High Blood Pressure Remedies - What You Can Do Without Using Drugs

According to the American Heart Association there are high blood pressure remedies that don't call for drugs that most of the 50 million Americans who have this condition can benefit from. In fact the AMA says that medication is only useful when diet, exercise and changes in lifestyle fail to work. So what are these drug free remedies and why aren't more people using them?

To answer the last part of the question first, our American medical professionals turn to pharmaceuticals first as a matter of routine. That's the way they are trained and that's the most efficient use of the 15 minutes that they typically can allow for each doctor's visit. This is not to say that they don't care, it's just the way our health care system has evolved.

The net result is that treatment for high blood pressure usually involves testing different types of drugs and different doses until a combination is reached that effectively manages blood pressure. The problem of course is the discomfort and unnecessary over dosing that can result from this practice of mixing and matching. People trust their doctors so they accept this practice.

But how much do you know about blood pressure remedies that don't require drugs?

There are no definitive causes for hypertension but there are almost always the same lifestyles that lead up to it. Common characteristics in people with elevated pressure include obesity typically caused by a sedentary lifestyle and a diet high in fats and low in nutrition. Stress is the second common characteristic and with over half of Americans suffering from some form of sleep deprivation that's understandable.

The three things that are common to bringing on HBP, lack of exercise, poor diet and stress are the three things that can just as easily reverse and even cure the condition.

But this is where it can get really complicated and requires more effort than some people are willing to exert.

Exercise

This is an easy one. Exercise is the fastest way to lower blood pressure period. Forty minutes of light aerobic exercises like walking or riding a bike will lower pressure immediately after the exercise ends and keeps it down for approximately 24 hours.

Exercise strengthens the heart muscle making it a more efficient pump, trains the blood vessels to expand during the systolic beat, burns off excess adrenalin and other stress related chemicals and of course over time burns off extra pounds reducing the risk of obesity.

Diet

Thanks to the food processing and packaging industry, and restaurants that are more interested in making a buck than nutrition, eating a healthy diet has become almost impossible. Additives like sodium and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are found in all types of processed and packaged foods even the so called reduced fat and low fat varieties.

The only way you can insure you get the nutrition you need is to eat fresh food. The vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that are needed to counter hypertension are most abundant in fresh fruits, vegetables and certain fish. Eating right requires extensive planning. See the AMA's DASH diet for a list of foods that are truly heart healthy.

Stress

In today's uncertain economic environment there's enough stress to go around for everyone and it affects more than just our blood pressure. Stress can be managed in part by diet or rather by avoiding certain foods and drinks in our diet, As mentioned above, exercise burns off the affects of stress and you may want to consider exercising in the evening after a day of building up stress rather than in the morning.

In order for these blood pressure remedies to work you have to have a plan and you have to stick to it. The good news is even if you do just a little bit to improve your lifestyle and diet it will have an incremental impact on your pressure. If you use a home blood pressure monitor (which you absolutely should) you'll be able to get instant feedback on how your efforts are doing.

Home remedies for hypertension do work...it simply takes a commitment to stick to the plan.?

What are you doing to treat your high blood pressure? How is it working for you? Wouldn't it be great to wake up one morning and have the whole problem in your past?

Well it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen at all until you take charge of your health. If you want help with that then you need a plan that charts out exactly what you need to do. Do yourself and your family and at least take a look at this incredibly helpful tool now. Click here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachel_Willson

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Knowing Your Antihypertensive Drugs

Recently, the occurrence of hypertension, even at a very young age, has given way to the formation of different health societies focusing on hypertension management. Antihypertensive drugs are therapeutically used in lowering blood pressure and are part of a hypertension treatment regimen. Lifestyle changes, coupled with the right kind of diet, are also of great help in hypertension management.

Antihypertensive drugs are prescription medications, and self-medication is highly discouraged. The cause of hypertension may not simply be because of high levels of cholesterol; it may be due to other factors such as too much sodium in the blood, constriction of blood vessels due to fat deposits, a side effect caused by some medications, or a complication brought about by other diseases such as diabetes.

Theantihypertensive drug consists of different classifications based on their mechanism of action. Since hypertension may occur due to different reasons and factors, it will be of great importance to know what factors are involved in its development. For example, diuretics help the body in decreasing too much sodium ions that cause the blood pressure to rise. Beta-blockers, which include atenolol, propranolol and metoprolol, aim to lower blood pressure by antagonizing the effect of beta-receptors that cause vasoconstriction. The beta-blockers lower blood pressure by causing vasodilatation.

The angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or ACE inhibitors that include captopril and enalapril are important in hypertension management. This class of drugs acts by blocking the effect of angiotensin II that causes hypertension and thus, achieving a decrease in blood pressure.

Another very common class of antihypertensive drugs is the calcium channel blockers. Drugs of this class include nifedipine. The vasodilators, on the other hand, are a class of antihypertensive drugs that directly dilate blood vessels to increase peripheral blood flow. This effect is important in lowering high blood pressure.

As with all other drugs, side effects and adverse drug reactions may also occur while on antihypertensive drugs maintenance, so practice caution and awareness for any occurrence of unwanted side effects.

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Common hypertension drugs can raise blood pressure in certain patients

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2010) — AlbCommonly prescribed drugs used to lower blood pressure can actually have the opposite effect -- raising blood pressure in a statistically significant percentage of patients. A new study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University suggests that doctors could avoid this problem -- and select drugs most suitable for their patients -- by measuring blood levels of the enzyme renin through a blood test that is becoming more widely available.

The study appears in the online edition of the American Journal of Hypertension.

"Our findings suggest that physicians should use renin levels to predict the most appropriate first drug for treating patients with hypertension," says lead author Michael Alderman, M.D., professor of epidemiology & population health and of medicine at Einstein. "This would increase the likelihood of achieving blood pressure control and reduce the need for patients to take additional antihypertensive medications."

The study involved 945 patients who were enrolled in a workplace antihypertensive treatment program in New York City from 1981 to 1998. All had a systolic blood pressure (SBP) of at least 140 mmHg. SBP, the top number in the blood pressure reading, represents the amount of force that blood exerts on the walls of blood vessels when the heart contracts. No patients were receiving treatment for high blood pressure before enrolling in the study.

The patients were given a single antihypertensive medication, either a diuretic or a calcium channel blocker (so-called "V" drugs, which lower blood volume) or a beta blocker or an ACE inhibitor ("R" drugs, which lower levels of renin, an enzyme secreted by the kidneys that plays a key role in maintaining blood pressure).

Plasma renin activity (PRA) and SBP were measured at enrollment, and SBP was measured again after one to three months of treatment. The renin level predicted those patients who were most likely to have a favorable response with either an R or a V drug. In addition, for both R and V drugs, the renin test was able to identify those patients most likely to experience a "pressor response" -- a clinically significant increase in SBP of 10 mmHg or more.

Overall, 7.7 percent of the patients exhibited a pressor response. The highest percentage of pressor responses -- 16 percent -- occurred in patients with low renin levels who were given a beta blocker or an ACE inhibitor (R drugs).

"Every clinician knows that there's a variation in response to antihypertensive treatment, and that some patients will have an elevation in blood pressure," says Dr. Alderman, a former president of the American Society of Hypertension. "The latter phenomenon is generally attributed to patients' failure to take their medications or to a random event. But these data show that it's not a random event -- it's due to a mismatch between the patients' renin status and the drug. We think it makes sense to use renin to predict the most appropriate treatment."

Dr. Alderman says that two groups of patients might especially benefit from having their renin levels measured: patients being prescribed antihypertensive drugs for the first time and patients who are taking multiple antihypertensive drugs when one or two might work just as well. "With renin testing, you will more often get blood pressure under control with less therapy," he adds.

PRA testing has long been used to help determine the underlying cause of a patient's hypertension (i.e. whether it's due to constricted blood vessels or too much blood volume, or both), which can help guide therapy. "The problem was that the test was expensive and difficult to perform accurately," says Dr. Alderman. "However, the methodology for measuring PRA is getting better and the test is becoming more widely available."

In an accompanying editorial, Morris J. Brown, M.D., professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Cambridge School of Medicine in England, wrote, "The role of renin measurement may be to detect the extremes, and to reach rational treatment in those not controlled by standard combination [drug therapy]. Many hormones are measured on rather less reason and evidence than plasma renin, the 'oldest' of them all; its place in routine management of hypertension has at last arrived."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

Alderman et al. Pressor Responses to Antihypertensive Drug Types. American Journal of Hypertension, 2010; DOI: 10.1038/ajh.2010.114

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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