Everyone knows that high blood pressure puts people at risk of heart failure, stroke, and other potentially fatal conditions.
Researchers are only now starting to realize that there is a related condition that may kill even more people.
This is disturbing, because it means preventing high blood pressure is not quite enough.
An article by British researchers in the March, 2010 edition of the Lancet medical journal concluded that people with systolic blood pressure that varied from one doctor’s visit to the next were at much higher risk of stroke than those who simply had high blood pressure.
While their study participants all suffered from high blood pressure, those whose scores changed the most between low and high suffered the most strokes, especially if the highest point was very high.
Remember that your systolic blood pressure is the higher of the two numbers on your blood pressure reading. It measures the pressure of the blood pumped from your heart into your arteries. If normal blood pressure is 120 over 80, systolic is 120.
An article that will be published in the September, 2015 edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine is even more alarming than the Lancet study. An impressive 25,814 patients with high blood pressure were subjected to repeated readings over a period of 22 months. They were subsequently monitored for almost three years to find out who suffered the most strokes and heart attacks.
Those with the largest variations between readings had a 30% greater risk of suffering a heart attack, a 46% greater risk of suffering a stroke, and a 25% greater risk of suffering from heart failure.
As if this is not bad enough, those with a higher than 14 point variation in the systolic reading were 58% more likely to have died than those with smaller variations. In other words, if your blood pressure sometimes reads, for example, 130/90 and sometimes 150/100, you are 58% more likely to die in the next three years than someone with stable high readings.
One thing that the researchers do not know yet is the direction of the causal relationship. Does highly variable blood pressure cause the cardiovascular conditions, or are there other conditions already present that are causing the highly variable blood pressure.
This is important because, if the highly variable readings are caused by some third health condition, researchers must try to discover this deadly condition very soon.
If, on the other hand, the unpredictable levels cause the heart attacks and strokes, researchers should develop a treatment that keeps blood pressure consistent, as opposed to just lowering it.
The bottom line is, however, that high blood pressure needs to be managed. You need to get it down, whether it’s spiking or not.
Sounds like a poorly done study to me. Most nurses don’t even seem to know how to take blood pressure
readings and some of them are using automatic monitors- not the most accurate. Some of them talk to you
and expect answers while they’re getting your blood pressure- one cardiologists office doesn’t even have
the proper setting for a blood pressure reading- your arm should be on a table at the same height as your heart- not dangling from an examining table. Some patients need a minute or two after walking to the office to let their blood pressure settle but everybody is in a hurry to get the numbers and move on to the next patient.
As someone who has suffered high variations in BP and managed to fix the problem I can tell you there is only 1 thing causing this condition. stress. Even though my doctor refused to treat me for stress and tried yo put me on a cocktail of drugs instead. The stress is usually a result if childhood trauma and can be fixed by any combination of therapies including Theta, FFT, Havening,, NLP
The drugs can’t fix this, just make it worse over the long term.
I agree with the above comments. The first one also applies to the Christians’ latest article about childhood elevations in BP leading to later problems. I can’t see that -as if they vary so much in everyday checks how can they really keep tabs on people so way back that are at all viiable for research in later life.
On the second comment Stress is a big one- but also low thyroid function which is SEVERELY neglected [esp.in UK] leading to low metabolism and central obesity in later life,. This KEEPS BP high [worse then variations, imo]. BP is linear with excess weight- I’ve checked mine ouit!
The BP treatments that GPs afford us hit the kidneys and affect their efficiency long term leading to electrolyte imbalances and magnesium deficiency in particular.
These are all destabilising to good health and herbs and exercises may help a bit -but not overcome institutionalised incompetence rife in many health services today on general health management.
Thank BIG Pharma! -for owning the ways and means of much physician care.
I have always suspected my long-endured high blood pressure readings were related to adrenalin. I hope the German researchers will continue their study for those of us who realize what the chemical medical prescriptions are doing to our bodies.