(UPI.com) — Watching a DVD of patients telling how they control their blood pressure helped African-Americans patients control their blood pressure, U.S. researchers said.
Researchers at Boston’s University of Massachusetts Medical School and Birmingham’s Cooper Green Mercy Hospital and the University of Alabama created three videos with recognizable members of the community — “exceptionally eloquent and persuasive” hypertension patients — who told how their hypertension was controlled through diet and medication.
Dr. Thomas K. Houston and colleagues randomly assigned African-American patients to a group who saw the videos or a “control group” with usual care.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found patients with uncontrolled hypertension who viewed the stories had better blood pressure control than the control group.
People and doctors should be made aware that statins can drive up blood pressure. I lowered mine by getting of the statin, which had pushed my potassium levels to dangerous levels. ( I am 78)