Financial ties cloud AHA blood pressure recommendation
The supposed link between high blood pressure and heart disease has gotten out of hand over the past few years. The American Heart Association (AHA) isn’t helping matters. The organization is now recommending that everyone with high blood pressure – and statistics say that’s about 72 million Americans – should own their own home blood pressure monitor, and regularly check themselves. Never before has such an unprecedented endorsement of a medical device been issued to consumers.
As you know, I’m a voice in the wilderness telling everyone I can find that high blood pressure DOES NOT cause heart disease. Despite what “unbiased” conventional medicine – which generates millions from the treatment of hypertension – maintains, evidence showing a conclusive linear link between elevated blood pressure and the incidence of heart disease is almost nonexistent.
Personally, I suspect that there’s a profit motive at stake here. Guess who co-sponsors the AHA’s blood pressure website? A leading blood pressure monitor company. Of course the AHA denies that this manufacturer had any role in the association’s recommendation. But I wonder
And I’m not the only one wondering. Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the consumer advocate group Public Citizen says that “this is not as clean a recommendation as it could be” because of the device manufacturer’s ties to the AHA.
Blood pressure monitors can cost up to $100 when purchased on the Internet. Most insurance plans will not pay for the monitor, though the AHA (and surely the device makers) believe that these should be covered by insurance.
I’m all for empowering patients, of course. But I don’t believe that these monitors are the way to do it. Blood pressure is a tricky thing. It can vary during the course of the day. I wonder about the stress and worry that constant monitoring will put on patients – not unlike a person on a diet who weighs himself compulsively several times a day rather than once a week.
Don’t be the first one on the block with a home blood pressure monitor. Save your money.
Health benefits of staying social
Here’s a tip for my older readers: don’t skip that book club meeting this week. And be sure you visit your kids and grand kids. Give your friend a call and have a nice long chat. Meet friends for lunch. It turns out that all of these are amazing ways to keep fit – mentally.
A new study reveals that maintaining social ties with family and friends can go a long way toward keeping your memory sharp as you get older and can significantly slow the deterioration of memory in the elderly.
The study examined the impact of social integration on memory changes in Americans aged 50 or older over the course of six years. Turns out that the socialites had memories that declined at half the rate of those who had less social interactivity.
According to the study’s author, the results “suggest that social integration may be an important component of efforts to protect older Americans from memory decline.” Makes sense to me. In fact, I believe the same is true at nearly any age. An active mind is very often a nimble mind – and keeping up a social calendar that involves a wide variety of interaction lets the brain fire off in many directions, keeping it working. Less interactivity, more atrophy of the brain. This is a simplistic view, but so often the human body functions in this way.
