Pills For Blood Pressure In South Africa

What Are Pills For Blood Pressure?

Blood pressure medications (antihypertensives) are medicines that bring your blood pressure down in various ways. Some blood pressure medications make your blood vessels widen so blood gets through more easily. Others remove extra fluids from your blood or block natural hormones your body makes that raise blood pressure.

In addition to your age, race, and gender/sex, your healthcare provider will consider your other health problems and how high your blood pressure is when deciding which high blood pressure medication to give you. Your treatment will be different from your neighbor’s or your brother’s prescriptions because each of you has a unique situation.

Pills For Blood Pressure In South Africa?

There are different types of antihypertensive medications that are used to treat hypertension in the public sector in South Africa: hydrochlorothiazide a thiazide diuretic; amlodipine a calcium channel blocker (CCB), and enalapril an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACE-I) are the most common first-line.

What Does Blood Pressure Pills Treat?

Blood pressure medications treat high blood pressure, or hypertension, with the goal of keeping your heart strong and preventing heart failure, a heart attack, kidney failure, or a stroke. High blood pressure makes your heart’s job more difficult and more demanding. Bringing your blood pressure down makes it easier for your heart to keep pumping blood to your essential organs and cells 24 hours a day.

Types Of Blood Pressure Pills?

Adrenergic blockers (including alpha, beta, alpha-beta, and peripherally acting blockers)

What they do: They keep your body from raising its blood pressure in reaction to stress.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • Fainting.
  • Dizziness.
  • Tiredness.
  • Low heart rate.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors

What they do: They keep your body from making angiotensin II (a blood vessel constrictor).

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • Cough.
  • High potassium.
  • Dizziness.
  • Angioedema (face and neck swelling); if you have this dangerous reaction, you shouldn’t take an ACE inhibitor drug again.

Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs)

What they do: They keep angiotensin II from making your blood vessels constrict.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • High potassium.
  • Dizziness.

Calcium channel blockers (including dihydropyridines and non dihydropyridines)

What they do: They keep calcium out of your blood vessels, which lets the muscle in your blood vessels relax and loosen.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • Headache.
  • Dizziness.
  • Fast or slow heart rate.
  • Lower leg swelling.

Centrally acting alpha-agonists

What they do: They prevent your nervous system from responding to stress.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • Tiredness.
  • Dry mouth.
  • Slow heart rate.

Direct vasodilators

What they do: They make your blood vessels more open.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • Fast heart rate.
  • Headache.
  • Lower leg swelling.

Diuretics (including potassium-sparing, loop, thiazide and thiazide-type diuretics)

What they do: They help your blood vessels get wider and make your kidneys move extra fluid and salt into your pee.

Selected blood pressure medication side effects:

  • High or low levels of magnesium or potassium.
  • Upset stomach.
  • High uric acid levels.
  • Dizziness