it really depends on your cholesterol breakdown and your other risk factors for heart disease… LDL is the bad cholesterol that crestor targets (and decreases)... total cholesterol doesnt matter as much as LDL/HDL breakdown
a couple things that contribute to your goal cholesterol: history of peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, abdominal aortic aneurysm, known coronary artery disease, history of heart attacks, HDL (good cholesterol), blood pressure, history of smoking, family history of early heart disease… for example, a patient with no risk factors, male gender, and 35 years of age would have a LDL target of 130… a 35 year old male who has had a heart attack automatically has a target LDL of 100 with recommendation to even decrease it lower to 70… so as you can see, it really is patient specific…
based on those risk factors, a target LDL is given (using Framingham RIsk Calculator which can be googled)... there are many drugs that lower the bad cholesterol, statins being the main ones used… crestor is a statin= rosuvastatin and has the best LDL lowering potential… simvastatin (zocor) at maximum dose can lower LDL about 40%... crestor at a relatively low dose can do the same and at a high dose can lower approximately 60%...
its true that crestor, just like other statins can cause muscle pain and liver problems… appropriately so, should you decide to start crestor, liver should be monitored… crestor doesnt affect kidney much, but does need dose adjustment in renal failure, so a screening kidney function test should be done but doesnt need to be aggressively followed…
hope this helps a bit…