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#1
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OT Anyone who was interested in the recent cholesterol/statin drugthread might be interested in this site, too
Thanks. That's for cholesterol. What are your thoughts on blood
pressure lowering drugs or the whole business about testing for blood pressure? --Lia Handsome Jack Morrison wrote: http://www.redflagsweekly.com/heart_...rol_drugs.html |
#2
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Surely the medical establishment is familiar with dangerously low blood
pressure (Dad) and dangerously high blood pressure (Mom). I'm trying to find reasons and common sense between the two. Dad's getting more tests tomorrow to try to find the source of the internal bleeding. The transfusion helped a lot, but there has to be a slow leak. Mom's probably anxious about Dad. While I don't doubt that there are unscupulous drug companies out there, I'm also convinced that there is some good in pharmaceutical and medical professions. (We've had that discussion before, haven't we?) So while there may be one company that's arbitrarily playing with the numbers to sell more drugs, that doesn't negate the reality of blood pressure being a useful indicator of likelihood of heart attack. Or does it? --Lia Handsome Jack Morrison wrote: I think it's going the way of statin drugs for cholesterol -- *way* over prescribed, etc. When they recently (and arbitrarily) changed the BP recommendations to anything over 120/70 now constituting "pre-hypertension," they pretty much expanded the MARKET for BP-lowering drugs by several magnitudes. They'll be putting it in cereal before long. As one of those referenced articles said: "There is a company which makes billions of dollars each year selling drugs that lower the blood pressure and the cholesterol levels of millions of people. This company now promotes the doctrine that there is no such thing as a cholesterol level, or a blood pressure level, that can be too low. Whatever the level, lower it. For these two risk factors are major killers and they must be hunted down and beaten with a big club..." I think it qualifies as madness, Lia. |
#3
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Surely the medical establishment is familiar with dangerously low blood
pressure (Dad) and dangerously high blood pressure (Mom). I'm trying to find reasons and common sense between the two. Dad's getting more tests tomorrow to try to find the source of the internal bleeding. The transfusion helped a lot, but there has to be a slow leak. Mom's probably anxious about Dad. While I don't doubt that there are unscupulous drug companies out there, I'm also convinced that there is some good in pharmaceutical and medical professions. (We've had that discussion before, haven't we?) So while there may be one company that's arbitrarily playing with the numbers to sell more drugs, that doesn't negate the reality of blood pressure being a useful indicator of likelihood of heart attack. Or does it? --Lia Handsome Jack Morrison wrote: I think it's going the way of statin drugs for cholesterol -- *way* over prescribed, etc. When they recently (and arbitrarily) changed the BP recommendations to anything over 120/70 now constituting "pre-hypertension," they pretty much expanded the MARKET for BP-lowering drugs by several magnitudes. They'll be putting it in cereal before long. As one of those referenced articles said: "There is a company which makes billions of dollars each year selling drugs that lower the blood pressure and the cholesterol levels of millions of people. This company now promotes the doctrine that there is no such thing as a cholesterol level, or a blood pressure level, that can be too low. Whatever the level, lower it. For these two risk factors are major killers and they must be hunted down and beaten with a big club..." I think it qualifies as madness, Lia. |
#4
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Surely the medical establishment is familiar with dangerously low blood
pressure (Dad) and dangerously high blood pressure (Mom). I'm trying to find reasons and common sense between the two. Dad's getting more tests tomorrow to try to find the source of the internal bleeding. The transfusion helped a lot, but there has to be a slow leak. Mom's probably anxious about Dad. While I don't doubt that there are unscupulous drug companies out there, I'm also convinced that there is some good in pharmaceutical and medical professions. (We've had that discussion before, haven't we?) So while there may be one company that's arbitrarily playing with the numbers to sell more drugs, that doesn't negate the reality of blood pressure being a useful indicator of likelihood of heart attack. Or does it? --Lia Handsome Jack Morrison wrote: I think it's going the way of statin drugs for cholesterol -- *way* over prescribed, etc. When they recently (and arbitrarily) changed the BP recommendations to anything over 120/70 now constituting "pre-hypertension," they pretty much expanded the MARKET for BP-lowering drugs by several magnitudes. They'll be putting it in cereal before long. As one of those referenced articles said: "There is a company which makes billions of dollars each year selling drugs that lower the blood pressure and the cholesterol levels of millions of people. This company now promotes the doctrine that there is no such thing as a cholesterol level, or a blood pressure level, that can be too low. Whatever the level, lower it. For these two risk factors are major killers and they must be hunted down and beaten with a big club..." I think it qualifies as madness, Lia. |
#5
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Surely the medical establishment is familiar with dangerously low blood
pressure (Dad) and dangerously high blood pressure (Mom). I'm trying to find reasons and common sense between the two. Dad's getting more tests tomorrow to try to find the source of the internal bleeding. The transfusion helped a lot, but there has to be a slow leak. Mom's probably anxious about Dad. While I don't doubt that there are unscupulous drug companies out there, I'm also convinced that there is some good in pharmaceutical and medical professions. (We've had that discussion before, haven't we?) So while there may be one company that's arbitrarily playing with the numbers to sell more drugs, that doesn't negate the reality of blood pressure being a useful indicator of likelihood of heart attack. Or does it? --Lia Handsome Jack Morrison wrote: I think it's going the way of statin drugs for cholesterol -- *way* over prescribed, etc. When they recently (and arbitrarily) changed the BP recommendations to anything over 120/70 now constituting "pre-hypertension," they pretty much expanded the MARKET for BP-lowering drugs by several magnitudes. They'll be putting it in cereal before long. As one of those referenced articles said: "There is a company which makes billions of dollars each year selling drugs that lower the blood pressure and the cholesterol levels of millions of people. This company now promotes the doctrine that there is no such thing as a cholesterol level, or a blood pressure level, that can be too low. Whatever the level, lower it. For these two risk factors are major killers and they must be hunted down and beaten with a big club..." I think it qualifies as madness, Lia. |
#6
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Handsome Jack Morrison wrote:
Striving to get everyone with a BP higher than 120/80 to automatically start taking drugs with the potential for some really *serious* side effects, based on an arbitrarily derived cut-off point (that isn't backed by even one properly conducted field trial), is, IMO, unconscionable, not to mention highly dangerous. Let's steer the conversation away from corporation motivations and profits and back to the science itself. What would be a more realistic definition of high blood pressure that should have drugs prescribed to bring it down? How could that be determined for the individual? What are the serious side effects of the drugs and how do they stack up against the possibility of heart attack? While I have reason not to trust the big faceless corporations, I do have a certain amount of trust for my mother's doctors who have long histories of being reluctant to prescribe anything when nothing would do just as well. One of these doctors came down with a terrible flu and refused so much as an aspirin for himself with the conviction "what you don't take won't hurt you." This philosophy goes back 20 years at least and probably longer. The other doctor is similarly reluctant to prescribe and a cardiologist. And they're outside the HMO system as regards this particular patient. They have no motivation to put their sister and aunt on more drugs than she needs. Still, I worry about Mom's blood pressure. --Lia |
#7
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Handsome Jack Morrison wrote:
Striving to get everyone with a BP higher than 120/80 to automatically start taking drugs with the potential for some really *serious* side effects, based on an arbitrarily derived cut-off point (that isn't backed by even one properly conducted field trial), is, IMO, unconscionable, not to mention highly dangerous. Let's steer the conversation away from corporation motivations and profits and back to the science itself. What would be a more realistic definition of high blood pressure that should have drugs prescribed to bring it down? How could that be determined for the individual? What are the serious side effects of the drugs and how do they stack up against the possibility of heart attack? While I have reason not to trust the big faceless corporations, I do have a certain amount of trust for my mother's doctors who have long histories of being reluctant to prescribe anything when nothing would do just as well. One of these doctors came down with a terrible flu and refused so much as an aspirin for himself with the conviction "what you don't take won't hurt you." This philosophy goes back 20 years at least and probably longer. The other doctor is similarly reluctant to prescribe and a cardiologist. And they're outside the HMO system as regards this particular patient. They have no motivation to put their sister and aunt on more drugs than she needs. Still, I worry about Mom's blood pressure. --Lia |
#8
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Handsome Jack Morrison wrote:
Striving to get everyone with a BP higher than 120/80 to automatically start taking drugs with the potential for some really *serious* side effects, based on an arbitrarily derived cut-off point (that isn't backed by even one properly conducted field trial), is, IMO, unconscionable, not to mention highly dangerous. Let's steer the conversation away from corporation motivations and profits and back to the science itself. What would be a more realistic definition of high blood pressure that should have drugs prescribed to bring it down? How could that be determined for the individual? What are the serious side effects of the drugs and how do they stack up against the possibility of heart attack? While I have reason not to trust the big faceless corporations, I do have a certain amount of trust for my mother's doctors who have long histories of being reluctant to prescribe anything when nothing would do just as well. One of these doctors came down with a terrible flu and refused so much as an aspirin for himself with the conviction "what you don't take won't hurt you." This philosophy goes back 20 years at least and probably longer. The other doctor is similarly reluctant to prescribe and a cardiologist. And they're outside the HMO system as regards this particular patient. They have no motivation to put their sister and aunt on more drugs than she needs. Still, I worry about Mom's blood pressure. --Lia |
#9
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Handsome Jack Morrison wrote:
Striving to get everyone with a BP higher than 120/80 to automatically start taking drugs with the potential for some really *serious* side effects, based on an arbitrarily derived cut-off point (that isn't backed by even one properly conducted field trial), is, IMO, unconscionable, not to mention highly dangerous. Let's steer the conversation away from corporation motivations and profits and back to the science itself. What would be a more realistic definition of high blood pressure that should have drugs prescribed to bring it down? How could that be determined for the individual? What are the serious side effects of the drugs and how do they stack up against the possibility of heart attack? While I have reason not to trust the big faceless corporations, I do have a certain amount of trust for my mother's doctors who have long histories of being reluctant to prescribe anything when nothing would do just as well. One of these doctors came down with a terrible flu and refused so much as an aspirin for himself with the conviction "what you don't take won't hurt you." This philosophy goes back 20 years at least and probably longer. The other doctor is similarly reluctant to prescribe and a cardiologist. And they're outside the HMO system as regards this particular patient. They have no motivation to put their sister and aunt on more drugs than she needs. Still, I worry about Mom's blood pressure. --Lia |
#10
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Handsome Jack Morrison wrote in
: Striving to get everyone with a BP higher than 120/80 to automatically start taking drugs with the potential for some really *serious* side effects, based on an arbitrarily derived cut-off point (that isn't backed by even one properly conducted field trial)... Taking this sentence and blending it with my knowledge of your dog-sport interests left me imagining dogs running around with bottles of prescription medication that had been hidden from them 300 yards away in a swamp...chortle -- Kate and Storm the FCR |
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