Is Amlodipine goood medicine for hight blood pressure ?
Is Amlodipine goood medicine for hight blood pressure ?
is it a first line drug ? is it for long term treatment ? is it safe and less side effect from another medicine ? does it give for young age with high blood presssure ? has anyone take amlodpine ?
i am 30 years old , i am taking amlidipine 5 mg and lisinopril 10 mg for 2 months blood pressure now 130/66
Tagged with: amlodipine • blood pressure • line drug • lisinopril • medicine
Filed under: blood pressure treatment
Hi Hon! I was taking ARB antihypertensive meds for about 10 years. Got high potassium level, so doctor freaked and put me immediately on Amlodipine.
The 10 years of taking the ARB didn’t reduce my blood pressure a bit. It may have kept it from going higher, but didn’t reduce it at all. It was 130/70 for all that time.
The Amlodipine dropped it immediately to the 115/55 level and has kept it there. My primary care doctor started me on the 5 mg dosage but the cardiologist upped that to 10 mg even tho the 5 had dropped my blood pressure to where I was barely moving.
I haven’t noticed any side effects from taking this medicine. I think it is better than the ACE and ARB meds and much less $$$ as well. It achieved what the ACE and ARB did not. It lowered my blood pressure to where I think the doctors wanted it.
Amlodipine (as besylate, mesylate or maleate) is a long-acting calcium channel blocker (dihydropyridine) used as an anti-hypertensive and in the treatment of angina. As other calcium channel blockers, amlodipine acts by relaxing the smooth muscle in the arterial wall, decreasing peripheral resistance and hence reducing blood pressure; in angina it increases blood flow to the heart muscle.
The typical hiarchy for blood pressure medications are:
1) diuretics
2) ace inhibitors (like your lisinopril)
3) angiotensin blockers
4) beta blockers (atenolol)
5) calcium channel blockers (like amlodipine)
As far as overall safety goes, calcium channel blockers are 5th on the list, you may want to ask why they didn’t raise your lisinopril or add a beta blocker. The problem with calcium channel blockers is that they may make you weaker (strengthwise) and they are very difficult to come off of, and dangerous to miss a dose) So unless your high blood pressure is coupled with poor blood supply to your heart, it would not be my first choice or even my third.
Yes it is. It can be used long term, yes. It does seem to have quite a few side effects. So does lisinopril. There are drugs with less side effects out there, but they may not control your bp as well. 130/66 is very good.
A good but more expensive alternative to lisinopril (an ACE inhibitor) is Diovan. It has less side effects and interactions.
Nisoldipine and diltiazem have less side effects than amlodipine, and are also calcium channel blockers, which all have similar side effect profiles. These 2 just have a less extensive list.
If you don’t like your current medicine AT ALL.. You could go for a beta-blocker such as propanolol, atenolol, labetalol but these have more and more serious side effects than calcium channel blockers in general. You could also go the diuretic route, but those aren’t any safer or better than calcium-channel blockers. (as far as my PDA says .. but listen to your doc)
If you’re relatively side-effect free, why change a good thing?
My concern isn’t how to treat it .. really. My concern would be WHY does a 30 year old have high blood pressure in the first place? If you can answer that question easily with being overweight or abusing alcohol, then that’s that.. But I’d wonder if there might be something underlying going on here, myself.