About 15 years ago a doctor told me i should take statins for border line high chlosterol.
Being a truck driver i thought my back pain was from sitting long periods of time. I did have my back pain checked and found i had a herniated disc. It wasn't bad enough for surgery so it was let go. Now 63 and thinking i was in pretty good health, i found myself chocking during the night every time i tried to lay down to sleep. I went to the doctor the next morning and he realized i was having conjestive heart failure. After a 10 day stay in a hospital we found that my heart and lymph nodes are enlarged and the heart pump is only working at 15 to 20 per cent. I will be getting another echo cardiagram next month to see if the meds are helping or not then will decide whether to have a defibulator put in. My question is , is it likley that the statins i was taking have anything to do with this problem.?? Also, since going into the hospital in mid august i havent taken any of the chlosterol meds and by the time i left there my back pain has completley gone and haven't had any pain for the last one and a half months.
Ronald,
I am sorry to hear about some of the difficulties you have been having lately. To answer your question regarding the statins, it is very unlikely that they could cause congestive heart failure. Statins work by decreasing the amount of LDL cholesterol the liver produces. As a result, the liver increases its ability to take LDL cholesterol from the blood for storage in the liver. This lowers your LDL cholesterol levels and improves the health of your blood vessels. This would help your heart function rather than hurt it. One possible side effect of statins is that they can cause muscle pain.
Congestive heart failure can occur for a variety of reasons. Some of these include ischemic injury to the heart (when the coronary vessels are damaged so that insufficient blood reaches the heart muscle), kidney disease (your body holds onto too much fluid which can disrupt cardiac function), or rarely infection. There are other causes as well.
Your doctor is the best person to answer your specific questions.
I hope this helps,
-HealthSupport
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