Hollister : Hypertension Needs A Good Dose of Healthy Food And Exercise Along With The Proper Medication

Article by Richard Kuehn

Hollister : Hypertension Needs A Good Dose of Healthy Food And Exercise Along With The Proper Medication: View From A Private Duty Caregiver Serving, Carmel, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Gilroy, Hollister, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas & Seaside, CaliforniaAt a recent meeting of the American Society for Hypertension, Kaiser Permanente, the large Northern California health plan, said they were making major strides in the battle against high blood pressure. 80% of their 660,000 patients diagnosed with hypertension have the condition under control, up from 44% a decade ago, said Kaiser Permanente. Another study last year which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that in national health surveys, half of Americans with high blood pressure had it under control in 2008 compared with 31% at the beginning of the last decade and 27% in the early 1990s. “That progress that’s been made nationally is really striking,” Brent Egan, a blood-pressure expert at Medical University of South Carolina told the Wall Street Journal. “It has exceeded what I thought was possible,” he said. Kaiser Permanente has used a strategy of coming up with clinical guidelines for diet, exercise and medical treatment and sticking to them. It also got ideas from a number of clinics and used the strategies that have proven most effective, then started a registry to track patients status. They made great strides combining two medications after seeing positive results from clinical trials. Previously, most patients received a single medication. By developing such a huge database of people with hypertension and tracking their treatment and status over time, what Kaiser Permanente has done is the equivalent of a giant research project, but even better than most research projects because patients were studied and their treatments were changed over time based on the ongoing results of the study. Kaiser Permanente would call in some patients which appeared as if they would benefit from a change in drug regimen, while others were asked to come in because it looked as if they hadn’t had their blood pressure checked in some time and they were at high risk of hypertension. “We can’t just rely on patients showing up on our doorsteps,” Marc Jaffe, clinical leader of Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Cardiovascular risk-reduction program, told the Wall Street Journal. About 74.5 million people have high blood pressure according to the American Heart Association (AHA), and those over 60 or those who are obese are extremely susceptible to this ailment, reports the AHA. Defined as a reading of 140/90 or higher, those patients face being at high risk of a heart attack, stroke, congestive heart failure and kidney failure. At Family inHome Caregiving, we stress to our Clients, many of whom are in their 80′s and 90′s, that a combination of a healthy diet and exercise, paired with a lot of social stimulation, can make them happier and healthier. Kaiser takes a similar stance, stressing to its patients that eating right and exercise can be just as important as drug treatments, particularly when patients are obese. As the medical community continues to struggle with budget cuts and how to provide better service at a lower cost, Kaiser Permanente appears to have come up with a winning strategy in the treatment of hypertension. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355542170157276.htmlhttp://www.familyinhomecaregiving.com/blog/index.html?entry=hospitals-being-pressured-to-increase

About the Author

About Richard Kuehn & Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey:

After more than a decade of caregiving, both in a professional environment and for a 97 year old family member I was dissatisfied with service from local caregiving agencies. I became convinced of the need for a service which provides very personal assistance to the elderly and founded Family inHome Caregiving serving the Monterey Peninsula. Please visit my blog where I talk about important senior issues at:http://www.familyinhomecaregiving.com/Blog

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