Statins can they affect your cognitive skills?

I had a heart attack about a year ago. It was a SCAD, which means it had nothing to do with my cholesterol which was actually quite good, but they had to put in stents and the Carido Doc insisted I go on statins. Ok, fine but in a few weeks I noticed a slight decline in my ability to recall the right words. When I'm typing I often skip letters, entire words, or mess up the order of letters. When I'm really tired, I have moment when I jumble up the words in a sentence or can't even speak English. I have to stop and think hard to get a sentence out. This never happened before I started taking meds. I didn't have a stroke. (In fact the reason they joked in the ER how they knew I didn't do drugs because of the words I used and how clear and precise I was in describing my symptoms.) I'm convinced it's my meds ... has anyone else dealt with this?

• Were you on a pump for any of that time? That is a more likely cause than the statins.

• Oh gawd yes! I have bad bad cholesterol (i.e. LDL). I have been tried on every statin that exists and they all give me intolerable symptoms--esp. fatigue, but also mental fog that is horrible and includes depression. There is a lot of info online on the side effects of statins. Just do a google search. Doctors pretend there are no side effects because the drug companies brainwash them that the SE are minimal. But they do differ and different people respond differently--many people get muscle aches. There is a very good website by the doctor who wrote "Wheat Belly"--William Davis, MD. The site is called Trackyourplaque.org. It is membership based and does cost quite a lot but you can always join for a while and then quit. There is so much info on that site that reading it is a full-time job (!) but it is EXTREMELY informative in the area of preventive cardiology. You may not even need a statin--they are often over-prescribed. My sense is from trackyourplaque that many cardiologists are vastly undereducated in the non-interventional side of cardiology. In any case, there are many relatively young guys (mostly) there with stents who are bewildered about what to do. Good luck!

• R2 is exactly why DL is a great source of medical advice. What a shitstain.

• My guess is R3 is a drug rep. In any case, there is another site you might want to check run by a former air force surgeon, Duane Graveline, who has compiled a great deal of info on the side effects of statins. I may be a "shitstain" (not sure why that would be) but I am well-informed on this subject (unfortunately), so my guess it IS your statin. At least ask your doctor to try another one--there are currently about 5 or 6 different statins on the market. Crestor was the one that had the worst effect on my brain. There are indeed many people with these side effects out there. I do agree that DL is maybe not the best place to do this kind of research.

• Did you Dr not recommend cardiac school? They have classes where they discuss all this. One two hour session is the side effects of the drugs you will have to take. There are other side effects of just having a heart attack you need to know about also. See if you local hospital has these classes on a regular basis. Most insurance companies pay at least a part for them. Good luck OP. Things will be better in about 18 months to 2 years.

• Names. Names fail me. I used to be the Trivia King. People would call me in the middle of the night to ask who played what or so and so. Now I can picture the person, even know exactly what they've been in but the name isn't there.

• The fact that you're asking for medical advice here means there's something horribly wrong with your brain. I would log off now and head to the nearest ER

• I do get brain fog from the statin I'm taking, OP.

• Take some ubiquinol with your statins.

• What if they find out that for some people longterm statin use is a strong contributory factor for senility, dementia, and Alzheimers disease? The drug companies and the doctors issue a collective, "Whoops! Our bad." Remember Thalidomide?

• My stupid PCP, after just one cholesterol blood test tried to get me on statins. I took them for less than month, the bad reactions were immediate: brain fog and fatigue. I told him to run a second set of tests before prescribing the statin, but he was adamant that I needed a statin. I then started working on getting my cholesterol down on my own through a change of diet and becoming more active. I had started working from home at the time, I wasn't as active as I used to be with that long daily walk to and from the subway, that was completely eliminated. I lowered my cholesterol, without statins, by 50 points in a few months. It was bad enough that I had genetic high blood pressure. I'm still on a HBP med, there was no way I was going to add another daily medication to that list. Healthcare is the US is way too based on pumping people with medications, not changing our diets and lifestyles. Not one doctor has ever told me to exercise or change my diet. it's morr like "Take this magic pill, you will be fine." Doctors also never tell a patient what the longterm effects are from any medication.

• "Not one doctor has ever told me to exercise or change my diet." Are you that fucking neve and stupid? They teach the importance of diet and exercise in grade school.

• "Are you that fucking neve and stupid? They teach the importance of diet and exercise in grade school." No I am not NEVE, lol That should be naive, idiot.. I didn't NEED a doctor to tell me to exercise and change my diet, but I see the type of patients my PCP has, My PCP has a lot of obese patients who have diabetes, these illiterate fools are still eating junk food and still smoking, they have non concept that medication is just a small part of getting healthy. I wonder if my PCP tells them anything but to "take your meds". I do hear his conversations with other patients, but sometimes he does close his door, more on that later. He's that type of lax doctor who is more about pushing meds, than truly helping his patients, we are just $$$ to him. A lot of his patients are on Medicaid and he wanst to keep that gravy train coming. A neighbor's brother is a diabetic, he's already had a few toes removed, he is still eating junk, doesn't diet, still smokes and, well, he clearly does not give a shit about his health. That type of person is NOT me. I never ate crappy food, fried foods, NEVER ate McDonald's or any of that crap. I never smoked, never did recreational drugs or drank hard liquor. I drink the occasional glass of wine when I go out to dinner with friends. When I worked away from home, I would actually bring my own healthy sandwich or a container of a homemade salad. It started as me saving to buy my condo, I became frugal for that purpose, but I noticed I was eating much better lunches than most of my work colleagues. I'd see these people bringing in fast food and pizza lunches pretty much every day. One guy had a heart attack at 40, he wasn't even overweight. He simply didn't eat well and had a sedentary job, he was our IT guy. I am in shape, I have no idea how my cholesterol got high. I had to change my diet in the extreme, I was already eating healthy foods. My HBP is genetic, both my parents were always slim and active, they too have HBP. My brother doesn't have any ailments, my sister does have HBP, they are both slim. MY point is, most doctors don't stress the importance of eating well, exercise and even taking supplements, they are all getting some kind of kickbacks from the pharma companies and I know it. I usually wait in a smaller office before my PCP sees me, this is so the incoming patients can think there aren't many patients before them because they see an empty waiting room. The door is usually open in my PCP's office, I always overhear my PCP pushing anti-depressants on pretty much nearly everyone of his patients. It's clear, I need to find another doctor, I can't stand this guy. He's been my doctor since around 1992. Unfortunately, having an HMO limits me to the doctors within the 'medical group'. I did change to a wonderful female doctor a few years ago, unfortunately, she left to go into private practice, she doesn't accept my HMO. Walk a mile in my shoes then you can comment on my health issues. It's so easy for nasty DL posters to attack others without knowing the full background story, this applies to pretty much ANY topic here! That's a given.

• Dr. David Agus of "The End of Illness" says that everyone over the age of 40 should take statins because they're anti-inflammatories. Dr. Oz disagrees with him so that's one point for Agus.

• Yes, but it helped me to change from Zocor to Lipitor and take CoQ10 and a significant amount of fish oil.

• There are those on this thread who give informed, insightful answers, and then there are those incredibly angry (for whatever reason) fools who come back with one sentence filled with rage and expletives. What's that about? What's the reason for your senseless rage over a discussion of statins?

• If you take statins, then also take CO-10Q to restore what statins deplete.

• I asked my cardiac doc about CoQ10 and she looked at me like I was reading a stockmarker report from a tabloid. She did insist on Fish Oil and Vitamin D, but the oil makes me ... um... a bit runny.

• Oh, yes. About four or five years ago, the NYT carried an article about sudden and profound memory losses that were reversed by discontinuing statins. However, not all are affected this way. There were descriptions of a couple of case studies in the article. The FDA has added warning labels. I guess this hasn't taken effect yet.

  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-fda-statins-idUSTRE81R1O220120228

• Did OP forget this thread?

• Haha, r20. I've heard and read so much negative information about statins that it would not surprise me if they were causing your cognitive issues, OP. You should also consider that you've had a heart attack, which can also lead to memory issues. Is there any chance of you changing your diet and getting off the drugs?

• My partner decided he didn't want to take Crestor anymore, so he cut out all meat. Now he only eats seafood and lots of vegetables, Some rice and pasta. (Yes, I made him get a mercury level drawn after 3 months. It was fine.) He lost 22 lbs -- which he didn't really need to lose. He had to start eating more because he was looking gaunt. And his cholesterol went to normal levels and stayed there. When h e would eat things like hamburgers or steak, he would also eat fries and onion rings. That's one of the reasons why he lost so much weight. If you eat low fat fish and a little bit of rice and vegetables when you go out to eat, you don't eat fattening fried foods.

• My skeletel muscles are pretty much gone and I also have some word-memory problems. Funny thing is, the drug dropped me from 390 to 270 until I quit it. Since then I've settled at 230 and eat whatever I want. I really believe this poison will be the big lawyer bonanza of the next decade. That's why it costs so much (hey have to save up for the settlments they know are coming.)