A Professor of Cardiology at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Prof. Janet Ajuluchukwu, has said that anti-hypertensive drugs work better when taken at night.
According to her, this can be attributed to the fact that the different organs of the body work better at night when they are relaxed and free from stress.
In an interview with The Next Edition, the immediate past HOD, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine (CMUL) and Lagos University teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, said, “We have studied it and we have proven it that in our own practice when we gave part or all of the treatment at night,because of those night time changes, the drugs worked better and in our own values, the blood pressure went down. We found that the physiological activities that are switched on or off at night worked well with our drugs at night.”
Prof. Ajuluchukwu also disclosed that most heart attacks and strokes occur in the morning due to increase in adrenaline and some stress hormones. “When you are asleep, your blood pressure must go down 10 units than when you are awake. As we are trying to wake up, certain things happen inside our body to put the body into the process of waking up and it involves adrenaline and certain stress hormones. So people are surprised that when they wake up their blood pressure is up and that is even why people have heart attacks and strokes in the morning.”
She further disclosed that the male sex is a risk factor for hypertension as against the females who are protected by the female hormones. “In the Nigerian data, in most of the geographical zones where tests were done, it was seen that men would have blood pressure prevalence higher than the women but in certain places you see it coming closer together.Generally, we think that the female hormones are protective. Even for certain problems to afflict man and woman, especially the heart attack type of story, the women appear to be highly protected. However, after the natural menstruation ceases or somebody has what is called a surgical termination of menstruation, their risk factors come up. So there is evidence that the female hormones are protective.. So does it mean that the male testosterone is adverse, there is a lot of debate about that.”
