Notes from My Journal:

It’s kind of crazy how dumb smart people can be when it comes to making important decisions about their health. I’m thinking of so many friends and colleagues of mine that are taking medications or have undergone surgeries simply because one person, their doctor, told them they should.

Stupid people do that, too, but they have an excuse. They are stupid. But if one has an above-average IQ, I’ve got to wonder: Where is the doubt? Where is the skepticism?

This is something I began noticing about 40 years ago, when I was publishing books and newsletters on alternative health.

The first book I sold was called something like 365 Natural Cures from Around the World. It was a big book – maybe 12 x 16 inches and more than 200 pages. I was proud of that book because it contained so many natural remedies for so many health problems, both common and rare (e.g., the common cold and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) and from serious to benign (e.g., prostate cancer and mosquito bites).

It took me and my team of researchers about 18 months to bring it to print. (Back then, research had to be done mostly in university libraries and by interviewing experts.) But it sold well enough to get me interested in publishing more information on natural health.

What I learned from all the research we did was that although drugs can be miraculous in treating all sorts of minor and major health problems, there is almost always a set of adverse side effects that are given very little attention. I also learned that dozens of the most commonly prescribed drugs are no more effective than some natural plant-based products that have no negative side effects.

Since then, I’ve made it a habit to read books and articles that challenge mainstream medicine, looking for remedies that may be as good as or better than the prescribed drugs – remedies that aren’t talked about by mainstream medicine because, being natural, they cannot be patented and, thus, produce profits for Big Pharma.

Occasionally, I will recommend what I believe to be a safe and effective alternative treatment to a friend or colleague, and the response is almost always the same. They look at me like I’m a crackpot and tell me that they prefer to take medical advice from “someone who went to medical school.”

When that happens, I’m at a loss. I don’t want to argue, because… who knows? I could be wrong.

And so it was that when I was first diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure about a year ago, I was in a quandary. I was uncomfortable with my doctor’s solution, which was to put me on blood-pressure medication, and yet I was a long way away from having a better and safer idea.

“I’m going to write you a prescription,” Dr. B said as he took the wrap off my upper arm. “You came in at 180 over 90. You should begin taking this drug immediately, and then return here next month for another check.”

Dr. B’s certainty about what I needed to do made me feel that I’d be stupid to ignore his advice. “After all,” I told myself, “he’s a nice, honest guy. He’s smart. And he went to medical school.”

So, despite all the skepticism about pharmaceuticals that I had built up over the years, I went ahead and began taking the drug.

A few weeks later, when the side effects began to kick in (fatigue and brain fog, to name two), I had second thoughts. So, I started researching. And what I found was, unfortunately, what I feared I would find.

For starters, most people think high blood pressure is a disease. It is not. It’s nothing more than a set of symptoms. This misunderstanding became widely circulated when the medical industry, eager to monetize its treatment, gave it a disease-sounding name. They dubbed it “essential hypertension.”

Which means… well… exactly nothing.

If you want to understand how much the medical industry doesn’t know about hypertension but pretends to, take a look at this report, written by a doctor for laymen.

Nigel Checks the Facts 

To assess the risks and benefits of blood pressure medication, I gave Nigel about two dozen studies I had accumulated over the past several years and asked him to give me the pros and cons of taking that medication – especially over a long period of time.

Having learned a thing or two about AI prompts, I told Nigel to go to the various “government” and “big health” and other “official” health sites to gather facts about the side effects of blood pressure medication. I told him to trust no single source, to discount anything that was based on insignificant testing and/or questionable research, and to report the effectiveness of blood pressure medication in terms of both absolute risk (actual incidence) and relative risk (increase vs. control/placebo or alternatives).

This is what Nigel came up with:

Acute Kidney Injury (AKI)/Renal Dysfunction
* Absolute risk: Varies by population; generally ~1–5% in routine use, higher in elderly/dehydrated patients.
* Relative risk: Increased vs. placebo and with drug combinations (ACE/ARB + diuretics/NSAIDs).
* Details: ACE inhibitors and ARBs can reduce kidney filtration pressure; risk rises sharply with dehydration or drug combinations.
* Why serious: Can lead to sudden kidney failure, hospitalization.
            
Severe Hypotension (excessively low blood pressure)
* Absolute risk: Symptomatic hypotension reported in ~0.7% (ACE inhibitors) up to ~7–10% (some ARBs/diuretics). 
* Relative risk: Several-fold higher than baseline depending on drug class.
* Details: Especially common when multiple drugs are combined.
* Why serious: Leads to falls, syncope, reduced organ perfusion.
                        
Electrolyte Imbalance (especially hypokalemia or hyperkalemia)
*Absolute risk:
– Hypokalemia (diuretics): Common; clinically significant cases ~2–15% (varies widely).
– Hyperkalemia (ACE/ARB): Less common but clinically important.
* Relative risk: Clearly increased vs. placebo or non–electrolyte-altering drugs. 
* Details: Diuretics lower potassium; ACE/ARBs can raise it.
* Why serious: Severe imbalance can cause arrhythmias or muscle failure.
            
Angioedema (life-threatening swelling, especially with ACE inhibitors)
* Absolute risk: <1% overall; ARBs ~0.12% vs 0.07% placebo 
* Relative risk: ~1.5–2× higher than placebo (but rare)
* Details: Sudden swelling of face/throat.
* Why serious: Can cause airway obstruction and death.
            
Common but Non-fatal Effects 
 a. Dry cough (ACE inhibitors)
* Absolute risk: ~7–10% (up to ~13.9% in some studies) 
* Relative risk: ~7× higher than ARBs (~1–3%)
b. Dizziness/fatigue
* Absolute risk: Dizziness: 1.7%–14.8% depending on class. 
* Relative risk: Often 2–5× higher than baseline.
c. Adherence impact
* Real-world outcome: 23.5% discontinue within ~9 months; 40% partially non-adherent.
* Suggests side effects are clinically meaningful, not trivial (study of 370,000 patients).

If all this seems overly technical to you, you’re right. (Nigel’s results often feel that way to me.) So I asked him a simple question – the same question I asked about statin drugs and the COVID vaccines…

Question: Nigel, Do blood pressure medications extend life? 

His answer (like the answer I got when I asked about statin drugs): Yes, there is evidence that these drugs can extend life. But not by all that much. And there are offsetting risks – especially if you are my age (75) or older – that should cause you to pause.

And he gave me this breakdown…

1. For High-Risk Patients – including older adults or those with a high BP number – a modest but clear benefit. (But the net benefit, I would argue, is not impressive.)
            
2. For Average-Risk Patients – moderate hypertension without high short-term cardiovascular risk – a modest benefit. 
* Relative risk reduction (events): ~12% to 22%
* Absolute reduction: ~0.5%–1% over ~5 years
* Estimated life extension: likely months, not years (on average)
* Evidence strength: moderate
Bottom line: Benefits exist but are small in absolute terms.
            
3. For Low-Risk Patients – otherwise healthy individuals with mildly elevated BP – uncertain benefit. 
* Relative mortality reduction: not proven.
* Absolute mortality reduction: not demonstrated.
* Estimated life extension: 0 years proven.
* Evidence strength: weak (Cochrane reviews).
Bottom line: No clear evidence that treatment prolongs life.

Takeaways from Nigel’s Research 

* In Short: BP drugs do not directly “add years.” They reduce the probability of fatal events. High-risk patients may gain years. Average-risk patients may gain months. Low-risk patients may gain nothing measurable.

* There are some serious risks in taking blood pressure medication. They include kidney injury, hypotension, and electrolyte imbalance. However, these are not common.

* The most common unwanted side effects are bouts of coughing and dizziness (both of which I experienced when I was taking them). These can be annoying to some people, In fact, because of these side effects, 10% to 15% of those who take them eventually decide to stop.

My Own Experience 

I’m lucky. I didn’t have to make the tough decision about whether to continue taking blood pressure drugs or abandon them, hoping that I was statistically better off. But that’s because, in the middle months of last year, I lost 40 pounds, from 228 to 188, thanks to taking semaglutide shots, eating healthy, and exercising twice a day. Once I got the weight off, I kept it off. And that put me in the good-to-very-good range in everything one is normally tested for in a comprehensive blood test.

For the past two months, my resting pulse is in the 50 to 60 range. With strenuous exercise, I can get it to about 160 beats a minute. Three minutes later, it drops below 100. All of my biomarkers for heart health improved dramatically. My HDL, LDL, triglycerides, calcium, homocysteine, etc. numbers are all good-to-very-good for my age. Even my overall cholesterol count, which was the established metric for decades, is now below 150. So, it didn’t surprise me when my doctor agreed that I didn’t need to take the statins anymore. I stopped taking them about six months ago, and have not had a reason to start again.

One More Thing… 

I finished the above essay last night. This morning, I came across this article as I was sorting through the approximately 200 news sources, opinion pieces, business messages, and personal emails that overfill my inbox every day.