Are there any blood pressure drugs that can be used as needed?

My mother in laws bp fluctuates often so she adjusts her meds on a daily basis per readings.
For those of us who tend to run hot regularly, a daily low dose is usually prescribed.
Seems odd that your primary isnt more concerned after high readings for a time period. Good luck!

Ask your doctor.

I have heard of in hospital, continuous monitoring with BP cuff on the arm at all times, having PRN meds.

@Dutchess_III I mentioned in my original post that I talked to doctors. Obviously, any meds will be from a doctor. My GP doesn’t want the responsibility of prescribing. Literally, he chose to defer to my cardiologist.

One of the OTC options is to take L-Arginine, which my cardiologist suggested to me a while ago, but I’m worried about getting more shingles outbreaks, and she agreed. She obviously didn’t bother looking at my record before suggesting it.

Like Bill Maher says, if doctors always gave the perfect right answers there would be no such thing as needing a second opinion.

I came to fluther to see what has happened for other people.

I would talk to a pharmacist, I feel they know drugs better than most Doctors.

Why don’t you just go on an antihypertensive med? You’d probably just need a low dose.

@smudges I have tried three plus one type of diuretic and had bad reactions to all. Plus, I sometimes have normal pressure and going too low can be dangerous. My doctor had decided not to put me on meds again, so we were letting it ride, but recently my pressure was very high again for a prolonged time. Some of it is stress I think, some of it is my thyroid, and I think some is probably if I lost weight it would be lower. Meanwhile, I have to do something.

No.

I didn’t read everybody’s responses so if I’m being redundant, I’m sorry. First of all, a diuretic would be more if you’re having extra fluid, like if your legs and or feet were swollen. So that might be why your doctor hesitate to put you on that. And ideally it would only be for a brief period of time but it does have some side effects. It can be hard on your kidneys for one. It sounds like maybe some sort of low dose of a blood pressure medicine would be the way to go but I’m not a doctor. I’m just somebody that has high blood pressure although it’s been doing really well lately. But I am on blood pressure medicine. I do know that you can’t just take it when you feel like your pressure is going up. I don’t know much about thyroid issues so I can’t help you there. And if you do feel you have excess fluid, drinking enough water will help with that. You really don’t want to be getting up every hour on the hour overnight to go to the bathroom, and that’s what the diuretic will sometimes cause to happen.

It’s hard, especially depending on external factors, but try to recognize when you’re getting stressed and take a break as you can. Take deep breaths and get yourself to relax as much as possible.

If it was me I’d be concerned also. All I know to suggest is to try another low dose of BP meds. I don’t know what kind you took before, but different ones work differently. I’m sure you already know that. Maybe try a type you haven’t used before.

Types of blood pressure medications include:
Adrenergic blockers (including alpha, beta, alpha-beta, and peripherally acting blockers)
Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors
Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs)
Calcium channel blockers (including dihydropyridines and nondihydropyridines)
Centrally acting alpha-agonists

Thanks everyone. I have another appointment tomorrow, but my same cardiologist. Probably should try another doctor.

My GP doesn’t want to prescribe for me, although he wants me to definitely treat the high BP. I tried going to a GP again this past year and half after not going to GP’s for a few years, except when I needed an antibiotic once every five years. He defers to my specialists, and the very reason I stopped seeing a GP regularly years ago was I already had specialists. The problem was my current cardiologist refuses or I have to beg for blood tests that do affect my heart or should be checked with medication she actually prescribes. The only reason I knew one medication harmed my kidney function was because I demanded the test. She kept telling me to have my GP run the blood tests. The GP gets my blood tests and says go back to my cardiologist. It’s ridiculous, and practically negligent to me. Ugh. None of them call me when something is bad on a test.

I need to try to find new doctors again I guess for cardiology and endocrinology, and I like my GYN, but they are closing their practice!

I have hypertension. I take my medicine the way the Dr. prescribes.
Don’t know why you want to do an end run around around you Dr.

Wow, I think I’d have a thing or two to say to any doctor who refused a simple blood test. Whenever I’m having blood drawn for my endocrinologist, I ask her to add on any tests which my GP or cardiologist would want, like a cholesterol panel or magnesium. I must say though that I would not mess with my thyroid meds. The thyroid affects almost every organ system in the body, and the medication is measured in micrograms, so little changes can have big results.

@Dutchess_III The problem is they don’t have her on anything and she has noted a number of times when it’s high.

@smudges Thank you.

Well quit checking it! I mean what numbers indicate to you, but not to your doctor, that you have a problem?

@Dutchess_III Her numbers are high. The doctor wasn’t interested in giving her a diuretic.

@Dutchess_III My cardiologist had decided a while ago to live with the 130/80ish BP on average, because it’s high but not HIGH. More recently my pressure has been very high a lot. I was at my GP’s last week, actually the nurse practioner, and BP 165/95 in her office, and as usual they tried to tell me white coat syndrome, and I said, “no, it’s been like that the last week a lot, and before that a lot of 145/95, it’s been very high consistently.” I gave her a copy of my 24hr BP monitor that I did two weeks before (ordered by my cardiologist) had the result of hypertension, but the actual BP recorded were not in my portal. I know they were high and one recording was a diastolic of 122, because I looked at the recording as it was taken. I didn’t even tell the NP that in case I misread it.

The NP started to write me a script for a calcium chanel blocker, but said she wanted to check with the doctor first and that she would call me if they call in a script. Later that day a nurse called me saying the doctor would prefer I get a script from my cardiologist.

I don’t think blood pressure meds have anything to do with diuretics. Caravanfan?

@Dutchess_III Diuretics are commonly prescribed for BP. About three years ago I went to cardiologist at the University of Florida who specializes in blood pressure problems and he prescribed me Hydrochlorothiazide (HZTC). Often times people who take an ACE inhibitor or calcium channel blocker at night also take a diuretic in the morning. Unfortunately, I had terrible side effects from it. Additionally, I was really annoyed at the billing at UF, because ahead of time I tried to make sure I knew how much it was going cost, and I feel they gouged me beyond belief. I even went back to see an endocrinologist willing to open my wallet to try to solve my problem, but she was not helpful. The best care I had for my thyroid was my NP in Tennessee. Sigh, it might be worth a flight if I cannot get it all reasonably worked out.

Here is the info for HZTC as a BP med and diuretic. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-5310/hydrochlorothiazide-oral/details

@Dutchess there are meds that combo both diuretics plus bp, so they definitely have a reason to prescribe them together.

They might add a diuretic to almost any medicine. I’m saying that I think BP meds and diuretics are two separate meds prescribed for different reasons.
I need the doc to tell me tho. He’s the professional not me.
Somebody share this with him please. I don’t want to hassle with putting my phone in desktop mode. It’s a mess. Thank you.

I take 50 MG of Losartan a day, and have for 17 years. It’s combined with potassium to help keep my electrolytes level.
I also add salt, which I never used to do, to my foods for the same reason.
But my.blood pressure and electrolytes are two different issues.

^^ They may be two different issues for you, but electrolytes and BP are related. It’s a pain to read but this is one of the many articles I found. Blood pressure is about the heart, and without sodium or potassium the heart will stop so yes, they’re definitely related.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.cir.98.6.613

@Dutchess_III You can read my link. Losartan is the drug that damaged my kidneys. I am one of the few with bad side effect from it. Diuretics can help reduce the pressure in the blood vessels. The other BP meds relax or dilate the blood vessels.

Your situation is not typical, your electrolytes are more out of whack than the average BP patient.

Dutchess you can Google and find many articles explaining the link between blood pressure and fluid retention (which, as you know, is what a diuretic addresses).

When we finally offloaded the shop and Rick got a job with insurance after having none for 5 years I immediately made a Dr appt just for a check up. BP was 225/125. They put me on BP meds and I never looked back.

@Dutchess_III I googled. Here are some articles about treating hypertension with diuretics for you:

https://www.healthline.com/health/heart-disease/diuretics-hypertension

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-pressure/in-depth/diuretics/art-20048129

@Dutchess_III You aren’t paying attention. My BP problem hasn’t been straight forward and I have bad side effects to the medications so far.

It sounds like you don’t check your BP, so you don’t know how controlled it is. For yours to be as high as it was, who knows how long you had untreated high BP. I don’t think you get to feel superior on this, but if you want to, go ahead.

@Dutchess_III Wow, you were a stroke waiting to happen! Is it good now?

I know.The nurse’s face when she read it!! she RAN out of the room to get a doc! And no telling how many years it was that way. Like I said, it was my first Dr. visit in 5 years.
They put me on Lorsartan and some other BP med (I forget its name….per my doc I quit taking it 4 years ago) and it’s been 125/75 or so ever since. So I’m good @smudges.
I was disappointed when the nurse kept asking “You didn’t feel anything? No dizziness? Nothing?” Hypertension is called “The silent killer” because you don’t notice a single thing. Nurse should have known that.

@JLeslie I don’t check it obsessively, but I do check it every few months, maybe.
Kids like my BP checker. They run around checking everyone’s blood pressure. Even the dog’s. According to them…..we all daid!!

^^ Glad to hear that you’re doing well in that department, at least!

When they discovered mine it was 163 over one twenty something.

They say 160 isn’t too bad…but it sure makes me nervous!

Update: I went to see the NP at my cardiologist’s office to go over my 24 hour BP results. My BP was not as bad as I thought, the average readings were something like 135/85. I was right that one of the readings had a diastolic of 122.

The NP prescribed me a calcium channel blocker in what she called a baby dose. I haven’t picked it up from the pharmacy yet. She said it might cause some swelling in my ankles, I hope not. She did say if my pressure goes too low I can try it every other day, but for now I will be taking it daily. I tend to go in phases where my pressure is running high a lot for a few weeks, and then I might have a good few weeks, so who know how it will go. At least her telling me that, I know I can go off the drug on my own if by some miracle it trends down. I still think it has to partly do with my thyroid, partly weight, and partly with stress too.

I might have to just pay for thyroid blood tests to see if I can find a pattern since the doctors here won’t give me two or three scripts to get the test done when I have the big upswing in blood pressure. My doctor in Tennessee would have done it, it was how I finally found a dose that worked for my thyroid when I was “first diagnosed.” I went three years until I finally found her and was able to steady my thyroid levels.

Thanks for the update! Glad to hear someone listened to you. :)