By David Liu, PHD

Saturday Jan 5, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- It's known that up to 75 percent of patients using statins to lower cholesterol levels may experience muscle pain.  A study in Journal of American College of Cardiology explains why.

Scientists at the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen found statins resulted in low levels of the key protein Q10, which leads to lower energy output in the muscles and they believe that that could be  responsible for the muscle pain associated with statin use.

A safer alternative to statins is red yeast rice, which has been found as effective at lowering cholesterol as statins.  No muscle pain has been found associated with use of red yeast rice.

Red yeast rice is used to make rice wine in China and other Asian countries. It is available as a dietary supplement for people who are interested in lowering their low-density liporpotein (LDL) cholesterol.