Once you reach the age of 60, you will probably be told to start taking an antihypertensive, a drug to lower your blood pressure. It’s one of the routine medications offered to older people as a just-in-case therapy – but the doctor couldn’t be more wrong, new research has discovered.
Raised blood pressure which is in the ‘high normal’ range becomes less of a risk factor as we get older, and doesn’t cause cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease, as doctors have believed for the past 50 years or more.
Drugs to lower blood pressure should be given only to people who are younger than 60 years, say researchers from the Prevention of Metabolic Disorders Research Centre in Tehran, Iran. There is still evidence that raised blood pressure in the middle-aged can cause serious health problems, they say.
Their findings were based on a major study of 6,273 people aged from 30 years and older, all with varying degrees of hypertension, who were monitored for more than nine years.
(Source: World Congress of Cardiology, April 20, 2012).
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