Question: I have hereditary very high cholesterol and have been on various statens for many years and now on 40 MG Crestor. I am 70. I've had arthritus on an off and muscle stiffness, but lately arthritus and tendonitus in my hands and forearms has become very debilitating and I am considering stopping the Crestor to see if it is a cause. My VA doctor is a "strictly by the numbers" type so I haven't run this by him yet. Two of my sisters dropped Lipitor for similar reasons and their aches and pains went away. What do you think?

I have long been aware of the muscle pain side effect. How about statins contributing specifically to arthritus and pain in tendons?

Also a friend just today told me to try CoQ10 to counteract deficiencies caused by statins that result in muscle and joint pain. Would you say that CoQ10 would likely help if I did NOT get off the statins?

This is another followup: I have been to see the hand surgeon but I was very disappointed in his lack of communication and negative rapport. He gave me cortizone in both thumb joints and said some thing like: "the only surgery would be to remove the bone [metacarpal I believe] in my thumb since the joint above was destroyed by the arthritis". He also said it would not improve thumb mobility but would reduce the pain. I felt very discouraged. Coincidentally I learned that my neighbor had that bone same removed and some tricks with tendons done and her thumb action was quite normal. I want to know if this is a standard procedure (to do some tendon tricks not mentioned by my surgeon) and whether I could hope for similar thumb performance to my neighbor; or would it be doom and gloom like my hand surgeon made it seem.

The cortizone helps a lot but I expect the improvement will wear off. I am a musician and could not play my guitar until the cortizone. The left thumb and maybe the right thumb need to improve mobility for my music to continue.