New_Zealand_Listener_09_14_2019

14 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 14 2019

P

art way through our interview

about her hypertension, Ann

Bain offers to take her own

blood pressure, the way she

does most days. She’s been

sitting quietly on her couch

in Whangaparāoa, north of

Auckland, for the past 20

minutes and doesn’t feel the least bit stressed,

she says. She wraps the cuff

of her home monitor around

her upper arm, presses the

button to inflate the band,

and waits for the reading. “I

feel fine,” she says. “I’d say

it’d be normal. As normal

as it can be.” It is anything

but. Bain’s blood pressure has

spiked to 192/109.

Bain, 74, the chair of

children’s charity Koru Care,

takes five different drugs daily to control the

high blood pressure she’s had since she was in

her forties but which worsened recently when

she was diagnosed with a kidney condition.

She says her specialist has told her there are no

more tablets she can take. “It’s a silent killer; I

know that. I’d like to know what else I can do,

because nobody wants high blood pressure.

I’d like to know why. I know I could drop

dead tomorrow.”

Auckland-based researchers are hoping

to answer those questions by investigating

how a little-understood but highly influential

contributor to hypertension might be

identified and treated.

Ask most people about the

causes of high blood pressure

and top of their list is likely

to be our sedentary, self-

indulgent lifestyles – we eat

too much bad food, drink

too much booze and exercise

too little. Last year, a study

of a remote Amazon tribe

revealed remarkably stable

low blood pressure, with no

trend towards an increase as they aged. But in

primary care in the First World, it’s one of the

commonest chronic health problems doctors

will encounter, with estimates that a third of

men and a quarter of women will have raised

CALLING

OUT THE

‘SILENT

KILLER’

As scientists plan trials for innovative

new ways to tackle hypertension,

Donna Chisholm looks at why

our blood-pressure problems are

so vast and poorly controlled.

HYPERTENSION

About 750,

people in New

Zealand are

estimated to have

hypertension,

but only about

half are treated.