High Blood Pressure: Are You a Victim of 'White-Coat-Syndrome'?

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Last week we told you about the Polypill — the all-in-one pill that combines statins, aspirin and ACE inhibitors — designed to lower cholesterol, blood pressure and help prevent atherosclerosis.

If you're over the age of 55, chances are that your doctor may try to prescribe this dangerous drug cocktail to you... as a precautionary measure... even if you don't have high LDL 'bad' cholesterol, or high blood pressure or any other indication of heart problems...

If you received our alert last week, you'll know about the dangers of the Polypill and hopefully you'll tell your doctor where he can stick it, if he tries to prescribe this drug to you... After all, telling perfectly healthy patients to take a drug as a 'precaution', is medical speak for pushing a handy little money-spinner!

Own worst enemy

Here's a different scenario though... one for which you may not have any ammunition to prevent your doctor from writing you a prescription...

You enter your doctor's surgery for your regular check-up and have your blood pressure measured... The reading shows that you have high blood pressure and before you know it, you're given a prescription for ACE-inhibitors to lower your blood pressure...

Something's wrong and you know it. You've never had high blood pressure! In fact, you don't even have any of the usual warning signs: a persistent headache, blurred or double vision, nosebleeds and shortness of breath. Yet you can't argue with your doctor because you've seen the results with your own eyes... The man in the white coat must be right. Right?

Wrong!

Earlier this year, a study of 8,300 people with high blood pressure, who did not respond to their medication, found that 37 per cent of these patients actually did not have high blood pressure at all!

It turns out that you could be your own worst enemy as soon as you walk into the doctor's surgery. According to the results of the study, published in the journal Hypertension, the 'white-coat-effect' was behind many diagnoses of high blood pressure. Meaning that instead of having high blood pressure, you may have been wrongly diagnosed simply because you were nervous while your blood pressure was taken.

It's estimated that 12 million people in Britain may have to be re-examined because of the 'white-coat-effect'... and three million of those may have been misdiagnosed... That's an awful lot of drugs being dished out completely unnecessarily!

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Curb your enthusiasm

What's even more concerning is the fact that doctors say the drugs given to patients, won't do them any harm when taken unnecessarily... Which is a complete and utter lie!

Ace inhibitors, can cause side effects like persistent cough, dizziness, skin rash, swelling of face and throat, loss of sense of taste, and birth defects when used by pregnant women as early as the first trimester... That's hardly not doing any harm!

This whole debacle has prompted the first change in the standard method of measuring blood pressure.

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), now recommends that GPs no longer rely on blood pressure readings taken in the surgery. Instead, they should send patients home with a portable ambulatory monitory device, when high blood pressure is suspected.

This means that patients will be given a device that they must wear for a day. The device will automatically take a reading every half an hour and the average reading can be downloaded by a nurse after 24 hours. GPs are expected to switch to ambulatory monitoring over the next year.

As expected some die-hards in the mainstream are questioning whether this upheaval is justified, but NICE insists that the ambulatory readings will be much more accurate and a better predictor of heart attacks and strokes. Not only that, but it will also ensure better patient safety... Probably not the outcome Big Pharma was hoping for, since it means fewer drugs will be dished out... but hey Big Pharma, you can't win them all...

It all sounds good to me... Now, we just need to get NICE to recommend safe and effective natural alternatives for lowering blood pressure — like meditation and a healthy and active lifestyle — and this picture will look a lot more rosier.

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Sources:

Many given blood pressure drugs suffer 'white-coat' hypertension, published online 29.03.11, thetimes.co.uk

Anxious wait for doctor raises blood pressure diagnoses rate, published online 24.08.11, thetimes.co.uk