inevitably have an artificially raised blood pressure. Both factors, the anxiety and the taking of the blood
pressure, may be sufficient to “make” a person hypertensive.
A healthy blood pressure can vary tremendously—as much as 30 mm Hg—over the course of any day.
To be really certain that you are hypertensive, the doctor would either have to take several readings each
day over a period of six months (as recommended by the WHO) or give you a portable electronic device
to do the same. Another complication lies in the fact that the systolic blood pressure may vary between
each arm by as much as 8 mm Hg. In some cases the difference can be up to 20 mm Hg.
There is also the question of whether the doctor or health care worker takes the blood pressure while
the person is lying down, then sitting, and then standing. If the person is asked to stand, how long does the
doctor wait before taking the blood pressure? Furthermore, is he also checking the person’s heart rate in
the three different positions? Just taking a blood pressure measurement when the person is sitting will not
tell him much about what happens when he is standing for any amount of time. But how rare is the patient
who asks his doctor to do such detailed testing? The general mode of behavior in a doctor’s office is to let
the doctor do his job without questioning him. A recent study revealed that more than 70 percent of health
care workers failed to use the proper arm position established by the American Heart Association. This
position calls for the elbow to be slightly flexed and held at heart level.
In a study from the University of California, San Diego, 100 subjects' blood pressure was taken in six
different positions. The researchers found that when the subjects were seated with the arm perpendicular
to the body, hypertension was recorded in 22 percent. However, when the same subjects held the arm
parallel to the body, 41 percent had readings that indicated high blood pressure. This raises a very
important question: “How many people leave the doctor’s office or hospital with a blood pressure
prescription in hand who ‘suffer’ from high blood pressure because the doctor or nurse didn’t follow the
proper measurement guidelines?” My conservative estimate is, hundreds of thousands of them.
With regard to testing the blood pressure of pregnant women, no consensus exists as to which of the
several available tests are truly reliable.
Furthermore, high blood pressure often is a temporary stress-related phenomenon and returns to
normal levels after things calm down. In the case of white-coat hypertension, your blood pressure may
drop to normal levels soon after you leave the doctor’s office. But whether your blood pressure is
chronically elevated or not, you may be asked to take anti-hypertensive drugs that have little or no effect
on your real condition. In addition, they may produce severe side effects including headaches, lethargy,
nausea, sleepiness and impotence. Anti-hypertensive drugs are popular because patients believe that
swallowing a pill a day can prevent a possible heart attack. Research published in 1997 by the Journal of
the American Medical Association found that drugs for high blood pressure may be overprescribed,
especially if blood pressure measurements are taken by the doctor instead of by the portable device used
for ambulatory monitoring.
Breeding Hypertensive Patients
What is more disturbing is that the medical system is trying to create a problem where none actually
exists. What is considered “normal” blood pressure has been modified nearly a dozen times in the past 35
years. The American Medical Association’s recommendations now cite anything over 115/70 mm Hg as
“high.” Just 10 years ago, that number was 140/90 mm Hg, which is actually still quite low. Perhaps, soon
everyone with 100/60 mm Hg may be considered at risk. How far do they want to take this deception
before everyone is considered to be in the high risk group for hypertension and heart disease?
We are certainly heading in the wrong direction with our medication policies in the U.S. and other
countries. We have indiscriminately turned huge portions of the population into hypertensive patients