High blood pressure not only causes CHF, it makes CHF worse if you have it. There are great medications for high blood pressure: Some people call them antihypertensives. We call them ‘Pressure Pills.’

What It Is
What To Do About It

Pressure pills treat high blood pressure. People with high blood pressure have narrowed, constricted blood vessels, so their blood, which used to flow free and easy through their normal-sized blood vessels, is now jammed in there - totally pressurized.

Pressure pills take the narrowed constricted blood vessels, and open them up so blood can flow free and easy again.

High blood pressure has a scary nickname: “The silent killer.”

That’s because people with high blood pressure feel exactly like people who don’t have high blood pressure - fine.

Except bad things happen to them:

Heart attacks

Strokes

Pulmonary embolisms (sort of a stroke in your lungs)

And congestive heart failure.

There are two bad things about this (beyond the obvious):

First, people get fooled. Because they don’t feel sick from their high blood pressure, they don’t feel any better when they take their pressure pills. So they stop taking them - and then they have a heart attack, a stroke, or a pulmonary embolism. Or their heart failure gets dangerously worse.

Heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and CHF are much more terrible than you think they’re going to be.

People say, I know how I want to die - I just want to drop dead one day from a heart attack. That may be an easy way to go - but it forgets your loved ones who will be crying over your coffin, and the empty home they’ll go to after the funeral.

Strokes are worse than anyone who hasn’t had one can imagine - Your face gets disfigured. You drool. You can’t speak right - if you can speak at all. You can’t walk. And people stare at you.

People who have pulmonary embolisms suffocate. Many of them die.

If you already have CHF, it doesn’t mean that stuff can’t happen to you.

And don’t forget that high blood pressure is probably what caused your CHF in the first place— so it will definitely make your CHF worse now.

Hearts love open blood vessels that are easy to pump blood through.

But people who have high blood pressure have blood vessels that are too narrow for the to fit the blood that wants to flow through them: In other words, the blood is jammed in.

Imagine a blocked drain pipe. Water is flowing through it - but not enough and too slowly.

Now imagine using that plunger that’s been in your bathroom for the past 14 years. It pushes the water through, but now there’s a lot of pressure in the pipe and inside the plunger.

That’s your heart (the plunger) and your blood vessels (the drain pipe) when you have high blood pressure. There’s a lot of strain on your heart and a lot of pressure inside those blood vessels.

Pressure pills open up that drain pipe (we mean, your blood vessels) making it easier on the plunger (we mean, your heart).

What It Is

Pressure pills treat high blood pressure. People with high blood pressure have narrowed, constricted blood vessels, so their blood, which used to flow free and easy through their normal-sized blood vessels, is now jammed in there - totally pressurized.

Pressure pills take the narrowed constricted blood vessels, and open them up so blood can flow free and easy again.

High blood pressure has a scary nickname: “The silent killer.”

That’s because people with high blood pressure feel exactly like people who don’t have high blood pressure - fine.

Except bad things happen to them:

Heart attacks

Strokes

Pulmonary embolisms (sort of a stroke in your lungs)

And congestive heart failure.

There are two bad things about this (beyond the obvious):

First, people get fooled. Because they don’t feel sick from their high blood pressure, they don’t feel any better when they take their pressure pills. So they stop taking them - and then they have a heart attack, a stroke, or a pulmonary embolism. Or their heart failure gets dangerously worse.

Heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and CHF are much more terrible than you think they’re going to be.

People say, I know how I want to die - I just want to drop dead one day from a heart attack. That may be an easy way to go - but it forgets your loved ones who will be crying over your coffin, and the empty home they’ll go to after the funeral.

Strokes are worse than anyone who hasn’t had one can imagine - Your face gets disfigured. You drool. You can’t speak right - if you can speak at all. You can’t walk. And people stare at you.

People who have pulmonary embolisms suffocate. Many of them die.

If you already have CHF, it doesn’t mean that stuff can’t happen to you.

And don’t forget that high blood pressure is probably what caused your CHF in the first place— so it will definitely make your CHF worse now.

How It Happens

Hearts love open blood vessels that are easy to pump blood through.

But people who have high blood pressure have blood vessels that are too narrow for the to fit the blood that wants to flow through them: In other words, the blood is jammed in.

Imagine a blocked drain pipe. Water is flowing through it - but not enough and too slowly.

Now imagine using that plunger that’s been in your bathroom for the past 14 years. It pushes the water through, but now there’s a lot of pressure in the pipe and inside the plunger.

That’s your heart (the plunger) and your blood vessels (the drain pipe) when you have high blood pressure. There’s a lot of strain on your heart and a lot of pressure inside those blood vessels.

Pressure pills open up that drain pipe (we mean, your blood vessels) making it easier on the plunger (we mean, your heart).

What To Do About It

What to do (when your doctor prescribes pressure pills)

Take them. When the doctor tells you. You really have to take them every day - If they’re prescribed once a day, or twice a day, they only work until it’s time for your next dose.

So, if your blood pressure without medication is usually 150/90:

But 120/60 after you take your medication!

If you wait too long after you were supposed to take your next dose - Yup - 150/90 again like when you use a plunger to push water through a partially clogged drain pipe - the water’s moving, but with every push on the plunger there’s a lot of pressure inside the plunger and on the sides of that pipe you’re forcing the water through.

The narrowing makes life very, very hard for the heart. It’s like trying to blow water into a cocktail straw: Really, really hard to do - rigorous, strenuous, grueling and exhausting.

And get this - Hearts beat 115,000 times a day, or 42 million times a year! That’s a lot of grueling exhaustion. It’s no wonder that, after five or ten years of high blood pressure, hearts get damaged, weak, and less able to pump enough blood with every beat. When that happens, it’s heart failure.

Pressure pills to the rescue! Pressure pills widen blood vessels that have been constricted and narrowed by high blood pressure. That makes it easier for the heart (whether it’s damaged by heart failure or not) to pump blood through them. Which slows down the damage A LOT!

(IMPORTANT INFO: Water pills help with high blood pressure too. Read below.)

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