Role of blood-pressure drugs in depression should set off alarm bells
Severe depression may be the last thing your doctor thinks about when he zips you off an Rx for a blood-pressure drug.
But according to the findings of a new study, it should be one of the first.
Shocking new research out of Scotland has discovered that two major classes of blood-pressure meds can significantly up the risk of “mood disorders” such as acute depression.
These are findings that everyone taking one of these drugs needs to know about right away.
Because what a doctor might say is all in your head could very well be coming from what’s in that bottle of pills.
Over-medicating patients for high blood pressure is one of the biggest obsessions in medicine.
These are meds that can turn your life upside down, given all the side effects they come along with. And now we can add severe depression to that list.
Researchers in Scotland set out to test the findings of another, small study, one that found certain kinds of blood-pressure meds called calcium channel blockers could help with bipolar disorder.
But what they turned up was quite unexpected.
By examining data on over 520,000 patients in several hospitals in Scotland they found that two particular classes of these meds — beta blockers and calcium channel antagonists — doubled the risk of suffering from major depression so severe it required hospitalization.
And the researchers weren’t even counting the people who had episodes of depression and weren’t hospitalized. Can you imagine what the numbers might be if those patients had been included in the study?
The two classes of blood-pressure drugs found to up depression include names such as beta blockers Lopressor, Tenormin and Zebeta. Calcium channel antagonists include Norvasc, Cardizem, Verelan and Sular. (You can easily check with your doctor or pharmacist if you’re taking a BP med to find out what kind it is).
As I said, the results of this study were a surprise to even the researchers. But really, this is nothing more than further evidence that heavy-duty pharmaceutical drugs have life-changing side effects that we may not be aware of — even if they’ve been in use for some time.
And these results come at a time when BP meds are being heavily promoted and pushed on many patients who don’t even need them in the first place.
I’ve been telling you about a power play put into effect by the National Institutes of Health based on a highly flawed study called SPRINT. The idea was to convince doctors that we all need to get our blood pressure down to 120 or lower — and that we should be on as many of these meds as possible to make that happen.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Three years ago a team of top docs made this recommendation: If you’re 60 or over, a blood-pressure reading up to 150/90 is perfectly fine.
If you’re under 60, the reading said to be A-OK got bumped up to 140/90.
No drugs required!
But that was a blow to Big Pharma’s bottom line like never before. And researchers with long-standing ties to pharmaceutical companies are doing their best to deep-six those recommendations.
So if you or a loved one are taking one of these meds, especially if that’s been the case for some time, have a talk with your doctor about how you can quit them.
Because as we now know, it could be one of the most important things you can do for the sake of your mental health.
Sources:
“Blood pressure meds could raise your depression risk” Meera Senthilingam, October 11, 2016, CNN, cnn.com
