There is so much hearsay and speculation in this thread... ;-)

Atorvastatin is generally a very safe medication. Vague muscle aches and pains though commonly attributed as side-effects of statins are often coincidental. In most statin trials, there is generally no significant difference in musculoskeletal discomfort between the drug and placebo. The fact is, there are many much more common reasons for transient muscle aches.

Atorvastatin can cause mild elevations of liver enzymes but where this is stable, it is of unknown significance.

Rhabdomyosis is a very rare but potentially lethal side-effect and it tends to be idiosyncratic. You either get it or you don't. The risk is probably in the order of 1 in 20,000 or so.

The statins are also not sedating and there is no good evidence that it has any effect on memory. Someone up this thread stated that atorvastatin was used before bed in hospitals for the purposes of sedation. This is not true. Statins are often used at night as they are more effective when taken in that manner; cholesterol synthesis in the liver occurs more at night. However, atorvastatin can be taken any time during the day. In fact, insomnia is listed as an uncommon side-effect of atorvastatin by the manufacturer.

As many people here have stated, your lipid levels do not depend solely on your diet. Genetics do play a large part. I have seen many vegetarians who have rather high cholesterol levels. However, if you have favourable genetics, exercise and having a healthy diet alone WILL reduce your lipid levels to target levels. Furthermore, even if you don't have favourable genetics, exercise and healthy diet will still reduce your cardiovascular risk anyway so it is always recommended.

Statins generally reduce the risk of the primary endpoint of a coronary or cerebrovascular event (i.e., heart attack or ischaemic stroke) by about a third, regardless of your baseline risk. So, if you have already had a heart attack or stroke, a statin is strongly recommended as your baseline risk is very high (e.g., if you have one stroke and are untreated, your risk of another in 12 months is close to 70%). However, if your baseline risk is fairly low, then you may be getting rather limited returns.

For the purposes of primary prevention (i.e., preventing the FIRST event), the needed to treat (NNT) value of atorvastatin to prevent a heart attack is in the order of hundreds for people considered "at risk" of coronary artery disease at 3 years. In the ASCOT trial, about 300 patients would need treatment for 3 years to prevent one heart attack.

That doesn't mean that atorvastatin is useless for primary prevention. Vascular disease, after all, is very common in Western societies but it does mean that most people using statins for primary prevention may not actually be getting much benefit, particularly if their baseline risk is low. Guidelines, however, are written from a health economics point of view. There is a balance between the cost of therapy and its gains at a population level, rather than at an individual level.

Cheers.