Statins come up on this forum from time to time. I can't take statins. My doc told me if I didn't go on statins I'd be dead in 10 years. I was on Lipitor and CoQ-10 for a year before I finally told the doctor I'd rather die, thank-you. Symptoms were numb arms, muscle soreness and weakness, dry skin, and memory loss. It would take a week to recover from a zone 2 ride, which left me progressively weaker throughout the season as I gradually LOST conditioning and strength; and by the end of the riding season I'd lost so much leg strength that I had to rest halfway up a flight of 15 stairs. Since stopping (over 10 years ago now) I got back most of my leg strength and memory, and the numb arms went away almost immediately. But my dry flaky skin persists and it seems I've permanently lost 15 bpm off my MHR.

My doc, not content to let it go at that, referred me to a cardiac specialist. (Who had been a GP before discovering there was more money in cardio.) He gave me a full slate of tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me other than my numbers being outside the recommended range. Then he tried me on Zocor with the same results, and then on Zetia, which immediately gave me open blisters on the bottoms of my feet.

I agree that based on posts here and various other forums, that side-effects are both more numerous and more severe than the medical community acknowledges. Muscle myopathy is particularly troublesome -- my doc sheepishly admitted a year or two ago that he'd seen studies that showed *some* degree of myopathy occurred in virtually all cases. Don't forget, the heart is a muscle! My advice, strictly as a layman, is to avoid statins at all costs.