It’s always refreshing when someone (other than me, of course) steps forward to call out mainstream medicine’s shameless drug-pushing for the dangerous hogwash that it is. But that’s just what a team of Irish researchers did — and in the Journal of the American Medical Association, no less.
Remember the ridiculous SPRINT study I shared with you a couple of years back? You know, the one that insisted everyone should have systolic blood pressure of 120 or lower, even if it takes several side-effect-riddled drugs to do it?
Well, a few astute researchers smelled the baloney from a mile away. So they designed their own study, just to see if the supposed “safety” of this strategy actually held up in a real population.
They followed a group of adults over the age of 75 for three-and-a-half years — the same study period used in SPRINT. And surprise, surprise… their findings told a much different story.
In fact, falls and blackouts were five times higher in this study. Dangerous blood pressure drops upon standing were almost doubled. The conclusion? Doctors need to think twice before treating blood pressure this aggressively — because for a lot of older patients, it’s not safe.
It’s a shame that this is what it takes to convince clinicians to use their judgment instead of loading their patients up on blood pressure drugs. Especially since anyone could have called this outcome from a mile away.
It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other studies linking aggressive hypertension treatment to falls, fractures, depression, and other cognitive disorders. But… here we are.
In the end, though, I just hope doctors are taking heed. High blood pressure is obviously a problem — but as with so many other common conditions, drugs are not the only (and certainly not the best) solution.
Of course, if this debacle demonstrates anything, it’s that the message still needs to get out there. Which is why I will be covering this topic — and the new blood pressure recommendations for diabetics in particular — in the upcoming December issue of my monthly newsletter Logical Health Alternatives.
Before you take another blood pressure pill, I hope you’ll consider subscribing if you haven’t already.
Source:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170809140228.htm
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