The purpose of monitoring blood pressure in hypertensive patients is to observe the condition and the efficacy of the drug. However, some patients regard blood pressure measurement as a sign and weather vane for taking medicine, and take medicine when blood pressure is high, and do not take medicine if blood pressure is normal.
I often meet patients who say that they do this, and ask for praise!
Praise?How is this possible. This method of taking medicine is wrong, harmful, and needs to be corrected.
If your blood pressure is normal while taking antihypertensive drugs, that is exactly what antihypertensive drugs do.
Take medicine to lower blood pressure, and control blood pressure in the normal range after taking medicine, which means that the drug is effective, and the dosage and combination are also appropriate, so continue to take medicine to maintain the efficacy.
If your blood pressure drops to normal, you should continue eating. Unless the blood pressure is always low and the systolic blood pressure is always lower than 110mmHg, then consider adjusting the drug and reducing the dose.
Only by taking medicine on time every day can you maintain the concentration of medicine in your body and maintain the effect of lowering blood pressure.
At present, most of the antihypertensive drugs commonly used in clinical practice are taken once a day. Such drugs are long-acting antihypertensive drugs. That is, the effect of the drug can be maintained for 24 hours or more. Even when the effect is the weakest, there are more than half of the strongest effects, more than 50%, which is medically speaking, the "valley-to-peak ratio" is greater than 50%. In this way, the antihypertensive effect can be kept stable and blood pressure fluctuations can be reduced.
When the drug enters the body, it will be metabolized and excreted by the body while it plays a role. The concentration of the drug in the blood, after a certain period of time, decays by half, 50%. The time it takes for the concentration of the drug in the blood to decay by half is called the "half-life" of the drug. Taking a medicine, the concentration of the drug needs to reach a stable state in the body, it needs to go through 5 7 half-lives, which can be calculated by mathematical formulas. Therefore, it generally takes about a week for antihypertensive drugs to stabilize after taking them once a day, and different drugs are different.
Because drugs are metabolized and excreted every day, it is necessary to supplement drugs in order to maintain their efficacy. When we take medicine every day, it is to replenish the drugs that are metabolized and excreted, keep the concentration of drugs in the body stable, and maintain the antihypertensive effect.
Therefore, if the blood pressure is normal and do not take the medicine, the concentration of the drug in the body will decrease, and the blood pressure will rise again.
Here comes the most important question!Irregular medication, blood pressure fluctuates greatly, and the harm is greater!
Irregular use of antihypertensive drugs can cause blood pressure fluctuations.
Blood pressure, which can fluctuate widely, is more harmful.
Studies suggest that abnormal blood pressure fluctuations are even more damaging than high blood pressure. The effect of this blood pressure fluctuation and the effect of high blood pressure levels are two separate risk factors. Abnormal fluctuations in blood pressure can not only cause damage to target organs such as carotid arteriosclerosis, left ventricular hypertrophy, and decreased renal function, but also be associated with cardiovascular events such as acute myocardial infarction and stroke, and cardiovascular death. Studies of coronary heart disease have found that large fluctuations in blood pressure are related to the degree of coronary stenosis. Like a kind of hidden hypertension, it is a normal blood pressure measurement at the hospital, but sometimes there will be a significant and rapid increase in blood pressure, especially in the early morning. Such fluctuations in blood pressure, especially in the early morning, increase blood pressure rapidly and increase the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
Irregular use of antihypertensive drugs, resulting in high and low blood pressure, is this not artificially caused blood pressure fluctuations?So the damage is even more serious.
Moreover, at the moment when the blood pressure rises, the damage has already occurred. If there is damage and remedication, it is an "afterthought".
Therefore, lowering blood pressure requires 24 hours to achieve the goal, and long-term targeting.
Go to the hospital for follow-up or take blood on an empty stomach or take blood pressure medication?
When you go to the hospital for a follow-up visit, you should take your medication normally.
When you go to the hospital to have your blood drawn on an empty stomach, you can take the medicine normally. 50 ml of water to take the blood pressure medicine does not affect the blood test results.
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