The Gift Giving Season: Are You Under Control?
Do you have high blood pressure (hypertension)? Diabetes? High cholesterol levels? If you have any of these health conditions your risk of stroke and heart attack are much higher than that of other people your age without these concerns.
A current article at Web MD points out that we're getting better at helping people to understand what high blood pressure is and why it needs to be controlled. In a study published in the January 2007 edition of the medical journal Hypertension it was shown that 1/3 of adults in the US had good blood pressure control in 2003-04. This is an improvement of 8% when compared to the years 1999-2000. Unfortunately the study also points out that 2/3 of those who have high blood pressure do not have it adequately controlled.
There are a number of reasons why people with hypertension often don't have their B/P under control. Some don't know that they have high blood pressure, and if they have been told that they do, they may not feel any symptoms.
Having a disease without symptoms makes it hard to convince someone that they should take medications, especially if taking them makes them feel unwell. Another reason people with high blood pressure don't control it is that their health care providers are reluctant to add multiple medications to their regimen. This may be because of cost, or it may be because they are concerned about the potential for more side effects when a person is taking multiple drugs.
This concern is often not founded however; in fact, there is a move to use smaller doses of multiple medications to control blood pressure. This works better because you get side effects more frequently at higher drug doses than you do with small doses, even when there are several of them. As this report states, it's hard to prove that aggressive treatment of high blood pressure is more dangerous to the patient than allowing their blood pressure to remain at unsafe levels (above 140/90 mmHg). Rather than focusing on the number of pills the person is taking, health care providers and their patients should stay focused on getting to a safe blood pressure level.
If you have high blood pressure then I recommend that you ask for a very special gift from your favorite Santa this year: a blood pressure cuff. This is an invaluable tool to monitoring your pressure at home; it will help you to give readings to your health care provider from times when you are more relaxed than you are in the office.
It will also help to monitor your progress toward reaching the B/P goal that you set together. This goal should be at least under 140 on the top (systolic) and 90 on the bottom (diastolic). Both numbers count. If you also have diabetes your control should be even better, because adding high blood pressure to this other heart disease risk factor is like throwing gas on a fire. People with diabetes should be trying to get their blood pressure under 130 systolic and under 80 diastolic, according to the American Diabetes Association.
It's funny how the various associations such as the American Heart Association, The American Diabetes Association, The American Association of Endocrinologists etcetera all publish their own guidelines for B/P control isn't it? I do wish they could all come together with a plan so that both health care providers and patients wouldn't feel like they were always on the move with these "target" goals. That said, it's hard to argue with the fact that the more one is able to improve their B/P control, the less their risk of stroke and heart attack.
Talk to your health care provider. Ask, how's my control?
Take care,
Laurie
Related Topics:
Technorati Tags: blood pressure cuff, hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol
A current article at Web MD points out that we're getting better at helping people to understand what high blood pressure is and why it needs to be controlled. In a study published in the January 2007 edition of the medical journal Hypertension it was shown that 1/3 of adults in the US had good blood pressure control in 2003-04. This is an improvement of 8% when compared to the years 1999-2000. Unfortunately the study also points out that 2/3 of those who have high blood pressure do not have it adequately controlled.
There are a number of reasons why people with hypertension often don't have their B/P under control. Some don't know that they have high blood pressure, and if they have been told that they do, they may not feel any symptoms.
Having a disease without symptoms makes it hard to convince someone that they should take medications, especially if taking them makes them feel unwell. Another reason people with high blood pressure don't control it is that their health care providers are reluctant to add multiple medications to their regimen. This may be because of cost, or it may be because they are concerned about the potential for more side effects when a person is taking multiple drugs.
This concern is often not founded however; in fact, there is a move to use smaller doses of multiple medications to control blood pressure. This works better because you get side effects more frequently at higher drug doses than you do with small doses, even when there are several of them. As this report states, it's hard to prove that aggressive treatment of high blood pressure is more dangerous to the patient than allowing their blood pressure to remain at unsafe levels (above 140/90 mmHg). Rather than focusing on the number of pills the person is taking, health care providers and their patients should stay focused on getting to a safe blood pressure level.
If you have high blood pressure then I recommend that you ask for a very special gift from your favorite Santa this year: a blood pressure cuff. This is an invaluable tool to monitoring your pressure at home; it will help you to give readings to your health care provider from times when you are more relaxed than you are in the office.
It will also help to monitor your progress toward reaching the B/P goal that you set together. This goal should be at least under 140 on the top (systolic) and 90 on the bottom (diastolic). Both numbers count. If you also have diabetes your control should be even better, because adding high blood pressure to this other heart disease risk factor is like throwing gas on a fire. People with diabetes should be trying to get their blood pressure under 130 systolic and under 80 diastolic, according to the American Diabetes Association.
It's funny how the various associations such as the American Heart Association, The American Diabetes Association, The American Association of Endocrinologists etcetera all publish their own guidelines for B/P control isn't it? I do wish they could all come together with a plan so that both health care providers and patients wouldn't feel like they were always on the move with these "target" goals. That said, it's hard to argue with the fact that the more one is able to improve their B/P control, the less their risk of stroke and heart attack.
Talk to your health care provider. Ask, how's my control?
Take care,
Laurie
Related Topics:
Technorati Tags: blood pressure cuff, hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol
2 Comments:
what is very high blood pressure? My b/p has been 184/110
This question is in reference to cholesterol numbers. I had a workup done for the first time in 15 years, and my HDl came back at 96! I'm a 57 yr old man, and the LDL number was right in range, overall total was a little high because of the HDL number. My question: is it possible to have a risk from HDL being TOO high??
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