# Blood pressure drugs

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-pressure-drugs/761904>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 6, 2016, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-pressure-drugs/761904 "2016-08-06T02:28:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2016, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-pressure-drugs/761904/1 "2016-08-06T02:28:11Z")

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Does lowering your blood pressure with drugs put you in the same risk factors as people who don’t need the drugs to begin with? Or is it somewhere in between? If high blood pressure is a symptom, then suppressing a symptom may not make much difference to the underlying disease. Any studies?

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**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2016, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-pressure-drugs/761904/2 "2016-08-06T02:37:17Z")

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The blood pressure itself is the problem.  
High blood pressure causes inflammation of arterial walls, leading to plaque formation.  
So, treating hbp is not just masking the problem - it is treating it.

Note that most doctors will recommend losing weight and exercising to reduce some of the causes of hbp, not just drugs alone.