Cholesterol reduction. Statins or diet and exercise

[Lurcher67]

I have just had a recent blood test and my TC has gone down from 5.6 in Apr 23 to 3.5 in Sep 23, my LDL has gone down from 3.7 to 1.7.
I have reduced my carb intake mainly to control BG.
Is this a case of the Atorvastatin working correctly or would the cholesterol have lowered with dietary changes anyway? I guess I am asking this question as I was told I would be on statins for life, unnecessarily if dietary changes have lowered cholesterol. One of the reasons given was that I am at greater risk of CVA due to DM.
My bp is in ideal range and I am not overweigh.

 

[Leadinglights]

Reduction in carbs is reported as helping to lower cholesterol by some sources, but for the individual hard to call unless you experiment and stop the statin and see what happens to your cholesterol result after a few months.
Not suggesting you do that but something to ask about doing.

 

[Drummer]

I took Atorvastatin and Metformin for a few weeks after diagnosis and it nearly destroyed me. My memory was badly affected, plus I felt dreadful, became suicidal and my body ached. It took me 18 months to lose the pains in my muscles and I relearned everything I had written down by constant repetition day after day. Memories do resurface from time to time even now.

 

[Burylancs]

I have just had a recent blood test and my TC has gone down from 5.6 in Apr 23 to 3.5 in Sep 23, my LDL has gone down from 3.7 to 1.7.
I have reduced my carb intake mainly to control BG.
Is this a case of the Atorvastatin working correctly or would the cholesterol have lowered with dietary changes anyway? I guess I am asking this question as I was told I would be on statins for life, unnecessarily if dietary changes have lowered cholesterol. One of the reasons given was that I am at greater risk of CVA due to DM.
My bp is in ideal range and I am not overweigh.

Almost certainly the statin working effectively, doing what they are designed to do

 

[Lurcher67]

I took Atorvastatin and Metformin for a few weeks after diagnosis and it nearly destroyed me. My memory was badly affected, plus I felt dreadful, became suicidal and my body ached. It took me 18 months to lose the pains in my muscles and I relearned everything I had written down by constant repetition day after day. Memories do resurface from time to time even now.

That sounds horrendous Drummer. Did you feel those side effects immediately or after a prolonged period of taking the medication? Fortunately I don’t seem to have been affected by the metformin or the Atorvastatin. I was a bit sceptical when prescribed, but if they are helping without causing any obvious side effects then I guess I am lucky in that respect.

 

[Lurcher67]

Almost certainly the statin working effectively, doing what they are designed to do

As I am not feeling any I’ll effects from them, I will continue until gp takes me off them or I do start to be negatively affected by them.
As I was started on these shortly after diagnosis, I don’t know what the blood test result would have been without taking them. I guess I will never know and should be grateful that my cholesterol has dropped. Just need to concentrate on BG level next, which I think is improving according to finger prick testing, but won’t know for certain till after next HbA1c test.

 

[Lurcher67]

Reduction in carbs is reported as helping to lower cholesterol by some sources, but for the individual hard to call unless you experiment and stop the statin and see what happens to your cholesterol result after a few months.
Not suggesting you do that but something to ask about doing.

Hi, yes I guess I will never know for sure, was just curious as to whether reducing or cutting out altogether previous diet of bread, crisps, biscuits etc would have also reduced cholesterol. I will probably continue with them until I can discuss with GP, but I haven’t had any negative effects from taking them, perhaps they may reduce dosage.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

As I am not feeling any I’ll effects from them, I will continue until gp takes me off them or I do start to be negatively affected by them.

I think the majority are able to take statins with no noticeable side effects, though we have a few members who had a strong reaction, and some have the severity of their reaction written into their notes. My understanding is that diet changes can only go so far (the body makes most of the cholesterol in our bloodstream).

Statins cut back on this production, and encourage re-absorption so I think it’s likely the reduction is a bit of both, but research suggests probably mostly the statins.

My lipid panel numbers dropped very effectively on a low dose statin (no side effects for me either), and I didn’t intentionally change my menu to reduce saturated fat intake.

 

[Drummer]

That sounds horrendous Drummer. Did you feel those side effects immediately or after a prolonged period of taking the medication? Fortunately I don’t seem to have been affected by the metformin or the Atorvastatin. I was a bit sceptical when prescribed, but if they are helping without causing any obvious side effects then I guess I am lucky in that respect.

Almost immediately,
I only took the tablets for 5 weeks. I was diagnosed in November, and just before Christmas I lost the car in the supermarket car park, then after wandering around with the key for a while I found it, opened the back and it was full of shopping I'd done two days earlier. By then I could see that I was getting almost normal blood glucose readings, so I threw out the tablets and stuck to the low carb diet.

 

[Eddy Edson]

FWIW, I experimented with this back in first year or so after diagnosis.

Started with LDL-C of 3.2 at DX in Mar 2018, started on high-dose Rosuvastatin (first line statin here in Oz). After 6 months, in Sep 2018, my LDL-C had halved to 1.6, due to some combination of the statin; cutting saturated fat & refined carbs; losing enough weight to zap my T2D and resolve my metabolic syndrome; eating tons of fibre. Also noting that a reduction of ~50% is exactly what would be expected from 20mg Rosuva + lifestyle changes, according to the studies.

To experiment, I dopped the statin a couple of weeks before my next blood test in Nov 2018: LDL-C went back up to 2.1. But you can't just say that the statin was responsible for 0.5 of the Mar->Sep fall from 3.2 to 1.6, and "lifestyle" factors for the other 1.1. Apart from anything else, I was continuing to lose weight, increase exercise etc.

So if I hadn't dropped the statin, maybe (probably) LDL-C would have been lower than 1.6 in Nov. Which is consistent with what happened next ...


... when I resumed taking the statin, and at my next test in May 2018 my LDL-C had gone down to 1.0. So maybe the picture is something like this:

- Reduction Mar 18 - May 18: 2.2.
- Due to "lifestyle": 1.1
- Due to statin alone: 1.1

But who knows?

Anyway, my LDL-C has stayed at 1.0 mmol/l +/- 0.1 since then. I'd prefer it to be lower, if anything, and don't intend to experiment further. But if I wanted to, dropping the statin for a few weeks once again wouldn't be enough to impact my health. If you want to do the experiment, I'd say consult with yr doc and make sure you have a good handle on exactly what you're testing and what different outcomes to the experiment might mean.

 

[Burylancs]

Hi, yes I guess I will never know for sure, was just curious as to whether reducing or cutting out altogether previous diet of bread, crisps, biscuits etc would have also reduced cholesterol. I will probably continue with them until I can discuss with GP, but I haven’t had any negative effects from taking them, perhaps they may reduce dosage.

The standard doses of NHS are either 20 mg Atorvastatin or 40mg Simvastatin as those are equally effective but Simva seems to be favoured because it’s cheaper (?). There’s no reason why you should suffer ill effects from a Statin. Statins are one of the most important medications for helping to control the consequences of Type 2 Diabetes along with metformin, gliclazide, ace inhibitors (-prils), blood pressure tablets, insulin etc. Statins come early in the sequence because Diabetic Dyslipidemia is one of the earliest complications to develop. You have to be wary of scare stories emanating from the Daily Mail and misinformation from anti-statin ideologues. Fortunately the Statin Wars have died down on this group in recent years.

 

[nonethewiser]

I have just had a recent blood test and my TC has gone down from 5.6 in Apr 23 to 3.5 in Sep 23, my LDL has gone down from 3.7 to 1.7.
I have reduced my carb intake mainly to control BG.
Is this a case of the Atorvastatin working correctly or would the cholesterol have lowered with dietary changes anyway? I guess I am asking this question as I was told I would be on statins for life, unnecessarily if dietary changes have lowered cholesterol. One of the reasons given was that I am at greater risk of CVA due to DM.
My bp is in ideal range and I am not overweigh.

Great reduction so we'll done, even better that you've not had side effects but not surprised as very few do.

Without a shadow of doubt it would be Artorvasstatin that's brought your cholesterol down, it's said that diet has little effect on cholesterol so any reduction would be much smaller.

 

[Eddy Edson]

it's said that diet has little effect on cholesterol

Dietary *cholesterol* doesn't have usually have a big impact on LDL-C, but other things in the diet can: saturated fats, trans fats, refined carbs increase it; polyunsaturated fats, fibre decrease it etc.