Committed couch potatoes everywhere will embrace this new BP study
Let Yourself Go
Stop exercising. Go ahead and smoke. Eat what you want and all you want. Stay put on that couch and pass the Funyuns.
That’s the takeaway message from a new study in which Canadian researchers explored the impact of drug therapy and lifestyle changes on patients with high blood pressure.
Oh, and one more thing: Keep taking those drugs because (according to this study) they’re your only hope.
Strange numbers
First – here’s your appetizer. (A heaping plate of insanity follows.)
Researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute gathered data collected from questionnaires given to 2,500 adults in Ontario in 2006. About 20 percent were diagnosed with high blood pressure.
About 40 percent of the HBP respondents said they combined drug treatment with lifestyle changes (such as diet modification, exercising, smoking cessation, etc.). And conveniently, almost the very same number – about 40 percent – said they used hypertension drugs, but threw caution to the wind and made no lifestyle changes.
When the Ottawa team crunched the numbers they found that blood pressure was successfully controlled by 78 percent who combined drug therapy with lifestyle changes. And the stunning surprise of the study: In the drugs-only group, 85 percent successfully controlled HBP.
In other words: Lifestyle changes? Feh! What a bunch of chumps! All you have to do is take the drugs.
The Magic Salt Theory
And now for the not-one-bit-subtle drug sales pitch…
In a Reuters Health article, lead author of the study, George J. Fodor, M.D., offered this statement: “Whether we like it or not, the only thing which we can definitely offer which really works is drug treatment.”
The “only” thing that “really” works? Yeesh.
But here’s the real howler…
Dr. Fodor has a better idea for all those people who have been suckered into losing weight, quitting smoking, etc. Reuters: “Rather than pushing people to make lifestyle changes, he concluded, public health efforts might be more profitably directed toward pressuring the food industry to reduce its sodium use.”
Ai yi yi. It’s the absolutely ridiculous Magic Salt Theory: Remove salt and HBP goes away.
Of course, Dr. Fodor’s “solution” overlooks the key result of his own study: Drugs work, but lifestyle changes like reducing salt don’t matter, so why waste public health efforts to pressure the food industry to remove salt? In fact, shouldn’t we be pressuring the food industry to fortify foods with hypertenstion drugs? After all, drug therapy is the only thing that really works.
Note to Dr. Fodor: Just kidding, doc. In case you weren’t aware, those lifestyle changes that are proven to reduce hypertension in intervention trials* will also improve health in innumerable other ways.
* “Effects of Comprehensive Lifestyle Modification on Blood Pressure Control” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 289, No. 16, 4/23/03
Sources:
“Lifestyle Changes and Blood Pressure Control: A Community-Based Cross-Sectional Survey” The Journal of Clinical Hypertension, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1/5/09, interscience.wiley.com
“Changing Habits May Not Lower Blood Pressure” Anne Harding, Reuters Health, 2/10/09, reutershealth.com
