I am about to start a one-man six-month medical experiment involving statins and pain

I was prescribed statins some seven years ago, after being diagnosed with Type II diabetes, and after a blood test revealed I had an unhealthily high level of cholesterol. Four and a half years ago, I began waking up with a pain in my right hip/buttock, which would take about 20 minutes to ease. It grew worse over the next few months, lasting for up to two hours after getting up. I didn't panic, because I assumed the bout of sciatica I'd suffered a few years' earlier had returned, and I found that doing some of the exercises I'd used back then, followed by a ten-minute morning hobble round the block, would end with me walking upright and pain-free.  But then the exercises and the hobble stopped doing the trick, so I went to my GP, who sent me for a CT Scan to find out what was going on. The results were negative, and I was told that my sciatica had indeed returned, and just to keep doing the exercises: it would eventually lift.


It didn't, and by the start of last year I'd had enough. When a chap can't actually stand up for his morning pee and finds himself guzzling ibuprofen before his first cuppa of the day, he knows he's in trouble. A lot of athletes end up in this state, I believe - but I'm not one of their number. Back to the doctor, who told me to stop taking statins and booked me in for an appointment with a physiotherapist. An extremely efficient Dutch chap informed me that I had a touch of arthritis in my sacroiliac, but no signs of sciatica - in fact, the sciatica exercises I'd been doing might have been making things worse. So, a new set of exercises, no statins, a self-prescribed diet, and quite a lot of excruciating manipulation ensued. Things gradually improved. I stopped taking ibuprofen (which, it transpired,  had been wrecking my stomach), and within a month or two found I could (a) pee standing up first thing (b) sit at my desk within an hour of waking up without everything siezing up afterwards, and (c) go for a walk before lunch without looking like I was suffering from a spectacularly painful attack of haemorrhoids. The physio said the pain from my arthritis should disperse within 20 minutes of waking up, but it was still lasting for two hours or more - although it wasn't half as intense as it had been.

The I read a few pro-statins scare stories - and started taking them again towards the end of last year. And now the hip pain is back, with a vengeance. I've been doing the back-strengthening exercises again for the past week, I've never come off the diet, and today - thanks to yet another article about statins in the Daily Telegraph: Statins do cause muscle pain, scientists conclude - I've taken myself off them, even though I'm not suffering from muscle pain, as far as I know. They may of course, be entirely blameless when it comes to causing or even exacerbating the pain in my lower back/hip, and, for all I know, taking them may have prevented me from succumbing to a heart attack. But I suspect they may have something to do with my hip pain. It won't be a proper controlled experiment, because I'll be doing the exercises - but if the pain eases significantly over the next few months, I'll never swallow another statin pill as long as I live.

What's disconcerting about all this is that - as with several of my deeply tedious but seemingly non-fatal medical problems - I have absolutely no clue where to go for a definitive diagnosis. I suspect that's because nobody has the answers. Which, given the astonishing medical advances of recent decades - thanks to which many of us, including me, are still alive when we otherwise wouldn't be - seems odd.