How your blood pressure meds may be killing you
Is that blood pressure drug you took today putting you on the fast track to heart disease?
According to some substantial new research out of Johns Hopkins, it very well may be.
It looks like the mainstream obsession with driving down blood pressure numbers has another dark side to it. For years I’ve been warning you how taking pills to try and hit that magic 120 number could be a one-way ticket to Alzheimer’s.
But this is something else.
You might say it’s a way to damage your heart without really trying.
You exercise, eat your veggies — maybe even take important supplements like CoQ-10 for heart health.
But if you’re also popping meds to lower your blood pressure, well, you might as well forget even trying to protect your heart.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins poured over the records of more than 11,000 Americans spanning over three decades. And they found that there’s a very good reason a blood pressure reading has two parts to it.
The top number, or systolic, reflects what your BP is when your heart is working, or contracting. And that number gets a whole lot of attention, especially since the big federally-sponsored SPRINT trial was released last year (more on that in a minute).
The diastolic, or second part of the reading, is a measurement of your BP when your heart is at rest, between beats. While we hear a lot about why we should get that top number down to 120 or below — the other half seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.
Until now.
What the Hopkins researchers discovered is that when the second, or diastolic, number goes too low, it’s a recipe for heart damage. That’s especially true when your diastolic number is below 80 to begin with.
The Hopkins team found those who had a diastolic reading below 60, were a hair away from being 50 percent more likely to have heart disease and over 30 percent more likely to die — from any cause.
That’s why, says Hopkins researcher J. William McEvoy, doctors shouldn’t just look at “driving down the top blood pressure number in isolation.”
But unfortunately, they do. And that’s especially so since a big federally-funded blood pressure study, called SPRINT, was released last year.
As I said at the time, SPRINT was proof positive that our government is more concerned with Big Pharma’s bottom line than our health.
The study was actually stopped years before it was to finish up after the National Institutes of Health claimed it had all the “potentially lifesaving information” it needed about blood pressure. And that was: take three or more blood pressure meds to get that top number down to 120 or lower.
Of course, there’s a little problem with that. Driving your blood pressure too low can send your risk of Alzheimer’s through the roof. And now we can add, your risk of heart disease as well.
But by now, I’m not the only one who thinks there’s something fishy about that SPRINT study.
Doctors and researchers all over the world are attempting to uncover crucial details about how the study was conducted. Even basic information, such as what method was used to take the trial participants’ blood pressure hasn’t been released.
“We need less opinion and more information,” one BP expert in England said.
But SPRINT aside, we’ve already got decades’ worth of information that’s telling us as you get older, blood pressure that’s too low can literally starve your brain of blood. And that for people over 60, there’s no reason to even consider starting up on drugs unless your readings hit 150/90 or higher.
And if your doctor is one who is still bewitched by that nonsensical SPRINT study, don’t walk, but sprint to find another one.
Sources:
“Doctors: Beware of low diastolic blood pressure when threating hypertension” Johns Hopkins Medicine, September 1, 2016, ScienceDaily, sciencedaily.com
