Have you recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure? Do you have diabetic nephropathy or other kidney disease? Has your doctor recommended taking Lisinopril or other ace inhibitors as part of your treatment? Learn about the most common side effects as well as the more rare ones that you should watch out for. Starting a new medication can be scary so be informed.
Have you recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure is your doctor recommending that you take lisinopril but you’re concerned about possible side effects if so then this is a video for you keep watching to learn a little more about what side effects to watch out for and why this can be an important medication for you welcome to family minute i’m doctor richardson
And this is your home for practical and accurate information to help your family make healthy decisions this is a channel that focuses on reading better health to your home on today’s episode we’re going to be talking about one of those common medications that we use a treat high blood pressure called the center pro to do so i’m going to do this a little different
Than my other videos we’re going to talk about the medication through the eyes of a recent patient of mine who has ended up starting on the xenophon now to protect his privacy we’ll just refer to him as jim so jim’s a 58 year old patient of mine who came to me after being seen in his dentist’s office while there they noticed that his blood pressure was high it was
158 over 92 they ended up repeating the test it was about the same so they recommended that he come in to see me as i saw him in the office i noticed that his previous blood pressures of in borderline high too high a few times about the time he wasn’t too excited to start medication for it to be honest at this visit he really wasn’t too excited to start on anything
Either so we had a great discussion about blood pressure and why it’s so important to treat it i told him that the reason we care about high blood pressure is because the impact that it can have on your overall health you see a high blood pressure is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and stroke as well as it plays a significant role
In chronic kidney disease often times we refer to high blood pressure has the silent you learn it’s called us because it typically doesn’t have any symptoms when you take your blood pressure you get two numbers the top number is called the systolic blood pressure this is your pressure that your heart exerts about vessels whatever your tracks now the bottom number is
Called the diastolic blood pressure that’s the resting pressure in your blood vessels when your heart isn’t beating both numbers are important for most people we diagnose high blood pressure when your numbers are over 140 on the top and 90 on the bottom on a consistent basis so in jim’s case with his blood pressure being 158 over 92 he was a high risk of having a
Heart attack or a stroke at some point in his life let’s give his attention a little bit more but he was still hesitant to do anything about it he just had a hard time getting over the fact that he may have the nick of medication to treat a condition that doesn’t have any symptoms he wouldn’t even know he had it if he hadn’t been checked my atonement ii he really
Wasn’t alone with his concern in fact it’s one of the harder things that i have to do is help people understand how important it is to treat blood pressure especially when you’re not having any symptoms i told him you don’t want the first symptom to be a stroke now that seemed to get attention so we asked a little bit more about what needs to be done so we had a
Great discussion about diet and lifestyle changes we talked about how he needs the exercise in five times a week avoiding excessive salt this time watching them find carbohydrates and focusing on getting lots of fruits and vegetables in his diet and ultimately working on some weight loss he was willing to work on these but he was worried that he wasn’t going to be
Too successful so we gave him some encouragement the start for recommended because of his age and where his blood pressures were at the moment but it would be best if we helped him a little bit with his blood pressure i recommended that we start him on lisinopril this is a medication that has been available in united states since 1987 it used it was principally
A control blood pressure but it’s also used to help decrease the risk of heart failure after somebody’s had a heart attack as well as treat people like diabetics who have damage to their kidneys that causes you delete protein mirrior now instead of problems to the class and medication called angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors we call them ace inhibitors for
Short they work by blocking certain enzyme that affects how your kidneys are able to regulate blood pressure in your body but the best part is not only do they help lower your blood pressure but they have a lot of great studies shown have a significantly decrease your risk of having a heart attack this is why felons would be a good choice for june he was warming
Up to the idea of trying medication for that still has something service he was worried about whether we could even remember to take it this is always a concern with medication but lisinopril is pretty easy to take as you’re willing to take it once a day it comes in at a ttle of 2.5 and 5 10 20 and 40 milligrams the maximum effective dose being 40 milligrams now
Having a different dose drinks also makes a lot easier to find the right dose for each individual now another concerning have is whether it would be something that had to stay on his whole life now this is a great question one that many don’t like the answer to it’s important to understand that with lisinopril and any other blood pressure medication it only works
While you’re taking it we don’t have anything that will cure high blood pressure but i explained i have people come in all the time with their blood pressure high after we originally had a control telling me that they stopped the medication because we fixed it now unfortunately this is not the way it works unless you have some underlying lifestyle issues that are
Causing your high blood pressure and you fix those you need to stay on these medications don’t stop them unless you discuss it with your doctor now if you do make some significant lifestyle changes and your blood pressure starts to drop then under the direction of your doctor they may be able to pull back on how much you are taking or even get off of it this isn’t
The norm though and unfortunately sometimes we just have high blood pressure in order to prevent that heart attack and stroke you need to stay on your medication so at this point i think i had him a little more convinced this may be the route that he wanted to take however he was still a little bit concerned about the side effects fortunately for most people this
Is the great news about this medication lisinopril that is usually well tolerated it’s not very often that i have a patient want to stop it because of sai thanks that being said any medication has the potential for side effects and the sena pro is no different i explained to them the most common side effects that we tend to see with lisinopril are cough dizziness
Headaches fatigue and maybe some light sensitivity now all these the one that i see most commonly is the cough this is the classic side effect that can happen with the center pro it’s really relatively uncommon still but if you’re gonna have a problem with this medication that will make you want to stop it it will most likely be the cause you see what happens is
For some people for whatever reason they don’t get rid of the breakdown products at its medication now as this builds up in the body for some reason it causes some irritation to the throat it causes a dried tickle no throw it in a coffin to be really annoying now it typically is one of those cops that you may not even totally notice but those around you will but
The good news is there’s nothing dangerous about it once you stop the medication it’ll go away you just need to do it under the care of your doctor so they can switch into something else certainly other things can cause a cop to so if you’re having congestion or other cold or respiratory like symptoms it’s probably not the medication now the other thing that we
May see is dizziness this is usually a sign that the medication is working too well if this happens typically you notice that when you stand up you get the head rush revealing it may feel like you’re gonna pass sound if this is happening concentrate on standing up slower check your blood pressure ring wasn’t your doctor so you can talk about it sometimes all you
Need to do is just adjust the dose there are more serious of a rare reactions you should be aware of and watch for we already mentioned low blood pressure but some people who have a more significant drop that is more difficult to clean also there’s a condition called angioedema that can occur in some people and it certainly is a common i think i’ve seen it once in
My career it’s most easily described as what you may see with an allergic reaction where you can get some swelling in your face lips throat tongue and even in your bowels if you think this is happening it’s important to stop your medication and contact your doctor rarely it can cause severe swelling in your throat or airway if this is happening to you immediately
Emergency room right away other air side effects can be inflammation of the pancreas that we call pancreatitis elevated potassium levels and some can cause an increase in promotion the most common reason we see decreased kidney function with this medication is when people combine it with into inflammatories i got your profound aleve or medicine similar to those
When you take these kind of medications especially when you are doing it on a regular basis the combination of the two can cause a decreased blood flow to important parts of the kidney and damaged some of the best advice that i can give is to avoid combining anti-inflammatories and kinase inhibitors like lisinopril it really can be harmful for you so just like
You jim after hearing about some of these possibilities was a little nervous about taking the medication but i’ll tell you just like i told him you have to step back and look at the big picture the risk of these side effects is very small some of which i’ve never seen so don’t let the fear of a rare side effect put you in danger of a very real risk the untreated
High blood pressure brings it would be the same as say mchugh don’t want to drive to the hospital when you’re sick because you might get in a car crash now that seemed to do the trick to help jim feel a little more comfortable starting on something like this but he still had one hang-up he was worried because he had heard about how expensive medications can be
Now luckily i was able to come as furious about this as well lisinopril is very affordable it’s been generic for some time in fact you can get a 30-day supply to a local walmart for $4 so jim finally decided this was the right course of treatment for him on subsequent visits we were able to get his blood pressure controlled very well and he’s done great on it
We’re still working on making some of those lifestyle changes but he’ll get there so overall the center pile can be a great medication for most people it was for jim but like most medications they are for everybody if you’re thinking about it for yourself there are a few groups of people that should be cautious about taking it those who just stay clear of it are
Those who have already had a prior allergic reaction or had a history of angioedema that we talked about before also if you are pregnant or are female in your childbearing years you may want to look elsewhere also those who already have some underlying kidney disease or severe heart disease or certain heart valve problems should also be careful about it work with
Your doctor to find the right one for you if diet and lifestyle changes have not met enough to control your blood pressure and your doctor recommends that you take lisinopril as part of your treatment regimen hopefully you have a little more confidence in using this as part of your treatment plan now this certainly isn’t an all-inclusive an in-depth discussion
Everything that could be told about this medication that’s not what i’m trying to do here my purpose in sharing this information is to help give information that you can think of to discuss with your own doctor so please don’t take this as direct medical advice take everything you’ve learned today and discuss it with your own doctor and how it applies to you and
Your own since you if you found this information to be helpful do me a favor go ahead and hit that like button and share with your friends and family and if your health is really important to you consider subscribing and hit that notification button so you don’t miss out on any of our future content now don’t go anywhere because if you’re looking for ways that you
Can make some good diet and lifestyle changes to treat that blood pressure go ahead and click here to watch some simple steps that you can start your diet journey and if you’re looking for another option treat your blood pressure then click here so until next time this is family met with dr. richardson can remember take care of your body because it’s the only one
Transcribed from video
LISINOPRIL FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE: Is it right for you? | What are the Side Effects? By Erik Richardson D.O.