This is a frightening story. It’s why I try to avoid hospitals at all costs.
I asked Dr. G, who is now his personal cardiologist, if we needed to do anything to prevent his potassium from going so low again. He said, “If he stays off that drug, he will be fine.” To think that he went through all this because his GP gave him a drug to prevent heart attacks!! What a crazy world we live in.
…The blood pressure medication Dean had taken for 20 years was hydrochlorothiazide. It is the most commonly prescribed medication for blood pressure, not because it is safe or effective, but because it is the one insurance companies choose to pay for!
The dietary and general medical ignorance on display, and the rules, are almost criminal. And I’m sure this is the kind of treatment that my father got when he died of his second heart attack, in 1979. And I consider my high blood pressure (with which I’ve been living otherwise healthily for many decades) to be less risk than most of the prescribed “treatments.”
You have to be your own doctor which is sad because I hear that’s an actual profession. Over a year ago I was given a drug that caused me a great deal of pain. Every doctor said the same thing, “it’s not supposed to do that.” It took a nurse to fix the problem but not until several weeks of torture.
Blood pressure is another problem. mine swings back and forth between over 200 and non existent in minutes. Now I’ll have to check if either of the 2 heart pills I’m taking are of what you mentioned.
You have to be your own doctor which is sad because I hear that’s an actual profession.
Ultimately you are the one most responsible for your own welfare. Trust doctors enough to go to one but not enough to accept their treatment without research. I would still be crippled with debilitating pain if I took my doctor’s word for what could or couldn’t be done to address it.
Let me guess the way it lowers blood pressure is by exhausting the body’s supplies of potassium faster… Potassium lowers blood pressure.
I once went into the hospital for a procedure and for whatever reason they administered me with a high dose of potassium while I was there. Made for a really nasty trip to the ICU… When I hope up I was plugged into a machine. Could have actually died right there.
You’d think physicians would know by now that unbalanced high doses like that, of a variety of useful nutrients, are dangerous. This has me wondering how many of them are using critical thought, and how many are following a memorized trouble shooting list like the common first tier tech support.
I’ve always thought that the intrinsic intelligence of doctors is highly overrated. I couldn’t do it (get into or through med school), not because I’m not smart enough, but I don’t have that good a memory.
“Let me guess the way it lowers blood pressure is by exhausting the body’s supplies of potassium faster”
I don’t think so. I think it makes you pee more. There are thousands of articles on the how HCTZ depletes potassium, but I don’t think that’s the mechanism for reducing blood pressure.
Rand said “And I consider my high blood pressure (with which I’ve been living otherwise healthily for many decades) to be less risk than most of the prescribed “treatments.””
Why do you think so? (I take HCTZ, the very common drug discussed in the link, so I have a personal interest. )
Because I’m aware of none without side effects, and I have no symptoms of any problems, other than hypertension itself. And I’ve (not) suffered from it all my adult life.
Whew! I’m relieved. I was afraid you were going to cite a study showing that it was better to leave high blood pressure untreated, and then I was going to have to at least consider whether to continue to treat mine.
But now I’m a bit concerned about you. I realize you’re not asking for *my* advice, so I’ll be very brief and I won’t bring this up again: I assume you’ve done at least five minutes of reading on hypertension, and you know how it does damage while you don’t experience any symptoms. (Or, if you are a skeptic, then at least, how it is thought to do damage….)
Here is a pretty alarming list of ways your body is silently damaged:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-pressure/in-depth/high-blood-pressure/art-20045868
As for side effects, plenty of people don’t experience any side effects, and many more experience only very mild side effects, and of course, life is chock-full of tradeoffs.
Anyway, thanks for answering my question!
Bob, it’s not about my “experiencing” symptoms. It is about there are zero measurable symptoms. After four decades.
All of this stuff, as with most medical “science,” is statistical and observational. Correlation is not causation.