Why Statins Cause Muscle Pain

Statins (usually prescribed as cholesterol-lowering drugs) are known for having a lot of side effects, and the most common reason that people quit statins is because of muscle pain that started after they started taking statins.

It turns out, it has to do with calcium:

An unfortunate coincidence

Researchers (Dr. Jennifer Leigh et al.) found that certain statins, including simvastatin, can bind to the ryanodine receptor, a calcium-channel protein in skeletal muscle, causing calcium to leak into areas of the cell where it does not normally go.

This is a completely unintended action of the statins in question, and happens because drugs and receptors function a lot like locks and keys, and sometimes it’ll happen that a certain key opens a different lock because it coincidentally has a molecular shape that will also fit in there if it hits it at just the right angle.

This becomes a problem in this case, since excess calcium will directly weaken muscle fibers and/or accidentally activate enzymes that slowly break muscle tissue down. All this unintended activity will tend to lead to pain, weakness, and fatigue.

You can read the paper itself, here: Structural basis for simvastatin-induced skeletal muscle weakness associated with type 1 ryanodine receptor T4709M mutation

What this means for doctors: the hope here is that statins could potentially be redesigned to avoid binding to muscle calcium channels while still lowering cholesterol. Exploring this, the research team were indeed able to close statin-related calcium leaks in mice and look forward to testing the drugs in humans with the same statin-induced muscle problems.

What this means for you: not a lot yet, in practical terms, but the main call-to-action here is to fully research statins before you go on them and, if you are on them without having fully read up on them, do so now (better late than never), and make an informed decision (with your doctor(s) on board, please), about either continuing, discontinuing, or trying a different statin if you’re having problems with the one you’re on.

If you’re coming at this completely fresh, then some of the first things to know will be that statins:

• often (but not always) are much less effective for women than for men, and also
• often (but not always) come with side effects that are typically a lot more serious for women than for men.

The side effects can then lead to a “side effect train” whereby the patient then has to take something else to treat the side effect, then something else to treat the side effect(s) of that medication, and so on, until they are taking an increasingly large stack of medications. See also: Are You Taking PIMs? Getting Off The Overmedication Train

Based on that, statins will not be “the right choice” for women as often as they are for men.

But, to be clear, sometimes they are the right choice, even for women!

You can read on that in detail, here: Statins: His & Hers?

Want to learn more?

Or if you want to get really into detail, then check out this excellent book that we reviewed (and whose information largely informed the above-linked article):

The Truth About Statins – by Dr. Barbara H. Roberts

Take care!