Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Treating High Blood Pressure

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Treating High Blood Pressure

My friend's mother has high blood pressure. He sent an e-mail to ask for my recommendation on a specialist to treat this condition. I asked my wife for advice, as she is familiar with this medical condition.

My wife's advice is:

1. Send your mother to see a doctor (i.e. general practitioner) near your home.
2. The doctor will be able to take the blood pressure and prescribe the medication.
3. If the condition need specialist attention (and this is usually not necessary), the doctor will recommend a specialist.
4. High blood pressure is quite common and can be treated quite easily by a general practitioner in most cases.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: High blood pressure must be treated ASAP, my brother has been ignoring his high blood pressure for about 6-7 years, for fear of the drugs harming his kidney. Recently his heart was found to have enlarged by 3 times, due to it working too hard to cope with the high blood pressure. Fortunately the condition is said to be reversible according to the doctor, as long as his high blood pressure is kept under control. Besides that, high blood pressure left untreated will harm most of the other organs.; January 03, 2008 9:31 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear Mr Tan,

I have been treated by my nearby doctor for the past many years for my high blood pressure. I agree with your wife's advice.

The doctor is able to treat me well. I don't need to see a specialist. Anyway, I can't afford to pay the high fees.

Thank you for sharing this simple, yet practical advice. Many people, especially the young people, are not familiar with these common medical condition. They want to see a specialist on the first occasion. This is unnecessary.; January 03, 2008 10:22 AM
Anonymous said...: It is a time to put in place a regime
of diet and exercise plan to reduce the risk of heart problem.
Insurance cannot protect you from this. Surely you don't want to make a claim or console yourself that you have insurance and peace of mind. It is rubbish that insurance agents like to frighten you and to give you the false sense of peace.
Surely you have heard time and again from insurance agents.; January 03, 2008 12:09 PM
Anonymous said...: High blood pressure can be quite easily controlled with medication by one's family doctor.

A medical specialist charges a very high premium even for high blood pressure treatment. It is not worth it at all. This is the reason why MOH is moving chronic care to family doctors becos family docs are the most cost effective in the healthcare system.

If the blood pressure is not well controlled even with multiple medication (which is rare), family docs will send such patients to the cardiologist for a second opinion.; January 03, 2008 11:00 PM
Anonymous said...: I am the friend Mr. Tan is referring to. Just a piece of advice I got from the doctor Mr. Tan recommended:

1) What is high blood pressure depends on age. When you are 30, the pressure of 170 is considered very high. When you are 60, 170 is only slightly high, 230-250 is very high. This happens because blood vessels get stiffer with age.
2) What's dangerous is not short bursts of high blood pressure occuring throughout the day, but consistently elevanted high pressure slowly weakends blood vessels
3) There is no medicine to be taken after high pressure - it should be taken on a regular basis before it actually appears. In most cases the medicine is able to control the pressure very well
4) The most sure way to improve your blood pressure is to lose weight; January 07, 2008 9:55 AM
Anonymous said...: As an ex-high BP sufferer, I recommend you
(A) embark on a low salt diet called the DASH-2 diet (http://www.dashforhealth.com/?gclid=CM7Npues95ACFRgETAodN1B9sw)
(B) Start exercising - even a 45 min walk a day is a good enough start!
(C) Drink Celery juice or eat other high Potassium source foods

I'm 35 yrs old and my BP dropped from 170 to 125 after 3 months.

Good luck!; January 15, 2008 12:01 PM