What to Take for Pain With High Blood Presssure

If you have high blood pressure, you may be able to control it well with the proper diet and prescription medication. However, having high blood pressure may limit your choice of treatment for pain. It is important to know what is safe to take for pain with high blood pressure.

Pain Medications that Cause High Blood Pressure

• High blood pressure, or hypertension, may be a result of taking certain over-the-counter pain medications. The Arthritis Foundation cites a 2007 study that showed that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), acetaminophen and analgesics all may contribute to high blood pressure. Taking these types of medications six to seven days a week resulted in a 26 to 38 percent greater chance of developing high blood pressure among the men studied. According to the Arthritis Foundation, this increased risk was also apparent in two studies of women in 2002.

  Since these medications carry an increased risk of developing high blood pressure, you should avoid them if possible if you already have high blood pressure. These medications can worsen your blood pressure.

Drug Interactions

• Some pain medications may also interact badly with the medication you take for your high blood pressure. For example, NSAIDs can reduce the effectiveness of blood pressure drugs as well as potentially raising your blood pressure on their own.

Pain Relief Options

• Johns Hopkins recommends trying non-medicinal pain relief options first. However, if those do not work for you, aspirin is an acceptable option that will not interfere with your blood pressure medications or raise your blood pressure on its own.

  Johns Hopkins also states that if aspirin does not relieve your pain or if you cannot take it for other reasons, you may take acetaminophen in the smallest dose possible. If that doesn't work, you may move on to NSAID pain relievers, starting with naproxen. Try ibuprofen next if naproxen does not work for you.

  Prescription pain relievers are a last resort if over-the-counter medications do not work. Begin with prescription naproxen, and then try diclofenac. The prescription drug Celebrex should be your absolute last resort for pain relief, as similar drugs that are no longer available increased the risks of heart attack and stroke.

Precautions

• If you have high blood pressure, whether you control it by diet alone or by medication, never take any type of pain reliever without consulting your doctor first. Your doctor has information about all the prescription medicines you take and exactly how serious your high blood pressure problem is. Therefore, he is the best person to advise you on pain management with high blood pressure.

  Never skip any doctor's visits when taking pain medications with high blood pressure. Your doctor will need to monitor your blood pressure to make sure the pain medications aren't causing it to go too high. Also, never take more than the minimum recommended dose of any pain reliever without your doctor telling you to do so.