High Blood Pressure, Low Brain Function

I love Daniel Amen, M.D. Get on his mailing list and you will always have the most up to date information about the brain, avaiable with every email you open from him. This was in todays' email. Since high blood pressure is the silent killer, (showing no symptoms), it makes sense to always get your blood pressure checked to also make sure you have great brain function. This is a study from Russia. Here is Dr. Amen's blog:

High Blood Pressure, Low Brain Function — Treat Hypertension to Have a Great Brain
Here is a fascinating research study from Russia on the importance of taking care of your blood pressure. High blood pressure decreases blood flow to your brain and impairs concentration and other cognitive processes. Lose weight, exercise and get hypertension treated!!“The aim of our study was to estimate brain perfusion and cognitive function (CF) in patients with arterial hypertension (AH) before and after hypotensive therapy. The study included 15 patients (mean age, 53.0+/-5.7 years) with previously untreated or ineffectively treated essential hypertension of the second degree.

All patients underwent brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanning with 99mTc-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) and comprehensive neuropsychological testing before and after 24 weeks of hypotensive therapy (angiotensin-converting enzyme [ACE] inhibitor or diuretics). The brain perfusion was significantly lower (15-22%) in all regions of AH patients. These patients showed a 25% decrease in attention and psychomotor speed as well as a 14% decrease in mentation. Six months of hypotensive therapy led to an increase in brain perfusion by an average of 7-11% in all brain regions. After treatment these patients demonstrated an average 11-18% improvements in attention and psychomotor speed, as well as an average 10% improvement in abstract mentation.

Marked signs of brain hypoperfusion and impaired CF: decrease in attention, slowing psychomotor speed and mentation was found in hypertensive patients even without focal neurological symptomatology. Twenty-four weeks of hypotensive treatment with ACE inhibitors or diuretics had a positive effect on cerebral perfusion and led to CF improvement.

Reference: Efimova IY, Efimova NY, Triss SV, Lishmanov YB. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Institute of Cardiology, Tomsk Research Center, Tomsk, Russia. nuclear@cardio.tsu.ru. Brain perfusion and cognitive function changes in hypertensive patients. Hypertens Res. 2008 Apr;31(4):673-8.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Brain Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “High Blood Pressure, Low Brain Function — Treat Hypertension to Have a Great Brain”
David Cox, DC Says:

July 25th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
How about this title: Low Brain Function Causes Hypertension - Treat Low Brain Function to Have A Great Brain!

Low brain function has multifactorial causes: poor sensory integration; diminished sensory stimulation from lack of movement; dysafferentation from dysuse of the brain itself; dysfunctional motor unit integrity; some drugs, to name a few.

Decreased cortical stimulation allows disinhibition of the pontomedullary reticular formation’s inhibitory affect on the intermedial lateral cell column which results in escape of the sympathetic system, producing hypertension among other concomitants.

Increased stimulation from peripheral receptors increases cortical frequency of firing which in turn increases pontomedullary reticular inhibition to the IML, thereby reducing all sympathetic concomitants.

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