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46% of Americans Now Have High Blood Pressure (nbcnews.com)
"Millions more Americans will now be diagnosed with high blood pressure," reports NBC News, which describes the condition as "one of the leading killers around the world."
Anyone with blood pressure higher than 130/80 will be considered to have hypertension, or high blood pressure, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology said in releasing their new joint guidelines. "It's very clear that lower is better," said Dr. Paul Whelton of Tulane University, who chaired the committee that wrote the guidelines... 130/80 to 139/89 is now considered Stage 1 hypertension and anything 140/90 or above will be considered stage 2 hypertension...
"Rather than one in three U.S. adults having high blood pressure (32 percent) with the previous definition, the new guidelines will result in nearly half of the U.S. adult population (46 percent) having high blood pressure, or hypertension," the groups said in a joint statement... While people may be confused by the change, the heart experts said three years of reviewing the research showed that many fewer people die if high blood pressure is treated earlier. "We are comfortable with the recommendations. They are based on strong evidence," Whelton said.
Slashdot reader 140Mandak262Jamuna blames the pharmaceutical lobby, arguing that "a few years down the line, we all will be taking blood pressure medications," though Dr. Robert Carey of the University of Virginia, who helped write the guidelines, claims there will only be a 1.9% increase.
The new guidelines recommend that everyone watch their diet and exercise, and that people with stage 1 hypertension should also first try eating less salt, more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains before taking blood pressure medications.
"Rather than one in three U.S. adults having high blood pressure (32 percent) with the previous definition, the new guidelines will result in nearly half of the U.S. adult population (46 percent) having high blood pressure, or hypertension," the groups said in a joint statement... While people may be confused by the change, the heart experts said three years of reviewing the research showed that many fewer people die if high blood pressure is treated earlier. "We are comfortable with the recommendations. They are based on strong evidence," Whelton said.
Slashdot reader 140Mandak262Jamuna blames the pharmaceutical lobby, arguing that "a few years down the line, we all will be taking blood pressure medications," though Dr. Robert Carey of the University of Virginia, who helped write the guidelines, claims there will only be a 1.9% increase.
The new guidelines recommend that everyone watch their diet and exercise, and that people with stage 1 hypertension should also first try eating less salt, more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains before taking blood pressure medications.
physicians don't even have a standardised way to measure blood pressure. One measurement won't tell you much. You can't say my blood pressure
is x/y. it can vary a lot and always depends on the circumstance it is measured. To say my blood pressure dropped by 3 points is stupid, because
my estimate is that the margine of error is at least, depending on the method, between 5 and 10 mm/Hg and not only because of the error of the devices, but also because your physician is a factor for error. Add to that, the variance during the day, the fact that you are supposed to be at rest,
which sometimes is not possible for some people, because physicians make them nervous.
So in order to determine your blood pressure, you need at least several measurements a day, for maybe a week. And then you have to look at the curve and at the activity before after and during the measurement. So saying x/y is high blood pressure is stupid. But since medicine is not a science, but just some amateurs playing with statistics, what can you expect?
You have to add a LOT of salt to a real recipe to get it to resemble anything pre-packaged or bought at a restaurant. If you cook for yourself, "normal" people tend to think you're on some sort of radical low salt diet.
Sometimes I need to consume extra electrolytes if I drink too much water to flush down my daily pharmacy with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.