Q: I very strongly believe that I am heavily over-medicated. I am on Adalat90mg (Nifedipine), Metoprolol100mg, Atacand 32mg (Candesartan), Ezetrol 10mg and Aspirin 1-a-day. At 220lbs, 5’11”,and bp averaging 160/85, with no noticeable side effects, I am very worried and I strongly believe that I am way too much over-medicated. I have not seen or heard of anybody with so much prescription for bp! What are your thoughts?
A: You are only taking three blood pressure medications. The Ezetrol is a drug to lower cholesterol. I assume you are taking the aspirin on the advice from your doctor to help lower your risk for heart disease. It is not uncommon for three drugs to be needed to get blood pressure in control. Since you seem worried about your health, I would focus on losing weight. Your body mass index is 30. This means you are in the obese category. Losing weight will likely lower both your blood pressure and your cholesterol. With significant weight loss, you may be able to get off more than one drug. For information about the importance of having healthy weights go to this page at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s site.
I assume you are taking the aspirin on the advice from your doctor to help lower your risk
for heart disease. It is not uncommon for three drugs to be needed to get blood pressure in
control. Since you seem worried about your health, I would focus on losing weight. Your body
mass index is 30. This means you are in the obese category. Losing weight will likely lower both
your blood pressure and your cholesterol. With significant weight loss, you may be able to get
off more than one drug. For information about the importance of having healthy weights go to:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/index.html
(16 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)
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One of the big problems with this, though, is the effect of these medications may well be to make it very difficult indeed to lose weight.
In my experience, such drugs cause extreme lethargy, muscle weakness and pain. Please research the DASH diet, as this helps with weight loss, control on BP and also cholesterol.
I AGREE it is difficult to lose weight on HBP meds………if anything I gain 5lbs. a year on them
I agree with the doc. Having “no noticable side-effects” as you stated, dropping 5, 10, or even 20 lbs of weight may cause your Doctor to eliminate some or all of your meds because using exercise w/ diet to shed pounds improves BP & cholesterol (2-4-1!)
Has anyone besides me noticed the association between the muscle pain associated with these, weakness and weight gain? Who wants to exercise when it hurts?
I thought it was me. What is the correlation? I am taking metoprolol and amlodipine.
I have tried 5 different classes of HBP meds….they all cause me pain & weakness some more than others AND I gain weight because of lethargy
I definitely had pain and swelling on exercise with my bp medications (lisinopril), my doctor told me to switch to taking my med at night and that helped. Fatigue, muscle pain, edema and circulatory problems/high blood pressure are all problems that occur with vitamin C deficiency as well. Make sure you are taking your vitamins and eating citrus fruits. It sounds like it is too minor a thing to make a difference to such a big problem, but it works.
Muscle pain has been associated with statins and may discourage people from exercising as it can worsen with exercise. This pain apparently is more common among athletes who take statins. Take co-enzyme Q10 if you are taking statins and it might help with this as statins are known to deplete the bodies own mechanism for producing CoQ10 in the liver.
I am as well are on a heavy dose of BP medications lisinopril 40mg; spironolactone 25mg; metoprolol 100mg; clodine 0.2mg and amlodipine 10mg along with singulair 10mg. My weight is 188 at 5’6 at 45yrs of age. The meds are keeping BP down but i’m constantly with a headache and have insomnia because those are some of the side effects of these drugs. Please advise.
1. Losing fat weight IS a great idea. Stopping all soft drinks and junky treats and eating the DASH II diet will effortlessly remove a lot of your excess fat.
2. And, even before that, doing this will also lower your blood pressure. It’s proven to do so!
3. The beta blocker, Metoprolol will prevent exercise from making you fit. Switch to using the Resperate or Tai Chi for that part of your blood pressure lowering as soon as you can. Then stop that drug!
4. Ezetrol is NOT a statin; but it may leave you tired. If it does, dropping soft drinks and junky treats, going on the DASH diet and taking sterol supplements will lower your cholesterol well and can help get you off that medication. There was a recent study showing this effective your doctor can look up.
5. Add 10 minutes of relatively vigorous exercise most days of every week that you build up to very gradually.
That will help you lose fat and will do so even more if you can do 15 to 30 minutes some days each week.
It also has been found recently to be even more protective from your high blood pressure than all your meds put together! (HealthDay, Thurs, 4-19-2012)
Just work with your doctor to get off the Metoprolol and add the other stress relief things that can replace it. That will enable your exercise to protect you better. (Also do NOT take statins because recent research found they cause exercise to harm you. Do the other things on this list and take niacin instead.)
I, too am on meds due to a stroke associated with high BP and cholesterol. I take 2mg Cardura, 25 mg Metropolol (sounds like a dangerous medication), Lisinopril 40mg.,and 75m Plavix plus 40 mg. Lipitor every day. I hate taking the meds; however, the doctor says it will be the rest of my life because I had a stroke. I am 5’4″ weigh 136 lbs. When I am home, my BP is normal (124/68 but when I go to the doctor’s office it jumps up sometimes to 150/72 and sometimes higher if he makes me nervous. Any suggestions would help me. Thank you
This is June again. I neglected to say that I had 2 G.I. bleeds because of these meds when I was taking a baby aspirin. They took me off that and I had another one because of the Plavix. The doctor now has me on Plavix every other day. Do you think this is safe for me? It’s scary since I’ve never been on medications other than a thyroid med ever since I was 40. I started taking these other meds at 73 yrs old. I lost over half of my blood in both instances. I’m worried. Please reply to me.
These doctors these days are complete idiots. They didn’t even recognize the fact I had white coat syndrome and overmedicated me and my BP dropped to 86/49 and I got several similar readings. My BP was little higher than normal but was up to 60 points lower at home. I was able to get my BP back to normal just by exercising and conforming to a DASH type diet. Lot of fruits and vegetables and little or no meat/dairy is the key. Medication does not solve the problem nor get to root cause diet does and these dumb doctors never offer advise on good nutrition.
I am on 20mg Lisinopril and 12.5mg Hydrochlorozide(sp)-each med taken once a day. My PA (I don’t see an M.D.) – local HMO policy. Also take 50mg atenolol;20mg Lovastatin;20U Humelin N insulin; 1 gram of Metformin all daily
I am 76 years of age,weigh 195lb, height 5’10” – BP ave -140/90;cholesterol – 195;cardiac arrythmias/a-fib occasionally. I exercise 4 times/week – walk 3 miles each time or stationary bike;routine-bike 5 miles/6lb weights-20 reps each arm/ab-slide for tight abs 3 times per week.
It has been a great life, but I realize that Gary Null/Andrew Lessman can’t solve everyone’s problems and life is a finite journey. As a recent surgeon general put it “We’re all going to die of something sometime… I take Lessman’s vitamins – for eyes, heart, multi-vitamin, weight stability, diabetes etc. I don’t trust big pharma’s products so prefer supplements. Father lived to be 67; Mother 58.
Thanks for the time and space to speak out!
Jim
I thank the Lord for my time on earth and am doing the best I can with what I have.