Maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system reduces the risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke. High blood pressure and high blood cholesterol levels affect your blood vessels and heart, increasing the risk for these life-threatening conditions. Monitoring your blood pressure and cholesterol levels helps you make adjustments to your lifestyle that can influence these factors. For those who cannot manage their blood pressure and cholesterol levels, medications are available to help reduce them to healthy levels.
High Blood Pressure
Measuring your blood pressure tells you how much force your blood exerts on the walls of your blood vessels. A blood pressure measurement includes two readings: the systolic pressure measures the force of the blood as the heart contracts and the diastolic pressure measure the force of the blood as the heart relaxes. To maintain optimal heart health, the American Heart Association recommends keeping your blood pressure to 120 mmHg or less over 80 mmHg or less. As blood pressure increases, it can cause damage to the walls of the blood vessels, leading to weakness and scarring. It also increases the workload on the heart, leading to damage to the heart or valves in the heart. Controlling your blood pressure may require medication. Diuretics, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blockers and calcium channel blockers are among the medications used to treat high blood pressure.
High Blood Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a waxy type of fat both produced by the body and absorbed from foods you eat. Although necessary to support the formation of cell membranes and hormones, cholesterol can build up in the blood vessels, especially along areas of damage caused by high blood pressure. This explains why these two conditions often occur together. For optimal heart health, you should maintain a total cholesterol level of less than 200 mg/dL. Doctors consider cholesterol levels of greater than 240 mg/dL as high and at an increased risk for heart disease. Medications can help you decrease your cholesterol levels, but usually require a lifetime commitment.
Statin Medication
Because many patients suffer from both high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, it is important to make lifestyle changes, like eating a healthy diet, exercising and quitting the use of tobacco products. When making these changes fails to reduce your cholesterol levels and blood pressure readings, medications may become necessary. A classification of medications known as statins can help lower cholesterol levels by blocking a substance necessary for cholesterol production. Statin medications also have anti-inflammatory benefits that can help provide stability to the lining of the blood vessels, making plaques less likely to rupture and cause a heart attack or stroke. Statin medications also help blood vessels relax, therefore, lowering blood pressure.
Combination Medication
Some medications used to treat high blood pressure, such as those classified as beta blockers, may actually cause a slight increase in cholesterol levels. For those who already suffer from high cholesterol, or whose cholesterol levels approach the high level, talk to your doctor about taking a medication created to treat both conditions. Amlodipine besylate/atorvastatin calcium combines the calcium channel blocker medication amlodipine with the statin medication atorvastatin. Calcium channel blockers inhibit the influx of calcium ions into the muscle cells of the heart, therefore, reducing the intensity of the heart's contractions. It also helps to relax blood vessels. When combined with the statin medication, patients experience both a reduction in blood pressure and cholesterol levels, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
References
- National Heart Lung and Blood Institute: High Blood Cholesterol
- American Heart Association: Understanding Blood Pressure Readings
- MayoClinic.com: Statins -- Are These Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Right For You?
- U.S. National Library of Medicine: Caduet (amlodipine besylate and atorvastatin calcium) Tablet, film coated
- American Heart Association:Types of Blood Pressure Medications
