Is it ok to go on and off blood pressure medication?

Question

My mother has high blood pressure, but does not like taking pills, so she is only taking her blood pressure pills when she feels she needs them and not every day. Is it harmfull to do this?

Answer 1

This is not a good idea. can be very dangerous. if your mom is having probs with the pills, she needs to talk to her doctor, he can perscribe differant ones.
High blood pressure is nothing to mess around with. Thats why it's called the silent killer.

Answer 2

Your mother needs to know that this is simply not acceptable. Going on and off blood pressure medication is VERY dangerous. First of all, it defeats the purpose of taking the medicine in the first place since you never end up with enough of the medicine in your system at one time to help lower blood pressure. In addition, if you happens to take it regularly for awhile and then stop taking it, your blood pressure can suddenly skyrocket which can lead to a heart attack and obviously, death. So...tell her to deal with her "pill issues" or talk to her doctor about it, but what she's doing now is definitely NOT OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 3

The lifestyle changes you are making are excellent...the self-prescribing or un-medicating of your blood pressure is however not excellent or even anywhere near a good idea ...this is something you should do under the care and instructions of your doctor. You trusted this doctor enough at first , I do not see any reason for you to suddenly decide you know better than the doctor and drop the BP meds. He is being cautious which is his job...you would have more to be concerned about if he just let you plan your own medication.

Answer 4

You can't feel it when your blood pressure is high so you can't say I feel fine so I'm not taking them. It's critical to take them and you must take them every single day. You need to try and get the point across to her that you're worried about her and you want her to take them. It's only a little pill so what if you have her take them when she eats a meal with you so you can see her take them. Just bring them to the table and put them down or put a pill on her plate and don't say any more. It might not hurt to call her doctor and tell him that you're worried and see if they would call her. She might understand that you're concerned enough to call him.

Answer 5

YES! Yes, because BP has to be pretty high before you feel it, and hypertension (even if you don't notice it) can do its dirty work silently: destroy the kidneys and cause heart attacks and strokes, among other things.

Heart attacks can kill you or make you permanently weaker; strokes can kill you or make you unable to move part of your body and/or not think the way you used to, and ruined kidneys means you'll have to spend 3 days a week, every week, in dialysis in order to survive. If you don't know what dialysis is, look it up--it's not pleasant.

AND, if she's a diabetic and thinks that diet/blood sugar really don't matter, those matter too--they make all the problems I outlined above worse.

Answer 6

Onec a person starts bp medicine, should continue rest of life eitrher have the presuure or not. But may change the type of Medicine. Better not off on. Ok ?

Answer 7

I'm pretty sure that's not a good idea, blood pressure is nothing to mess around with

Answer 8

YES!! She needs to take her BP pills as directed for the rest of her life, EVEN when she is feeling better. She is putting herself at great risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke!!!!

Answer 9

i hope that your mother is not a doctor. she is not taking very good care of herself. the doctor prescribes blood pressure medication to be taken daily. there is no gray area.
she could kill herself by taking it when she feels like it.

Answer 10

Tell her she has to take them everyday just like her doctor told her to not just when she feels like it. You can do more damage by stopping and starting them again. She could end up in the hospital or even worse, death.