What exactly does simvastatin do?
Simvastatin belongs to a group of medicines called statins. It’s used to lower cholesterol if you’ve been diagnosed with high blood cholesterol. It’s also taken to prevent heart disease, including heart attacks and strokes.
What’s the side effects of statins?
Side effects can vary between different statins, but common side effects include:
- headache.
- dizziness.
- feeling sick.
- feeling unusually tired or physically weak.
- digestive system problems, such as constipation, diarrhoea, indigestion or farting.
- muscle pain.
- sleep problems.
- low blood platelet count.
Why is the simvastatin to be taken at night?
Simvastatin is probably best taken at night because concentrations of total cholesterol and of low density lipoprotein are significantly greater when it is taken in the morning.
What are the benefits of atorvastatin?
Atorvastatin is used along with a proper diet to help lower “bad” cholesterol and fats (such as LDL, triglycerides) and raise “good” cholesterol (HDL) in the blood. It belongs to a group of drugs known as “statins.” It works by reducing the amount of cholesterol made by the liver.
Why are statins so bad?
Very rarely, statins can cause life-threatening muscle damage called rhabdomyolysis (rab-doe-my-OL-ih-sis). Rhabdomyolysis can cause severe muscle pain, liver damage, kidney failure and death. The risk of very serious side effects is extremely low, and calculated in a few cases per million people taking statins.
Do statins make you pee more?
The study also found that statins were linked to fewer sleep disturbances, but an increase in reports of needing to urinate at night and urinate more frequently, while there were too few reports of cognitive problems to draw any conclusions.
What happens if you stop taking cholesterol medication?
Stopping your statin has been linked to increased risk for cardiovascular events (like heart attack) and death in patients with coronary artery disease. In a recent 8-year study, more than half of patients stopped their statin believing they were experiencing a side effect.