No serious side effects. I want to add my experience as I see eve...

No serious side effects. I want to add my experience as I see everyone here has a side effect. I am always wary about medication, and I have taken statins mainly Zocor and Lipitor off and on for 10 years or so. I have familial hypercholesterolemia, so diet hasn't helped much, and I have tried all kinds of food supplements etc. I do take CoQ10 based on reports I have read, not from any side effect. If there are any side effects its not significant that I can notice it. Sometimes I am forgetful, hard to say if its caused by the drug, as the times I have been off it, has been much different. I wonder if high cholesterol is a real problem, I wonder if high triglycerides are worse? Lately I found what seems like an improvement by eliminating high glycemic foods like rice and replacing with barley and oats. Barley also has some fiber and other things that are apparently helpful. Grapefruit is also helpful, but there is a warning not to take it, if you are already taking statins. Based on all this side effects reported here, I feel I might need to try once again, to try an alternative. I am maintaining my 10mg Lipitor, though I had been planning to move back to Zocor as its cheaper for me. I will take a test in 2 months to test my current barley diet, and recent exercise routine to see what improvements can happen. Then if successful, I might get off statins, maintain the non-glycemic diet, exercise and in addition take a lot of grapefruit and a reasonable dose of niacin. In the past I have tried ginger, garlic, Chinese herbs, and more then I can list here without much help. Occasionally I had been surprised by low readings, once when I had come back from a 10 day meditation retreat. I have read that cholesterol can change due to stress, and this is a very variable thing. I have taken lab tests within 2 days from the same lab and seen almost 20% difference (with fasting). I think each body is different and one needs to take a very long term, positive attitude of experimenting and not feeling discouraged too much, but always reading and trying different things and being careful of how you interpret the results. I would rather ignore the high cholesterol, except my brother died at 65 from cardiac issues, but he also had diabetes. I am now 51. openlotus