What it means to be normal

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“The artifactual disease” is the phrase George Pickering coined to describe hypertension in the 1950’s and 60’s.  In those days, he dominated the debate about the nature of hypertension, arguing against those who thought hypertensive patients who developed complications comprised a distinct entity of subjects.  “The higher the pressure, the worse the prognosis,” he would repeatedly affirm.  To my knowledge, he did not expound on the J-curve phenomenon, but he surely made a convincing case that defining a disease on the basis of arbitrary cut-off numbers is most foolish indeed.

But since the 1970’s, after clinical trials established the success of anti-hypertensive therapy, and with the growing enthusiasm for “risk-factor modification” and the inexorable rise of population medicine, any attempt to expect rational nomenclature or clarity of thought has seemed increasingly futile.

Instead, we must be impressed by discussions of studies where “Patients were categorized by their mean SBP level over follow-up as very low normal (<120 mm Hg), low normal (120 to <130 mm Hg), high normal (130 to <140 mm Hg), high (140 to <150 mm Hg) and very high (>150 mm Hg). ”

I recently tested myself on a 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitor.  My SBP varied from 90 to 142 mmHg.

No wonder I was feeling out of sorts.

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