George Shirley wrote:

> Reading what y'all have to say about statins and the fatigue has got me
> to thinking. As I said in an earlier post I have been on Zocor for a
> long time. In the last few months I have been bothered by chronic
> fatigue, get up in the morning and within an hour I have to lie down and
> take a nap, again in the afternoon. I seem to be always tired, and some
> part of me is always aching and hurting.

If it's *increasing* fatigue/weakness and pain, absolutely get checked.
What is happening is that your liver is somehow tricked into thinking
your body is starving/malnourished and starts taking apart muscle fibers
for protein to make energy from. Do a search on "rhabdomyolysis" for
more complete, not to mention accurate, descriptions.

> I think I'll see my doctor, have an appointment soon anyway and see what he says. He is from
> Colombia originally and isn't much on writing prescriptions if there's
> another way to do it. So far has taken me off of insulin and a couple of
> diuretics and I'm doing better than ever on less meds.

Sensible. No reason to poison yerself more than you have to.

> Yup, think I'll
> give him a call and set up some blood tests and see what he has to say.

More than likely it's something else, unless the schtuff you're
describing is increasing--and calling it "fatigue" is a bit misleading,
it's more like you can't move, not that you don't want to.

Be sure to have a liver panel and a test for an enzyme called "ck" or
"cpk" (it's released when muscles are damaged; it's usually used for
cardiac events but in this case can tell you rather quickly if there's
something else).

B/