What exactly is high blood pressure, and why don't doctors all over the world agree on the best way to treat it? In part 1 of our blood pressure report, you can learn more about the dangers of high blood pressure and the most common medicines used to treat it.
When your heart beats, your blood pushes against the walls of your arteries, which is called blood pressure. When your heart beats and pumps blood into the arteries, that's when your blood pressure is at its highest. This is called systolic pressure, and it is the high number in your reading. The diastolic pressure is the pressure when your heart is at rest between beats. Your blood pressure is at its lowest when you're sleeping, and even though it changes a little bit during the day, it stays pretty much the same. Blood pressure that is normal is 120/80. If your systolic blood pressure goes over 140 or your diastolic blood pressure goes over 90, you have high blood pressure.
The American Heart Association says that about one in three adults in the U.S. have high blood pressure, which is also called hypertension. What's even scarier is that one in three of those people don't even know they have it. It makes sense that this condition has been called "the silent killer" for a long time.
High blood pressure is one of the main reasons why people get a stroke, heart attack, heart failure, or kidney failure. And if you have it along with being overweight, smoking, having high blood cholesterol, or having diabetes, your chance of having a heart attack or stroke goes up by several times. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says that if you don't have high blood pressure by age 55, you have a 90% chance of getting it at some point in your life.
High blood pressure can happen to both children and adults, but it is most common in people over 35. African Americans, middle-aged and older people, obese people, heavy drinkers, and women on birth control pills are more likely to have high blood pressure than other groups. Even though many older people get high blood pressure, it is not a normal part of getting older. Blood pressure can be prevented and lowered by eating right, working out, and making other changes to how you live.
Medication that is often given for high blood pressure
Researchers don't know what causes high blood pressure in 90–95% of cases, but they do know enough to have come up with both drug and non-drug treatments that work well.
Medical professionals can treat high blood pressure with a wide range of different drugs. Even though other classes of drugs are sometimes prescribed, the most common ones can be broken down into five groups. Each group has different ways of lowering blood pressure.
Diuretics, which are also called "water pills," help the kidneys get rid of extra water and sodium.
Beta-blockers stop nerve signals from going to the heart and blood vessels. This makes the heart beat slower and with less force.
Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) Inhibitors stop a hormone called angiotensin II from being made, which would narrow blood vessels if it were made.
Angiotensin II can't do its job when you take an Angiotensin Receptor Blocker (ARB).
Calcium channel blockers stop calcium from getting into the heart and blood vessel muscle cells. This makes the blood vessels relax.
As of June 2005, it didn't seem like there was much agreement among medical experts around the world about the best first-line treatment for high blood pressure. It's important to know that in June 2006, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the British Hypertension Society came to an agreement in the UK and put out new guidelines with important changes to help primary care doctors decide on first-line therapy. Beta-blockers, which have been shown to prevent strokes less well and are more likely to cause diabetes, are no longer recommended as a standard treatment for most people with high blood pressure. This is a big change. Instead, most people in the UK, with a few exceptions, are now told to try ACE Inhibitors (or Angiotensin Receptor Blockers if they have side effects) before trying other types of hypertension drugs.
As with any medicine, ACE Inhibitors can cause side effects, and some people, like black people of any age, shouldn't take them at all. According to the Mayo Clinic, a study published in June 2006 by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that children whose mothers took ACE inhibitors during the first trimester had a higher risk of birth defects. This was in addition to the known risks during the second and third trimesters. Most people can take ACE Inhibitors without any problems, but some may have side effects like cough, high potassium levels in the blood, low blood pressure, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, weakness, a strange taste (like metal or salt), and rash. Kidney failure, allergic reactions, a drop in white blood cells, and swelling of tissues are rare but more serious side effects (angioedema).
ARB medications are very similar to ACE Inhibitors. Depending on a person's health problems, a doctor may switch between the two, or sometimes give them both. ARBs most often cause cough, high potassium levels, low blood pressure, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, diarrhoea, a metallic or salty taste in the mouth, and rash. ARBs are less likely to make you cough than ACE inhibitors. Kidney failure, liver failure, allergic reactions, a drop in white blood cells, and tissue swelling (angioedema) are the most serious, but rare, side effects.
On January 19, 2007, researchers at Rush University Medical Center said that ACE Inhibitors and ARBs keep people from getting diabetes, while diuretics and beta-blockers make it more likely that a person will get diabetes. The authors said that more research is needed to find out if new-onset diabetes causes as many heart attacks, strokes, or deaths as diabetes that has been around for a long time. But their data suggests that there are real and important differences between antihypertensive drugs when it comes to the risk of getting diabetes for the first time.
Melaleuca has a natural treatment for high blood pressure called ProStolic. It works by interacting with a natural enzyme in the body, just like ACE Inhibitors and ARB medications do, to relax blood vessels and let blood flow normally. As a way to compare, it might be helpful to know how the ACE and ARB classes of drugs and the non-drug hypertension treatment ProStolic formula work in the body.
In Part 2 of our Blood Pressure Research Report, we will talk about ACE Inhibitors and Angiotension Receptor Blockers, Natural Therapy for Maintaining Healthy Blood Pressure, and the benefits of Bioactive Casein Hydrolysate Tripeptides VPP and IPP.
