# Lowering LDL… But Losing Muscle? The Data You Haven’t Seen

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** High Intensity Health
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaaaKtAXQqI
- **Дата:** 28.12.2025
- **Длительность:** 14:04
- **Просмотры:** 14,212
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/17303

## Описание

A large UK Biobank analysis found that long-term statin use is associated with accelerated declines in skeletal muscle strength and lean mass over time, raising important questions about risk–benefit trade-offs.

Link to study: https://bit.ly/statins-shrink-muscle

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-----------------------------------------Show Notes--------------------------------------



## Транскрипт

### Intro []

A new report finds that statin use is linked with a decline in skeletal muscle strength and function. Let's dive into this paper. This is a really interesting recently published analysis. The title of the paper is statin use is associated with a decline in muscle function and mass over time irrespective of statin pharmaccogenomic score. This is an important paper to

### Statins linked to declining muscle strength & function [0:20]

discuss because as you know as you get older you naturally lose strength and muscle size and function which can lead to increased risk of having a fall, breaking uh you know your limbs and also having hip injuries which can lead to serious functional challenges and compromise life expectancy. Well, there is a conundrum here because your doctor, it turns out, is likely still convinced that LDL cholesterol is the sole driving factor increasing your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Well, we know that cardiovascular disease is much more nuanced and there's a lot of context here and not every single person who suffers from a heart attack or myocardial inffection has high LDL cholesterol. But that being said

### Why muscle strength matters for longevity & metabolic health [1:02]

statins are the most widely prescribed medication. and they are among medications still to this day in 2025. But we know that strength is really important, muscle is really important for helping to dispose of glucose in the postmeal window for helping to preserve uh your overall vitality. Uh grip strength and overall muscle mass is independently linked with better biologic aging. So here we have this medication that lowers one biomarker that in some studies is independently associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease while compromising the health of a critically important organ that is your skeletal muscle. So we should be aware of these nuances, right? We should understand that this analysis of 297,000 people in the UK bioank data using grip strength found that guess what? People who take statins have much lower grip strength compared to people who do not. Now, there's nothing really magical about grip strength per se. It is a way

### Grip strength explained as a marker of whole-body strength [2:03]

to triangulate whole body strength. And so, that's why many studies are using grip strength. It's one objective way to sort of ascertain overall body strength. So, I see a lot of people doing, you know, dead hangs and farmers carries. All those are great exercises, but I also encourage things like pull-ups and rows and deadlifts and anything to improve whole body strength. Because when you're exercising your entire body, it turns out you improve the strength of your grip as well. So the average age of the participant was in this 297,000 cohort that was studied was about 56 years of age. And what they found was continuous use of statins is associated with a decline in muscle function and mass over time. There was a 25% decline in grip strength and a 73% decline in appendicular lean mass compared to never users. This is really important. Now

### Key finding: 25% grip strength loss & 73% lean mass decline [2:56]

[clears throat] if you told me or if you just you know your doctor said hey I you know Sally your LDL cholesterol is quite high. You're at higher risk of developing aththeroscotic cardiovascular disease. So therefore I have this medication that I'm going to prescribe to you. And they also told you that, oh, and by the way, that is linked with over time a 73% decline in your lean mass strength. You would probably scratch your head a little bit and say, well, is the juice worth the squeeze? Do we want to compromise whole body strength and lower our LDL cholesterol a little bit? Uh in my opinion, I mean it would be very a very nuanced conversation to have with uh with a potential client about you know weighing the risk benefit. I think we need to consider risk benefit analysis when it comes to supplements, lifestyle interventions and also pharmaceuticals. We need to think about the unintended harms. Now the good thing

### Risk–benefit problem: lowering LDL vs damaging muscle [3:47]

is the FDA does a decent job about this at least when there's direct to consumer advertisements. I was getting my haircut the other day and there was a advertisement for an anti-depressant medication. Uh that's not something I would ever recommend or take for myself. But you know after watching the commercial at the end the list of side effects was death, serious uh infectious injury, amunosuppression, gastrointest I mean every single ailment that you would never want was linked it turns out with this medication and they listed at the end. But I think that patients should understand now that a recent study found that statins lower this important gastrointestinal peptide known as GLP-1. It turns out which is you know now one of the uh highest revenue grossing pharmacologic agents out there. Semiglutide and ompic I'm referring to. Um so we know that those medications are so popular because people that have weight loss resistance and obesity and even type two diabetes have a uh suppression in these critically important gastrointestinal hormones. So

### Statins, GLP-1 suppression, and increased diabetes risk [4:47]

people are trying to pharmacologically administer them to themselves to improve their metabolic health. We know that statins lower GLP1. also uh increase risk for diabetes. Now, we know that statins, guess what, are linked with a reduction in skeletal muscle mass as well as strength over time. So, we need to ask ourselves here is are we missing, you know, the forest through the trees? Are we sort of monomomaniacally focused on lowering LDL cholesterol at all costs while ignoring all of the unintended harms? So, I think this is something that uh really should be uh discussed a little bit more and that's why I want to make these videos because it turns out you may not have known about this uh u had we not made this because uh I think many people are unaware of this and um the push for statins is still out there. Uh young people in their 30s uh you know have a someone close in my life who was just recommended a statin and they're 33 years old. So they exercise, they're a

### Statins vs aging: accelerated strength loss over time [5:43]

lean mass hyper respponder and their doctor was really pushing a statin for this person, a female, which needless to say, there has never been any research in women showing that lowering LDL cholesterol improves hard outcomes. So I think that's important to acknowledge. But, you know, when we look at the grip strength change over time, we naturally lose strength over time as we get older. I mean, this is just part and parcel with the aging process. you were probably stronger when you were 18 compared to, you know, whatever age you are now. So, this happens. But if we look at the slope of the curve, continuous statin users tend to lose more strength over time. As you can see here from this is figure one here, changes in lean mass strength as well as grip strength over time, comparing people who have never used a statin compared to people who have been prescribed and used a statin. So, that

### Study figures: statin users vs never-users compared [6:37]

is obviously not a good thing. Now, let's go on and talk about the discussion and highlight some key aspects of the study. But first, I want to thank you for still being here. Hopefully, you're enjoying the content. Hit that like button, leave me a comment in the comment section below. And since we're talking about strength, I have to remind you about the importance of creatine monohydrate. This is one of the most widely studied erogenic aids out there. It's not only good for strength and muscle health, but new research actually shows that if you have a poor night's sleep, creatine can help offset the cognitive decline linked with that. We also know from various research studies that creatine helps support healthy hydration. It can help draw water into your muscle cells. And we know that people can become more dehydrated with age. So, creatine is very important for that. And most

### Creatine’s role in strength, cognition, hydration, and mood [7:19]

importantly, creatine has recently been shown to help improve mood and affect and the way that you think and feel and move throughout life. Many people are not getting sufficient creatine in their diet because they're afraid of red meat because red meat contains saturated fat and cholesterol. And we uh people still believe for whatever reason that is harmful. So if you do not eat sufficient amounts of red meat and you tend to avoid uh red meat, you may want to supplement with creatine around exercise. It has been shown to increase strength, performance, endurance, as well as all the cognitive benefits that I mentioned. Now, it turns out there's different sources of creatine. Creatine made in China and creatine made in Germany. The German material is lower compared to the Chinese material in two impurities commonly found in creatine, dihydrotrizine and dcyan diamide. That's why over in myios, you only get the German source creatine known as crevatalis or

### German vs Chinese creatine: purity & impurity differences [8:13]

creapure. So, if you want to optimize your exercise performance as well as your mental health and cognition, click the link in the description below and check out the variety of creatine products, including a creatine enhanced electrolyte. You can save with a code podcast at checkout over at myioscience. com. I'll put links in the description below since we are talking about strength. Now getting back to the discussion of this paper, the investigators say, "Our results indicated that satin users had lower baseline grip strength and ependicular lean mass compared to non-users after adjustment for confounders and sensitivity analysis. Longitudinal analysis revealed that continuous satin use was associated with a faster decline in both grip strength and appendicular lean mass such that after approximately 10 years of follow-up satin users displayed lower trajectories of muscle function and mass than never users. I think this is really important. They say overall the study shows that statin use is associated with an accelerated decline in muscle function and mass over time irrespective of the statin pharmaccogenomic score.

### Study conclusion: accelerated muscle loss regardless of genetics [9:18]

This is really important. They say moreover we demonstrated that continuous use of statins is associated with an accelerated decline in muscle function and mass over time. This association represents an additional 25% decline in grip strength and a 73% decline in appendicular lean mass among continuous statin users compared to never users. These results partially align with findings from two longitudinal studies. They talk about the different studies. The uh Tasmanian older adult cohort study, a continuous statin use uh was associated with a decline in leg strength and muscle quality. Um and they say uh similarly statin users recovering from a stroke who had sarcopenia displayed lower grip strength upon discharge despite unchanged muscle mass. Okay, so they're offering just some context here, maybe some better clarity about the nuances and the unintended harms that have hitherto not been discussed. And that is how statins compromise muscle function. Now anecdotally, we actually know this to be

### Athlete experiences: real-world strength loss on statins [10:17]

true. And this is where you know it's nice to have these peer-reviewed academic uh you know journals and articles and these analysis using uh statistical models and large cohorts but athletes generally stay away from statins because you know football players and linemen they tend to have higher levels of obesity and obesity associated uh issues. Some of these linemen can be up to 320 some odd pounds and so forth and have high body fat percentage and body mass indexes and so on. But linemen know and various football players know that, you know, they have high lipid levels and when they're prescribed a statin, their exercise performance declines and so therefore they don't take these medications. Um, I've known several athletes who have told me that, you know, they were prescribed a lipid lowering medication and they noticed a demonstrable decline in their strength and exercise performance. Now, why mechanistically why might this be? Well, it turns out that the way that statins work is they block a critically important en enzyme called HMG COA reductase. And

### Mechanism: HMG-CoA reductase, CoQ10, and mitochondrial energy [11:16]

downstream of that enzyme is a uh a biosynthetic process where co-enzyme Q10 is made. And co-enzyme Q10 is very important for helping to generate cellular energy within your mitochondria in your muscle tissue. So you have on the one hand you have you're blocking this enzyme to prevent cholesterol from being synthesized. On the other hand, you know, the the unintended harm there is you're reducing the synthesis of this important enzyme that is absolutely essential for making ATP, which is of course the way in which your muscles finance their uh muscular contraction. So it sort of makes sense that mechanistically uh this would happen. Now the investigators say several biologic mechanisms could underly the associations that we observed. Statins inhibit as I just mentioned a HMG COA reductase reducing not only cholesterol synthesis but also key intermediates of the mevalonite pathways such as co-enzyme Q10 as well as isoprenoids. The depletion of these intermediates has been linked to impaired protein prenilation mitochondrial dysfunction and inhibition of protein synthesis all of which may contribute to muscle atrophy. Okay, so

### Broader harms: diabetes risk, muscle atrophy, mitochondrial dysfunction [12:27]

here we go. We have increased risk of diabetes. we have reduction in GLP-1 and we have a reduction uh in muscle protein synthesis and mitochondrial function. So we need to you know sort of take a step back I think as a collective and say is it really worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze or should we have a more nuanced perspective when it comes to uh LDL function. They also go on to say that evidence suggests that preferential vulnerability of type two fast switch muscle fibers which are glycolytic and primarily contribute to muscle mass is more pronounced potentially with statin users uh and so forth and there could be some myotoxicity associated with tat statins so like muscle toxicity uh which is obviously not a good thing. So, in conclusion, if you're healthy, if you're already strong, if you're physically active, if you eat a whole foods diet, you manage your stress, you prioritize sleep, you know, print out this paper.

### Final takeaway: questions patients should ask their doctor [13:21]

I'll put a link in the description below. Print this out and say, "Doc, like, why are we doing this? " You know, are you aware of this recently published paper? the importance of skeletal muscle strength and mass, especially as a protective independent reduction in risk of all cause mortality as you get older? you know, if you're not, then maybe you should read this paper, you know, because doctors are very busy. You know, they're doing documentation and charting and dealing with uh Medicare and Medicaid and insurance reimbursements. You know, they're really busy working within their business or their practice and sometimes are just unaware of this new research. And so, that's why we make these videos. Hopefully, you found this particular video helpful. If you did, hit that like button. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on a future one down the