Heart Medications Archive

Talk to your doctor first. The benefits of the drug may far outweigh any side effects.

Unpleasant or harmful reactions to medications are common and can range from mild—a little nausea, for example—to severe, such as fainting or palpitations. Such reactions cause some people to abruptly stop taking the medication without telling their doctor. This can make them feel better, but it may also create a problem—for example, seriously elevated blood pressure or heart rate.

If you have heart concerns, these are the essential actions you can take to live a longer, healthier life.

Heart disease causes one in four deaths among men in the United States, but you don't have to be one of them. If you have been diagnosed with heart disease, there are things you can do today to lower your risk.

Careful compliance makes management of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs safer.

If you have atrial fibrillation and have been prescribed an anticoagulant such as warfarin (Coumadin), there may come a time when your doctor will consider adding another type of blood thinner, called an antiplatelet agent, to your anti-clotting regimen. Examples of antiplatelet agents include aspirin, clopidogrel (Plavix), and prasugrel (Effient).

Statin drugs can help lower cholesterol levels, but many statin users stop taking their medicine, often because they report having side effects. A new study from researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital published in Annals of Internal Medicine finds that many people who go off their statins can stay on the drugs longer term once they restart them.

The study looked at more than 100,000 people who'd been prescribed at least one statin drug. More than half of these people stopped taking their medicine at least once, often because of side effects. Yet of those who were restarted on the same or a different statin, more than 90% were still taking the drug a year later. Few of them had another side effect. This study was performed only at one university health system, and therefore its conclusions may be limited. However, it does provide some good news to women with heart disease, because statin drugs can help reduce their risk of a heart attack. If you're experiencing adverse effects from a statin drug, your doctor can help you decide whether you should continue taking it.

About one in every five people who take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug experiences a side effect, most often muscle weakness or muscle pain. In about half of these people, the discomfort causes them to discontinue using the drug. An analysis of 134,263 adults prescribed statins at two Harvard-affiliated hospitals, Brigham and Women's and Massachusetts General, found that 18,778 experienced a statin-related problem that caused 11,124 to stop taking the drug. More than half of those who stopped resumed taking a statin within 12 months—40% went back to the same statin and 60% switched to a different one—and 90% of those who restarted statin treatment were still taking the medication one year later.

Because statins are highly effective in preventing deaths from cardiovascular disease, it is particularly important for people with diabetes, kidney disease, and known cardiovascular disease to take a statin for life. When statins cause side effects—muscle pain, for example—the study shows that statin therapy may be temporarily stopped and then resumed. For most people, this won't be a problem; others may find that switching to a different statin is the best way to lessen or avoid troublesome side effects.

These diet and lifestyle interventions can make a big impact.

High blood pressure can be stubborn: three to five medications are often needed to bring it down. The good news is that making simple changes to your everyday life may help reduce your dependence on drugs. How much they will help can't be predicted, however. You won't know until you try them.

Interactions with common foods, beverages, vitamins, and supplements can change how your medicine works.

If you have heart disease or are at risk for it, you probably take two or more prescription drugs. It's in your best interest to make sure these drugs work as well as they should. That's why you need to know about foods, beverages, vitamins, dietary supplements, over-the-counter drugs, or other prescription medications that could interact with your medications. An interaction may cause the drug to become more powerful or less effective. If either happens to you, your heart disease could progress, or you might be at increased risk for a heart attack or fatal arrhythmia.

Ask these questions to determine whether the benefits of the drug outweigh its risks.

Attention-grabbing headlines such as "Statin Use Tied to Cataracts" and "Patients Taking Antihypertensive Drugs Show Increase in Lip Cancer" can make some readers so fearful that they stop taking their medication. The truth is that these headlines and articles are often misleading. Often, the chance of experiencing the frightening side effect is so small that the benefits of taking the medication far outweigh the risk.

If you want to prevent heart disease or its consequences, take your blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart medications as prescribed. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School reviewed 25 large studies that looked at how faithfully people took their medications. Of the five studies conducted in healthy people taking medications to prevent heart disease, four found that taking cholesterol-lowering statins at least 80% of the time reduced heart risk 18% to 19%: one found that failing to take blood pressure medication as prescribed increased the risk of needing hospitalization for a heart attack by 15% (American Journal of Medicine, April 2013).

Twenty studies had been conducted in people who had already suffered a heart attack. Findings included the following:

Q. I recently developed atrial fibrillation, and my doctor said it was because my magnesium level was low. What would cause this to happen?