Realizing that you are at high risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, you accept your doctor’s prescription for cholesterol-lowering statin medication and take to heart his warning that you need to get serious about exercising by hitting the track five days a week. But after a few months, instead of feeling more fit and energized, your muscles ache all the time, you’re still huffing and puffing, and you haven’t dropped a pound.
What’s behind this discouraging lack of progress? There’s a good chance it’s the statin! Yes—the very drug that was supposed to help you get heart-healthy may instead be hindering exercise’s ability to boost your health, a recent study shows.
The new research: Participants included 37 overweight or obese adults who had not been exercising or taking statin medications and who had at least two of the following risk factors for heart disease and diabetes—high blood pressure…excess belly fat…elevated blood sugar (as measured after fasting)…low HDL “good” cholesterol…high triglycerides or other blood-fat abnormalities.
All participants took part in a fairly rigorous aerobic exercise program, and half of the participants also took a typical daily dose of 40 mg of simvastatin (Zocor and its generic equivalents).
After 12 weeks, participants who exercised and took statins saw reductions in their LDL “bad” cholesterol and total cholesterol levels, while those who only exercised saw no such reductions. This was as expected. However…
Cardiorespiratory fitness (as measured by the rate at which is oxygen consumed in response to maximal exercise and the length of time that a person can continue to exercise during a stress test) improved by 10% in the exercise-only group, but by only 1.5% in the statin-plus-exercise group.
Muscle fibers examined under a microscope showed a beneficial 13% increase in mitochondria—the “power plants” of cells where oxygen is converted to energy—among the exercise-only participants…whereas in the statin-plus-exercise group, there was a 4% decrease in mitochondria. Their muscle health had worsened!
What the results mean: By most measures, statins impeded the improvements in cardiorespiratory and skeletal muscle fitness that otherwise would be expected to occur with regular exercise.
More research is needed to determine whether all statins interfere with the benefits of exercise in the same way…and whether people who become accustomed to regular workouts before starting statin therapy would be protected in any way against such interference.
It’s also worth nothing that, in previous research, statins have been shown to increase the risk for muscle pain and a dangerous side effect called rhabdomyolysis, in which muscle fibers break down and enter the bloodstream, leading to kidney damage.
Bottom line: If your doctor wants you to start taking statins, discuss the merits of increasing your exercise regimen without taking the drugs…and if he or she dismisses the idea, consider getting a second opinion. Exercise has numerous health benefits—and none of the risks of statins.
