Normally, people’s blood pressure goes up from childhood until middle age. However, scientists have not been as sure about what happens to blood pressure in older people.
Researchers from the University of Exeter have discovered that in older people, blood pressure starts to drop gradually about 14 years before they pass away. This finding gives us new insights into the health of the elderly.
In the past, scientists noticed that blood pressure might decrease in older adults, and they thought that treatments for high blood pressure could be the reason for this decline.
To explore this further, researchers looked at the medical records of 46,634 people from Britain who had died at the age of 60 or older. These records included both healthy individuals and those with various health issues such as heart disease or dementia.
The researchers found that the sharpest declines in blood pressure were seen in patients with dementia, heart failure, significant weight loss late in life, and those who had high blood pressure. But interestingly, even healthy people without these conditions also showed a long-term drop in blood pressure.
This discovery showed that the decline in blood pressure wasn’t just because people with high blood pressure were dying early. It happened to both healthy and sick people alike.
Understanding this pattern is crucial for doctors as it can help them tailor treatments for older patients. The researchers suggest that doctors need to pay close attention to what falling blood pressure means for each elderly patient individually.
However, this finding doesn’t mean that older people should stop treating high blood pressure or stop taking their medication. The researchers emphasize that more studies are needed to understand why blood pressure drops this way in older people.
If you are interested in learning more about blood pressure, you might want to look into studies on what causes high blood pressure and the accuracy of common methods for measuring it.
Recent research suggests that drinking black tea may significantly reduce blood pressure, but some high blood pressure medications might increase the risk of heart failure.
This study was led by Professor George Kuchel and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies about vitamin impacts on high blood pressure people need to know, and how to manage high blood pressure and diabetes with healthy foods.
For more health information, please see recent studies about the best and worst foods for high blood pressure, and modified traditional Chinese cuisine can lower blood pressure.
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