Have you recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure? Do you have diabetic nephropathy or other kidney disease? Has your doctor recommended taking Losartan or other ARB’s 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 you take losartan but you’re concerned about the possible side effects if so and this is the video for you keep watching to learn a little bit more about what side effects to watch out and why this can be an important medication welcome to family men i’m doctor richardson and
This is your home for practical and accurate information our family make healthy decisions this is the channel that focuses on bringing better health to your home now in today’s episode where are we talking about one of the most common medications that we use to treat high blood pressure cobb losartan to help us learn more about this medication i’m gonna tell you
The experience of one of my patients who i recently start on this medication to protect his identity where does he know him dale dale 61 years old and he’s not a big fan of doctors he hasn’t been in to see anybody for 20 years and the only reason he came in to see me as he was at his dentist’s office because of a tooth had been bothering him they took his blood
Pressure there and is 190 over hundred now for a couple rejects it didn’t go down so they refused to treat him and tell his blood pressure was under control this is actually not an uncommon thing to happen you’d be surprised at how many people get referred to me from their dentist because of their high blood pressure well anyway he had to make an appointment to
See me to see what we could do about his blood pressure so when he came to my office he had improved from the dentist so now he was only 182 over 100 so luckily he wasn’t having his symptoms like headaches or chest pain or any of those significant problems so we didn’t need to send him to the emergency room he just needed to get his blood pressure under control
Now remember dale is not a big fan of doctors maybe some of you out there can relate that sounds like you let me know in the comments below and don’t worry i won’t be offended i don’t like most doctors either now he’s not a too excited about the office so i try and help him understand a little more about high blood pressure why it’s something he should care about
Other than so he goes to fixed 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 high blood pressure is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease to include heart attacks and strokes as well as
It plays a significant role in chronic kidney disease often times we refer to high blood pressure as the silent killer it’s call this 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 the pressure that your heart exerts in the vessels when it contracts
Now the bottom number is called a diastolic blood pressure that the resting pressure in your blood vessels when your heart isn’t beating both numbers are important now for most people we diagnose high blood pressure when your numbers are over 140 in the top and 90 on the bottom on a consistent basis so in dale’s case with his blood pressure being 182 over a hundred
He was a very high risk of having a heart attack or a stroke at some point of his life if not here soon so this got his attention a little more but he was still hasn’t to do anything about it he just had a hard time getting over the fact that he may have to think of medicine to treat a condition that doesn’t have any symptoms he wouldn’t even know that he had high
Blood pressure had he not gone to the dentist i told him this wasn’t alone this concern in fact it’s one of the hardest 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 don’t know that you don’t want your first symptom to be a stroke that seemed to get his attention so
Yes a little more about what would need to be done so we had a really good discussion about diet and lifestyle changes we talked about how it needs to be exercising five times a week avoiding excessive salt in his diet watching the refined carbohydrates and focusing on getting lots of fruits and vegetables and as a diet and ultimately working on some weight loss
He was willing to work on knees but he was worried that he wasn’t going to be too successful so he gave us some encouragement to start but recommended that because of his age and where his blood pressures were at the moment that we would do best if we just helped him a little bit pressure i recommended that we start among those are 10 this is a medication that
Has been available in the united states since 1995 it was first released under the tree known kozar but has been generic since 1920 so it’s typically just referred to as losartan it’s used a principally control blood pressure but it’s also used to treat those and then enlarged heart as well as to prevent and treat kidney damage caused by the effects of diabetes
Well certain belonging to the class of medications called angiotensin receptor blockers we call them arvs research they work for blocking a certain receptor 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’ve also been shown to help decrease the risk of your
Heart attack and stroke and they can be quite effective in most people this is why i felt this would be a good choice for daryl now he is warming up to the idea of trying a medication of more up but still had some concerns he was worried about whether he could even remember to take it this is always a concern with medication but it’s our tan it’s actually pretty
Easy to take it you only need to do it once a day it comes on tablet of twenty five fifty and a hundred milligrams and the maximum effective dose is 100 milligrams it’s easy to dose and get some flexibility to change strengths if needed no not a concern ii had is that whether this would be something you would have to stay on his whole life this is a great question
And really one that many don’t like the answer to you see it’s important to understand that with little sartain and any other blood pressure medication it only works when you take it we really don’t have anything that will cure high blood pressure i explained that i have people come in all the time though with their blood pressure really high after he originally
Had it controlled telling me that they stopped the medication because we fixed it unfortunate this is not the way it works so 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 know if you do make some significant
Lifestyle changes and your blood pressure starts to drop then another direction of your doctor they may be able to pull back on how much you’re taking or even get rid of it this isn’t a norm though and unfortunately sometimes we just have high blood pressure and in order to prevent that heart pack up stroke you need to stay on the medication so at this point i
Think i had him a little more convinced that this may be the route that he wanted to take however he was still concerned about sine of x now fortunately for most people this is the great news about this medication well sartain is usually well tolerated it’s not very often that i have a patient want to stop it because of side effects that being said any medication
Has potential for side effects and loss are cons no different i explained to him that the most common side effects that we tend to see with losartan are some diarrhea fatigue joint pains dizziness heartburn and sometimes a cough i mentioned the cough there’s another medication that they recently reviewed called the syndrome you can link to it up here or in the
Description below it’s a cousin to losartan it works similar it’s most common side effect is a dry cough well sartain is usually the medication that we will switch patients to when they get that cough from the cinah prone usually the cop will go away upon switching but there’s some lesser common cases of people giving the copper plus r 10 as well that’s nothing
Dangerous just annoying and should go away when you stop the medication no probably the main side effect i see is some dizziness or feeling like heaven this usually is a sign of the medication may be working too well if this happens typically you notice that when you stand up you get that head rush feeling it may feel like you’re gonna pass out if this is happening
Concentrating on standing up slower check your blood pressure and bring those to your doctor so you can talk about it sometimes all you need to do is just adjust the dose now there are some more serious i’ll be a rare reactions that you should be aware of and watch for we already mentioned that low blood pressure but some people can have a more significant profit
Is more difficult to breed on also there’s a condition called angioedema them occur and some people it certainly is a common i think i’ve seen it once in my career so it’s most easily described as what you may see with large reaction where you get swelling in your face lips tongue throat even 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 you need to get through the emergency room right away no other air side effects can be high potassium levels decrease kidney function liver irritation and some decrease in your platelet count in your blood now the most common reason though that we
See a decreased kidney function with medication is when people combine it with anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen aleve or medications similar to them when you take these kinds of medications especially when you’re doing it on a regular basis the combination of the two can decrease the blood flow of important parts of your kidney and can damage them so the best
Advice that i can give you is avoid combining anti-inflammatories and arb is like losartan it really can be harmful to your kidneys now there has been an issue that has recently been in the press regarding this medication there was recently several recalls regarding this vacations regarding this medication it caused a lot of concerning questions for my patients
Now what happened is some of the manufacturers allowed some impurities in the medications that were being manufactured that had some risk of common cancer now these were specific batches of medications from specific manufacturers that have a problem there wasn’t anything really related to losartan itself that was a problem only some of the ingredients they were
Using in the manufacturing process so if your medication was affected you should have been contacted by the pharmacy or your insurance carrier if in doubt though take it to your pharmacist to make sure that your specific medication was not involved in recall so just like you darrel after hearing about some of these possibilities there was a little nervous about
Taking the medication but i’ll tell you what i told him you have to step back and look at the big picture because the risk of these side effects are very small so which i’ve never seen so don’t let the fear of a rare side effect put you in darren danger the very real risk untreated high blood pressure brain so you’ll be the same as saying that you don’t want to
Drive to the hospital when you’re sick because you might get in a car accident that seemed to do the trick to help they’ll be more comfortable starting on something like this but he still had one king up he was worried because he had heard about how expensive medications can be now luckily i was able to come as fears about this as well well sartain is usually pretty
Affordable it’s been generic for a while now in fact you can get a 30-day supply your local walmart for nine dollars so dale finally decided that this was the right course of treatment for him on the follow-up visit his blood pressure dropped from 180 to over a hundred to 145 over 88 he had a significant drop one was feeling a lot better he still wasn’t quite a goal
So it worked a little more with some other treatments to get him there but he was quite happy with lasar 10 and other than the fact that you had to take it he really didn’t realize he was even on something overall though sartain can be a great medication for most people it was for dale but like most medications they aren’t for everybody if you’re thinking about
It for yourself there are a few groups of people that should be conscious about taking it those who should stay clear of it or those who have already had prior allergic reaction or had a history of angioedema that we talked about before also if you’re pregnant or are female in your childbearing years you may also want to look elsewhere also those who already have
Some underlying kidney disease or severe heart disease you should also be careful so what was your doctor to find the right one for you now diet and lifestyle changes have not been enough to control your blood pressure and your doctor recommends that you take a little certain as part of your treatment regimen hopefully you have a little more confidence in using this
As part of your treatment plan now that certainly isn’t an all-inclusive and into that discussion but everything they be told about this medication that’s not what i’m trying to do here my purpose in sharing this information is help give information that you can think about it so 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 in your situation now if you found this information to be helpful do me a favor go ahead and hit that like button and share it with your friends and fans 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 other content now don’t go anywhere because if you’re looking at ways that you can start your diet and lifestyle changes to help treat your blood pressure go ahead and click here and watch some simple steps that you can take to start your diet journey and if you’re looking for another option treat your blood pressure click here so until next time
This is family met with dr. richardson and remember take care of your body
Transcribed from video
LOSARTAN for High Blood Pressure: What are the Side Effects? By Erik Richardson D.O.
