Are You Prepared To Fight For Natural Lower Blood Pressure?

Do you believe in natural health and blood pressure control? If so, be prepared to fight harder than ever for your beliefs as elements of the healthcare profession, the drug companies and the media collaborate to discredit them. At times it seems as if the medical profession – traditionally harnessed to the pharmaceutical industry - is finally getting behind natural health and encouraging safer, alternative solutions. Sadly, it turns out that many are giving nature only lip service, at least where it really matters. If ever there was more convincing needed, a recent study and its follow-up in the media remove all doubt. Consider these headlines, printed here exactly as published:nn“Lifestyle Won’t Lower Blood Pressure”nn“Healthy Lifestyle No Help In Blood Pressure”nn“Changing Habits May Not Lower Blood Pressure” These and similar headlines appeared throughout the web, TV news and print media in response to a study published in early February 2009. The item was carried by such mainstream and widely trusted news organizations as ABC News and REUTERS. This is especially alarming as both the headlines and the reported “conclusions” of the study are so far removed from the facts as to be virtual fabrication. The study in question was conducted by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in Ontario. The authors of the study concluded that blood pressure drugs are more effective at reducing hypertension than lifestyle changes. What the study actually revealed was that those taking blood pressure medications without making lifestyle changes fared slightly better at controlling their blood pressure than those on medication and attempting lifestyle improvements. “Attempting” is the key word here because the study found that many of those claiming to change their lifestyle to fight hypertension simply are not. This complication is called “non-compliance” and it is hardly earth-shattering. The resistance of many people to changes in long-entrenched habits (anyone for New Year’s resolutions?) is common knowledge. Non-compliance of subjects in a study, however, is normally grounds for its disqualification, or at least a serious downgrading of its conclusions. But not, apparently, when they serve the purpose of certain medical experts like Dr. George Fodor of the Ottawa Heart Institute, who stated, “Whether we like it or not, the only thing which we can definitely offer which really works is drug treatment.”nnReally? Despite initial resistance from medicine, exercise, weight-loss, a healthy diet and other lifestyle modifications have won a hard fight to become the standard first-line treatment of hypertension throughout the healthcare industry. The Ottawa study itself acknowledges that “clinical trials show that these measures are effective”, although this appears as little more than a grudging afterthought. The simple fact is that years of clinical evidence overwhelmingly support lifestyle modifications as an effective way to lower and control blood pressure. Luckily, not all doctors are so eager to turn on decades of establish health research. Dr. John R. Lee, a nationally recognized family practitioner, writes in his article “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Blood Pressure”:

The most important thing I want to tell you about high blood pressure is that it can almost always be lowered with lifestyle changes… But the conventional medical wisdom is that patients won’t make lifestyle changes and so the automatic response to high blood pressure is to prescribe a drug… 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 need them. My experience as a family doctor was that people are more than willing to make the necessary lifestyle changes if they are given some basic support on how to go about it.

Sadly, people are not likely to get the support they need from the likes of Dr. Fodor and his research colleagues. In addition to the non-compliance issue, the Ottawa study has enough holes to sink it for all but a gullible media ever eager for fresh medical headlines. These include a mere 10% difference in results between the two groups tested (85% versus 78%). When combined with the lack of test controls (were the two groups matched for types of drugs and dosages taken?) the results become meaningless, or worse. Of course most people don’t care about statistical significance and other fine details. But what everyone should be concerned about is how a slipshod study with virtually no real-life significance can be misrepresented by medical professionals and then repackaged by the media with headlines that go way beyond just the usual exaggeration. But possibly the most important question to ask is who sponsored this study? And who stands to benefit from publicizing it in this way? While there is no clear answer in this particular case, it is no secret that the pharmaceutical industry is deeply entangled in medical research organizations, extending even to the supposedly independent American Heart Association. You could go so far as to say that many health institutes are little more than drug research facilities and testing grounds. That’s not to say that the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t make an invaluable contribution. And we must acknowledge that very few others have the deep pockets required for such work. Yet we must also guard against the creeping medicalization of society advanced by the drugs industry in cahoots with large parts of the healthcare profession. Hypertension treatment is especially illustrative as it affects so many people. Despite the side effects and sometimes fatal consequences of discredited blood pressure medications like beta-blockers, increasing numbers of drugs are released on the public. At the same time, they shift the goalposts of “healthy” blood pressure, widening the drug net to catch ever more basically healthy people in its trap. Statins, increasingly used for blood pressure control as well as cholesterol reduction, make another good example. Many medical experts are now calling for statins to be prescribed to everyone over the age of 40, regardless of the state of their health! Their recommendations arise from what in reality turns out to be but a tiny chance of statins preventing heart disease, based entirely on questionable “probability” studies. Which brings us back to our original study and why we should care... The Ottawa study discussed in this article is a blatant case of bad science and manipulation. But much other research – such as that promoting statins – undergoes much more sophisticated trickery and misinterpretation. This is not always intentional or malicious, but the damage is the same. If such poor quality research as the Ottawa study is not only reported without question but even further exaggerated by our media, what defense do we have against more sophisticated manipulation? As medical “consumers” we need to think carefully before being swayed by new research results, especially those that contradict long-held principles. They are, after all, selling us a product and one of the basic principles of marketing is to create a need. We know that lifestyle improvements along with other natural methods can help many people to achieve lower blood pressure. Don’t be railroaded into unnecessary drug treatment by special interests and the media!nn