Hello and Welcome to ‘Ask A Doctor’ service. I have reviewed your query and here is my advice. I feel if you are taking statins for hypercholesterolemia, then those medications can cause muscle pain and weakness. You need to talk to your doctor about this possibility and see if the medications need to be changed. Doctors often prescribe statins for people with high cholesterol to lower their total cholesterol and reduce their risk of a heart attack or stroke. While statins are highly effective, they have been linked to muscle pain, digestive problems and mental fuzziness in some people and may rarely cause liver damage. Statins include atorvastatin (Lipitor), fluvastatin (Lescol), lovastatin (Altoprev), pitavastatin (Livalo), pravastatin (Pravachol), rosuvastatin (Crestor) and simvastatin (Zocor). One of the most common complaints of people taking statins is muscle pain. You may feel this pain as a soreness, tiredness or weakness in your muscles. The pain can be a mild discomfort, or it can be severe enough to make your daily activities difficult. To relieve statin side effects, your doctor may recommend several options. Discuss these steps with your doctor before trying them: 1. Take a brief break from statin therapy. Sometimes it s hard to tell whether the muscle aches or other problems you re having are statin side effects or just part of the aging process. Taking a break can help you determine whether your aches and pains are due to statins instead of something else. 2. Switch to another statin drug. It s possible, although unlikely, that one particular statin may cause side effects for you while another statin won t. It s thought that simvastatin (Zocor) may be more likely to cause muscle pain as a side effect than other statins when it s taken at high doses. 3. Change your dose. Lowering your dose may reduce some of your side effects, but it may also reduce some of the cholesterol-lowering benefits your medication has. Another option is to take the medication every other day. 4. Take it easy when exercising. Unaccustomed vigorous exercise might increase the risk of muscle injury in people taking statins. It s best to make changes in your exercise routine more gradually. Exercise causes muscle pain too, so it is sometimes difficult to know if the pain comes from the statin or the exercise in someone who just started an exercise program. 5. Consider other cholesterol-lowering medications. Although statins are the most effective oral medications for lowering your cholesterol, other types of drugs also are available. Sometimes, taking a combination of cholesterol drugs can provide the same result with lower doses of statins. 6. Try coenzyme Q10 supplements. Coenzyme Q10 supplements may help to prevent statin side effects in some people, though more studies are needed to determine any benefits of taking it. Talk to your doctor first to make sure the supplement won t interact with any of your other medications. Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further. Regards- Dr Sanjay Kini