Statins and alcohol: Risks and side effects

It’s possible for cannabis to either increase or decrease the amount of Lipitor in your blood. This may increase your risk of side effects, including myopathy (muscle pain), rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown), and liver problems. The effects of mixing alcohol with medication also depend on certain individual factors. For example, women can experience the effects of mixing alcohol and medications more severely than men because of differences in metabolism. Alcohol can interact with certain drugs or exacerbate the medical and mental health conditions you’re being treated for. They can provide personalized guidance based on your specific medications and health status.

Is It Safe to Mix Statins and Alcohol?

If you crave something sweet, try sherbet or candies with little or no fat, such as jelly beans. Lifestyle changes can help improve your cholesterol — and boost the cholesterol-lowering power of medications. Although you may think of cholesterol as unhealthy, it’s essential for your health.

New Methods for Analyzing Alcohol Consumption and Stroke-Related Outcomes

Your doctor may check your liver enzymes and assess you for liver disease before starting a statin. You should NOT use statins if you have active liver disease or elevated liver enzymes. It is often not safe for people with liver disease or dysfunction to take statins. Despite the recommendation to monitor liver tests, and the uncommon risk of severe liver injury, statins may be helpful for some people with liver disease. But, because the risk of liver damage is so rare, this is no longer the case.

It’s important to note that this list is not exhaustive and may not include every medication you are taking. If you are not sure if you can safely drink alcohol while taking a certain medication, read the label carefully and consult with a pharmacist or doctor. Here is a short list of the most common prescription and OTC drugs that can pose a risk to your health if mixed with alcohol, as well as what can happen if the substances are combined. In general, alcohol use has the potential to make symptoms of a mental health condition worse. In addition, there are hundreds of mental health medications that interact with alcohol. Combining alcohol with a mental health medication can make the medication less effective or even more dangerous.

1. Statins may actually reduce mortality in some people who already have liver disease.
2. Drinking too much alcohol can actually increase your risk for heart disease and stroke, raise blood pressure, contribute to obesity, and increase the levels of fats called triglycerides in the blood.
3. In turn, the acute response to alcohol may also be determined by drinking habits and alcohol tolerance 14.
4. Subjects who drank wine more often, however, were less likely to have symptoms of depression and more likely to have a better perception of health status.
5. You should avoid grapefruit and grapefruit juice during your Lipitor treatment.

However, modulatory influences related to drinking patterns, genetic susceptibility, nutritional factors, ethnicity, and gender also many play a role (Piano and Phillips 2014) (figure 4). Although results related to levels of alcohol consumption and stroke events are less clear, some conclusions can be drawn. Approximately 1 to 2 drinks per day may have no effect on or lead to a slight reduction in stroke events; however, greater daily alcohol levels increase the risk for all stroke events and incident stroke types. In terms of stroke subtypes, compared with nondrinkers, current alcohol drinkers have an increased risk (~14 percent) for hemorrhagic stroke (Ronksley et al. 2011). Instead, the organization advises watching your weight, eating a healthy diet, and exercising regularly to keep hope house boston your cholesterol levels in check. You should consider moderating or eliminating your alcohol intake with certain cholesterol medicines.

Can I Drink Alcohol While Taking Lipitor and Other Statins?

More than one cellular event may be happening at the same time, and, as with other chronic health conditions, the relevant mechanisms may be synergistic and interrelated. We prospectively hypothesized that alcohol would not reduce the MACE risk in statin users. We also tested whether an alcohol-related benefit would be observed in non-statin users, especially in the primary prevention cohort. The more you drink, the more your levels of cholesterol and triglycerides rise. As you might imagine, high levels of either type of this waxy fat are not exactly desirable for managing cholesterol or optimal health.

Despite the progress in standardizing measurement of alcohol, studies still vary in how they define the different levels of drinking, such as low-risk or moderate and heavy drinking. Most often, low-risk or moderate drinking has been defined as 1 to 2 standard drinks per day and heavy alcohol consumption as 4 or more standard drinks per day. However, ascertaining the exact alcohol consumption threshold for determining both the benefit and risk has been challenging, and threshold levels continue to differ across studies.

Statins disrupt insulin-signaling pathways and can affect the function of beta cells in the pancreas, which create and release insulin. However, most of the time these elevations are only temporary and not usually dangerous. Statins interfere with the body’s production of cholesterol and help to lower low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), or bad cholesterol, when diet and exercise haven’t proven effective. Is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Research Forum on Beer and Lifestyle (FICYE). The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Moderate versus Heavy Alcohol Intake

Figure 3 summarizes the potential mechanisms underlying the cardioprotective and adverse effects of alcohol consumption. This area of research was briefly outlined here; more comprehensive reviews on these mechanisms are available (Krenz and Korthuis 2012; Mathews et al. 2015). Having higher levels of HDL cholesterol may help protect against heart disease and related death.