A study that involved health histories of 1,000,000 people
followed for over 5 years came up with a couple of surprising findings about
the risks associated with high blood pressure (HBP).
The finding that surprised the researchers most – at least
the one they focussed on for health web sites – is that the systolic (upper)
and diastolic (lower) registers of blood pressure each had their own
cardiovascular risks by being elevated, so that, for example, raised systolic
pressures were associated much more with a risk for a hemorrhage in the brain,
raised diastolic pressures were much more associated with the development of
ruptures in abdominal aortic aneurysms (an AAA is a weakening in the wall of
the part of the aorta that travels through the abdomen).
The finding that was most interesting to me, though, is
that once you’ve been diagnosed with HBP, you are at an increased lifetime risk
of cardiovascular complications no matter how well you control your raised
blood pressure, although clearly, the poorer the control over blood pressure,
the higher those risks.
In other words, even if you diligently take your HBP meds
as prescribed and your BP comes down, once you’ve allowed your BP to rise into
the higher ranges, you retain a higher risk of hemorrhage, stroke, etc, no
matter what you do.
Which means 1) we don’t know nearly enough about blood
pressure as we should, 2) we may not be lowering BP enough in people who’ve gone on to develop
HBP, 3) (this one for sure) our medications are not nearly as good as they should
be so that even though they may lower our BP effectively, there is still some
damage going on to our blood vessels that these meds do not address, and most
important, you really don’t want to develop raised blood pressure in the first place, and although HBP occurs
even to people living very healthy lives, it tends to be much more common in
people who are overweight, eat poor habits, smoke, and are sedentary.
