Hypertension and Lifestyle Modifications: Beyond Controversy

Traditional approaches to controlling the epidemic of blood pressure-related atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) in people with hypertension have mostly focused on pharmacological therapy. Nonetheless, nonpharmacologic therapy, commonly known as lifestyle modification, plays an essential and rising role in addition to medication therapy. Specifically, non-pharmacol­ogic therapies can serve as initial therapy in Stage 1 hyperten­sive patients, facilitate medication step down or withdrawal in patients with well-controlled hypertension, prevent hyper­tension in high-risk populations, and reduce blood pressure in normotensive individuals and thereby lower their risk of ASCVD.

It particularly refers to life-style modifications i.e. therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLC) which include reducing dietary sodium, exercise for at least 30 min per day, five days per week; to have Dietary Approach to stop Hypertension (DASH) diet protocol and to achieve a weight loss goal of 4.5 kg or more by non-pharmacological measures such as increased physical activity, reduced salt intake, reduced fat intake, alcohol abstinence, smoking cessation, behavioural changes, yoga, meditation etc.