Treatment for blood pressure improves

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 37

Treatment for blood pressure improves

PA Wellington High blood pressure can now be treated without the crippling range of side effects that hypertension drugs used to create, according to a medical expert

Professor Wilhelm Lubbe has recently been appointed to the new National Heart Foundation chair in cardiovascular studies at the Auckland University Medical School.

He said that hypertension treatment was so advanced that 1986 was the best time to have high blood pressure.

Dr Lubbe said that new anti-hypertensive drugs can now virtually normalise blood pressure, without such side effects as depression, dizziness, fatigue and impotence, which older drugs used to create.

Today patients could enjoy a quality of life and life expectancy of people with normal blood pressure.

However, Dr Lubbe said that high blood pressure — or hypertension — was a huge problem in New Zealand. It affected a fifth of

men aged between 35 and 64, and more than half went untreated.

Slightly less than a fifth of women Were hypertensive, but were more likely to have their blood pressure checked, he said. Checks were vital, as untreated high blood pressure could lead to strokes, heart attacks, and kidney damage. People should have their blood pressure checked when they visited their family doctor, no matter what their visit was for, Dr Lubbe said.

Risks of high blood pressure were increased if hereditary, if the person was overweight, had too little exercise, ate too much fat, or smoked, he said.

Modem lifestyle with its stress was also a factor.

"If we lived iq a more primitive situation where we all grew potatoes and fished all day we probably wouldn’t have so many people with hypertension,” he said.

New Zealand’s hypertension rate was similar to that of many countries.