High blood pressure a scam to sell drugs?

[SeekinTruth]

I tend to agree that high blood pressure (like so many other things) has become mostly a scam to sell drugs, but not necessarily exclusively. I can be serious in some cases, certainly. But like cholesterol, they've been lowering the "normal" figures and scaring people, that's for sure. Someone on the forum, I think it was LQB posted some time back that "old time" doctors used to say for each decade above 30 or 40 years old, if I remember correctly, you should add 10 points to BP readings to be normal. (One of those "old school" country doctors had told him that, I think). For some reason I can't seem to find the post now.

 

[nicklebleu]

... "old time" doctors used to say for each decade above 30 or 40 years old, if I remember correctly, you should add 10 points to BP readings to be normal. (One of those "old school" country doctors had told him that, I think). For some reason I can't seem to find the post now.

That's certainly a valid concept in my opinion - but only for the systolic (upper) BP, but not for the diastolic (lower) BP. The diastolic BP is anyway much more important in regard to whether or not one gets the diagnosis of "hypertension".

FWIW