Medications for High Blood Pressure


The use of medication is only initiated when the high blood pressure seems to get very severe to a point where regular physical lifestyle modification is insufficient. But even so, it does not mean that people with high blood pressure should lose track of their lifestyle changes. Medication and lifestyle modification will have to coexist with each other.

There are a number of varying drugs that works to lower blood pressure, and they are called antihypertensives. Drug therapy usually makes use of a combination of different medications. By using a small portion of one type of drug combined with another kind can help minimizing the side-effects, while maximizing the anti-hypertensive effect. Even a petty 5-6 mmHg reduction of blood pressure can help to prevent heart disease, stroke, heart failure, and other diseases that are involved with hypertension.

Some of the most widely used hypertension drugs are as follows:

ACE Inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blocker

ACE Inhibitors, also known as Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme, is commonly used in combination with other anti-hypertensive medications, usually diuretics. ACE Inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blocker work to relieve blood pressure by affecting the renin-angiotensin hormonal system.

In addition, ACE Inhibitors helps to treat cardiomyopathy (heart failure) and proteinuria (kidney). They also serve to slow down the process of kidney dysfunction from kidney diseases affecting patients with high blood pressure. ACE Inhibitors include: creatine captopril, enalapril, fosinopril, lisinopril, quinapril, ramipril.

Diuretics

Diuretics work to elevate the rate of the releasing of salt and water from the body. Diuretics can be both used as a single drug treatment for hypertension, or to be combined with other anti-hypertensive medication to boost the effectiveness of the other. Diuretics include: bendroflumethiazide, chlortalidone, hydrochlorothiazide.

Beta-blockers

Beta receptors are the most important receptors for the sympathetic nervous system in the heart and blood vessels. When beta receptors are being stimulated, they tend to increase the rate of the heart and the strength of the heart’s pumping action, which can be unhealthy.

Beta-blockers help to ease the rate of the heart, causing the muscles to relax. This beta-blocker is particularly useful for treating patients with hypertension, who experience faster heartbeat during sleeping, angina (cardiac chest pain), and a heart attack.

They also help to treat migraine and chronic anxiety in hypertensive patients. But in England, recent problems resulting from its side-effects have led to their downgrading to fourth-line therapy, as proved that they have roused type 2 diabetes. Their other side effects include fatigue, sexual impotence in males, depression, nightmares. Beta-blockers are comprised of: atenolol, labetalol, metoprolol, propranolol.

Calcium channel blockers (CCBs)

Calcium channel blockers drag down the speed of the calcium moving into the muscle cells of the heart and arteries. It reduces the strength of the heart’s pumping action (cardiac contraction) and eases the muscle cells in the arteries’ walls, thus lowering blood pressure. Calcium channel blockers are: nifedipine, amlodipine, diltiazem, verapamil.

Alpha-blockers

Similar to beta-receptors, alpha-receptors are of the sympathetic nervous system that constricted the peripheral arteries. And alpha-blockers’ job is restore the peripheral arteries to their original condition, and it goes to reduce blood pressure. Alpha-blockers include: doxazosin, prazosin, terazosin.