Friday, July 24, 2009

Statin, statin, who wants a statin? Do I?

So, I switched PCP's recently. The new dude ran a lipid profile, since the one I had done at diagnosis was hideously bad, but nobody takes that as accurate, since high sugars also bring up your cholesterol. (Seriously, is there anything high sugars do not screw up?)

Anyway, the LDL was high, and he sent me a card with the results along with a prescription for simvastatin, the generic for Zocor. The rest of the numbers were good, btw. Triglycerides, HDL, all that. And it is light years better than what it was in January at diagnosis.

I'm a little torn about this. On the one hand, I know high cholesterol is bad, especially for diabetics. Bad, bad, bad. On the other hand, I've been reading about statins, and they seem to be pretty well tolerated in for short-term use, but long term, the side effects and risks really start to outweigh the benefits.

The thing that really concerns me, however, is that they have recently learned that they seem to lower your blood pressure as well, which has a lot of people saying "Great! 2 risk factors lowered in one drug!" For me, though, it is not uncommon for nurses to take my blood pressure multiple times, saying "hmmm....that's a little low...let me recheck." And I am constantly hearing "Is your blood pressure usually this low? Is this normal for you?" My last BP 2 days ago was 80/50. So yeah, I run low.

Plus, I'm not sure if I can take a statin while on this study, and there's no way I'm jeopardizing my status in the study for this pill. I asked the study nurse, she should be calling me on Monday to tell me whether or not it's OK.

So that leaves me staring at this prescription, wondering whether or not to fill it. What do you think?

2 comments:

  1. I say wait to see what the study nurse says. Nurses always ask me if I run "that low" too! Some people just run low I guess (that's what they always tell me). Is it common for this to happen with diabetics?

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  2. High cholesterol is common in diabetics. Blood pressure - I'm not sure. They just keep telling me to keep it low, so I don't know if most diabetics run high, since keeping it low is a good idea anyway.

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