‘Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened." Winston Churchill

Many moons ago I was at a conference on cardiovascular disease when the results of the Medical Research Council (MRC) study on treating hypertension were released. This was supposed to be the definitive trial on the subject. Big enough to answer the three killer questions.

Once again the great Nostrakendrickos has been proven correct. My son does a little dance nowadays accompanied by the words ‘Oh yes… oh yes…. oh yes’ whenever he does something he considers brilliant. Normally scoring about five gazillion points on an incomprehensible game on PS2.

In the last few days I have been perfecting my own little ‘I told you so’ Dance. Why? Because, for some time now I have been critical of lowering blood pressure with drugs. Primarily because I believe this to be complete waste of time based on idiotic thinking. A harsh yet fair judgement, I think.

What A Marvelous And Novel Revelation! And Just When Someone Was Trying To Tell Me That Stress, Psychological Or Physical, Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Dying Of Coronary Artery Disease

Here are a few other examples to remind us that memory lapses in science may be more common that we may think....

RESULTS: On days when the local professional football team lost at home, mortality attributable to acute myocardial infarction and stroke increased significantly in men. No increase was observed in women. CONCLUSIONS: Results achieved by the local professional football team are associated systematically with circulatory disease death rates over a five year period in men, but not women.

One Contrary To The Same Company’s Aggressive Promotion Of Its Drugs To Treat High Blood Pressure And Lower Cholesterol

They say you should never explain a joke, because then it just isn’t funny any more. I quite agree, but something made me laugh over the weekend, and there is no way that I can get anyone to understand why without explaining it.

I shall attempt to set the scene.

‘Blood pressure screening for children should start at age 3, according to the latest government diagnosis and treatment guidelines that were presented at the American Society of Hypertension’s Nineteenth Annual Scientific Meeting.’

To tell the truth, I was tempted to make that statement my entire column. Perhaps arrange it artistically in the midst of white space. Or maybe I should just stencil it out on a huge sheet of paper, frame it and send it in for an international arts prize. I would entitle it ‘Proof of a world gone mad.’

An Interview with Dr. John Laragh

John Laragh, MD, is director of the Cardiovascular Center at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and Weill Medical College and Editor-In-Chief of the American Journal of Hypertension

This two-part series is an expanded version of an article that will appear in the October edition of the Health and Stress monthly newsletter of the American Institute of Stress

This column will also appear in the August edition of the Health and Stress monthly newsletter of the American Institute of Stress

The "diet dictocrats" are at it again. The latest NHLBI (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute) warning is that Americans are eating too much salt and are therefore at increased risk for hypertension, stroke and heart attacks. Others claim that excess sodium is a poison that can also cause cancer and osteoporosis. NHLBI recommends that not only high blood pressure patients but all Americans should sharply reduce their sodium intake, regardless of age, gender or race. This is another example of the same, stupid "one size fits all" cookie cutter approach of treating population statistics and laboratory measurements rather than people.

This article is from July’s Health and Stress monthly newsletter of the American Institute of Stress

Up until a few weeks ago, if you asked anyone, including doctors what they considered a normal or desirable adult blood pressure to be, 120/80 would have been the most frequent response. Not any more. According to the new JNC-7 guidelines, 120/80 puts you in a new disease category called "prehypertension" and at increased risk for heart attack, stroke, or kidney disease. The recommendations for rectifying this potentially deadly disorder are the usual advice to lose weight, avoid salt and sodium rich foods, exercise regularly, stop smoking and reduce stress. However, we all know how difficult it is to achieve these goals, much less maintain them. And even if you do, the results are not that rewarding, even for patients with blood pressures of 160/100 and higher.

I write this before I have read all the details on the new Heart Lung and Blood Institute guidelines on raised blood pressure. But there has been enough information flying around to know what they are saying. Frankly, I knew what these guidelines were going to say before the committee met for the first time. Before, in fact, the members of the committee even knew they were going to be on the committee.

A EQUALS B, AND B EQUALS C, YET C IS GREATER THAN A

Yes, I know, the title looks a bit like one of those horrible mathematical proofs that only the class swot used to know. Everyone else doodled on the side of the page and waited for the class bell to ring in time for them to make their escape.

But please don’t run and hide, I intend to use no mathematics in this article. What I want to highlight is the fact that a great deal of research directly contradicts the conventional and yet no-one in the medical community appears even slightly concerned.

I have written about hypertension a couple of times. So I thought that I should throw my hat into the ring about the controversy surrounding the ALLHAT trial. A trial which wins my official tortuous acronym award? ALLHAT stands for the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering treatment to prevent Heart Attack Trial.

Actually, my favourite acronym is the CARPORT trial. This stands for, wait for it: the Coronary Artery Restenosis Prevention On Repeated Thomboxane A₂-receptor blockade. There are others, the TIBET, ALIVE, LIFE, LIMIT. Rule number one, your clinical trial must have a memorable acronym otherwise, self-evidently, no-one will remember it.

Why Almost Everything Written About Treating Blood Pressure Is Wrong

(Part Two) - (begin the series here)

Some of you may have seen research reported in the New Scientist magazine which established quite clearly that most scientific researchers don’t bother to read the full papers that they use for references. In fact, most of them just copy and paste the list of references used in other papers.

(Part One)

Let’s suppose that one day you went to the doctor and she decided to take your temperature, just to see what it was. To your surprise it was two degrees higher than normal. As we all know, a high temperature is associated with a higher than normal level of mortality, so the doctor decided to use a drug to get your temperature down, along with advice to wear less clothes and take cold baths.

C-REACTIVE PROTEIN

How The Medical Profession Will Turn A Symptom Into A Disease

You may have heard a bit about a substance in the blood called C-reactive protein (CRP). It is released in ‘inflammatory’ conditions in the body: infections, rheumatoid arthritis and also heart attacks. CRP has been around, and known about, for years. However, CRP is about to suffer the same fate of other innocent substances in the blood that have the misfortune to rise in people who have heart disease. It is going to be accused of causing heart disease.