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The thing is, you go to the Doctor's office and they weight you, measure your height and take your BP, irrespective of time of day and rarely giving you five m

by anjel 3y ago

The thing is, you go to the Doctor's office and they weight you, measure your height and take your BP, irrespective of time of day and rarely giving you five minutes to sit and relax. If it reads high your doctor gets the report and reaches for his prescription pad. Its a single momentary snapshot in time taken under less than ideal conditions on which a long term medication decision is based, often with attendant side effects. My understanding is that the proper way to chart for a BP problem is to take BP twice a day, once before lunch (after sunrise metabolic amplification affects are have waned) and again before right dinner time. These readings done daily for a week, and averaged are your real blood pressure readings. And then of course there are also the confounding effects of white-coat syndrome.[1] So, not to downplay the absolute importance of detecting hypertension and treating it asap, but the way it gets done is both perfunctory and quite prone to false positives. This methodology sells extra meds for spurious reasons... [1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/White_coat_hypertension https://www.wikiwand.com/en/White_coat_hypertension

deleted 3y ago
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tibbon 3y ago
My experience with blood pressure measurements is that no matter what I’ve ate/drank, or how fast I walked down the hall in the Dr’s office my BP is never over 120/80. If mine did jump, even at one appointment, it would stick out pretty quickly.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Your claim sounds pretty spurious to me. The only reason I even know you're right about the measurement and diagnosis issue is from listening to a medical podcast in which medical doctors the correct way to measure blood pressure and diagnose hypertension, in order to encourage listeners not to get over-excited about a single high reading and go ask for drugs. My wife is on blood pressure, and it was definitely not prescribed on the basis of a single reading. She was given instructions for how to measure it herself from a list of reliable devices and did so twice a day for a week before going back. It's saddening to see this discourse on the Internet where the half the people are out there saying "doctors won't take my condition seriously and tell me to eat better and exercise more" and the other half saying doctors just prescribe meds and never recommend lifestyle interventions. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. All the doctors I actually know absolutely prescribe lifestyle interventions. But if the patients won't eat better and exercise more, what else are they supposed to do? This doesn't seem like some kind of wild mystery where the rise in population average blood pressure is being caused by false positives and people being scared of the office. The population is fatter, exercises less, sleeps less, and drinks more alcohol, all causes of elevated blood pressure. We can tell them not to do those things, but we already do and that clearly makes no difference.

by anjel 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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tibbon 3y ago

My experience with blood pressure measurements is that no matter what I’ve ate/drank, or how fast I walked down the hall in the Dr’s office my BP is never over 120/80. If mine did jump, even at one appointment, it would stick out pretty quickly.

nonameiguess 3y ago

Your claim sounds pretty spurious to me. The only reason I even know you're right about the measurement and diagnosis issue is from listening to a medical podcast in which medical doctors the correct way to measure blood pressure and diagnose hypertension, in order to encourage listeners not to get over-excited about a single high reading and go ask for drugs. My wife is on blood pressure, and it was definitely not prescribed on the basis of a single reading. She was given instructions for how to measure it herself from a list of reliable devices and did so twice a day for a week before going back. It's saddening to see this discourse on the Internet where the half the people are out there saying "doctors won't take my condition seriously and tell me to eat better and exercise more" and the other half saying doctors just prescribe meds and never recommend lifestyle interventions. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. All the doctors I actually know absolutely prescribe lifestyle interventions. But if the patients won't eat better and exercise more, what else are they supposed to do? This doesn't seem like some kind of wild mystery where the rise in population average blood pressure is being caused by false positives and people being scared of the office. The population is fatter, exercises less, sleeps less, and drinks more alcohol, all causes of elevated blood pressure. We can tell them not to do those things, but we already do and that clearly makes no difference.