Hypertension Medication - Do You Really Need It?

I've had high blood pressure for about fifteen years. This lens full of hypertension information is based on my own experience as a hypertension patient. My goal is to take charge of my own health care and find a way to get off the medication for good!

High blood pressure, hypertension, runs in my family. My grandmother (Mom's mom) had multiple strokes. My sister, a nurse practitioner who inquires about all health matters, once told me that our grandmother didn't take her high blood pressure medications regularly, and that's what caused the strokes. When my grandmother was almost eighty, right before we were to have a grand birthday celebration for her, she had the worst stroke of all. The party was canceled. She never was to walk or talk right again. She spent the last six years of her life in a wheelchair... a bitter pill for a formerly very active outdoors-woman to swallow.

After seeing that, I honestly can say I don't take my quest lightly. When I say I want to quit taking high blood pressure medications I don't mean that I'll simply quit taking them and risk my health. No, no, no, no . . . I am a cautious person. I am cautiously exploring natural remedies and treatments.

I was surprised in 1994 when a doctor told me I needed hypertension medication. I was only 42 years old. I'd had high blood pressure problems with two of my pregnancies but at that time I didn't realize my family had a history of high blood pressure, and didn't know what that would mean for me. The doctor prescribed Atenolol and Valium. The Valium was supposed to help me relax as at the time I had the most stressful job ever - as mother to two preschool aged children. My stress level was extremely high.

I'd already heard that there were problems with the safety of Valium, so I never took any of those pills. I didn't want to take something that might cause brain damage. However I took the Atenolol, and then ran out. At that point I moved to another town and was living alone with my two children and never had any time to myself to go see a doctor. After months of worrying about my health, I got a chance to see a doctor. He didn't want to put me on the medication! He wanted me to try diet and exercise first. . . but I insisted on getting the Atenolol prescription. In retrospect I can see I did this to myself!

A month or two later a nurse practitioner noticed the Atenolol didn't have much effect on my blood pressure, so she prescribed a second pill, Adalat, also known as Nifedipine. Atenolol is a beta blocker and Adalat is a calcium channel blocker. I took them both together for years.

Flash forward from 1994 to 2003. I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to the remote forest town of Happy Camp in far-northern California. I was taking a College of the Siskiyous class to be an Emergency Medical Technician - EMT1, basic level . . . and we were doing all sorts of things in class to learn what to do when we go out on calls. While there, I learned about heart rates, tachycardia and bradycardia. Yes, I was a newbie to medical instruction . . . my college degrees were in Early Childhood Education and Paralegal Studies. I took the EMT class on an impulse only because I couldn't find another class to take that semester!

So there we were in class, all gathered around taking each other's pulses, and people were having a hard time finding my pulse. When they did, it was measured to be about half the rate as most others. It was a clear case of bradycardia. To say it mildly - I was alarmed! How could it be that my pulse rate was only sixty beats per minute?

I tested myself often from that point on and it never got any faster. Unfortunately, at times it got slower - all the way down to forty beats a minute. I was worried it would just quit beating someday! How much slower could it get before I was dead?

I asked my nurse practitioner about it and found out it was considered normal because I was taking a beta blocker for hypertension. Atenolol.

About that time I realized that since my pulse was slow, all those aerobic exercises I'd been doing for years weren't able to work because I couldn't get my pulse rate up high enough for aerobic conditioning to take place. No wonder it was so hard for me to lose weight! I was mightily upset!

Next I did research on the Internet and discovered there are also problems and side effects with Nifedipine (Adalat), for example, headaches, which I had frequently. I went to the nurse practitioner and told her I needed to get off both the meds - and you know what she told me... that hypertension patients don't recover and must take medication all their lives.

I vowed to be an exception to that rule!

I confronted my nurse practitioner with my newfound realization that the Atenolol was keeping me from being able to lose weight, and convinced her that I had to change to another medication. She helped me wean myself off Atenolol and Adalat, and replaced those with ACE inhibitors and diuretics. Supposedly safer, but by now I trust the pharmaceutical companies as much as I'd trust an angry rattlesnake. I still haven't lost the weight, and I'm wondering if there's any Aspartame (poison) or Fluoride (poison) in either of these medications. Funny how pharmaceutical companies don't give you a list of ingredients.

I've done a lot of research on the internet. One thing I discovered is that the definition of high blood pressure has changed radically over the years. In the old days people were expected to have blood pressure readings that by today's standards would be considered high.

See this article: Blood Pressure 100 Plus your Age

The new recommendation is to keep blood pressure at 115/75 or below, which is very hard to achieve for many people my age. See this hypertension chart.

The old formula:

100 + age = normal blood pressure (for men)
or
100 + age - 10 = normal blood pressure (for women)

Okay, I tried that for a while. I quit taking my blood pressure medications entirely - except for use of medical marijuana. My blood pressure fluctuated between about 125/80 to 170/90. Normal for me, at age 57, was (according to the formula) 100 + 57 = 157 - 10 = 147. When my blood pressure was 147/90 or less, I felt great - like everything was going to be okay because that was the old standard for "normal". However when my blood pressure was up around 170/90, ::gasp:: ...I felt panicked!

My friend kept telling me it was going up only because I was testing it too often and worrying too much. After a couple months of doing this, I started getting readings in the 180s fairly frequently! That's when I really panicked, and went back onto my meds. I do not want to have a stroke - especially since I live about 100 miles from the nearest hospital.

I wasn't ready to give up the meds, and I think a lot of the reason why is those two terrible words: Diet and Exercise. I need more of them... and to lose weight, before I'll be able to really make it without my blood pressure medication.

For now, I'm still taking hypertension medications - a pill that combines the ACE inhibitor with a diuretic.. The good news is that my blood pressure is usually controlled at about 125/80. The frustration is that I still want to stop taking high blood pressure medications. I long for natural solutions.

So, my intent is to find a way to lose the weight, exercise more, and get my body under control. If I still have a blood pressure problem when I'm at a "normal" weight for my height, I will try going off the medications again, and using only natural remedies at that time.

I am convinced that if I were able to fast for a week or two every month, I wouldn't have any problems with hypertension.

In 2011 I fasted for two weeks using the Master Cleanse "Lemonade Diet". During that time I monitored my blood pressure at home daily.

After about a week my blood pressure was low enough that I no longer needed to take my high blood pressure medication. I continued to fast after the minimum time for that fast, which is ten days. At fifteen days I became concerned about having blood pressure that was too low! It got down to about 75/50! No meds! Because I worried about it being TOO low, I quit fasting.

For a couple months after that, I didn't need the meds, but gradually my blood pressure went up again. At this time I'm taking about half the medication I was originally prescribed. So far, this is the perfect amount for me. I really do need to get back into fasting. I believe if I did it regularly, hypertension wouldn't be a problem.