The Changing Ideal Blood Pressure

by admin on 10/10/2015 11:34 AM

The Ideal BP which has been 140 (160 in the elderly) systolic and 90 diastolic will be changing.

The cardiologists in Sacramento have long insisted that the ideal BP was 110/70. Many of our patients on their return from a cardiac consultation became lightheaded after achieving the new standards. Thus, we had to teach them to have a hold on a chair or table when they got up in the morning or made any sudden change in their position. This was to prevent falling or even loss of consciousness when the heart was pumping the blood in a horizontal plane and had to make a sudden change to pumping the blood in a vertical plane, so it would reach the brain. In the elderly, the blood vessels below the heart couldn’t tighten up and the blood vessels above the heart could relax as fast as they did when they were young, and the head of the BP didn’t quite reach the brain

How low should blood pressure go?

The answer: way lower than the current guidelines.

For years doctors have been uncertain what the optimal goal should be for patients with high blood pressure. The aim of course is to bring it down, but how far and how aggressively remained a mystery. There are trade-offs — risks and side effects from drugs — and there were lingering questions about whether older patients needed somewhat higher blood pressure to push blood to the brain.

The study found that patients who were assigned to reach a systolic blood pressure goal below 120 — far lower than current guidelines of 140, or 150 for people over 60 — had their risk of heart attacks, heart failure and strokes reduced by a third and their risk of death reduced by nearly a quarter.

The study, called Sprint, randomly assigned more than 9,300 men and women ages 50 and over who were at high risk of heart disease or had kidney disease to of two systolic blood pressure targets: less than 120 millimeters of mercury, which is lower than any guideline ever suggested, or less than 140. (Systolic pressure is the higher of the two blood pressure numbers and represents pressure on blood vessels when the heart contracts.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/health/blood-pressure-study.html?ref=health&_r=0 .

Also Sac Bee Sat Sept 12, 2015

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