The Lancet medical journal<\/strong><\/a>, indicates that intensive blood pressure control \u2013 taking steps to lower systolic blood pressure even further, to below 120 or 130 mmHg \u2013 can reduce people\u2019s risk of major heart problems such as heart attack and stroke.<\/p>\nThe findings come amid debate in the medical community over exactly how low people should aim to bring their blood pressure. Some experts fear that aggressive blood pressure control could raise the risk of falls among older adults, for example.<\/p>\n
The Chinese research team behind the study said it is the most extensive analysis to date on how this approach affects people\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
The researchers analysed data from about 80,000 people who participated in six clinical trials testing blood pressure control methods in China, Canada, and the United States.<\/p>\n
They found that across the trials, people who went the intensive control route \u2013 a combination of medication and lifestyle changes such as weight loss and quitting smoking \u2013 had fewer heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular-related deaths than people who were treated with standard blood pressure goals.<\/p>\n
Notably, however, the intensive control group was more likely to experience side effects such as dizziness, fainting, kidney problems, and abnormal heart rhythm.<\/p>\n
The results suggest there\u2019s a \u201cnet benefit\u201d to intensive blood pressure control, the study authors said.<\/p>\n
They recommended that doctors take a nuanced approach that takes into account each of their patients\u2019 circumstances, and said the findings \u201cunderscore the importance of individualised strategies to optimise outcomes while avoiding both overtreatment and undertreatment\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 01\/09\/2025 – 6:00 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Intensive efforts to bring down high blood pressure can lower the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[157,18,135,6424,27825,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-35820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-blood-pressure","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-heart-attack","12":"tag-heart-diseases","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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