Lower Blood Pressure Naturally

Top doctor claims most prescription drugs are useless and over-marketed

High-level medical expert claims that “5 out of 6 new prescription drugs don’t work”…

Professor Donald Light of the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey announced recently that drugs offer “few if any new benefits” in a presentation to the American Sociology Association.

Furthermore, he claimed that pharmaceutical companies spend vast amounts of money hyping and marketing new drugs to get doctors to prescribe them. At the same time they downplay side effects and health risks associated with these drugs.

Such accusations against the drug industry are not at all new… but here we have a top expert condemning others in his own field. Straight from the horses mouth, some would say.

How do the charges apply to common blood pressure medications?

You will surely wonder how much of this applies to hypertension drugs, especially ones you may be taking or fear you will have to take in future if you don’t get your blood pressure under control.

Well, blood pressure drugs are among the most frequently prescribed medications with several of them regularly in the top 10. The professor, in fact, specifically criticizes the dilemma with statins, America’s most frequently prescribed group of drugs after painkillers. And even though statins are already taken by millions of unsuspecting people, every man and woman from the age of forty would be taking them if some doctors had their way!

Professor Light says that the drugs industry has oversold statins as a wonder-pill to prevent heart disease, despite growing evidence that they do more harm than good. Recent findings published in medical journals confirm that serious side effects from statins are widely under-reported. What’s more, the “benefits” are achieved through complex manipulation of predictive statistics… in other words: they’re not real!

The medical/pharmaceutical industry has gone so far as to create an entire pseudo-science around cholesterol and heart disease to lend scientific support to the actions and benefits of the drugs they design. The true relationships between foods, fats, and the heart are in fact far more complex than their simplistic cholesterol models.

The potential dangers lying hidden in your blood pressure medications…

Statins are increasingly prescribed, both alone and in combination with other drugs, to lower blood pressure. As noted previously, many doctors have called for statins to be prescribed as prevention to perfectly healthy people! Yet the most frequent side effect of these drugs are extremely painful muscle cramps that can make life hell for the user.

The benefits of statins have been hyped while their risks are under-reported

Side effects are not the only issue; most drugs have long-term health risks which are often not evident until after many years of regular use… by which time it’s too late for many. In the case of statins we’re talking about liver and kidney disease, both of which, incidentally, cause severe and chronic high blood pressure!

Will statins follow in the footsteps of the previous generation’s blood pressure wonderdrug?

Beta-blockers were hailed as “miracle drugs” when they first started being used extensively in the 60s. In the decades since, they became the world’s front-line weapon in the fight against high blood pressure, prescribed in their countless millions.

But that’s how long it takes to acquire long-term, real-life data on a drug or medical treatment and slowly but surely a different picture of beta-blockers gradually emerged. Researchers discovered that using beta-blockers actually increases the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart attack by up to 50% (when compared with other blood pressure meds).

They also learned that the side effects of using these drugs were under-reported. What’s more, decades of use by millions of patients revealed that beta-blockers were simply not as effective at lowering blood pressure as once believed.

Since these findings, many countries such as the United Kingdom have withdrawn beta-blockers for high blood pressure treatment (although the drugs are still useful for treating other heart conditions). Doctors in some countries, namely the United States, carry on prescribing beta-blockers as if they were still in the 60s.

The picture of statins that is emerging is just too similar to that of beta-blockers to neglect.

Whatever happened to “do no harm”?

The Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm” is a mantra of medicine. So why do so many doctors work in league with the devil by prescribing these dangerous drugs?

The answer is, largely, that the pharmaceutical industry has hoodwinked them as well. As mentioned above, they spend huge amounts of money on marketing, specifically to the medical profession. And since their “hired guns” are often scientists or even medical doctors themselves they have enormous credibility among their peers in healthcare.

Too bad their credibility is used to such poor ends! Professor Light explains:

They spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It’s really a two-tier market for lemons.

When do the benefits outweigh the risks?

There will always be a point where the potential risks of high blood pressure justify the side effects/risks of a medication to treat it. I’m only here to discuss the general theme; that actual point is an issue for each individual and his/her doctor.

But to identify that point requires accurate knowledge of both the condition and the treatment. When doctors are given excessively favorable or optimistic outcomes of a medication the result is over-prescribing and subjecting patients to unnecessary pain and sufferering.

The evidence against over-medication is mounting and it’s become clear that prescribing drugs to treat high blood pressure should be a last resort only, not the routine treatment that is so frequently is. Professor Light claims that the drugs market is the “most dangerous market for lemons in modern society”. He concludes by saying that the toxic side effects and misuse of prescription drugs is a significant cause of death in the United States… “neither wars nor car injuries come close”.

In a similar vein, Dr. John Lee, in a column for the Virginia Hopkins Health Watch writes:

I believe—and there is plenty of research to support me—that these drugs have just as good a chance of killing you as the high blood pressure does, especially if you don’t really need them.

Does your blood pressure problem justify the use of powerful drugs? Is even your doctor fully informed about the side effects and risks of these medications? Are there any safer alternatives you could try?

If these are questions that disturb you why not consult your doctor about it? (But never stop or modify your blood pressure medication without medical supervision. Sudden changes in medication can be dangerous.)