Home › Blog › Warning: Statins Block Positive Effects of Exercise by Hurting Muscle Cell Health

I’ve been a big critic of statins, big pharma’s wonder drug, supported by loads of scrubbed and polished Pharma sponsored research. This past few months, the concept that you should take statins because you have high “bad cholesterol” was turned on it’s head when two major heart groups threw out the decades old high cholesterol guidelines (meaning that high cholesterol is no longer a reason to prescribe statins). Having said that, the paid university consultants on the Pharma dole delivered the goods, in that the new guidelines managed to expand the market for these drugs. However,  a recent paper is very concerning for those poor schleps trying to take their physician prescribed drugs and eek out some exercise.

We know that statins hurt muscles and that they can negatively impact the little batteries inside the cells (mitochondria). This past summer a study looked at what happened to a group of obese patients who were told to exercise. They had half the patients take statins and half didn’t use the drugs. Both exercised for 3 months, but only the patients off the statins saw any improvement in their fitness! Why? Muscle biopsies showed that the patients on statins had injury to the mitochondria, hence their muscles didn’t work as well.

This is a very scary study that fits with the other published data on statins. Since exercise beats statins for reducing the risk of a heart attack, the fact that statins hurt muscles and fitness levels may negate the positive effects of exercise. It may also explain why you just don’t feel like working out if you’re on these drugs. The statin backlash has begun. What else will we find that Pharma can’t suppress? Well I can tell you statins harm stem cells…

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile