High blood pressure

[jsamess]

I have had high blood pressure for over 20 years . I am concerned that the advice everybody is being given on this site is to take action if your blood pressure regularly goes higher than 120/80 . Medical facts are as we get older our normal blood pressure increases. Of the posts I have so far read many people have what many medical professionals would consider normal for their age . My own doctor has told me the more prescriptions are issued the more money the practice receives . People need to understand that to get your blood pressure down to 120/80 the medicines can affect you adversely and give you a poor quality of life . If this web site exists to help people please be honest , james

[Hidden]

My thoughts too. I have had high blood pressure all my life due to panic and anxiety. Now I am being cajoled into taking medicine. Rightly so because it can spike very high over 200. Other number is always around 80. But if I have a calm life and take a beta blocker I can keep it down to between 140 and 160 which I think it has been for decades. I don’t want to take several meds not knowing the overall effect. And I get loads of side effects. Current one being weight gain. So not that bad I suppose. The singling out of high blood pressure as dangerous for Coronavirus is I hope a red herring. It may be that the people worse affected or dying do in fact coincidentally have high blood pressure as well as other issues. It used to be that normal blood pressure top number was 100 plus your age. I am concerned and angry when people on internet panic patients into going to A&E by telling them their very slightly high BP is going to kill them. This is a great `site for me because there are loads of people trying to manage high BP and pegging along fine. This is as much as we can hope to do especially in older age group. The doctors have protocols (and money) to follow. And if they don’t follow the protocols, they are open to litigation. They are stuck with this situation just as we are.

[jsamess in reply to Hidden]

Yes very much agree . My local surgery has decided to lower the guidelines for somebody my age to bring even more people on board .

They also wanted to put me onto statins . My cholesterol level was 4 but the percentage of bad cholesterol was too high. So even more side effects ! Good luck , James

[Hidden]

The choice is, ignore medical advice and risk heart attack or stroke. Or take the tablets you are prescribedand live a happy, healthier life.

[jsamess in reply to Hidden]

I sometimes miss the odd pill . Yes I know I shouldn't but it's nice not to have the side effects , james

[lettingoffsteam in reply to jsamess]

If you get side effects then have you and your GP tried to change your prescription?There are many alternatives.I was diagnosed with very high blood pressure out of the blue.I'd had some borderline high readings at my GP but they were dismissed as white coat syndrome.As a result of not correcting my BP I now have slight thickening of my left ventricle or lvh which increases my risk of heart attacks and strokes.I would have gladly taken the meds, despite some very unpleasant side effects, to avoid this.I certainly take them now and I was pleased that my recent 24 hour bp measurement was 119/73.There is some chance that my lvh will regress with treatment so I'm sticking to the pills.

[lettingoffsteam in reply to lettingoffsteam]

By the way my bp at A&E when diagnosed was 244/133 and I was in five days to get it down.

[Happyrosie]

James, I mostly agree with you. I was a medical underwriter and we were happy to ignore the fifty year olds with bp around the 140 to 150 mark, as long as this was the norm and didn’t vary much. In other words, this cohort did not present an additional risk to the life assurance company - they didn’t die any sooner than the rest of the population.

A docs practice gets paid extra, as long as the vast majority of their hypertensive patients are controlled (whether by medication or lifestyle changes) as long as they present regular ‘normal’ reading to the practice.