High blood pressure treatment - the right lifestyle can support drug therapy

In general, blood pressure treatment involves using medications to reduce blood pressure as well as adopting the right lifestyle changes.

There are several different types of medications being used to control blood pressure. ACE inhibitors like lisinopril, enalapril, ramipril and captopril are one class of drugs used for this purpose. Blood pressure treatment may also make use of diuretics like hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) and bendroflumethiazide. Angiotensin II receptor antagonists are another class of medications prescribed. Examples include valsartan, telmisartan, losartan and irbesartan.

Depending on the patient's condition, the doctor may prescribe other kinds of drugs such as alpha blockers, direct renin inhibitors or calcium channel blockers. A combination of more than one drug class may also be used in some cases. Combination medications usually contain hydrochlorothiazide as one of its components, along with one other drug.

While medication is often essential for blood pressure treatment, doctors will usually advice patients to adopt lifestyle modifications to support the action of drugs and to sustain health over the long term. One of the common factors that predispose a person to developing hypertension is obesity.

Why does obesity make high blood pressure more likely to develop?

The reason is that like all other body tissues, fat tissue requires blood supply to stay alive. This means that excess fat stored in the body increases the number and length of small blood vessels through which blood must be pumped. Here is a shocking statistic - every pound of excess fat in the body requires about one extra mile of extra blood vessels!

Obviously, this means the heart must do a lot of extra work to support excess fat in the body. When someone who is overweight brings his weight down to normal levels, the workload on his heart decreases dramatically. This tends to lower blood pressure.

Since obesity is usually linked to lifestyle issues such as bad food habits and lack of exercise, the doctor will advice the patient to control these habits as part of his high blood pressure treatment regimen.

During the late 1990s, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute sponsored a study regarding using diet modifications to bring hypertension under control. This study was done on a group of 450 people. Some of these people had normal blood pressure while others had hypertension.

This group had to stick to a diet formulated by the researchers for a period of eleven weeks, to find out what effect diet had on blood pressure. The group members kept food diaries recording everything they ate. One main meal per day was had at one of the clinics involved in the research project.

For the first three weeks, all group members ate a standard American diet. This was done to ensure that everyone started off on an even footing. Next, the group was divided into three at random. The first group continued to eat the control diet they had over the past three weeks. A second group also ate similar food, but had extra vegetables and fruit in their diet. And the third group consumed a diet that had plenty of fruit and vegetables. In addition, their diet was low on saturated fats and used diary products with low fat content.

The study discovered that the second diet did reduce blood pressure as compared to the first. However, the third diet brought about significant reductions in blood pressure. This diet lowered both the systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings.

This underscores the importance of the right diet in high blood pressure treatment. Other factors involved include maintaining the proper weight, lowering sodium intake and avoiding alcohol / tobacco. Relaxation therapies such as yoga and guided mental imagery may also play a role in controlling hypertension.

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