If you think statins give you muscle pain, taking 20 mg of atorvastatin every day probably won’t make those aches any worse than a sugar pill — it might just be your mind playing tricks.

Some people who say statins cause muscle pain might still feel worse on a low dose of atorvastatin, even if most don’t — it could mean a few are extra sensitive.

If you stopped taking a cholesterol drug like atorvastatin because it made you feel bad, this study says you probably would’ve felt just as bad even if you were only taking a sugar pill — the symptoms don’t seem to come from the drug itself.

People on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs often complain of muscle pain, but studies show a lot of that might be because they expect side effects — their minds play a trick called the nocebo effect, not the drug itself.

When people taking statins have muscle pain, it's probably not the drug causing it — it's more likely because they expect side effects, not because the medicine is actually harming their muscles.

Most muscle aches people get while on statins probably aren’t actually caused by the drug, since nearly the same number of people on sugar pills have them too.