I joined your forum for support as a caregiver and to share the research I been involved in for 5+ years.
All of those experiencing memory loss, it's not due to statins, but many taking statins are experiencing some type of cognitive dysfunction. The association between statins and CoQ10 inhibition was known during the initial development of Merck's Mevacor, the 1st statin approved by the FDA in Sept, 1987. "Today, most of the side effects we are seeing from Mevacor and the other stronger statins are due to ubiquinone (CoQ10) deprivation." (quote from Dr Duane Graveline: http://www.spacedoc.net/mevacor.htm) Peer reviewed document published a few years later: "Lovastatin decreases coenzyme Q levels in humans" - Nov 1990: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=55074&blobtype=pdf
And that's the connection between statins, memory loss and long list of other side effects; CoQ10 depletion/deprivation.
Dr Graveline has written 3 books about statins and their side effects as he experienced memory loss (TGA - transient global amnesia) from Lipitor on 2 separate occasions. Dr Jay Cohen interviewed Dr Graveline back in 2004, discussing statin side effects: http://www.medicationsense.com/articles/april_june_04/graveline.html Dr Beatrice Golomb is another actively analyzing the side effects of statins. Her website "UCSD Statin Effects Study" contains a wealth of information: https://www.statineffects.com/info/ Side effects are listed at this link: https://www.statineffects.com/info/adverse_effects.htm Under "Links" there are 5 documents that discuss memory loss: https://www.statineffects.com/info/links.htm
For some cognitive decline improves once the statin is stopped, but for others like my husband, they may improve initially, then memory starts to decline again. He was diagnosed with AD 5 years ago but recent NP testing clearly stated he does not have AD. Brain MRI has not changed from one taken 5 years ago. His doctors are at a loss for what to call his condition. His symptoms do not fit any known profile of AD or PD (a hand tremor appeared last year).
I encourage anyone who's taking a statin drug and experiencing memory loss to discuss this with your doctor. Print some of the articles mentioned at the links above as most doctors are not aware of the cognitive/statin connection.
When after 3 days my husband could not remember who he spent the day working with, we threw them in the garbage. I had researched that night and found that 2% have this type of action and if not stopped immediately, the cognitive impairment can become permanent. I started him on the red yeast rice and garlic. When he was tested 30 days later his cholesterol had come down. The doctor was pleased until i told him my hb's reaction and what I had been giving him. He emphatically said that the zorcor, nor any statin drug, would cause such a reaction. I know there is research that suggest they will dissolve or stop the plaque buildup in the brain, but I still refuse.
Several years ago there was quite a bit of media coverage of a study which showed that people who took CoQ10 supplements reduced their risk of heart attack and stroke by 50%. CoQ10 has anti-inflammatory properties and one theory was that it reduced inflammation which could lead to blood clots. Another theory is that CoQ10 is needed by the mitochondria for proper energy production.
My doctor says that all adults over 35 should be taking CoQ10 supplements. You can get good quality 150 softgels inexpensively at CostCo, and Walgreen's has 2-for-1 deals on different brands every week. It's a small expense compared to the cost of a heart attack or stroke.
Also remember that one of the theories about the MCT and coconut oil is that it is an alternative energy source for brain cell mitochondria.... hmmmm......
I have to take statins due to my family history of early death from heart disease and I started taking CoQ10 about 6 weeks ago. I consider myself kind of a normal energy kind of person, neither the energizer bunny nor a slug but in the last week or so I have noticed a positive change in my energy level and less fatigue. Wasn't sure how much to take so I chose 100 mg once per day and am going to discuss with my dr at my check up at the end of the month.
Catherine, remember that most docs are not too aware of things like CoQ10 and often pooh-pooh things like that because of their drug-based training. It's impossible for any one doctor to keep up with all the various studies etc. that are constantly finding new things. My doc went to continuing education classes about this stuff and came back a believer in CoQ10 and Vitamin D for all his patients.
When people who are deficient start taking CoQ10, they need a "loading dose" to get their levels up. Some hospitals actually give heart attack patients CoQ10 intravenously upon admission. 100 mg is very minimal if you have been taking statins and thus are deficient. I take a minimum of 200/day and I'm NOT taking statins.
I take statin drugs for my cholesterol and started having severe muscle and joint pain in my legs. My Dr told me to take CoQ10, and the leg pain went away within a couple of days. My cardiologist also told me to take vitamin D. He said everybody north of (I think he said) the 35th parallel is deficient in vitamin D.
Hi Charlotte, Re: "When after 3 days my husband could not remember who he spent the day working with, we threw them in the garbage." You (and your husband) are lucky side effects appeared so quickly and you immediately made the connection. Six or seven years ago no one seemed to be aware of the cognitive/statin connection. Dr Julian Whitaker was the only one advising to supplement with CoQ10. And for many like my husband, it takes years for side effects to surface. He was taking CoQ10 100mg while on Lipitor 10 mg but we failed to double CoQ10 when Lipitor was increased to 20 mg. Over the course of 8 years while on statins, he experienced muscle/joint/neck/shoulder pain only to be told, "a small price to pay for improved heart health"... He took 3 naps a day, would awaken at 3 am and watch TV until he went back to sleep, was "snappish" for no apparent reason, dark pigmentation appeared all around his neck,visual disturbances, ED... all of these were continually dismissed by his doctors... just a natural part of "aging". TGA was the tip of the iceberg. All of these symptoms? Documented statin side effects. Fran
WOW! I am throwing my Lipitor and my husband's in the trash. He has family history of heart disease and his cardiologist doubled his dose after an angiogram about four years ago. Then his memory went south, he lost his sense of direction from being a human compass and many other of the symptoms mentioned above. And just like other posters, our doctor just poopooed my concerns about the statin drugs. He just went for another evaluation with a neuropsychologist and the results just don't satisfy me. She thinks he has some sort of ADD, with some depression and anxiety. I have been married to this man for almost 30 years and I know he can focus and concentrate on the task at hand (if it is of his interest). he has an appointment with the neurologist next week, I am printing all this and bringing it to her and this time. I am not allowing her to brush it off. CoQ10 here I come.
If I had the choice between heart problems and AD I'd rather have a fatal heart attack than have AD. Just my opinion.
There ARE safer alternatives to lower your cholesterol. Plant sterols have been shown to be as effective as statins. You can get Nature Made's "CholestOff" inexpensively at CostCo or Walgreen's. (They often come up on a Walgreen's 2-for-1 sale, and CostCo also occasionally has big sales on it.)
There are lots of other things that people try too, but the CholestOff is easy -- take them before meals.
I wish we had Sunshyne to report on this for us. Sigh.
Shanteuse - make sure it is the acetyl L-carnitine. We have been taking CoQ10 for a few years now, but he may have been so sensitive that the statin depleted it quickly. I have a brother that has been on statins for over 10 years and as far as I know has no memory problems. As my research showed, 2% of users will suffer the severed memory problems. Others will at varying rates.
You are right - there are natural ways to lower cholesterol and get healthier than taking Rx drugs. I prefer trying the natural first although it often takes more effort than just getting a Rx from your doctor. It takes time to educate yourself on the alternatives, can be more expensive, and more pills/supplements to take. To us the trade off is worth it. Thank goodness for the internet because I do not have money to buy all the books I would need to get the information I find on the internet - both pros and cons.
Charlotte, as you probably know there are several forms of CoQ10, some of which are more bioavailable than others. Life Extension brand ubiquinol is supposed to be good. It's very possible to get big discounts on it on the internet. Here's a discussion about it:
Remember most medications have side effects and you always have to weigh the pluses and minuses of every drug you take. I believe that the side effect of memory loss can occur with statins but I also know it does not happen with most people. I certainly would stop taking them immediately if I had that side effect. Most people that take statins have little to no side effects and remain on them. And things can even get a little muddier when they discover things like statins decrease the level of CoQ10 in the body and many of the side effects are cause by and can be corrected by supplementing CoQ10.
For me the answer is simple, I am now 48 and am the first woman in three generations on my mother's side that has not died of a heart attack by the age of 42. Statins and blood pressure medication have added years to my life and I will continue to take them as long as I don't experience intolerable side effects.
And the irony of it all is my DH has low blood pressure, low cholesterol, does not take statins or any other medications and has subcortical VaD (which is rarely found in anyone with out high blood pressure and cholesterol). Medicine is often an art, not a science....sometimes the pieces of the puzzle just don't seem to fit!!
I've been on Lipator for years with no problems. It's strange how different drugs work for some and are a real problem for others. Both my grandmothers and my Mom died with heart problems. I'm trying to turn the tide.
He didn't seem to have problems with it, until they doubled the dose four years ago after an angiogram. I am watching what he eats and encouraging him to walk around the neighborhood. He says he prefers a weaker heart than been a "crazy old man" (He is only 57). I started cutting his pills in half last week, put him on 200mg of CoQ-10, and two Horse pills ;-) of Omega-3. I have been taking statins for myself for a few years and don't seem to have any problems with it, but even I am cutting my dose in half, just in case. Maybe this will finally push both of us to live a little healthier.
Briegull, I agree, and he agrees with me. He rather have a heart that is not what it used to be, than be in a constant fog. He has an appointment with the neurologist today and we are going "armed" with all the information we have been able to gather. This time we are not letting the Drs brush off our concerns.
Finally someone well know comes out and speaks the secret:
Medicine Studies Under Scrutiny Content courtesy of Ivanhoe. For more information, click here.
Each year, $84 billion is spent on drug development. The rush to create better pills and more effective medicine could be costing the people who take them more than their money -- it could cost them their health. Is medicine losing out to the almighty dollar? Are clinical trials rigged? The results skewed?
There's a lot on the line. The prescription drug market is a $162 billion dollar a year business. But some say the studies done to get these drugs to market can -- and are -- being manipulated.
"Negative studies? We don’t hear about them," Peter Lurie, M.D., Deputy Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, told Ivanhoe.
“Many medical journals are becoming marketing instruments for the drug companies," Sidney Wolfe, M.D., Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said.
A new study finds 2 percent of scientists admit they have fabricated, falsified or altered data to improve the outcome at least once. About 35 percent admit to questionable research practices. A JAMA study reveals that 30 percent of the original research studied was either false or exaggerated. Problems include small study size, design flaws, publication bias and failure to publish negative results.
"A smart drug company -- maybe not an ethical one, but a smart one -- might decide to publish only those studies that put its drug or device in the best light," Dr. Lurie said.
Case in point: $25 billion worth of statins are sold each year to help lower cholesterol. Pharmaceutical companies are racing to create a new improved product.
“Every statin company is trying to make people believe their statin is better than another one," Dr. Wolfe said.
After astronaut and flight surgeon Duane Graveline’s cholesterol went up from 230 to 270, NASA doctors put him on Lipitor. An under-reported side effect changed his life
“I didn’t know my wife, and I didn’t know my home," Graveline told Ivanhoe.
Graveline was suffering from transient global amnesia.
“The doctors said, no, no, no, statins don’t do that," Graveline said.
Graveline found studies -- not widely reported -- that show statins impact cholesterol in your brain that affects memory.
“In our attempt to control the blood cholesterol, the statin drugs were adversely affecting the brain," he added.
Graveline found about 1,000 cases of amnesia reported to the FDA.
“Not one of these has ever been reported back to the medical community," he said."
Erick Turner was a doctor who reviewed trials for the better part of his career. When he became a reviewer for the FDA, he got the surprise of his life.
“I, first of all, was shocked at the number of negative trials, because I had never seen a negative trial before," Dr. Turner, Senior Scholar at the Center for Ethics and Health Care at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, told Ivanhoe. "I had been clueless … These were studies that simply weren’t getting published, or perhaps they were being presented in a way that made them look positive."
A JAMA study found industry-sponsored research was positive 87 percent of the time compared with 65 percent of non-industry-sponsored research. UCLA professor Jerome Hoffman says it’s not just the companies that profit from positive results.
"The financial success of medical journals, particularly the major journals, is intimately tied to meeting the needs of the companies that sponsor these big studies," Dr. Hoffman told Ivanhoe.
The push is on for more disclosure. This year the New England Journal of Medicine now requires authors to disclose any patents or royalties related to their research and it publishes the information with the studies. JAMA and other journals have followed suit. Many believe this is the first step to fixing the problem.
“No study is perfect," Dr. Hoffman said. "The large majority come to conclusions that can be questioned."
Those inaccuracies and misrepresentations can end up costing lives.
Some researchers believe the only way to completely fix the problem is to take private funds out of research. The down side to that? Private companies have more money to spend on research than the federal government. Others are pushing for a drug trial registry that would allow the public to see if any trials ended with negative results.
Copyright 2009 by KPTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Finally got a cholesterol count for my beloved, Total cholesterol is..... drum roll, please, 152. Better thatn ever with only half of his Lipitor, our PCP was stumped. She agrees, now, that he didn't need such a high dose, she is actually foing to change him to another statin, simvastatin at only 20mg, and sheck back in about three months. In the meantime, she wants him to get moving and exercise, maybe the Wii will get some use from him. Another MRI, with and without contrast shows that everything is about the same as it was 5 years ago. In other words, no real diagnosis, except that he has some loss of myelin.
Great news. Could be the high dosage of statins was the cause of his 'dementia'. The physician astronaut that had the same reaction to statins has been on the news lately. Maybe he will keep at it and push the dangers of them, especially at high doses.
I work at NASA, and I am quite familiar with the flight surgeons ordeal. I talked to our PCP and she wants to keep him on the 20mg os SImvastatin for a couple of months and see how it goes. If the cholesterol seems OK, then we would try 10mg only. She is still scratching her head about why his cardiologist put him on such a high dose. In the meantime the neurologist is still trying to figure out what is wrong with him. He has had two MRI's, one MRA, and mutlitple other tests in the last couple of months and nothing is conclusive so far.
My sister takes a super concentrated liquid fish oil she gets from our naturopath. She was sick for the last couple months and wasn't taking it and her cholesterol went back up. The medical doctor wants her to up her statin from 1/2 pill to a full pill but she got more fish oil and is going that route. Wish I could afford it - about $55 a month - but will settle for taking the capsules. As long as it stays around 220 I am satisfied.