Posted on 03/22/2026 5:51:24 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For years, turning 65 with a blood pressure reading above 130 meant one thing: medication.
A new analysis of the 2025 American Heart Association guidelines shows that this practice is changing, finding that roughly 10 percent of older adults previously flagged for treatment may no longer meet the criteria, a move experts say prevents overtreatment, but one that carries its own risks.
The 2025 guidelines marked a significant departure from the 2017 AHA guidelines, which recommended treatment for all adults over 65 with blood pressure at or above 130/80 mmHg.
The updated 2025 guidelines replace that blanket approach with one that weighs a patient’s 10-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, offering what experts describe as a more personalized lens on heart health.
Under the new framework, immediate medication is no longer recommended based only on age and blood pressure levels, but also with consideration of the individual’s other cardiovascular risk factors. This translates to around 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 65 with early hypertension who would no longer being recommended medication.
More than 70 million Americans are currently taking medication to lower their blood pressure and reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke. However, these drugs can sometimes cause side effects like dizziness, fatigue, and kidney problems, making the question of who truly needs treatment a consequential one.
Researchers analyzed data from 2,200 adults aged 65 to 79 with high blood pressure. They compared two groups: one that received treatment based on the 2017 guidelines, and another based on the current ones, which are guided by each person’s overall health risk profile.
They found that around 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 65 with Stage 1 hypertension would no longer be recommended medication, provided that they are otherwise healthy with no other cardiovascular risk factors.
Stage 1 hypertension is defined by blood pressure readings of 130 to 139 mmHg systolic or 80 to 89 mmHg diastolic.
The study also found that about 40 percent of older adults with high blood pressure could benefit from treatment that considers their overall health risks, not just their blood pressure numbers. This risk-guided approach could prevent overmedication of patients and thereby shield more patients from the potential side effects of blood pressure medication, while still reducing cardiovascular disease risk.
“The art now is to match the intensity of treatment to both global cardiovascular risk and the patient’s blood pressure, rather than chasing a number at all costs and treating all older patients with a ‘one size fits all’ approach,” Dr. Carolyn Lam, senior consultant cardiologist at the National Heart Center of Singapore and co-founder of AI medtech platform Us2.ai, told The Epoch Times.
In older adults, the concerns with over-aggressive blood pressure lowering include dizziness, falls, fractures, and acute kidney injury, especially in those who are frail or have chronic kidney disease, Lam noted.
The risk-guided approach, she explained, concentrates intensive treatment where the absolute benefit is greatest—typically in patients with diabetes, kidney disease, or multiple cardiometabolic risks—while avoiding unnecessary polypharmacy in lower-risk patients.
“Done well, this can reduce heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure, yet also help preserve independence and quality of life in later years,” Lam said.
“Many of these people are fragile,” he pointed out, and have blood pressure that goes up and down in a way that can be difficult to predict.
“Some of them have periods where their blood pressures go very low on their own, and then the blood pressure medication is quite difficult to use because you’re trying to abolish the high values, but you don’t want them to be exposed to low [blood pressure] values,” he said.
However, Kowey also warned that the report may have the unintended consequence of reducing treatment for those who really need it.
“I have a big problem with this,” he said. “It’s very analogous to what we’ve done with statins and LDL.”
He compared the new model for prescribing antihypertensive drugs to the risk models applied from previous guidelines on statin prescription statins and LDLs, which reduced the number of Americans that would once be candidates for statin medication by up to 40 percent.
Because the new risk model requires considering all relevant risk factors for treating high blood pressure, Kowey said a primary care doctor who is not savvy enough or doesn’t have enough time to do all the risk assessments is likely to get the wrong message.
“Which is, ‘well, I don’t have to treat this guy or this lady,’ and I think that could be a big trap,” he warned.
Kowey emphasized that he would very much not want primary care doctors to be, in the 10 minutes that they have spent with a patient, “sitting there wringing their hands about whether they should treat a blood pressure of 160 over 100 because of the risk factor issue.”
He concluded that the big challenge isn’t getting people off medications—“The big challenge here is finding all the people out there that need to be treated and giving them something that works, and that they can tolerate.”
I didn’t know poisonous snakes were the source of lisinopril. That potency could explain certain side effects. I have heard of spider venom used as a base source for treatment of some cancers, malaria and arrhythmia.
How do you eat your egg shells? I would rinse mine off and soak them in apple cider vinegar for a week in the refrigerator then use the vinegar with olive oil for a salad dressing.
Did you ever have a Covid shot, and if so, which kind. See my comment #80 on clearing spike protein caused by all 3 major US Covid shots.
Further note. My bossy computer insists on writing I’ll when I want to write I’ll (see it did it again) I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, you stupid computer. OK, calm down, ill, only took 3 tries completely erasing and reentering with lower case i each time. It even entered I instead of i after the words lower case, stubborn and dumb. AI not as good as advertised. At least I only had to erase and rewrite that vowel once instead of 3 times for the contraction. GRRRRR
When it goes below 99 I get a little dizzy. I do BP every night and the range is usually 110-125 over70-80. But I am medicated to reduce heart rate so that is probably the reason.
My brother is a lifelong athlete and he says his is often around 80/? without symptoms.
Will have to try that. I’ve been eating them raw.
Another method is to make a powder. 1st you boil
them 5 min then bake for 10 min at 200 degrees then
mash them in to a powder. 1/2 to 1 tsp/day.
*
No covid shots. Some of them may have been harmless
if the disclosure sheet was blank then only saline
solution.
Most people didn’t know to ask for it.
LOL, I use Grok for my AI research.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Mt experience parallels yours in that I also got the J&J vaccine that was non-mRNA. It almost killed me as I already had Covid-19 and later found out that the vaccine after having the illness caused severe reaction.
I too developed the lung congestion,(diagnosed with emphysema when half of left lung removed from lung cancer), and coughing. After many months of severe symptoms including heart arrhythmia, headaches, severe joint pain, brain fog, and the final straw was severe heartburn... I was laying in the hospital ER and doing Google searches on my phone to determine the cause, and found I had high histamines in my blood from a deficiency of diamine oxidase enzyme.
From the ER, I ordered some DAO Enzyme on Amazon. It arrived the next day at my home and I took 2 tablets prior to bed.
I woke up the next morning feeling 20 years younger. I felt great. Sleep apnea was gone, so was the brain fog, sinus congestion, neck inflamation, heart burn, joint pain... lungs cleared up and my digestion improved. It was a miracle drug for me.
I started making DAO (diamine oxidase enzyme) myself from sprouted green peas and maintained the health benefits.
One size does not fit all.
Western allopathic practitioners will kill you if you let them.
My dad is pushing 84yo. Stupid doctor has been messing with his BP meds hard for the last few years.
Pops finally started listening to what his body was telling him rather than what his doc had to say.
Off ALL of his BP meds and typically running in the 140/90 range, he now feels better than he has for a REALLY LONG TIME. No more dizzy spells when he stands up. Energy to do something other than sit in his barc-o-lounger all day. Clarity of thought improved. yada yada yada
“Do not use the measurement in the doctor’s office.”
I do as you suggest and take my BP at home for the week prior to an exam.
They call this, ‘White Coat Syndrome’ and many people are so psyched about a doctor appointment that your blood pressure DOES rise!
When mine was first recorded as high, I refused all meds, other than a water pill. At the time when mine was high, I had just sold my beloved farm, moved to a bigger farm with more work, my Dad was dying from cancer and we were in the throes of CovidBS-19.
Yeah - no wonder why my blood pressure was elevated! Yeesh!
I’m at normal levels now that my life has evened out again.
The current theory on White Coat effects is not nerves or stress.
It is that as a child, in a medical place, you had some bad experience. Your brain was still developing and this event hard-wired the brain to fight-or-flight in medical environments. You can tell yourself to relax all you want. The hard wiring won’t care.
The dizziness on those meds is a non starter for me.
I was fine last time I went to the doctor - but after rotating through a lot of Docs at the VA, I’ve had the same Doc for nearly 3 years now - which is some sort of record!
Frequencies in reference to the established Medical benefits of phototherapy which has been around since the ancient Greeks, and in recent times used most notably in forms such as a cold laser, however it has advanced to other new tech.
Biotechnology in the form of phototherapy or light therapy. Science is moving away from biochemical model to biophysics — light water magnetism. The mitochondrial dna.
Loren Picard discovered the extensive benefits of the ghkcu copper peptide. This peptide can also regenerate ones own stem cells.
There’s lots of talk currently of synthetic peptides and injections. Or the expensive foray of going abroad to get stem cell injections which may or may not work. However there is no need when we can activate natural processes in the body. Stem cells will go wherever they are needed and everyone is different. So we’re talking about not a protocol not a one-time thing we’re talking about a lifestyle. A long-term regenerative map, also resetting the genes and age reversal. Losing the one pill for one ill mentality like distributed out to cattle, rejecting God’s creation and each of our individual unique DNA designs. We are light beings giving off biophotons more powerful than the sun. And for many people suffering from whatever challenge, as heart health, the activation of the above processes in the body can bring resolution.
bkmk
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