Why drugs are often NOT needed for high blood pressure....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 10-13-2009

Last Friday, 10-9-2009, Dr. Robert J. Rowen, in his Second Opinion Health Alert e-newsletter email had an article with this title: “Why you don't need to treat your blood pressure”

(His essay actually covers why you don’t need to treat blood pressure below 160 over 100 with drugs.) The brilliant point he makes is why that’s so.

I don’t agree with everything he writes but I agree with most of it; & this article is brilliant.

(You can subscribe yourself it you like at: http://www.secondopinionnewsletter.com .)

Back in 2002, he said that there was no medical evidence that treating blood pressure less than 160 systolic would help you live longer. (The research that has been done has found exactly that. Above 160 over 100, bringing down blood pressure increases longevity and lowers death rates. But below that, it doesn’t seem to have any noticeable effect on death rates – or helping you live longer.)

It is true that people who have blood pressure 115/70 who are simply healthy enough to have such readings have fewer heart attacks and other diseases than those with readings of over 140 over 90. But getting your blood pressure that low from moderately high readings such as 140 over 90 BY USING DRUGS alone -- doesn't help.

In my own writing on lowering high blood pressure without drugs, I’d written that my guess was that below 160 over 90 the side effects of the drugs tended to come close to equaling the benefit of the lower blood pressure.

I’d also written that using the nondrug methods removed the CAUSES of the high blood pressure and offered MUCH better health protection than the drugs. I even had written that just lowering the high blood pressure alone was pretty weak protection and ALL people taking the drugs should also be advised to do the things that act on the causes.

(For a brief review of some of the most effective ways to lower high blood pressure without drugs or without drug side effects, see my post on just that on, Tuesday, 8-11-2009.)

Here’s his statement on why drugs don’t help much. As you’ll see, his point is totally compatible with what I’ve written before. But it makes it crystal clear why its failure to treat the causes that makes treating moderately lower with drugs alone so ineffective.

I recommend it to you highly.

“Medicine” (using drugs) “is based on treating symptoms, not causes. High blood pressure is merely a symptom of an underlying cause. Just treating the blood pressure” (with drugs) “leaves the cause untreated. For example, lead toxicity or potassium deficiency can cause high blood pressure. Yes, you can drug the pressure down. But you don't fix the problem.

Medicine hasn't learned yet that suppressing symptoms with toxic drugs may not only do no good, but it might also cause harm. I prefer to look at high blood pressure as a symptom of a risk factor, and not a risk factor itself. So you don't need to treat blood pressure. You need to treat the cause of it.

Action to take: If you have high blood pressure, have an integrative physician find the underlying cause. If you don't have access to one, you can call my office for a telephone "education" consultation. I've found that diet and lifestyle changes work wonders. And for chronically high blood pressure, a water fast can lower your pressure very quickly and safely (you can read about how to do this treatment safely on my website).

Two warnings: First, I never tell patients to stop their blood pressure drugs for safety and legal reasons. Stopping the drugs cold turkey can cause severe reactions. However, I find that with diet and lifestyle changes, you can lower your blood pressure naturally. Once your blood pressure is in a good range, like 130/90 or less, your doctor can SLOWLY wean you off of them.

Second, if your BP is more than 160, you are at increased risk of stroke (blood vessels can break at high pressure). There is a clear place for medical intervention — to prevent a vessel from blowing out. So if you have extremely high blood pressure, you need medication until you can find the cause.”

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Yesterday, I emailed Dr Rowen this:

“Your essay on "Why you don't need to treat your blood pressure" was brilliant; and all doctors should know this information.

Many people take blood pressure medications that have marginal effects on protecting their health but do have dollar costs, and often unpleasant side effects, where their initial blood pressure was in the undesirable range but less than 160 over 100.

I wrote but have not yet published an eBook on how to lower blood pressure without drugs.

In it I note that research has found that using drugs to lower blood pressure of over 160 over 100 did reduce mortality rates but was close to ineffective in doing so when used to lower blood pressures much less than that even if over 140 over 90.

I theorized that this was due to the drug side effects offsetting any health benefits at the lower readings.

I also point out that if your blood pressure is over 125 over 75, it will be health protective to bring it down to levels below that; but the most health protective ways to do so, unlike drugs, work on the causes of the high blood pressure and have other health benefits. Similarly, even if you were at blood pressure over 160 over 100 and taking drugs, your health protection is quite modest if you do not ALSO take the steps that begin to remove the causes of the high blood pressure.

The drugs alone offer only very partial protection without doing anything to remove the causes.

But I did not take the next logical step as you did -- to say that much of the reason the drugs do so little below 160 over 100 was because they fail to address the causes.

Good job!”