Prescription Alternatives Read online

  One could hardly call high blood pressure “silent” these days, because drug companies have spent millions if not billions over the past few decades to make sure everyone knows about it and to make it so scary that you’ll take their hypertension drugs at the first sign of a higher-than-normal blood pressure reading. Anytime you walk into a physician’s office, clinic, or hospital of any kind, the first thing they do is take your blood pressure.

  While it’s very true that chronically high blood pressure can be dangerous and should be treated aggressively, millions of North Americans with moderately high blood pressure are unnecessarily bullied by physicians into taking hypertension drugs without first making the diet and lifestyle changes that will lower almost all high blood pressure. This is a perfect example of how much quicker and easier it is to write a prescription for a drug that will make the numbers look better, without getting involved with the complexities of helping a person make lifestyle changes.

  Hypertension drugs usually lower high blood pressure, but they have significant side effects and they treat the symptom, not the underlying cause. When you take them, the symptom of high blood pressure is suppressed and your numbers look good for your insurance company, but your disease continues to progress. It’s important for you to be aware that unless you’re one of the few people who have high blood pressure caused purely by genetics or an illness such as kidney disease, your high blood pressure is caused by diet and lifestyle choices.

  If you’re already on blood-pressure-lowering drugs, do not go off them suddenly. If you want to work on improving your lifestyle to reduce your blood pressure, work with an experienced health care professional to lower your blood pressure naturally while you wean yourself off the drugs.

  Blood Pressure Facts

  Your blood pressure rises above normal when too much fluid is being pumped through the blood vessels or the blood vessels constrict, putting greater pressure on your heart and blood vessels. It can also be caused when the arteries lose their elasticity. Consider the plumbing in a house: When water pressure is high, water comes out of the faucet with great force. When water pressure is low, it may only trickle out of the faucet.

  Blood pressure readings show two numbers: the systolic pressure, which is the greatest amount of pressure exerted when the heart pumps or contracts, and the diastolic pressure, which is the lowest amount of pressure when the heart is in between beats, or relaxed. A “normal” blood pressure reading for a middle-aged adult is 130 (systolic) over 85 (diastolic), also shown as 130/85 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury, under pressure). A high diastolic blood pressure is more indicative of heart trouble in an older adult than a high systolic blood pressure.

  Normal blood pressure increases as we age. As our blood vessels get saggier and baggier along with the rest of the body, we need increased blood pressure to circulate our blood effectively. Research shows that in the elderly it may be dangerous to bring the systolic blood pressure below 140 mm Hg. Most research shows that if you’re over the age of 60, your systolic blood pressure may safely be as high as 160 mm Hg and your diastolic as high as 100 mm Hg.

  Should you worry if your blood pressure varies some from these numbers? If you’re overweight, stressed out, smoking, eating poorly, drinking too much alcohol or coffee, not exercising, or have heart disease, lung disease, or diabetes, then yes, because these are the risk factors for high blood pressure, and you need to get to work changing them—now. If you are following the Six Core Principles for Optimal Health and don’t have any of the preceding risk factors or a family history of very high blood pressure, be aware that your blood pressure is high and consider treating it naturally to avoid the risks of hypertensive drugs. If you do need to use a hypertensive drug, ask your doctor to try a diuretic first, for reasons you can read about in detail later.

  It’s irresponsible for a physician to prescribe a blood pressure drug based on one reading. Your arteries are muscular and flexible, designed to change blood pressure constantly in response to the needs of your body. Blood pressure readings taken in a physician’s office are usually higher than normal, and those taken in a drugstore are inaccurate as much as 60 percent of the time. If your physician feels your hypertension is severe enough to warrant taking drugs, you should be monitoring your blood pressure at home.

  Your physician is in a very tough position when it comes to treating your high blood pressure. If your blood pressure numbers don’t fit into the charts and your physician doesn’t prescribe the drugs, he or she can be penalized by an insurance company and is vulnerable to malpractice suits.

  How do we dare challenge blood-pressure-drug-prescribing habits? Numerous studies, including the famous Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial in the United States and the large Australian Medical Research Council Trial, have shown that people with mild to moderate high blood pressure who don’t take prescription drugs to lower their blood pressure do better than those who do take drugs. At a recent American Heart Association meeting, it was reported that without treatment 1 percent of people with high blood pressure have a heart attack, but with treatment with a calcium channel blocker 1.6 percent have a heart attack. That’s a 60 percent increase.

  Unless you’re under the age of 60 and your blood pressure is “severe” (e.g., above 180/110), there is little evidence that blood-pressure-lowering drugs (also called antihypertensives) actually reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, or even the risk of dying. If you’re in your seventies or older, multiple studies have shown that blood pressure drugs can do more harm than good. The exception to this is the Hypertension in the Very Elderly Trial (HYVET) study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008, which compared elderly patients taking either the diuretic indapamide alone or with an ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitor to patients taking a placebo. They found a significantly lower risk of fatal strokes, heart failure, and overall death rate in the treatment group. One reason this research may contradict similar studies is that it primarily used a diuretic, a type of hypertensive drug that has repeatedly been shown to be safer than others, such as beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors. Those who did take the ACE inhibitor in addition to the diuretic did so to reach a target blood pressure number of 150/80 mm Hg. One study showed that elderly patients on antihypertensive drugs whose systolic blood pressure dropped below 140 mm Hg had a significantly higher risk of dying. Another factor in this study is that patients were seen every three months and their medication adjusted at least that often if necessary. This rarely occurs in real life. One of the biggest dangers of antihypertensives in the elderly is that blood pressure drops too low; yet most doctor don’t seem aware of this and tend to dismiss complaints of side effects as symptoms of aging.

  Nearly all of the studies showing that antihypertensives do more harm than good were done with a placebo, meaning the group that did better did nothing to improve their blood pressure. Now imagine how bad the antihypertensives would look if they were measured against natural methods of lowering blood pressure, such as weight loss, exercise, diet, and stress reduction!

  Drugs That Can Raise Your Blood Pressure

  NSAIDs (aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen)

  Bronchodilators such as epinephrine, albuterol, and ephedrine

  Corticosteroids (e.g., prednisone)

  Bisphosphonates (e.g., Fosamax, Actonel, Boniva)

  Nasal decongestants (e.g., phenylpropanolamine)

  The migraine drug sumatriptan (Imitrex)

  The benzodiazepine antianxiety drugs (e.g., Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin)

  Many of the antidepressants, but especially venlafaxine (Effexor) and the MAOIs (Nardil, Parnate)

  Types of Antihypertensives

  There are four major types of drugs prescribed to lower blood pressure: diuretics, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, and calcium channel blockers. Diuretics lower blood pressure by reducing the amount of fluid in the body.

  The rest of the drugs listed here lower blood pressure by suppressing body signals that it’s t
ime to raise blood pressure. This makes the numbers look good, but when you really need some blood pressure, it’s not there, and that’s the underlying cause of the deadly side effects of these drugs. For example, if you need to run or climb stairs, or you get a bad scare, your body will put out signals to raise blood pressure, but the drug will block those signals. The theory is that this will keep your blood pressure from going so high that it gives you a heart attack. But on the other side of the coin, there are good physiological reasons for your blood pressure to go up sometimes, and if your body can’t meet those demands, it could kill you.

  All of these drugs are used to control and suppress a wide variety of heart disease symptoms, but none have any healing properties. Diuretics are often prescribed to treat the water retention caused by liver and kidney disease, but since they can also aggravate kidney and liver disease, they can be counterproductive.

  Which Are the Safest and Most Effective Blood-Pressure-Lowering Drugs?

  Of the drugs that lower blood pressure, the newer and more expensive ACE-inhibitors and calcium channel blockers have never been proven to be safer or more effective than the simpler and time-tested diuretics. A government-funded study called the ALLHAT, or Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial, proved once and for all that for the vast majority of people with high blood pressure, a diuretic will work just fine. This was a large study with more than 33,000 participants that began in 1994 and ran for eight years. When all the data had been crunched, researchers found that those participants who took the calcium channel blockers had by far the highest risk of heart failure, and those taking the ACE-inhibitors the next highest risk, compared to those taking a diuretic. The diuretic was also more effective than either of the other drugs at lowering systolic blood pressure.

  Drug companies had tried to justify prescribing ACE-inhibitors and calcium channel blockers by claiming they worked better for diabetics and prediabetics, but the ALLHAT study also disproved that claim. The diuretics work as well or better on all counts.

  Diuretics

  Diuretics, which are essentially designed to reduce fluid levels by making you urinate more, are one of the most common blood pressure medicines prescribed and, relatively speaking, the safest. One of the biggest problems with diuretics is the depletion of minerals. In addition to losing sodium, you lose most of the other minerals too, including potassium, magnesium, and calcium, which are essential to proper heart function, not to mention healthy bones. There’s no sense in lowering your blood pressure to prevent heart disease if your method of lowering it is going to cause it anyway. Numerous studies have shown that people with high blood pressure tend to be deficient in magnesium, so the last thing they need is to lose more.

  Diuretics also tend to deplete the B vitamins. If you’re on a diuretic, be sure you’re taking plenty of B vitamins and a good multimineral supplement. One of the most devastating side effects of diuretics for women is their tendency to promote the excretion of calcium in the urine, resulting in bone loss and osteoporosis.

  Another side effect of diuretics is a higher susceptibility to heatstroke or heat stress, caused by the body’s inability to cool off by sweating. This is particularly important for older people who live in a warm or hot climate. When it’s hot and you’re taking a diuretic, it’s important to drink plenty of fluids.

  Since diuretics tend to make you urinate more than usual, this can create an added discomfort for men with an enlarged prostate who often are already inconvenienced by having to urinate frequently. This side effect can also create more waking at night to urinate, which causes sleep loss, and in the elderly it increases the risk for a fall.

  Although the side effects of the diuretics are not pleasant, they are minor compared to the potential side effects of the other antihypertensive drugs.

  Examples of Thiazide Diuretics

  Bendroflumethiazide (Naturetin)

  Benzthiazide (Exna)

  Chlorthalidone (Thalitone, Hygroton)

  Chlorothiazide (Diuril, Hygroton)

  Hydrochlorothiazide (Aquazide, Esidrix, HydroDIURIL, Microzide, Hydro-Par, Oretic, Ezide)

  Hydroflumethiazide (Diucardin, Saluron)

  Indapamide (Lozol, Lozide)

  Methyclothiazide (Aquatensen, Enduron)

  Metolazone (Zaroxolyn, Mykrox)

  Polythiazide (Renese)

  Quinethazone (Hydromox)

  Trichlormethiazide (Metahydrin, Naqua, Diurese)

  What Do They Do in the Body? Increase urination, reduce fluid and water retention.

  What Are They Prescribed For? High blood pressure, edema (swelling, water retention, puff-iness), and CHF.

  What Are the Possible Side Effects? The most common and dangerous side effect of diuretics is excessive loss of minerals or an imbalance of minerals, called an electrolyte imbalance. Signs of a mineral imbalance can include dizziness, dry mouth, weakness, muscle pains or cramps, low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, sleepiness, and confusion.

  These drugs commonly cause dizziness, usually a signal that blood pressure is too low. Dizziness can lead to falls, dangerous driving, and mental fogginess—symptoms often attributed to aging, but which may be simply treated by reducing the dose of a blood pressure medication.

  High uric acid levels can lead to gout, a painful inflammation usually in the big toe. Other possible side effects include kidney damage, hyperglycemia (may increase fasting blood glucose) or precipitation of underlying diabetes, raised LDL “bad” cholesterol and triglyceride levels, anemia, and sun sensitivity.

  These drugs can also cause a wide variety of digestive problems, loss of appetite, vision problems, headaches, skin problems, restlessness, and impotence.

  Even taking the preceding cautions into account, for most people diuretics are the safest prescription drugs for lowering blood pressure.

  CAUTION!

  Think Twice About Taking These Drugs If . . .

  • You have lupus.

  • You have kidney or liver problems.

  • You have diabetes.

  • You have urinary tract problems such as an enlarged prostate that interferes with urination. Diuretics can make you even more uncomfortable by increasing the number of times you have to urinate.

  What Are the Interactions with Food? If you take too many electrolytes, such as in sports drinks, you may reduce the effectiveness of the drug.

  It’s good to eat plenty of high-potassium foods when taking diuretics that don’t “spare” potassium. Some common high-potassium foods include bananas, citrus fruits, melons, almonds, green leafy vegetables, potatoes, carrots, avocados, and soybeans.

  Licorice (not the candy made with anise, but the herb or root) can be an antidiuretic and reduce the actions of these drugs. It can also cause you to excrete higher-than-normal levels of potassium, the last thing you want on a diuretic that doesn’t spare potassium.

  Eating a lot of meat can increase uric acid even more, increasing the possibility of gout. If you are sensitive to monosodium glutamate (MSG), its negative effects can be exaggerated when you’re taking diuretics.

  Since the secondary purpose of taking diuretics is to reduce your levels of sodium, it’s obviously wise to follow a low-sodium diet to reduce your need for the diuretics. One of the best ways to do this is to eliminate processed and packaged foods from your diet and concentrate on whole foods such as whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables. When you do buy processed foods, read labels carefully. Many low-fat or sugar-free foods add lots of salt or MSG to improve taste.

  What Nutrients Do They Deplete or Throw out of Balance? Minerals, especially sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. Zinc is another important mineral that can be lost. Zinc is crucial to proper immune system functioning, wound healing, and thyroid function.

  Diuretics can cause a depletion of vitamin A, which many Americans are already deficient in.

  What Else to Take If You Take These Drugs. A good mineral formula that includes zinc, copper
, boron, iodine, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, chromium, selenium, plenty of calcium and magnesium, and if you’re a premenopausal woman, iron.

  Be sure you’re getting both beta-carotene and vitamin A in your multivitamin formula. Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

  Other Tips on These Drugs. They can skew the results of many blood and urine tests.

  Examples of Loop Diuretics

  Bumetanide (Bumex)

  Ethacrynic acid (Edecrin)

  Furosemide (Lasix)

  Torsemide (Demadex)

  What Do They Do in the Body? Increase urination, reduce fluid and water retention, largely by reducing sodium chloride (salt) uptake in your cells.

  What Are They Prescribed For? High blood pressure, edema (swelling, water retention, puffiness).

  What Are the Possible Side Effects? One of the most common and dangerous side effects of loop diuretics is dehydration caused by too much fluid loss. This can be deadly. An excessive loss of minerals or an imbalance of minerals, called an electrolyte imbalance, may result from taking these drugs. These diuretics are also more likely to cause hypotension, or blood pressure that is too low, which can also be dangerous, and such excessive potassium loss that it becomes life threatening. If your blood pressure is reduced too much, you may get dizzy when you stand up. In addition, high uric acid levels can lead to gout, a painful inflammation usually in the big toe.

  Other possible side effects include kidney damage, reversible and irreversible hearing problems, diarrhea, hyperglycemia (diuretics can increase blood glucose) or precipitation of underlying diabetes, raised LDL “bad” cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and photosensitivity, a reaction to the sun. These drugs can also cause muscle pain and cramps, restlessness, a wide variety of digestive problems, vision problems, and skin problems.

  CAUTION!

  Think Twice About Taking These Drugs If . . .