Is medication the best treatment?
Until recently, drug treatment – even with all its problems – was the best bet to control your blood pressure. This is probably because blood pressure drugs closely target the physiology of hypertension. Even when the original cause of a person’s hypertension may remain unknown, the physiological result is always a restriction of blood flow, which increases the pressure and load on the heart. The restriction can be caused by a number of things including a buildup of plaque within the arteries or excess muscle tension, which in effect compresses the blood vessels. Various blood pressure medications are designed to target these causes. There are drugs to clean the gunk out of arteries, others to dilate the blood vessels and still others to relax the muscles. But the common goal is to get the blood flowing and drug treatment is relatively successful because it produces a reliable physical response to make this happen.
