Just found out my cholesterol is “borderline high” and my doctor wants to put me on Lipitor. (I’d rather avoid it if possible) Has anyone out there trained/raced while using Lipitor, and did it have any adverse effects?
I have been on Lipitor for 2 years, also trying to lower my cholesterol. I have not had any “adverse effects” from taking it. However, I do go the doctor more regualry for cholesterol, liver and kidney test to make sure all if okay. So far, nothing abnormal has come back from test. Before getting on Lipitor, the doctor wanted me to exercise more and diet better. That through me for a loop. I told him I don’t think I can fit in anymore exercise than what I am doing as a triathlete. Ditto for the diet, already watching what I eat. Genetics with the high cholesterol hurts.
My cholesterol has dropped signifacantly while being on Lipitor. Even though I am healthy, I would like to be around for a while for my wife and soon to be kids. It is worth taking for (my) those reasons.
If you want more info… go to http://www.lipitor.com/default.asp
Here you you even find questions to ask the doctor.
Don
I had great results with it, 50% drop in total and and about 80% increase in hdl’s. Last summer had to go off of it for co-pay reasons and went on an equivalent, 3 months later my numbers went badly in the wrong direction. I’m on a trial with Zocor if the numbers don’t come back up I’m going back to Lipitor even with the increased $$. I get the cholesterol and liver lab done twice a year. One issue for athletes on any statin drug is the potential liver involvement. Early signs of a liver going south would be aches and pains, feeling kind of beat-up. Sounds like a good week of training to us. I’ve seen no ill effects of being on statins.
Yes, I am on Simvastatin. No side effects of training/racing that I can tell except my 100 free time is now 10 seconds slower than it was 28 years ago.
I have borderline high LDL and very high HDL, so my “risk profile” is low according to my GP. I train a lot so can’t get more active. It is just hereditary. I have been pretty well on the Dean Ornish “heart disease reversal diet” for about a year, so I want to see where I end up. I feel better than last year, but won’t know till me blood test. If my numbers are still high, I will go on Lipitor or something else. I am 38 and have a wife and 7 year old, so I want to be around for some time yet !
I read every label on the planet and am amazed at how much sat and trans fat is in pre packaged foods. Watch your energy bars !!! I did not realize that I was taking in ~ 6 g of sat fat alone per day in various bars that I was eating for snacks. Does not seem like a lot, but it adds up. I’ve removed ~ 20-40 g of sat fat per day alone just by being more aware of where my food comes from.
Make oatmeal your friend. Where making our own bars with a recipe from Quaker Oats. http://www.quakeroatmeal.com/HeartHealth/HHE/recipes.cfm Lipitor does have side effects, read the label and you’ll find out.
After a year of training and after losing 20 lbs, my cholesterol was 250+, with bad ratios of bad/good. So much for diet and excercise lowering cholesterol.
Lipitor knocked it down to 150 in a week. The doc did blood tests every 60 days the first six months to make sure I wasn’t having any adverse reactions. So far, so good. I get the blood work done every six months now.
Hasn’t seemed to affect my training or racing at all.
Lipitor shouldn’t be much of a problem. The only common adverse effects are its effects on the liver and muscle aches. If you don’t get the muscle aches it isn’t much of a problem but sometimes a doctor can check CK enzymes to see if you are getting muscle breakdown. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to continue Lipitor. Beta blockers on the other hand can hamper your exercise but at low does is tolerable for some. But if hammering with HR max of 200+ is your deal, you’d probably wan’t to stay away from those. Hope your cholesterol stays in good control. It’ll reap benefits many years down the line.
I don’t know about exercising on a statin drug, but I will tell you that Statins (lipitor is a statin) are amazing drugs that have been shown to not only lower your cholesterol but make tangible lengthening of life expectancy.
Things you should be watching out for is that Statins as a group have myopathy (muscle pain) and rhabdomyolisis (muscle death) as a side effect… so be weary when you start feeling soreness out of proportion to your normal post workout state.
taku, are you familiar with the body of info that says homocysteine level is more important that cholesterol levels?
Basically, what I’ve seen is many times cholesterol and homocyseine levels go hand-in-hand. However, you still see the thin guy with low cholesterol levels that has advanced atherosclerosis. Puzzling; until you consider his homocysteine level is high. Conversely, the fat guy with high cholesterol seems like a walking coronary ready to fall over, but, he has a very low homocysteine level and clean arteries. Maybe this explains the “odd” Mediterranean genetically similar family with cholesterol levels in the Thousands, and no evidence of vascular disease at all…I’d like to know what their homocysteine levels run.
BTW, homocysteine is a chemical found in abundance in meat.
First off what gives you heart attack is coronary arery disease which is harening of the arteries of your hearrt.
A hgh cholesrerol or a high homocysteine or a high blood pressure in and of itself will not give you a heart attack.
There is a lot of very good evidence linking the two though. Interestignley enough hyperhomocyteniemis (high homocysteine in blood) is associated specifically with a greater chance of dying from a heart attack. It is a risk factor independant from teh lipids in your blood for heart disease. ight now the majority of the research is focussed around the homocstene in patients with already underlying vascular disease
Now for the but. The problem is that people don’t know why this is a risk factor… one might think, who cares… just lower it… well lowering the levels with B6 adn B12 have shown conflicting results. Furthere it si not understood if the homocysteine and the coronary ertery disease is associated becyause of an underlying defect leading to the both or if the high homnocysteine cases the CAD… this is the main pont that needs to be settled. That is why people are not reccomending that people get their homocysteine levels checked.
Getting to your question is wheteher it is more important… They are independantly important. from what I have read. lowering the risk from one of these things does not change the risk from the other.
PS… If you give me your email address I cold send you some of the paes written on this topic.
This is an excellent point. Cholesterol is not the last word. Homocysteine levels are a better marker from what I have read. They usually track, but not always. I would check homocysteine levels before going on long term medication of Liitor or anything else.
taku wrote: First off what gives you heart attack is coronary arery disease which is harening of the arteries of your hearrt.
A hgh cholesrerol or a high homocysteine or a high blood pressure in and of itself will not give you a heart attack.
Well, atherosclerosis (thickening and clogging) is more of a problem than ateriolesclerosis (hardening) in coronary artery disease. And I know it isn’t a high cholesterol nor high homocysteine level, nor Hypertension that causes a heart attack.
A heart attack is simply caused by blood flow being interupted to a portion of heart muscle. It has many causes. There is a vasospastic component in some instances, but usually a myocardial infarction is a result of platelets sticking to a roughened site (often inundated with white blood cells attacking the foreign material found in a plaque) on the endothelium of the artery (often due to an acute rupture of a plaque that has developed over time), and the muscle becomes ischemic. For you triathletes, ischemic is a relative term that loosely means the same thing as “exceeding Lactate Threshold”. Technically, it isn’t even the heart attack that kills people. Lot’s of people have heart attacks and survive. The killer is usually the dysrhythmia that occurs in response to the ischemia. Sometimes it’s a dysrhythmia that occurs in response to something known as “reperfusion injury” during the recannulization stage of the event. Certainly, there are massive MI’s that simply knock out a major portion of the (usually) left ventricular muscular function so that the ventricle can no longer produce enough contractile force to maintain blood pressure. And there are MI’s of the papillary muscles that can result in so much mitral regurgitation that the already stunned heart can’t function well enough to maintain blood pressure. When blood pressure drops too low, coronary artery perfusion drops, further worsening the ischemia, and very quickly, the person is dead. However, usually it is an arrhythmia that results in insufficient pumping of blood from the left ventricle that “causes” the death. I see it often enough, I know what’s going on with coronary artery disease and heart function.
I was simply curious about the homocysteine level as a precursor marker…not like troponin levels being an after-the-fact marker. And a cholesterol level is, in some circles, increasingly thought to be an inaccurate precursor marker of the risk of coronary artery disease.
I apparently over simplified what I was tryign to say…
There is very a lot of very good data out there that says that homocysteine is a very powerful marker for future MI. And even more interesting it is a very strong marker for fatality from MI especially in vasculopaths (diabetics fir example) However there is not any good data… specifically prospective data saying that owerign the homocysteine levels will cause a reduction in risk factors.
My reading of the literature is that it is a good marker but people don’t know what to do with it yet. It is pretty clear cut in patients with genetic hyperhomocystenemia and elevated homocysteine with underlying vacular disease that more aggressive control should be instituted… The other big thing is that homocysteine is an independant risk factor from cholesterol…
So point being your question is it more important than cholesterol… I would say depends on your definition of importance. I would say as a general rule cholesterol and homocyteine are both important in MI
Thanks for taking the time to respond…
I’m going to watch for studies about ingestion of homocysteine-rich food and any implications for coronary disease…maybe there is a link, maybe not. One thing is for certain, Cholesterol level is NOT the end-all precursor marker that so many people think it is.
NO cholesterol is definately not the bee all and end all… There more that research is done the more that peopel realize that with many of these diseases that were thought to be somewhat focal in nature are the result of big picture changes in homeostasis such hyper inflammatory states signified by markers like CRP or systemic cytokine release after shock states…
Lots of interesting things on the horizon… If i see any literature about your topic I wil pass it along
I’m skeptical about the attention that’s focused on cholesterol. From the Lipitol commercials I’ve learned 2 things. 1. People with good diet and excercise habits frequently have high cholesterol. I already knew that from personal experience. 2. Lipitol doesn’t lower the risk of heart disease. That’s the disclaimer in fine print at the end of the commercial.
I really don’t get the point. Cholesterol is supposedly a major risk factor for heart disease. The dominant theory is that you must lower cholesterol to lessen the risk of heart disease. Then why is it that a drug like Lipitol, that is apparantly very effective at lowering cholesterol levels, doesn’t lower the risk of heart disease? And why take it if that’s the case?
This subject was already on my list of discussion topics when I go in for a checkup in a few weeks. The NP’s always on me about my cholesterol count and eating habits. She doesn’t realy know my eating habits but assumes they must be responsible for high cholesterol. I suspect I’m in more danger of having a coronary from the stress of worrying about my cholesterol level than the actual condition.
Larry