Is Your Blood Pressure Up?
Is Your Blood Pressure Up?
Oct. 3, 2001 -- A new study suggests that people with high blood pressure can help lower it simply by following the healthy habits they can learn in counseling or by taking a class. And with such improvements, these people stand a chance of not needing as much medicine to keep their condition under control.
Drugs haven't provided all of the answers in getting control of America's blood pressure problems. More than 43 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure. But less than a third of them actually get a handle on their condition. Since uncontrolled high blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack and stroke, researchers are turning their attention to finding other strategies to conquer this problem.
L. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH, and colleagues say that while medications are arguably the most important treatment, behavioral treatments such as counseling have long been recommended, either in addition to medication or instead of taking it. Boulware is with the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
The researchers looked at 232 studies of more than 4,000 people. They compared blood pressure results among people in counseling, training sessions, or self-monitoring of blood pressure.
Counseling involves either individual or group discussions with teaching in an informal setting where people could share personal experiences.
Training sessions are more formal classroom-like sessions. Both counseling and training courses focused on encouraging lifestyle changes, such as getting a better diet, how to lose weight, advice about exercise, and stopping smoking, which are all known to bring about improvements in blood pressure.
Self-monitoring of blood pressure at home is thought to bring blood pressure down by increasing awareness about your medical problem and, hopefully, getting you to stick to treatment.
The researchers found that counseling alone seemed better than usual blood pressure treatment. But adding a training course to counseling won even greater improvement.
Boulware's group was not able to gather enough evidence to support either self-monitoring of blood pressure at home or training courses alone to help fight high blood pressure.
The results are published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Is Your Blood Pressure Up?
Oct. 3, 2001 -- A new study suggests that people with high blood pressure can help lower it simply by following the healthy habits they can learn in counseling or by taking a class. And with such improvements, these people stand a chance of not needing as much medicine to keep their condition under control.
Drugs haven't provided all of the answers in getting control of America's blood pressure problems. More than 43 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure. But less than a third of them actually get a handle on their condition. Since uncontrolled high blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack and stroke, researchers are turning their attention to finding other strategies to conquer this problem.
L. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH, and colleagues say that while medications are arguably the most important treatment, behavioral treatments such as counseling have long been recommended, either in addition to medication or instead of taking it. Boulware is with the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
The researchers looked at 232 studies of more than 4,000 people. They compared blood pressure results among people in counseling, training sessions, or self-monitoring of blood pressure.
Counseling involves either individual or group discussions with teaching in an informal setting where people could share personal experiences.
Training sessions are more formal classroom-like sessions. Both counseling and training courses focused on encouraging lifestyle changes, such as getting a better diet, how to lose weight, advice about exercise, and stopping smoking, which are all known to bring about improvements in blood pressure.
Self-monitoring of blood pressure at home is thought to bring blood pressure down by increasing awareness about your medical problem and, hopefully, getting you to stick to treatment.
The researchers found that counseling alone seemed better than usual blood pressure treatment. But adding a training course to counseling won even greater improvement.
Boulware's group was not able to gather enough evidence to support either self-monitoring of blood pressure at home or training courses alone to help fight high blood pressure.
The results are published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.