Can I Manage Blood Pressure While Taking Cognitive meds?

Dealing with both blood pressure and cognitive health can be a little tricky as both of these conditions are severe and as we age both of these illnesses significantly impact our well-being. You should know that blood pressure reading is really important to check any symptoms and if you don’t lie between normal bp range of 90/60 mmHg to 120/80mmHg then you might be suffering from hypotension or high blood pressure. 

Monitoring your blood pressure is as crucial as it sounds and if you ignore all your high blood pressure or low blood pressure symptoms with your cognitive health then there is a chance that you might suffer from major health problems like decline in memory, focus and daily life activities. 

But what happens when you keep an eye on both of these problems simultaneously? Many individuals have found out that taking cognitive medications not only help with memory concerns or neurological conditions but also manages your blood pressure. And, in this blog we will majorly focus on how we can manage blood pressure while consuming the cognitive medications.

The Relationship between Cognitive Medications and Blood Pressure

You must know that high blood pressure or hypertension is known for creating cognitive decline and dementia in older adults. The studies have even confirmed that you can mitigate these risks once you have managed blood pressure effectively. 

Antihypertensive is a medication that is commonly prescribed by doctors to manage blood pressure and cognitive health because:

• It has shown positive effects on cognitive functions like memory.
• As these medications fall into different categories they have also acted uniquely in reducing the blood pressure.

Some antihypertensive medications like angiotensin-converting-enzymes inhibitors cross the blood and brain barrier to impact the cognitive functions directly. 

Benefits and Risk factors that involves these combined therapies

Even though both of this problems are interrelated to each other and we can somehow manage bp with cognitive medications but all of this comes up with different benefits as well as risk factors like:

Advantages 

• Recollection of memories- Most of the older adults take antihypertensive medications that cross the blood-brain barrier so that they can have a better memory. 
• Reduces little cognitive impairment – There has been a 19% reduction in cognitive impairment cases after the patient started treating high blood pressure symptoms with these medications. 

Disadvantages 

• Hypotension- When you treat blood pressure with cognitive medications such as through antihypertensives then there is a chance that it may lead to excessively low blood pressure that can cause you dizziness and fainting.
• Impact of drugs-  Most of the cognitive medications interact with antihypertensives in your body which then affect the efficacy of the medicines and cause adverse effects.

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Why is Regular Monitoring of Blood Pressure important?

As mentioned earlier, monitoring your blood pressure is vital because regular blood checks allow you to detect your abnormalities in time so that you don’t have to go further with cognitive or any sort of medications and can protect yourself from any kind of serious damage. Not only this but blood pressure monitoring also assess other risks like heart diseases, stroke and kidney problems. If you are already diagnosed with hypotension well in that case you should be consistent with your monitoring so that all your prescribed medicines will be beneficial to you.

We would recommend you to go for regular checkups to doctors because it really helps you get clarity about changes that are needed in your lifestyle and medications which will help you in future. 

 Role of Lifestyle Changes on Your Health

We must tell you that not just cognitive medications but lifestyle changes are also important for your blood pressure. Some of the lifestyle changes that you can incorporate in your life is a healthy diet, daily exercise and stress management techniques.

• Look out for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) foods that are rich in fibers, proteins and healthy fats such as eggs, avocado, oats,different fruits and vegetables. Also make sure that your diet has less sodium so that it doesn’t affect your blood pressure. 

NOTE-  You should try aiming for 150 minutes of exercises per week so that you can become consistent with your mental and physical health. 

Conclusion

By now you have understood that managing blood pressure can be done while taking strong cognitive medications but all of this also comes with all sorts of risks. But we must tell you that with medications also try moving your body to be more fit.

Also Read : Why Cognitive Health Matters To Older Adults And Millennials