I have recently had some success taking a very low dose of Rosuvastatin and thought I would share my experiences here.
I first had high cholesterol diagnosed around 15 years ago. I was put on a fairly high dose of a statin (can’t remember which one it was). Straight away I started experiencing side effects of mental and physical fatigue including a horrible heavy, dead feeling behind my eyes.
Long story short, over the next 15 years I tried various other statins and drugs such as Ezetimibe, Fenofibrate and, more recently, Bempedoic acid. I seemed to experience very similar side effects with all of these medications.
Twelve months ago, in my most recent blood test, I had a total cholesterol score of around 6.7 UK measure (259mg/dl in the US). This is fairly typical score for me. After years of trying I was on the verge of giving up.
Around four months ago, in desperation, I googled ‘micro-dosing statins’ (i.e. taking very small amounts) just to see what came up. It produced a number of interesting online discussions plus some medical research showing that it could produce positive outcomes. Micro-dosing was definitely a ‘thing’!
Again, long story short, I had an old pack of low dose, 5mg Rosuvastatin lying in a drawer, which I had previously tried and rejected due to the usual side-effects. I decided to literally just take one a week. I had no problems with this. If I had a slightly off day after taking it I knew had another six days where I would probably be OK.
After a month I very slowly started increasing the dose. The following three weeks I took one one every six days….then five….then four. After three months I was taking one every three days with few, if any, side effects problems.
At this point I took another blood test. My total cholesterol score has come down from 6.7 (259mg/dl) 12 months ago to 5.7 (220 mg/dl). Nothing else has changed. My diet / exercise regime / lifestyle is completely unaltered from the previous year. Bad (LDL) cholesterol is down from 4.3 (166mg/dl) to 3.5 (135mg / dl). These are figures I have literally never seen before. My nurse was jubilant!
This is hugely encouraging to me and shows that even a very low dose can help ‘shift the dial’ in terms of lowering cholesterol. My next target is to go up to one statin every two days by tapering up very, very slowly - maybe over a month or two.
I hope this helps people who have, for whatever reason, struggled taking statins but want to do something about their high cholesterol.