PENSACOLA, Fla. — High blood pressure can be deadly. Studies estimate half of all adults in the United States suffer from it.
Doctors Madison Gilbert and Josie Blasius are ambulatory care pharmacists. They run the new hypertension clinic at Ascension Sacred Heart.
Every day, they treat patients with high blood pressure.
For the first time since 2017, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are telling doctors to switch things up.
Updated guidelines emphasize earlier treatment and lifestyle modification.
“Weight management, having a healthy BMI, another big focus is sodium reduction,” Dr. Gilbert said. “And then another thing we look at is also anywhere we can limit other outside factors — smoking, caffeine, other medications that may also increase your blood pressure.”
They also emphasize natural approaches to lowering blood pressure.
“Focusing on those fruits and veggies, lean proteins, a healthy diet and then getting an exercise as well,” Dr. Blasius said. “And so down the line this will help decrease their overall pill burden and and help with maybe a more natural blood pressure lowering for them in the future.”
The American Heart Association’s blood pressure chart is the same as it was in 2017.
But they now advise doctors to use a new screening tool with patients. It’s called “prevent.”
“Takes into account blood pressure, smoking history, age, and cholesterol,” Dr. Gilbert said. “And also really cool, it adds on your zip code. So it’s a potential to look at social determinants of health. So you can specifically look at our zip code here for Escambia, and that’ll also look and modify your risk factors and what we should do for treatment.”
These new guidelines also include research linking high blood pressure to cognitive decline and dementia.
The overall message:
“Everyone get checked, every doctor’s appointment you’re at,” Dr. Gilbert said.
These pharmacists also say it’s important to track your blood pressure at home and take that log to your doctors’ appointments.