EFFECTIVE TRAINING CENTRE
Hypertension Treatment:
Why Are Medicines Helpless?
Modern sources provide a sick man with a great amount of information. Voluminous textbooks in medicine are concerned with treating essential hypertension. Materials of scientific conferences are regularly published. Reviews of new antihypertension drugs are coming out. Big websites and even whole portals are devoted to essential hypertension. Pharmaceutical treatment, physical therapy, folk remedies, herbs, decoctions and even spells. A sick man is just confused with all this information. It becomes totally impossible to decide between the remedies for essential hypertension.
What shall you do in case your blood pressure begins to trouble you? Is it possible to wait till it is over and not to cure it? Is it worth practicing self-treatment? What methods are effective? What methods have no real effect? What are the prospects of managing hypertension by a physician? Is it possible to keep essential hypertension under control and not to consume handfuls of medicines? This is only the tenth part of the most important questions arising before the person suffering from essential hypertension. But can the sick man get answers to them?
As a rule, we do not even have any blood pressure monitor at home. What is it for, if there is no need? This is how the vast majority of those suffering from essential hypertension live up to the age of 40. Over a long period of time intermittent headaches, heaviness in the back of the head, weakness, and fatigability are written off for overloads. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases these conditions have been already caused by hypertension at its early stage, which is still reversible and responds to treatment. But a man learns that he has essential hypertension only after hypertensive crisis or severe condition occurs requiring medication. This is how hypertension is primarily diagnosed. However, by this time it is already the advanced case of moderate or severe essential hypertension. This condition has already had time to do physical harm to practically all essential organs and systems of the body.
For this very reason, when a man learns from his physician that he has essential hypertension, he simultaneously gets to know about concomitant obesity, atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus and kidney imbalance. So, a man who suffered from malaise over years, never received treatment and thought of himself as a generally healthy person, now has a whole bunch of chronic decompensated diseases requiring urgent treatment.
There is no doubt, the first initiative is quite natural – a patient consults a doctor. And gets a list of medicines to be bought and taken daily in order to manage blood pressure. Everything begins from one or two medicines at a minimum dose. However, soon the blood pressure turns out to decrease only slightly and it often reaches high values. A patient makes the next appointment with his doctor, who just increases the doses. Within a few years, the situation is repeated again and again. Thus, the doses of antihypertension drugs reach their limit. Instead of one or two medicines a patient consumes three or four kinds of drugs daily. And this is only for blood pressure.
The drug burden grows steadily. With every meal, a patient takes pills rather than food. But can we tell that essential hypertension has been healed and the blood pressure will not increase? No such thing! A patient has to consider blood pressure of 140 mmHg as "working" and "habitual", though it is a diagnosis in itself and requires treatment. Fatigability and weakness still persist. And hypertension-related visceral lesions have not passed over. Moreover, the liver starts to make itself felt.
What is to be done next?
Dozens of various antihypertension drugs and their combinations have been tried. The doses are at their maximum. But the blood pressure remains unstable. So, for the first time in his life, a man comes up against the limits of potentialities of the pharmaceutical medicine. In search for information on the essential hypertension treatment options, a patient turns to the Internet. The internet resources in turn are abundant in disembodied and, to a certain extent, confusing information.
Medical articles give obscure definitions and classifications, as well as treatment regimens. However, it is the thing of the past. Other resources offer recipes of various decoctions. In addition, there is a great many non-pharmaceutical procedures and even electric appliances intended for reducing blood pressure.
Let us try to make sense of this sea of information from the very beginning.
Practically any source of information on essential hypertension cites the World Health Organization’s definition, namely: «Essential hypertension is a cardiovascular disorder developing due to dysfunction (neurosis) of higher vasoconstrictor centers and subsequent neuro-hormonal and renal mechanisms characterized by arterial hypertension, while at the symptomatic stages – by the organic changes to the kidneys, heart, and central nervous system.»
From this definition it becomes clear that the actual cause of hypertension is unsure. Only consequences are known, such as increase in blood pressure and visceral disorder.
Breathing and cardiac function are closely connected. Gases we inhale, their volume and composition make for the character of cardiac function and vascular tone. Due to excessive depth of breathing we lose carbon dioxide (CO2) – a natural factor of vasorelaxation, pressure reduction and organ oxygenation. Excessively deep breathing, first of all, disturbs the cardiac function, exhausts your heart and constricts your vessels. There seems no escaping the problems with blood pressure if you breathe deeply.
According to WHO classification:
- Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mmHg
- Stage 1 hypertension is 140-145/90-95 mmHg
- Stage 2 hypertension, moderate, is 169-179/100-109 mmHg
- Stage 3 hypertension, severe, is 180 mmHg and more /110 mmHg and more.
Essential hypertension at the early stage (stage 1 hypertension) is reversible. And there is no need to take medicines. With healthy physiological breathing (deep breathing elimination), it is possible to restore pressure back to normal. Of course, this requires a proper diet and work/rest regimen. In case of advanced essential hypertension with high values of blood pressure (stage 2-3), the Buteyko Breathing Method will recover breathing, the essential companion of cardiac function. And so, it will many times reduce the patient’s drug burden. It will give the chance to stop the ever-growing pressure, which is beyond the limits of drug potentialities. As long as the patient’s breathing is disturbed, it is practically impossible to stop the development of essential hypertension.
What medicines are available for treating essential hypertension?
As of today, the major groups of antihypertension drugs are represented by:
- Beta-adrenergic blockers
- Angiotensin converting enzymes (ACE)
- Calcium channel blockers
- Diuretics.
Treatment with antihypertension drugs temporarily relieves the symptom of essential hypertension, such as high blood pressure. But at the same time, it induces significant stress in the liver. At the stage of moderate arterial hypertension alone, a patient consumes more than 100 antihypertension pills monthly. The combination of various medicines produces the whole complex of adverse effects, which can worsen the condition and deteriorate life quality.
Angiotensin converting enzymes (ACE):
- Liver toxic
- Affect the cellular blood content
- Decrease essential ion concentration of blood
- Cause cough
Beta-adrenergic blockers:
- Can cause myocardial conduction block
- Increase blood sugar
- Cause respiratory muscle spasm
- Impair memory
- Reduce sexual vigor
- They cannot be used in diabetes mellitus, any conditions of bronchial obstruction (asthma, bronchitis) or myocardial conduction disturbances
Calcium channel blockers:
- Cause the shin edema
- Palpitations
- Muscle weakness
- Intestinal disorders
- Mental lability (shifts in mood)
- They cannot be used in metabolic syndrome (combination of hypertension, obesity and decrease in tissue sensitivity to insulin, leading to disturbance of metabolism).
Diuretics:
- Cause frequent urination
- Eliminate blood ions essential for cardiac function
- Aggravate clinical course of gout
- Increase blood sugar
- Impair sexual function of men and women
- Can cause muscle cramps
- Skin rash is possible
It becomes evident that prolonged exposure to an antihypertension drug and especially the combination of several drugs can lead to any set of adverse effects. The drug syndrome becomes an independent concomitant condition when treating essential hypertension, which deteriorates greatly life quality.
One cannot ignore lots of basic contraindications for antihypertensive drugs, among which are diabetes mellitus, bronchial asthma and bronchitis. And practically all medicines are of limited use in pregnancy and breast feeding.
Therefore, all medicines have well-defined limits of their potentialities and usability. Their major task is to temporarily relieve/weaken the symptom of essential hypertension, namely: high blood pressure.
Breathing function is an essential cardiac function regulator. If, for a variety of reasons, our breathing is far from normal, our blood pressure cannot be 120/80. What is it going to be if our breathing is kept deeper than normal and essential hypertension is controlled with pills? It stands to reason that we just give no way of normalizing our blood pressure. It will always tend to increase, irrespective of drug doses and combinations.
How can breathing be normalized?
In 1952, a Soviet scientist, academic physiologist Dr. Konstantin P. Buteyko made a breakthrough in medicine – he discovered the Deep Breathing Related Diseases. Based on this discovery he worked out a complex of special breathing exercises enabling breathing normalization, i.e., the Buteyko Breathing Method. Clinical experience in training of thousands of patients at the Buteyko Effective Training Centre, proved that breathing normalization itself disposes patients at the early stages of taking medicines for ever. In severe, advanced cases, normal breathing, combined with medication, becomes a great help in protecting the body against ever-progressing disease.
In order to master Dr. Buteyko’s Breathing Method and succeed in the treatment, there should be an experienced practitioner to guide you. Any attempts to normalize breathing on one’s own, with using materials from questionable sources will yield at best no result. It should be realised that breathing is an essential body’s function. Healthy physiological breathing is of great benefit, while incorrect breathing is harmful to your health.
If you wish to normalize your breathing, file application for Distance Training Course in the Buteyko Breathing Technique via the Internet. The training is conducted under regular supervision by the experienced practitioner that contributes to achievement of the required outcome in the treatment of the disease.
Signing up for training in Buteyko Breathing Method with receiving the "Practical Video Course in the Buteyko Breathing Method" is open.
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