First "Pre-diabetes" - NOW "Pre-hypertension"

[Maxmars]

I ran across this editorial...

I found it worth sharing....

After Pre-Diabetes, Will CDC Call Pre-Hypertension A Pandemic Next?

It speaks to an ugly observation about the 'declarations' we live "under" as if "law."  (my words, not his.)

... Like they did with Pre-Diabetes, where the United States stood alone in declaring that a blood a1c level so low only 5% of people with it would develop Type 2 diabetes in their lives was a pandemic they needed funding to stop. A blood level so low that half of China would be Pre-Diabetic if the CDC were in charge. Pharmaceutical companies would love to have 700,000,000 people designated as customers but every other country continues to shake their head at our belief system, the same way tourists are baffled by 80,000 Prop 65 'may cause cancer' stickers all over California stores.
...

How profitable was that strategy?  How "impactful" on the actual health of "consumers."  I know the press releases - crafted and gifted to the media - will delight in explaining how "they saved lives" and how "vital" it is we desist in even discussing this.
 

....

The new paper does what all correlations do; tell us how worrisome the effects are. In this case that if you have high blood pressure, you are 1.5X as likely to also develop cognitive disorders. There are real head-scratchers in such claims. Since the 1970s, well-funded medical organizations like the American Medical Association and American Heart Association have hijacked an alarming amount of American government medical policy. What used to be high blood pressure 50 years ago is now 40 points lower when it comes to systolic pressure (force during heart beat) and the diastolic standard for 'high' has also been reduced a lot. As with air quality and chemicals, we keep panic high by defining risk down, even if there is no improvement in outcomes.

Those changes to 'high' blood pressure mean a whole lot more people, tens of millions more, are on medication. That led to a corresponding drop in cognitive disorders...oh wait, no it didn't.

....

... I suggest this for consideration... even if you disagree with him...

I'd love to talk about some of what he says... but then... I disagree with him as well...

It would be interesting to work those differences out...

If he wasn't so damned angry ... nah, ...that's unfair... It's an editorial.

[UltraBudgie]

Why do I think this is a financial move, where having a certain number of "pre-" diagnoses can be factored into a health-backed security and given a price, it's value derived from the income from a expected lifetime of required drugs?

"10,000 new pre-hypertension diagnoses! That's $168K each ¹, call our subsidiary and tell them we can put another $1.7 billion on the books as future income! Sweet, we can get a loan against those receivables and buy new yachts!"


¹ According to AI, the cost of 35 years of branded hypertension drugs

[Zaphod58]

I ran across this editorial...

I found it worth sharing....

After Pre-Diabetes, Will CDC Call Pre-Hypertension A Pandemic Next?

It speaks to an ugly observation about the 'declarations' we live "under" as if "law."  (my words, not his.)

How profitable was that strategy?  How "impactful" on the actual health of "consumers."  I know the press releases - crafted and gifted to the media - will delight in explaining how "they saved lives" and how "vital" it is we desist in even discussing this.
 


... I suggest this for consideration... even if you disagree with him...

I'd love to talk about some of what he says... but then... I disagree with him as well...

It would be interesting to work those differences out...

If he wasn't so damned angry ... nah, ...that's unfair... It's an editorial.

They changed the definition of hypertension a few years ago, and dropped it to the upper level of normal for like 90+ of the population (130+ systolic or 80+ diastolic). At my latest annual check up, we said something about my blood pressure being considered high, and she looked at it and said that cardiologists just ignore the new guidelines, unless there are other factors involved.

[IDELB2006]

Why do I think this is a financial move, where having a certain number of "pre-" diagnoses can be factored into a health-backed security and given a price, it's value derived from the income from a expected lifetime of required drugs?

"10,000 new pre-hypertension diagnoses! That's $168K each ¹, call our subsidiary and tell them we can put another $1.7 billion on the books as future income! Sweet, we can get a loan against those receivables and buy new yachts!"


¹ According to AI, the cost of 35 years of branded hypertension drugs

Treating stage 3 kidney disease For a life expectancy of 24 years adds up to about 360k each. Not accounting for inflation.

Doing a better job educating patients could save a fortune, but nobody is lobbying for that.

[argentus]

Some medications are lifesaving, or at least life prolonging.    That doesn't mean that there are any meds that cure a condition.   What I have needed for a decade or more is a "pre-shitfit" medication, just to keep me chill, round the rough edges of life and not suppress my natural creativity and lusty zeal.

[Tecate]

The issue with Hypertension is that the numbers are not explained to the patient very well. The old 120/80 for instance really refers (the 80 mmhg) to the pressure in your blood vessels at rest. It is actually the most important part. The 120 mmhg, fluctuates so dramatically with anything that happens.

For instance, when your phone rings you get a small adrenaline spike startling you and driving the systolic pressure up. A lot of people have “White coat syndrome “ in which the act of taking the BP actually causes it to go up.Changes in altitude, your mood, many factors can affect your BP.

I agree that calling something pre-hypertension can be misleading and can be used as a way for drug companies to boost profits.

A lot of activities and healthy lifestyle can result in a more stable BP, without having to resort to medication, but people have been brainwashed to believe that only pharmaceuticals can cause change.

People are inherently lazy and want a quick fix without any effort. 

I too have hypertension.

My 2 pesos…

Tecate

[rickymouse]

A1C by itself is not a good test to determine diabetes.  The test has flaws.  If a person has  blood cells that last a real long time and they are not created nearly as fast as usual, then the  blood cells have more  little marks on them which means the A1C will be higher.  Some people have genetic conditions that effect the creation of blood cells properly, one of the porphyrias can cause that.

The A1C test was not designed to be used on it's own to identify diabetes.  Elevated blood sugar and other symptoms need to be present before ever considering treatment.  This I read when researching the actual manufacturers information on the test...evidently the doctors never read that though, I know lots of people who were put on metformin with no other symptoms except high A1C

Some people have blood cells that live for a year, most people have blood cells that only live for about four to five months.  I actually have genetics where my blood cells live a long time and also I have a genetic condition in the third step of the creation of hemoglobin which reduces the amount of hemoglobin created.  It is AIP porphyria....basically, I can't donate blood because I don't make new cells very well.  So far I have not been anemic but I have to watch I don't lose too much blood, I go sleep for days if I do.  I was told never to donate blood again and not to let doctors take too much blood out of me for testing.  I do eventually get back to normal, the anemia seems only to last maybe three or four days.

So, there are limitations on how to utilize A1C tests...other symptoms need to be there before they are supposed to prescribe meds from what I read at the manufacturers site a few years back.

If I eat tyramine foods, my blood pressure goes up pretty much, I have tachychardia, so my blood pressure has never been less than one forty over seventy five...resting heart rate when awake is usually around one ten.  My heart can go up to two twenty with little problem as long as my blood pressure does not go along with it.  At two thirty, my heart starts to flop around a little, but rarely do I get to that number, and I have had this all my life, kind of used to it, my father and uncle also had it, it is a hereditary form of the condition.  Been checked out by doctors over the last forty years quite a few times, taken those treadmill tests, taken the stress test with the medication, all show Tachychardia of unknown origin.  Won't take beta blockers anymore, four doctors tried them, and discontinued them after three or four months because of side effects...two told me that a different brand would make it better, and when they saw what was happening they told me to discontinue them because of bad side effects.

Diet works to control diabetes or high blood pressure, here is a pretty decent article about blood pressure control and side effects of common meds used to treat the condition.  I have only checked out about half of the foods and supplements so far to verify if the article is correct, so far the ones I did check with medical research did show a correlation and would most likely help most people.  Now it will not work for everyone, but most people can get relief from hypertension by using what is in this article.  It is not what most people think, it is not promoting "health foods"  More like food choices

Now, I know a lot about food chemistry, and also what cooking does to food chemicals, so it is way easier for me to understand things like this now than when I first started.  How food is prepared effects nutrients, cooking actually helps sometimes but destroys things other times.  look this over guys, I can give some information of how things work on much of this.  The lists are not complete though, they say garlic for some things, but onions will most often work too.  Maybe saying the allum family would have been more appropriate.  I know that many people do not consider the national library of medicine as legit but this seems pretty good, and it does have references of other research to show proper evaluation.  I even checked out the writers and they seem pretty decent and they seem to match reality pretty well.   Like I said, I just found this article not even a week ago, from researching an article from Physics.org I read dealing with some medicines...got off on a tangent and stumbled across this...which I know some of before, but not which way they accomplished the actions.  This tells me which metabolic process the foods and supplements help with.  Remember, if there is no deficiency, they will not help...but then again, you probably would not be having symptoms of hypertension if you ate right.


https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3989080/

[BeyondKnowledge]

Is the American Heart Association the same as it used to be? It was a rented office in Los Vages with a father and son team. Both have medical and law degrees. They keep all the money they can and give enough to studies and organizations to keep their brand active. I don't trust their openion.

[sahgwa]

Is the American Heart Association the same as it used to be? It was a rented office in Los Vages with a father and son team. Both have medical and law degrees. They keep all the money they can and give enough to studies and organizations to keep their brand active. I don't trust their openion.

Well they have a lot of markings on food packaging.
Aren't almonds heart healthy ;) ?

[Byrd]

I ran across this editorial...

I found it worth sharing....

After Pre-Diabetes, Will CDC Call Pre-Hypertension A Pandemic Next?

It speaks to an ugly observation about the 'declarations' we live "under" as if "law."  (my words, not his.)

How profitable was that strategy?  How "impactful" on the actual health of "consumers."  I know the press releases - crafted and gifted to the media - will delight in explaining how "they saved lives" and how "vital" it is we desist in even discussing this.
 


... I suggest this for consideration... even if you disagree with him...

I'd love to talk about some of what he says... but then... I disagree with him as well...

It would be interesting to work those differences out...

If he wasn't so damned angry ... nah, ...that's unfair... It's an editorial.

My "two cents"...first, the CDC never called diabetes a pandemic. https://www.cdc.gov/high-blood-pressure/...index.html

Okay, I know this is all hoity-toity and academic, but it doesn't meet the test of a pandemic.  Nor is it an epidemic.  You can't "catch" it from being around someone with diabetes (my spouse was diagnosed with diabetes a decade ago and I still haven't gotten diabetes.)

Second, by defining a "pre-hypertension" you reach the patient in time to tell them about some simple steps they can use to lower their risk of something more serious.   

People often find out about their untreated hypertension after they have a stroke, have debilitating migraines, kidney disease from damaged kidneys, vision loss, sexual dysfunction, or heart problems (aneurysms, heart attack, etc).  It also leads to cognitive loss (forgetfulness, declining ability to make decisions, etc, etc.)  Untreated hypertension is a major risk factor if you get Covid.

And it's more than just "preventing people from dying" -- it prevents them from becoming disabled.

So... if you define a risk category, it can be used to prevent future problems.