Experts have identified drug abuse, self-medication and excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages as the major causes of low-blood pressure.
A cardiologist at the First Foundation Hospital, Ikeja, Dr Tosin Ajayi, in an interview with our correspondent, described low blood pressure as a deadly and more dangerous disease than high blood pressure.
“An overdose of anti-hypertensive drugs or taking the drugs without real coordination can trigger the disease. Also, losing a lot of fluids due to diarrhoea can lead to low blood pressure, but the most common factor is when people take drugs inappropriately,” he said.
Ajayi stressed that indiscriminate use of drugs could affect the cardiovascular system, thereby making the blood pressure to become so low that it might be difficult to bring it up.
Warning Nigerians against self-medication, he said, “The sick should go to the hospital to be examined by a doctor, instead of rushing to a pharmacy to purchase drugs off the counter.
“The normal blood pressure is 120/70-80, while those who are traditionally on the low side can have 100/50 and still live like that for a long time. Such people don’t have to be worried. They just have to run from drugs that can affect their cardiovascular system, abnormally.”
As opposed to the general belief that blood could be boosted by taking a tonic, milk and vitamin supplements, Ajayi said, “You cannot boost blood by just taking milk and multi-vitamins because the quality of the blood is different from the volume of blood.
“These supplements increase the quality of the blood and not the volume. For those who are on the low side it means they have high-quality blood and if you check their haemoglobin, you will see that they have blood quality and many of them can live as long as life permits them.”
He said that a normal human must have enough body fluid, body volume, and enough blood quality before he or she can be alive.
Also, a medical practitioner, Dr. Kayode Atoyebi, said that excessive bleeding could cause low blood pressure.