The American Heart Association and The American College of Cardiology are lowering the blood pressure level at which one is considered to by hypertensive. It will now be 130/80.
They say they are going to recommend lifestyle changes to for some 40+% of American adults to get their pressure down, rather than taking medication. Uhuh. Sure.
Except:
“Medication would be recommended for people with 130-139 and 80-89 who are at high risk—about 4.2 million people more than the number recommended in the last guidelines issued in 2003. These drugs, which include diuretics, calcium channel blockers and ACE inhibitors, are widely available in inexpensive generic forms.”
Here’s the whole article
The medical community keeps lowering the bar (heh, bar… pressure… get it?). It used to be pre-hypertension; now it needs to be medicated. Reminds me of osteopenia, wherein lots of women were being put on medication until it was found to be unnecessary. I hate to cite NPR, but you know what they say about stopped clocks…
https://www.npr.org/2009/12/21/121609815/how-a-bone-disease-grew-to-fit-the-prescription
As a patient, you can always follow Nancy Reagan’s advice and “just say ‘no’ to drugs.”
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I work with a lot of women with low bone mass and might could still go teach for Sara Meeks PT. I agree that OP is fit the prescription disease and with 50% of women over 50 and 50% of men over 70% having it. . . The Natl and International Osteoporosis Associations are funded by big pharma and the dairy foundation. Fortunately, most all of the patients I see don’t want to take drugs or be infused. Keeping back and leg muscles strong is pretty good protection against fracture.
It’s good to hear that your patients are skeptical about taking drugs but I don’t think that’s necessarily the norm. Most people take the drugs their doctors prescribe without question. As for osteoporosis, many people are vitamin D deficient, yet doctors rarely check for that.
Instead of prescribing drugs for osteopenia, maybe doctors should see if their patient are calcium or D deficient first. Trouble is, those are cheap OTC products.
No, no, no. This is unpossible, because I have been assured many times that Big Pharma would never ever do anything like this for reasons of mere profit.
In any case the Sacred Principles of the Free Market sternly forbid profiteering and rent seeking.
Surely those Steely Principles also forbid changing medical guidelines to increase drug sales.
Surely.