High blood pressure hysteria is spreading
February 24, 2010 2:24 pm HealthThe medical establishment, with the help of the media, is spreading high blood pressure hysteria. An important new report claims that doctors in America are ignoring high blood pressure and that it should be treated more aggressively.
This is nonsense! Hypertension has long been one of the most over-diagnosed and over-medicated conditions in medicine. At least three of the 10 most prescribed drugs are blood pressure medications. At the same time, medical guidelines for hypertension have been dropped from 140 over 90 to 120 over 70.
Doctors are eager to prescribe blood pressure drugs at the first moment they see a “high” reading, even though many readings are false and lead to misdiagnosis. And many of these drugs can be more dangerous than the modestly elevated blood pressure they are supposed to treat.
Each one of these moves traps millions more healthy people in a spiral of dangerous and expensive drug dependency.
