Hypertension, high blood pressure is a lifestyle disease. 100 years ago it mainly existed in the rich and wealthy now it is 30-50% of the population. Depending on your definition hypertension is having a blood pressure reading of above 140/90 mmHg. Systolic blood pressure the top number, measures the force your heart exerts on the walls of your arteries each time it beats. Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP), the bottom number, measures the force your heart exerts on the walls of your arteries in between beats. The higher the two numbers the greater the risk. Interestingly they don’t always go up or don’t together so it can tell you something about your blood pressure. Something I will describe as blood pressure profiling later
Unfortunately though, recent international guidelines, lead by the pharmaceutical companies, have been endorsed with SBP targets below 130 or lower in most developed countries including Australia, the US and Europe. The reason there is so much interest in lowering the blood pressure guidelines is two-fold. First it is supposed to dramatically reduce the risk of adverse events and second and more likely it increases the number of people defined as having high blood pressure and require more medication. Yes I am a bit of a sceptic. In the major study on this they set a target of lowering blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg (intensive treatment) compared to a target of less than 140 mm Hg (standard treatment). At 1 year, the mean systolic blood pressure was 121.4 mm Hg in the intensive-treatment group and 136.2 mm Hg in the standard-treatment group. The intervention was stopped early after a follow-up of 3.26 years owing to a significantly lower rate of the beneficial outcomes in the intensive-treatment group than in the standard-treatment group. That is there were 1.65% per year vs. 2.19% per year. A reduction of 0.54% with intensive treatment. However, rates of serious adverse events of hypotension, syncope, electrolyte abnormalities, and acute kidney injury or failure were higher in the intensive-treatment group than in the standard-treatment group. Not to mention all the other side effects that were not measure because the study was cut short.
In the US alone estimates for number of people classified with high blood pressure rises from 32% of the population or 74.1 million individuals (equal to or greater than 140/90 mm Hg) to 45.4%, representing 105.3 million US adults on the new guideline (BP level ≥130/80 mm Hg). More than 31 million more customers for the pharmaceutical companies.
Don’t get me wrong hypertension is a real and major health issue. But it is clearly a lifestyle illness and the drug companies know that. Hypertension itself is not a disease but a condition that increases the risk of cardiovascular disease including coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction (heart attack) or stroke. As well as kidney and many other health conditions I will show you later.
Unfortunately it is all pharma driven. Let me give you another example. The major way they define hypertension is according to how many drugs it takes to control it, or not. Not whether it is caused by stress, processed foods or toxins in your environment or by the constellation of other conditions (comorbidities) that are associated with it, but whether the drugs work or not. For example, Resistant Hypertension (RH) is the persistence of high BP despite the use of three antihypertensive drugs of different classes or is on 4 or more drugs to treat it. Approximately 25% of people with hypertension have RH. Refractory Hypertension (RfH) is when BP is not controlled even with the use of five or more drugs and approximately 10% of all people with hypertension.
We define the disease by the fact that the drugs don’t work? Rather than focusing on the more than 10000 studies which show you can lower blood pressure naturally. Yes More than 10000 studies. I know as I have reviewed more than 1000 studies to create The Complete hypertension solution which is now available in our membership or as a stand alone Masterclass. You can lower your blood pressure naturally and improve all the other health conditions related to it.
References
J Hypertens Actions. 2019 Jun;37(6):1148-1153. doi: 10.1097/HJH.0000000000002021. The Global Burden of Hypertension Exceeds 1.4 Billion People: Should a Systolic Blood Pressure Target Below 130 Become the Universal Standard? Brent M Egan 1 , Sverre E Kjeldsen 2 , Guido Grassi 3 4 , Murray Esler 5 , Guiseppe Mancia 6 DOI: 10.1097/HJH.0000000000002021 .
J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2012 Jan; 14(1): 7–12. REFRACTORY HYPERTENSION: DEFINITION, PREVALENCE AND PATIENT CHARACTERISTICSMaria Czarina Acelajado, MD,a Roberto Pisoni, MD,b Tanja Dudenbostel, MD,c Louis J. Dell’Italia, MD,d Falynn Cartmill,e Bin Zhang, PhD,e Stacey S. Cofield, PhD,e Suzanne Oparil, MD,c and David A. Calhoun, MDc
JAMA Cardiol. 2018 Jul 1;3(7):572-581. doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2018.1240. Estimating the Association of the 2017 and 2014 Hypertension Guidelines With Cardiovascular Events and Deaths in US Adults: An Analysis of National Data. Bundy JD1,2,3, Mills KT1,2, Chen J2,4, Li C1, Greenland P3, He J1,2,4.
A Randomized Trial of Intensive versus Standard Blood-Pressure Control. N Engl J Med 2015; 373:2103-2116 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1511939.
