28 Jul 11 LOWERING YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE: QUESTIONS ABOUT DRUGS AND MORE

What’s wrong with taking drugs for HBP? Aren’t they effective?In a technical sense they can be quite effective. There is no question that doctors have succeeded in lowering the BP of many people through using one or more of the 50 or so drugs currently available on the market for this purpose. But these drugs do not always work, and even when they do, they usually produce serious side effects.
What are some of these side effects?Nausea, fatigue, sexual impotence in men, and a host of others. Most of these drugs also deplete the body’s supply of potassium and, as will be explained later on, the supplements which doctors often prescribe to compensate for this don’t always work too well. Some drugs even tend to wash vitamin B6 out of the system.A much more severe side effect is cancer. Studies at Oxford University in England, the Boston University Medical School and at the University of Utah Medical School have all pointed to this danger. As a matter of fact, the Food and Drug Administration warned physicians that women taking drugs containing reserpine, a commonly used substance in BP control, ran a risk of breast cancer that was two or three times greater than that of other women.
Does that mean that people with HBP should not take drugs?By no means. But they should simultaneously seek to lower their blood pressure through more natural methods so that they can reduce their need for such medication. Some may reach the point where they will not need drugs at all. Certainly, many have already done so.
If these more natural methods are so effective as you claim, why don’t doctors make greater use of them?Doctors usually do tell their HBP patients to give up cigarettes, cut down on salt and, if they are overweight, to reduce. These are all useful admonitions although, as we shall learn, there is much more to be said about all of them. But, in general, most doctors show little interest in these other methods of blood pressure control even when, as is often the case, they are backed up by scrupulous scientific research. Indeed, most doctors don’t even know about most of this research.
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