Statins are one of the most common medicines in the world. For many people they are the right choice. This post is not a reason to stop one. It is about three nutrients that a statin touches, and what to do about them.
How a statin works
Your body makes cholesterol on an assembly line. A statin shuts down a machine near the start of that line. That is how it lowers cholesterol. But the same line also builds other things. Two of them are coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and a form of vitamin K2. When the line slows down, so does the supply of those two.
CoQ10: the clear case
CoQ10 helps every cell in your body make energy. Your heart and your muscles use the most of it. Your body makes less of it every year after about age twenty.
Studies agree that people on a statin have lower CoQ10 in their blood. A review of six placebo-controlled trials found this across all the common statins.
Why does that matter? Sore, weak or tired muscles are the number one reason people quit their statin. Low CoQ10 in muscle is one likely reason for it. A review of 12 trials with 575 people found that those who took CoQ10 had less muscle pain, weakness, cramping and tiredness than those who took a placebo. The trials were small and not all agree, so this is a good lead, not a closed case.
The dose in those trials was 100 to 200 mg a day. Mega Restore has 200 mg of ubiquinol, the form your body can use right away. That is the reason the label says it helps replenish CoQ10 depleted by age and certain drugs such as statins.* It is not a claim to treat sore muscles.
Vitamin K2: the likely case
Vitamin K2 has one job. It turns on the proteins that move calcium to the right place. One of those proteins puts calcium into bone. Another keeps calcium out of your arteries. Without enough K2, those proteins are made but never switched on.
Your body makes some of its own K2 on that same assembly line. In a 2019 study, mice given a statin made about 45 percent less of it. In people, we do not have the final answer yet. Some heart scans show more calcium in the arteries of people on high-dose statins, but that could have other causes. The trial that would settle it has not been done.
If the theory is right, the cost of ignoring it is slow: less calcium going into bone, less being kept out of the arteries. If the theory is wrong, K2 from a supplement is still safe at normal doses. The one exception is warfarin or a similar blood thinner. If you take one, do not add vitamin K without your prescriber.
Vitamin D: why it is in the capsule anyway
You might expect a statin to lower vitamin D too, since the body makes vitamin D from cholesterol. It does not. Blood tests show people on statins have slightly higher vitamin D, not lower. We say that plainly because it is true.
So why is vitamin D in Mega Restore? Three reasons.
First, low vitamin D is common with or without a statin. It is most common in people over sixty, people who spend the day indoors, and people who live north of the 40th parallel. The 40th parallel is an imaginary line that circles the Earth. In the United States it runs roughly from northern California through Denver, Kansas City, Columbus and Philadelphia. North of that line, from about November through March, the winter sun is too low in the sky for your skin to make vitamin D at all. That covers all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, the upper Midwest, New York and New England. Spokane sits well north of it.
Second, people who take statins are usually the same people who are low in vitamin D: older, indoors more, often in the north. A review of seven studies with 2,420 patients found that people with statin muscle symptoms had lower vitamin D than people without them. Whether fixing the vitamin D helps them stay on the statin is still being tested.
Third, vitamin D and K2 work as a pair. Vitamin D helps you absorb calcium and tells your body to make more of the calcium-moving proteins. K2 switches those proteins on. Taking D without K2 makes more work for K2 and gives it nothing to do the work with. Putting them in one capsule means nobody takes one without the other.
What to do
Keep taking your statin. Ask your pharmacist or doctor about CoQ10; 200 mg a day is the studied dose. If you take vitamin D, take K2 with it. And get your vitamin D level checked once. The test is cheap and it ends the guessing.
Mega Restore puts all three in one capsule: 200 mg ubiquinol, 5,000 IU vitamin D3, 300 mcg vitamin K2 as MK-7. If you take a statin, any other prescription, or especially a blood thinner, talk with your pharmacist or doctor before you start it.
Mega Restore is 200 mg ubiquinol, 5,000 IU vitamin D3 and 300 mcg vitamin K2 as MK-7 in one daily capsule. $89.99 for a 90-day supply, free U.S. shipping. See the full label and buy.
References
- Banach M, et al. Statin therapy and plasma coenzyme Q10 concentrations: a systematic review and meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. Pharmacological Research. 2015;99:329–336.
- Qu H, et al. Effects of coenzyme Q10 on statin-induced myopathy: an updated meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2018;7(19):e009835.
- Harshman SG, et al. Atorvastatin decreases renal menaquinone-4 formation in C57BL/6 male mice. Journal of Nutrition. 2019;149(3):416–421.
- Tan J, Li Y. Revisiting the interconnection between lipids and vitamin K metabolism: a review. Nutrition & Metabolism. 2024;21:6.
- Mazidi M, et al. Effect of statins on serum vitamin D concentrations: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2017;47(1):93–101.
- Michalska-Kasiczak M, et al. Analysis of vitamin D levels in patients with and without statin-associated myalgia: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 7 studies with 2420 patients. International Journal of Cardiology. 2015;178:111–116.
This article is for education. It is not medical advice. Do not start, stop or change a prescription because of anything you read here.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
