Thursday, February 12, 2009

Changing habits may not lower blood pressure

From Reuters:
People who say they are making lifestyle changes in addition to taking medication to reduce high blood pressure may actually be less likely to have their blood pressure under control than people relying on drugs alone, new research from Canada shows.

"Whether we like it or not, the only thing which we can definitely offer which really works is drug treatment," Dr. George J. Fodor of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in Ontario told Reuters Health. "I don't like it and most people don't like it, but this is the simple truth."

Exercise, weight loss and other lifestyle modifications are widely recommended as the first line of treatment for people recently diagnosed with hypertension. While clinical trials have shown that these measures are effective, there is less information on how readily people make these changes in real life, and how effective they are outside the clinical trial setting. ...more

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