LifeCare Chiropractic

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blood pressure medication

Blood Pressure Meds in Older Adults Kill Quality of Life

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Keeping blood pressure under control is a main focus of mainstream medicine, especially as we age. We always use blood pressure medication to achieve this end.  But what if this makes us worse off??

I certainly seem to be on a rampage lately on the issue of blood pressure and blood pressure medications (including a recent post linking calcium channel blockers doubling risk of breast cancer), but I really do just flag these articles as they come out, so blame it on the medical research publishing community.  I’m just the messenger.

So, since it seems like the medical community has been hell-bent on destroying the $93.5 BILLION dollar industry (and that’s just in the US), I’ll just point out the details of this particular study quickly and give some resources for improving blood pressure without medications.

In it, researchers looked at the physical and mental health of 5866 persons with an average age of 57.  Here’s what they found:

  1. The use of blood pressure medications was associated with poorer health status.
  2. An increased intensity of blood pressure treatment (needing 3 or more meds) was also associated with poorer health status.
  3. The actual blood pressure reading was not a factor (in other words, it was the blood pressure medication and not the blood pressure itself).
  4. At the opposite end, both lower systolic and lower diastolic blood pressures were also linked to poorer physical and mental health status, regardless of treatment.

Basically, the use of blood pressure medications decreased overall quality of life.  Given that we know that drug treatment of stage 1 hypertension (systolic under 160, diastolic under 100) makes no difference in rates of heart disease, stroke or death, this adds yet another nail in the coffin of medication (versus lifestyle) management of elevated blood pressure.  Unfortunately, this is a habit that is going to die very, very, very, very hard given the decades we have spent medicating high blood pressure and the untold billions of revenue this class of drugs generates.

The vast majority of elevated blood pressure cases are really the early stages of diabetes.  This means that an anti-diabetic lifestyle is key to maintaining ideal blood pressure.  Here are some resources for you:

While it may sound like a brand new concept coming from me, but the use of blood pressure medication for stage 1 hypertension is falling apart quickly, leaving lifestyle as the ONLY method of safely lowering your blood pressure.

Side Effects of Blood Pressure Medication-Women Better Read This

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Calcium Channel Blockers (think “dipine” or “amil” names) are common blood pressure medications.  Much like every drug, this class comes with its list of side effects, but I’ll bet you didn’t know this was on the list.

Every drug comes with side effects.  That’s the price we pay to mess with physiology the way Mother Nature intended (which is what all drugs do–they mess with the way your body is supposed to be working).  The game we play is to make sure the side effects are not as dangerous as the disease state that is being treated.  Seems pretty simple, right?

If only.

There are hundreds of different types of blood pressure medications and fall into several classes: diuretics, beta blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and angiotensin II receptor blockers.  And, as mentioned, they all have side effects.  Some of them, like the beta blockers, I can’t even figure out why we’re still using them for blood pressure since they clearly lead to diabetes and stroke.  I’ve covered many of the known side effects of all these classes of drugs in a previous blog article that can be read by clicking here.

However, there is a new side effect identified in this particular article that should make every women sit up and take notice.

In a well designed study, researchers looked at the relationship between calcium channel blocker use and breast cancer.  This association was first identified in 1996, but lost any momentum within a few years, to be picked up some 17 years later by this group.  Here’s the details:

  1. There were 2763 women in the study, 880 of them with invasive ductal breast cancer, 1027 with invasive lobular breast cancer, and 856 with no cancer for controls.
  2. Use of calcium-channel blockers for 10 or more years increased risk of ductal breast cancer 240% and lobular breast cancer 260%.
  3. The risk was the same for all types of calcium-channel blockers  used.

While this study does not prove that this blood pressure medication contributed to the breasts cancers, it certainly doesn’t look good.  But here’s the kicker–the vast majority of prescriptions written for all blood pressure medications have been shown to be worthless for someone with stage 1 hypertension (systolic below 160 or diastolic below 99), essentially not having any effect on someone’s risk of heart attack, stroke or overall risk of death.

If a drug does nothing for the patient, then ANY side effects of that drug are unacceptable.  If that particular side effect is an increased risk of breast cancer from a blood pressure medication you didn’t need in the first place, I’m not sure there’s a word to describe this.

High Blood Pressure Medication–Is Your Doctor Still Prescribing It?

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Blood pressure medication use below 160/100 is worthless.  While nothing in medical research is set in stone, some things are close.

A review done by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2012, a worldwide medical research think-tank, found that there was no evidence that drug treatment of high blood pressure for systolic below 160 and diastolic below 100 lowered the rates of heart attacks, strokes or death.  That’s not to say that drugs for high blood pressure numbers like these does not actually work, just that there is no medical evidence to suggest that it does.

And let’s face it.  This is a LOT of money we’re talking about here.  Seemingly everyone is on blood pressure medications these days.  If the drug companies had research to prove that their drugs worked, the Cochrane Collaboration review would’ve found it.  I’m pretty sure there never will be research to show that medical management of high blood pressure below 160 and 100 works.

But what does this mean to a medical system that is so massively entrenched in dogma that I’m surprised they are not still doing bloodletting?

Apparently nothing.  Personally, I have yet to see a patient come in who’s doctor recently took them off of blood pressure medications.  This would, however, be a welcome sign that mainstream medical doctors actually read medical literature.  This is the heart of this short commentary basically asking the same questions.

The continued use of blood pressure medications beyond today would be fine if they were (a) free and (b) free of side effects.  Neither is true.

The cost to our healthcare system is monstrous and the list of side effects very long and can be reviewed in a previous blog article on this topic that can be read by clicking here.  Most notably, however, is the increased risk of stroke and diabetes from beta blockers.

What does all of this mean?  It means that, much like everything else, lifestyle is the only answer.  Using lifestyle to lower your blood pressure WILL lead to lowered rates of heart disease, stroke and death.  You can read my full recommendations in my Blood Pressure eBook that can be found by clicking here.

In the meantime, this is a great way to tell if your doctor is keeping up with the current medical literature as it relates to being the best advocate for your health.  If he or she is not doing this, maybe it’s time to find a new one.

High Blood Pressure Medication Fails; Die with Better Numbers

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Medicine today is built on a house of cards. We think that if high blood pressure medication lowers our numbers, we’re safe. Not even close to true.

I have covered again and again the fallacy of what is referred to as “surrogate end markers.”

In using surrogate end markers, the idea is that, for Disease X, patients with lower values of Blood marker B live longer or are less likely to get the disease. So, we create a drug that lowers Blood marker B synthetically, thinking that we will have an impact on Disease X. We don’t measure Disease X directly, because that would take too long.

The mistake here is that, what if Blood marker B being low and leading to lowered rates of Disease X is a reflection of the health of the patient, and NOT because Blood marker B itself is low? Time and time again we see that the use of surrogate end markers in research leads to WORSE outcomes when we artificial lower Blood marker B.

The bottom line is that many of us blindly follow our doctor’s advice to take some medication and we think that there is solid research behind this particular use of the drug.

Sadly, this is not often the case.  You may be given this drug because it will make your numbers look better, not because it has been shown to avoid YOUR concern such as a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis or dementia.

Which brings us to this particular study done by the Cochrane group.  Before we get into the results, you need to first understand that the what Cochrane Collaboration is all about.  In their own words:

“The Cochrane Collaboration is an international network of more than 28,000 dedicated people from over 100 countries. We work together to help healthcare providers, policy-makers, patients, their advocates and carers, make well-informed decisions about health care, by preparing, updating, and promoting the accessibility of Cochrane Reviews – over 5,000 so far, published online in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, part of The Cochrane Library. We also prepare the largest collection of records of randomised controlled trials in the world, called CENTRAL, published as part of The Cochrane Library.”

In other words, this is THE group that can tear apart the medical research on a topic and filter through the bad study designs and bias that can clog up the true results of a study.

So what did they find out about high blood pressure medications used to lower mild hypertension (systolic blood pressure <160 and diastolic blood pressure <100)?

Not really a whole lot.  In the studies reviewed, there was no evidence of a protective benefit from using high blood pressure medication in these patients.  No lowered rate of heart attacks, stroke or death.

Let’s be clear–this doesn’t mean there is NOT a benefit, it just means there is no research to prove it.  Now that we’ve been clear, let’s be honest…

Millions of dollars thrown into research for drugs to lower blood pressure.  BILLIONS of dollars paid annually for people to take these medications.  I’m thinking that, if there was an data to truly prove that they work, the drug companies would’ve been hoisting the research up on a pedestal for everyone to see.

The sad part is that I don’t think that these recommendations are going to be widely adopted.  Dogma rules in medicine and it takes decades to change behaviors.  It has been almost 4 years since the research linking stroke and diabetes with beta blockers for high blood pressure was published, and yet these drugs are still standard treatment for high blood pressure.

I have previously posted on other side effects associated with hypertension drug use and this can be read by clicking here.

The bottom line is that we should lower high blood pressure with lifestyle, not with drugs.  Only then can you be sure that you’re going to lower your risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and deaths.

So did you do to lower your high blood pressure?

BLOOD PRESSURE USING MEDICATIONS – IS LOWER WORSE?

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It is, of course, no big shocker that I am going to say that lifestyle is the only answer to safely lower blood pressure.  It should also be well known that the class of drugs known as beta blockers actually increase the risk of stroke and diabetes, and do not change the risk of dying.
 
The approach of blood pressure control with medication is lower is better.  But, as will anything using medication, when we begin to mess with our physiology, there is always a price to be paid.  This particular study looked at the benefits of lowering blood pressure below 130 systolic.  If you believe in mainstream medicine and that life is made better through chemistry, than this sounds like a reasonable goal.
 
However, while the risk of stroke was lowered by aggressive blood pressure lowering below 130, the risk of dangerous side effects went up 40%.  There was also no other benefit to the patient other than lowered stroke risk (in other words–a single intervention targeting only a single outcome-stroke, with absolutely no benefit to any other aspect of our health).
 
Contrast this to lowering blood pressure with lifestyle changes.  First, lifestyle will never bring you to a dangerously low blood pressure.  Dangerous side effects?  Only if you consider feeling better and looking better “dangerous.”  Single outcomes?  Lifestyle changes will cut across every other disease state in addition to lowering your risk of stroke.
 
Most case of high blood pressure stem from being prediabetic.  Manage the interplay between insulin and your cells with the right choices and you are well on your way to lowering your blood pressure.  That means exercise, more fruits / veggies, cut back on calories, increase intake of omega 3 fats while avoiding hydrogenated and reducing omega 6 and doing your best to avoid the toxic chemicals of the world we live in.