fbpx

Published on February 20, 2025

A note from Dr. Patrick McCullough, MD

Key Points

  • Approximately 22% of patients on statins have some degree of musculoskeletal pain (myalgia)
  • Low serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (< 20 ng/ml) are independently associated with myalgia and there is a possible connection between statin intolerance and vitamin D deficiency
  • Data from a 6-month pilot study found that the number of vitamin D-deficient and -intolerant patients who – after achieving normal vitamin D levels with supplementation – were able to tolerate the re-challenge of a statin for at least six months was 64%

Measure Your Vitamin D Levels Today

There is research showing that correcting vitamin D deficiency enables people to tolerate statins. Vitamin D also helps alleviate chronic pain symptoms.

A lipid colleague of mine from Wisconsin, Dr Tara Dall, who is board certified in family practice and runs a lipid clinic, told me about this at a lipid meeting I attended in Chicago a long time ago. She had a hard time getting her patients to take statins. She then discovered that many were vitamin D deficient and were able to tolerate the statins after she put them on 10,000 units of vitamin D a day. She is also the person who first advised me to check my vitamin D level in April 2009 when I saw her at the annual National Lipid Association meeting in Miami Florida. I told her I had suffered a statin induced myopathy. She told me to check my vitamin D level and start taking vitamin D and I would then be able to tolerate the statin.

I was very skeptical, as I had just become board certified in clinical lipidology, and there was never any mention of that in our training. But she had written an article about vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular disease that was published in the journal Lipid Spin, which I read. It was pretty convincing, and is how I first learned about vitamin D.

It changed my life.

I am writing this because there are many individuals with familial hyperlipidemia who are refusing treatment because of statin intolerance. In one case I know of, the 25OHD level on admission was 19.6 ng/ml. The odds are it was also low and untreated when this person was on the statins and unable to tolerate them. There is also a good chance she will be able to tolerate the statin if she starts taking 10,000 units a day of D3, therefore avoiding additional, more harmful and expensive treatments while addressing this critical deficiency.

Here are a couple of articles that show the beneficial effects of vitamin D in improving statin tolerance:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4525396/

https://www.lipid.org/communications/lipid_spin/2013FALL21

Key Points from the Above Article

  • Approximately 22% of patients on statins have some degree of musculoskeletal pain (myalgia)
  • Low serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (< 20 ng/ml) are independently associated with myalgia and there is a possible connection between statin intolerance and vitamin D deficiency
  • Data from a 6-month pilot study found that the number of vitamin D-deficient and -intolerant patients who – after achieving normal vitamin D levels with supplementation – were able to tolerate the re-challenge of a statin for at least six months was 64%

Important Note: This article is not meant to encourage the use of statins, rather to provide relevant information about vitamin D to those who do use them.

About Dr. Patrick McCullough, MD

Dr. Patrick McCullough, MD, is a medical doctor located in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati in 1994, specializing in Internal Medicine and working in a long-term acute care hospital. Since 2011, he has been Chief of Medical Services at Summit Behavioral Health, which provides inpatient care for adults with acute mental illness and addiction. Over half of the patients have stayed in treatment for over a year, some have been there for over 20 years.

Dr. McCullough began studying the published literature on vitamin D in 2009; he created his own vitamin D protocol for all of his patients and implemented it along with a blessing from several top vitamin D researchers. His protocol is to put all patients on 10,000 IU per day, and in his experience, “nothing bad happens – only good things happen!”

He has kept vitamin D records among his patients throughout these years, and many of them have been on his vitamin D protocol during the entirety of their care – which has resulted in lots of long-term data on the safety of vitamin D. Before the official recommendations on vitamin D were released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2011, he had already been utilizing high doses of vitamin D in his practice – and seeing many positive results. Had he been following the recommendations from the IOM, he would not have seen any of the results he has seen to this day.

Dr. McCullough is the author of several publications on vitamin D including two of his most recent, “Oral and Topical Vitamin D, Sunshine, and UVB Phototherapy Safely Control Psoriasis in Patients with Normal Pretreatment Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations: A Literature Review and Discussion of Health Implications” and “Daily oral dosing of vitamin D3 using 5000 to 50,000 international units a day in long-term hospitalized patients: Insights from a seven year experience.” He describes the long-term use of therapeutic, high doses vitamin D (of up to 50,000 IU per day) in his clinical practice, its safety, and its resulting health consequences.

Watch several interviews featuring Dr. McCullough here.

Are You Getting Enough Vitamin D & Other Health Boosting Nutrients?

Measuring our levels of vitamin D and other important nutrients and health markers can be considered one way to check-in with our health status and guide us towards the steps to take next in improving and supporting our health.

Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D levels and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Choose which to measure, such as your vitamin D, omega-3s, and essential minerals including magnesium and zinc, by creating your custom home test kit today. Take steps to improve the status of each of these measurements to benefit your overall health. You can also track your own intakes, symptoms and results to see what works best for YOU.

Enroll and test your levels today, learn what steps to take to improve your status of vitamin D (see below) and other nutrients and blood markers, and take action! By enrolling in the GrassrootsHealth projects, you are not only contributing valuable information to everyone, you are also gaining knowledge about how you could improve your own health through measuring and tracking your nutrient status, and educating yourself on how to improve it.

How Can You Use this Information for YOUR Health?

Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Measuring is the only way to make sure you are getting enough!

STEP 1 Order your at-home blood spot test kit to measure vitamin D and other nutrients of concern to you, such as omega-3s, magnesium, essential and toxic elements (zinc, copper, selenium, lead, cadmium, mercury); include hsCRP as a marker of inflammation or HbA1c for blood sugar health

STEP 2 Answer the online questionnaire as part of the GrassrootsHealth study

STEP 3 Using our educational materials and tools (such as our dose calculators), assess your results to determine if you are in your desired target range or if actions should be taken to get there

STEP 4 After 3-6 months of implementing your changes, re-test to see if you have achieved your target level(s)

Enroll in D*action and Build Your Custom Test Kit!