When a bucket of pills isn't enough
Imagine taking three, four—or more—medications to treat one condition, and the problem continues to plague you. Unbelievable as it sounds, this is the life of at least 30 percent of patients who have high blood pressure.
These patients have "resistant hypertension," which means, much to the dismay of many docs, you can't just throw a bucket of pills at it and hope it gets better. There are two things that can put you at risk for this particular form of high blood pressure: aging and carrying excess weight. Patients who have resistant hypertension are most likely battling a couple of health issues besides their blood pressure, which adds to the challenge.
I don't understand why any doctor would continue to throw pills—fraught with various side effects—at something that isn't showing any signs of response. When you buy something that doesn't work, is your first response to go buy more of it? Yet, if you have resistant hypertension, that might be exactly what your doc is asking you to do.
But even more puzzling is that one of the successful ways to treat resistant hypertension seems to have been overlooked in this whole dilemma: lifestyle changes. In other words, you have a better chance of curing your resistant hypertension by tweaking some lifestyle factors than you ever will by gobbling down pills by the bottle.
One of the biggies is salt intake. I find that salt-sensitive patients tend to have problems with their blood pressure. I have patients who will tell me, "But Dr. Inglis, I don't even salt my food that much!" There's a very simple change you can make beyond the salt shaker: Cut out processed foods. They're overloaded with sodium. It's estimated that nearly 80 percent of the salt in our diet comes form packaged, processed and prepared foods. Even something as innocuous as packaged bread can have more sodium than you'd suspect. It pays to read your food labels closely so you know exactly what you're getting—and I'm sure it's more than you bargained for when it comes to sodium.
The recommended amount of daily sodium is between 1.5 and 2 grams, but if you cut out the processed food products and go easy on the salt shaker, you should be OK without having to count every milligram of sodium.
