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HBP rarely kills before the victim is past 40; that's why it has not been weeded out of the gene pool. Using isolated counterexample as an excuse to do nothing about a medical condition (I know you are not proposing doing nothing) is a very bad idea. Use statistics instead.


Oh, I'm not advocating doing nothing. I'm just relating a scary story. I quit dating her 'cos I thought she wouldn't live to 50. And she was boring.

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Side effects are very individual; I never had any, but I know people with serious HBP who searched for appropriate therapy for years.


My point is that doctors tend to do what's easiest for them, and that's prescribe drugs. I know way too many older folks that are taking a lot of pills, and mostly to counteract side effect of other pills. I think this practice is insane, and yet, very common. Diet was never suggested to my mom as a way to control HBP.

But then, maybe the doctors know their audience. She didn't stick with the diet for long. Now she's back on the HBP drugs, but not accepting any others. At least some progress was made.

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Any physician will tell you to lower your stress level and intake of salt, caffeine and alcohol first, carefully increase the level of physical activity, lose weight etc.


This is probably why I'm so healthy. My BP is on the low side of normal, despite coming from a family of HBP folks and bein' 50 pounds overweight. I eat fairly low fat, not much salt, work at home with my two babies so no stress, and walk six miles a day. It works for me.

Now only to lose some weight. That will catch up with me someday.

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'Non-western' medicine(s) also used drugs they were able to prepare.


By "western" I meant the "throw drugs at it" mentality. Most non-western cultures eat a much healthier diet than we do, and don't have the same diet related problems.

My wife moved here from Taiwan. I took her shopping at Costco, and she saw and entire shelving rack devoted to Metamucil and it's like. She asked me "Is this really such a big problem here?"

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Well, I am skeptical (what is the right preposition here? 'of'?) any '0 anything' diets. That said, it is pretty clear that we eat much more fat than we evolved for; only few hundred years ago it was very difficult to obtain much fat of any kind in food.


Actually, he doesn't advocate the fanatical avoidance of fat, but to use it as a treat, rather than the main course. I looked at it more like, what would I eat if I were in the wild? Probably not hamburgers every day. Vegetables are much easier to catch.

When I was on that diet for a few months, any fat would actually make me feel sick, so it was easy to avoid.

It's almost impossible to dine out and find non-fat stuff, tho.

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Besides, my physician does keep pestering me about losing weight and does not suggest any drugs for that )


Mine does too, but only in passing, as anything they can think to check me for is already good. I've assiduously avoided having any brain function tested, however.

Anyway, I only wanted to say be careful to taking drugs forever, if there is a better way.