Anyone here with high cholesterol and on Crestor?

I am not a doctor. As you probably know muscle pain can be a sign of a very serious side effect. I believe Crestor is a statin drug like lipitor, so if you try it, I would recommend having your kidney function monitored closely.

I have high cholesterol, bad genes, and I refuse to take any medication, because I suffer from muscle pain for other reasons, and I am terrified I would have no idea if I am having a deadly side effect or not.

However, here is what is true for me and might help you. My cholesterol is 270 when I eat whatever I want. It has always been that, since the first time I had it checked in my teens, and I was a very thin girl. Even now at the age of 43 and 20 pounds heavier same deal. What is also the same is if I cut out egg yolks and sweets like cake and candy, it goes down to 225 in a month. If I again cut my cholesterol intake in half from there, I have gotten down to 215 in a few weeks. You might have a lot of control over yourncholesterol count like me, if you really eliminate cholesterol from your diet. Literally count the miligrams you are taking in. I figure my body does not stop producing cholesterol when I take it in, so I wind up with too much.

Good luck. Hope I helped.

@JLeslie

Just so there is no misunderstanding for the OP, “sweets like cake and candy” do not necessarily contain cholesterol. No sugars contain cholesterol; it’s found only in animal products. Very few candies will contain cholesterol.

In addition, diet helps but doesn’t completely control cholesterol; there’s a strong genetic component. I am a vegetarian who eats a small amount of dairy products and an occasional egg, but my cholesterol is still too high.

@crisw True. My sweets are cake and snickers bars. Hahaha. Good point though, cholesterol is only in animal products. In fact, when I decided to try butter instead of margarine, my cholesterol went up, I know everyone hates transfats right now, but in terms of my cholesterol number it seems to be better than taking in more cholesterol in the butter. However, I keep my margarine intake down to a minimum anyway. Again, I recommend actually counting mg intake of cholesterol, being very aware of what is being eaten.

I do believe some people simply genetically produce too much cholesterol, which goes with what you are saying, but I also believe there are people like me who genetically don’t have their receptors working right, and keep pumping it out, even when it is being taken in. My whole family has high cholesterol, but the two people in it who went vegan, well one is strictly vegan, the other does cheat some, but is vigilant about cholesterol intake, they are both well within normal limits.

Do you know how much cholesterol is in one egg yolk? You could have two steaks. I am not sure you really tried cutting back enough to really give it a good test.

My only point is if the OP has not goven ot a real college try with diet, he might want to. I hear people all the time say they tried, and then they tell me what they eat, and I see they are not really eating low cholesterol. One egg yolk is something like 225 mg, while a 6 oz steak is about 140 mg. Most people have 2 or 3 eggs when they eat eggs. Two slices of cheese is about the same as a small piece of steak. Dairy and eggs is a nightmare, and many people go vegetarian, but keep the dairy and eggs, if not eat more of it, and that is not going to help.

it really depends on your cholesterol breakdown and your other risk factors for heart disease… LDL is the bad cholesterol that crestor targets (and decreases)... total cholesterol doesnt matter as much as LDL/HDL breakdown

a couple things that contribute to your goal cholesterol: history of peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, abdominal aortic aneurysm, known coronary artery disease, history of heart attacks, HDL (good cholesterol), blood pressure, history of smoking, family history of early heart disease… for example, a patient with no risk factors, male gender, and 35 years of age would have a LDL target of 130… a 35 year old male who has had a heart attack automatically has a target LDL of 100 with recommendation to even decrease it lower to 70… so as you can see, it really is patient specific…

based on those risk factors, a target LDL is given (using Framingham RIsk Calculator which can be googled)... there are many drugs that lower the bad cholesterol, statins being the main ones used… crestor is a statin= rosuvastatin and has the best LDL lowering potential… simvastatin (zocor) at maximum dose can lower LDL about 40%... crestor at a relatively low dose can do the same and at a high dose can lower approximately 60%...

its true that crestor, just like other statins can cause muscle pain and liver problems… appropriately so, should you decide to start crestor, liver should be monitored… crestor doesnt affect kidney much, but does need dose adjustment in renal failure, so a screening kidney function test should be done but doesnt need to be aggressively followed…

hope this helps a bit…

@mdintraining The muscle pain is an indicator of possible severe kidney damage. Although, true the drug can affect the liver also.

actually muscle pain means rhabdomyolysis… breakdown of muscle… this can lead to kidney damage but muscle pain in itself does not signify kidney damage… thats why it is not necessary to monitor kidney function in the absence of symptoms… of course, as you know, once you develop muscle pain and definitely if you develop laboratory evidence of rhabdomyolysis, the statin should be switched or discontinued altogether…

@mdintraining This OP had muscle pain previously on statins so it seemed prudent to be extra careful. But, I see your point. When you wrote “Crestor doesn’t affect kidney much,” I felt the need to replh, because that is the very thing I am concerned for regarding the OP considering his history with another statin drug.

You wrote only the HDL LDL ratio matters, but it has been my experience that if numbers are very high, even if ratio is within normal, they still recommend drugs. They do to me. I wondered if something had changed? Since you are probably more current than my old doctors. Lol. I refuse the meds because I have all over muscle pain to begin with. I am afraid I would have no idea if I were really sick with kidney failure. I just have to become a vegan and then I would not have to worry about any of this. <sigh>

i guess i missed the OP part on having muscle aches with lipitor… you are at increased risk with another statin but its not a given that you will develop muscle aches… depending on how bad your muscle pains were, it could be worth a try giving crestor a chance

i think i wrote the ratio matters more… you are right total cholesterol is also important… the main three components of total cholesterol is hdl, ldl, and vldl… the last 2 are the bad ones… while the total cholesterol is still looked at, the ldl and vldl being high is what really prompts treatment decisions…

being vegan will help with control of cholesterol but genetics also play a role… my sister is a healthy 31 year old who is vegan and runs marathons every couple months… but she has horrible cholesterol… there are mutations in the receptors that eliminate cholesterol in certain people causing diet alone to be insufficient- although still not trivial to make dietary modifications…

@mdintraining You might have missed in one of my answers above that my cholesterol drops like a rock if I cut down my cholesterol intake. My sister who is vegan no longer has high cholesterol, and my father is close to vegan, he does have egg beaters, and a cheat every so often on other animal products, but rarely, and his cholesterol is controlled and his bipass from 20 years ago have stayed clear (he recently had an angiogram for a concern that wound up not being what they expected). He does take a statin though, no way to know if his cholesterol would be ok even without the drug, because he won’t test the theory.

I figure my receptors mal function, meaning don’t reduce my cholesterol output when I take in cholesterol, but I think some people simply overproduce cholesterol no matter what, so diet does not get them into normal ranges. I will never have low cholesterol, but I think it would be normal if I just bit the bullet and gave up animal altogether.

You might be interested in the literature on vitamin K2 if you are not aware of it. K2 is thought to aid in calcium going to the bone and the theory is the settling of calcium forming plaque in the arteries might be a bigger concern than cholesterol. Tricky because in America the best source of K2 is found in egg yolks, which of course I avoid. In Japan they get signiicant k2 from a food they eat called natto, and as you know the Japanese have less trouble with heart disease.

i was commenting that not all people are so lucky and can just cut back on cholesterol intake.. i saw your post… most people will lower their cholesterol with dietary modification… but i was just mentioning that its not a given….

ya ive heard about vitamin K2… its not studied well enough to come into medical practice yet but maybe one day…