The importance of sticking to your heart medication treatment plan
- Taking medication daily often feels like a chore, especially if you are feeling healthy.
- We chat to a cardiologist about what heart medication does and how skipping a dose could have dire consequences.
The role medication plays in your heart health
If you’ve been prescribed heart medication, your treatment plan could target the muscular function of the heart, or it could improve the circulation of blood vessels that supply the heart muscle. It largely comes down to the part of your heart your doctor is trying to treat.
“The most common kinds of medication treat narrow or blocked arteries of the heart, and these would be cholesterol medication, blood pressure medication and blood-thinning agents,” says Dr Siddique Ismail, a cardiologist at Rondebosch Medical Centre in Cape Town. “None of the conditions that predispose us to a heart problem are reversible."
Think high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol – they’re all risk factors for heart disease, and how they are managed is instrumental in your heart health outcome.
“Their control is crucial,” says Dr Ismail. "To maintain that control, you need to take medication every day because there is no cure for these conditions."
What is the risk of skipping my heart medication, even for just a day?
Would you leave home without your prescription glasses? Or drive without a seatbelt? Hopefully the answer to both is ‘no’, which should be the same approach you take to your heart pills.
Here’s why: your medication, especially for hypertension, is designed to induce a small, controlled blood pressure response daily. Skipping even a single day’s dose leads to a spike in your blood pressure.
“That spike would lead to a sudden stretching of blood vessels, which has the potential, if it’s at a weak spot in the wall of the blood vessel, to cause vessel rupture,” explains Dr Ismail. The rupture would bleed, and if this bleeding occurs in, say, the brain, you face the risk of brain damage or even death.
“It is imperative that a patient understands their illness, and the need to take responsibility for their own health,” says Dr Ismail, “not only for themselves but to be there for their loved ones.”
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