It was not always easy for people in the study to reach their blood pressure goals. “This will shift paradigms back toward much, much more aggressive treatment for high blood pressure“, said Dr. Quinn R. Pack, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation, noninvasive cardiology for Baystate Health.
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Proper medication prescribed by one’s doctor plays an extremely important role in both lowering their levels and then maintaining it at the lower levels.
Strong words for a trial for which no one has seen the actual, detailed results.
Rather than automatically prescribing one, two or more medications for patients whose systolic blood pressure is above 120, Drs.
“The worst thing people with high blood pressure can do is ignore it”, he said.
The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) was launched to determine whether adjusting the dosage, number and types of blood pressure medication to achieve a target systolic pressure of 120 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) rather than the now recommended 140 mm Hg reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. (It’s unclear what “almost” means.) Although these drops in risk sound good, they may only apply to people like those enrolled in the study.
Diet/Weight Loss: Though it is not entirely clear why weight loss is beneficial in helping to reduce high blood pressure and hypertension, part of the reason might be that losing weight can help to improve one’s circulation.
Hypertension is characterized by blood pressure readings higher than 120/80.
If guidelines are changed because of this study – as blood pressure experts expect they will be – an already falling death rate from heart attacks and stroke could drop even more, said Dr Jackson T Wright Jr, a blood pressure expert at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Centre, and a study investigator.
Pack said that “we have known for years that treatment of high blood pressure reduces risk for heart attack or stroke by 30 to 40 percent”.
And drugs seem to be the only option here.
The DASH diet is high in fruits, vegetables and fiber, and low in sodium. With all the overwhelming data, the question still remains, how can individuals be encouraged to monitor and manage their blood pressure?
That’s a pretty good day for a new health report in the media.
The study was presented at the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension Scientific Sessions 2015. “The study looks very positive”, she said in an email. An estimated 1 in 3 people in the United States has high blood pressure.
The American Heart Association recommends daily consuming 3 or 4 grams of salt to lower blood pressure. Again, physicians must have access to the data to discern whether or not this is true, which participants may have been harmed more than helped and which drug combinations may have been better or worse.
“This is notable because there (are) a lot of people out there with blood pressure in the 130s that we might previously have left alone, but if the results of this trial (are) as we think they are, it might be reason to try to get them to 120″, said Dr. John D. Bisognano, professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and president-elect of the American Society of Hypertension.
With millions of consumers strapping on activity monitors like Fitbit, Garmin and Jawbone, Chicago-based higi has created a platform for tracking blood pressure and other health information. Oparil suspects that the trial-which had about half as many participants as SPRINT-simply was not large enough to find statistically significant benefits associated with more aggressive treatment. His idea further supports the idea that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to treating hypertension, as the NIH press release seems to suggest.
Some might argue that because the trial seemed to get high-magnitude lifesaving results, it is irresponsible to sit on findings while all the data are analyzed and papers are readied for publication. However, doctors would often treat patients only if that number spike above 140. But details matter in medicine, especially when it involves the use of intensive multidrug therapy.
The study has not been published yet. Initial results were announced September 11. “But to offer a teaser of the final results, an unanchored relative risk reduction, without more information-that is a disservice to the dissemination of science”.
Pack added that the study confirms what many medical providers have observed in their practices.
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“So, when they first started with blood pressure meds in the 1950s, they were working with people who had blood pressures in the 180’s and 190’s systolic”. “Seeing a small sense of what led to the NIH’s suspending the study gives us a glimmer of what’s possible, but we don’t really know the whole picture”.
