How to Down Blood Pressure

A worse killer than cancer, high blood pressure each year causes the death of countless thousands of its estimated 6,000,000 U.S. victims. Last week a reassuring new manual for laymen reported that modern medicine can do much to tame the disease. Written by able specialist Dr. Irvine Heinly Page of Indianapolis this extraordinarily readable book (Hypertension; Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Ill.; $1.50) is calculated to calm most panicky patients.

Blushers, Cheer Up. No one knows exactly what causes high blood pressure; it is not, as many suppose, merely old age or overindulgence in red meat, salt, drinking or smoking. About 40% of hypertensives seem to inherit a tendency to it; even babies sometimes have it. Dr. Page blames excitable nervous systems for a great many cases (evidenced by the fact that anger or fear makes blood pressure jump), and he suspects that another source of the disease is a chemical called angiotonin, released by the kidneys when their blood supply goes wrong.

High blood pressure, says Dr. Page, should not necessarily be alarming: some people with blood pressure well above the danger line of 140 live to a ripe old age, because their blood vessels and hearts are tough enough to stand the strain. Hypertension becomes dangerous only when it results in sclerosis (scarring) of the arteries or arterioles (small branches of the arteries). Eventually this scarring may close some of the small blood vessels, cut off blood supply, overstrain the heart, lead to a brain stroke or coronary thrombosis.

First symptoms of the disease are likely to be headaches, dizziness, lightheadedness, excessive blushing. Dr. Page advises people with these symptoms to see a doctor and keep cool. Blushing is "a good rather than a bad sign" because it indicates a relatively harmless type of hypertension. Extreme danger signals are wavy vision with blind spots and red or smoky urine, indicating hemorrhages in eyes or kidneys.

Care and Cure. On the highly controversial subject of treatment with drugs and surgery, Dr. Page has liberal views. He believes that it often helps to give potassium thiocyanate (which reduces blood pressure and stops hypertensive headaches), remove a diseased kidney (but be sure it is the right one) or cut the nerves that connect the abdominal blood vessels with the nervous system. Dr. Page modestly dismisses as still an unproved experiment his own discovery--a kidney extract injected to counteract angiotonin (TIME, March 3, 1941)--although it has effected some remarkable cures.

Since most hypertensives must learn how to live with high blood pressure for the rest of their lives, Dr. Page urges them to stop assuming that they are done for.

His "not too oppressive" rules for hypertensives:

> Exercise moderately; never get tired; never run up a flight of stairs.

> Rest twice a day; doze at every opportunity; quit work at 3:30 or 4; take frequent but not long vacations.

> Eat four or five light meals a day instead of three big ones; keep weight down; avoid cathartics.

> Smoking (two cigars or ten cigarets), coffee (two and a half cups) and moderate drinking are all right in most cases. On drinking: "The proper reaction for hypertensives is a feeling of warmth, both in his skin and toward his fellow beings."

> Normal sexual intercourse is "altogether beneficial," but "a state of chronic low-grade sexual excitement ... is particularly undesirable for the hypertensive."

> Avoid arguments, worry, salt water, Turkish baths.

> "Many hypertensives . . . have not learned to accept and enjoy the good things of life without feelings of doubt and guilt. . . . The goal of the hypertensive [should be] a life of cultivated serenity. . . ."

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