Lenin

This is about the third time I have run into this vexing data...this time from the NIH (National Institute of Health). It's reprinted in a VERY good book called THE HARVARD MEDICAL GUIDE TO LOWERING YOUR CHOLESTEROL by Mason Freeman, M.D.

A common method of quantifying cardiac risk by adding points for various risk factors such as age, sex, systolic blood pressure, smoking, total cholesterol, and HDL. The government does so and comes up with a percent probability of getting heart disease in the next 5 years.

The contribution from hypertension is fairly large...whether it's cause and effect I'm still not sure, I think not, but that's another discussion.

Anyhoo the risk of systolic contribution for women looks like this:
<120.......... Untreated: 0........Treated:0
120-129...... Untreated: 1........Treated:3
130-139...... Untreated: 2........Treated:4
140-159...... Untreated:3.........Treated:5
>159.......... Untreated: 4.........Treated:6

OK, what does this show?
It shows that a womaen with an untreated 140-159 systolic has the identical risk as a woman taking hypertensive drugs and getting a systolic between 120-129. Thus a woman who drops her BP between 20 and 39 points is doing NOTHING to lower her cardiac risk.
In fact, if a women goes from 158 to 140 her risk actually goes UP from the medication.

The numbers for men are slightly less dramatic but still show almost the same discrepancy.

If these numbers are true, then what they pretty much indicate is that while low blood pressure is highly desirable for avoiding heart disease, artificial lowering with drugs is of amost no benefit, in fact can be detrimental.

Your thoughts.