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Blood
Pressure Medication Side Effects
If
your hypertension medicine gets you down, don't let your blood
pressure go up.
Among
Americans, high blood pressure is one of the most common life-threatening
disease—about one in four of us has it—and it is a major
risk factor for the number-one killer: heart disease.
Fortunately, hypertension (the medical word for high blood pressure)
is relatively easy to treat. A combination of lifestyle changes—including
exercise, weight loss, and reduction of salt, fat and alcohol intake—and
low-dose medication brings most cases under control.
Unfortunately, more than three-quarters of all people who have high
blood pressure aren't being adequately treated. As a result more than
30,000 people die each year at a cost of about $117 billion dollars
to our health-care system.
One reason so many go untreated is that hypertension frequently has
no symptoms. Unless you've been tested, you have no way of knowing.
But another cause of inadequate treatment is even less well known.
A recent survey done for the Coalition for Hypertension Education and
Control has revealed that many people who are treated don't stick with
their medication. Side effects lead them to skip doses or even stop
taking their medicine altogether.
Almost a third of the patients polled said they had experienced side
effects including weakness and fatigue, not feeling like themselves,
dizziness, headache, loss of sex drive, and problems with erections.
Almost a third of them said they skipped some doses or stopped taking
their medicine entirely. Their doctors were, if anything, even more
pessimistic. Half of the physicians surveyed thought that half of their
patients weren't following the instructions on their prescription.
Much of this problem stems from lack of communication. More than a
third of the patients surveyed hadn't been told by their doctors what
side effects might be possible. And I suspect that a large percentage
of patients didn't report back to their doctors the side effects they
did experience.
There are numerous medicinal approaches to treating hypertension, and
no one is best for everyone. Some people do well on beta blockers,
whereas others have better luck with diuretics. For people who have
problems with both, there are still other drugs.
If you're taking (or have stopped taking) a blood-pressure medication
that doesn't agree with you, talk to your doctor about the options.
Chances are your pharmacist has a solution that will turn down the
pressure without turning you off.
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