Taking the Pressure off of Blood Pressure Medication

Transcript Generated by AI.

Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to the MedEvidence Monday Minute Radio Show, hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS Radio and powered by ENCORE Research Group. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls us to bring you the latest medical updates with insightful discussions. MedEvidence is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research from both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence!

Kevin Geddings: 0:37

On 103.9 WSOS Dr. Michael Koren joining live on the studio line this morning. After watching the Super Bowl, what'd you think? A lot of people are saying it was boring. I didn't I didn't find it boring, but I really like football. So what what what did you think?

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:46

So you know, Kevin, it was interesting. I thought if you like defensive football, it was a terrific Super Bowl. Some really just tremendous defen defensive efforts for both teams. So to me, it wasn't it was definitely not a boring. So it was a it was a hard fought game, but clearly Seattle was the better team.

Kevin Geddings: 0:46

Yeah.

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:46

But both defenses played quite well. So for me, again, I'm a little bit of a student of the game and I and I found the football, particularly defensive football, quite enjoying.

Kevin Geddings: 1:12

Yeah, yeah. Clearly they were well prepared, and uh it's interesting to watch teams too when they have a couple of weeks to kind of get their injured bodies back together again, right? That probably makes some sense. I know it frustrates people that you have to wait a couple of weeks for the Super Bowl, but probably is a good thing from a health perspective, right?

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:28

Totally, totally. And you can see there were some blitz packages that were different than what you might have seen during the regular season because people had the time to plan these things and how a young quarterback navigates maybe a blitz package that he hasn't seen before was kind of the one of the interesting stories of the game.

Kevin Geddings: 1:46

Yeah. That's Dr. Michael Koren, by the way, he joins us on Monday mornings. We appreciate him very much, a big part of our family here at WSOS. He's a medical doctor, cardiologist, and a research scientist. And you we were talking off the air about a really cool one that's coming up for our listeners out there who may be dealing with high blood pressure or hypertension issues, right, Doc?

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:05

Absolutely. Absolutely. As you know, Kevin, is that people sometimes struggle to have their blood pressure controlled. Right. And it's not uncommon for people to need multiple medications. Um we have patients that very frequently need three to five medications to control their blood pressure. So we're working on a project right now that involves using an injectable type of treatment that will allow your blood pressure to be controlled for a month at a time. So again, this is envisioned to be in use with other medications, of course, but hopefully by using this uh type of medication that will last for a longer time, there'll be less pressure on people if they forget a pill or they forget the timing of their pills, and they probably will need fewer pills. So we are doing this research as we speak. And the neat thing for this uh for our patient population is there's actually a little stipend in our budget to compensate people with high blood pressure that just want to come in and get their blood pressure analyzed. So we'll bring them in, we'll teach them about what we're doing, and then they'll go back home and sort of measure their blood pressure over the course of a couple of weeks, and they will be compensated for this. At the same time, we'll see whether or not they'd be a good candidate for this longer-term study to see if this monthly medication is actually as useful as we think it will be.

Kevin Geddings: 3:26

I guess Dr. Koren, is there benefit too for I guess utilization of these medications when it's only once a month? Are we just better at doing things once a month than taking a pill every day?

Dr. Michael Koren: 3:36

Well, I think all of medicine is moving that in that direction, Kevin. So I mentioned that we're close to launching some gene editing studies for cholesterol issues. And more and more of the projects that get presented to us are about using medications that last for a longer period of time. For example, we were very involved in the development of a drug called Leqvio or inclisiran, which is a cholesterol treatment that lasts for six months. And more and more of these treatments that are being developed through research and development arms, pharmaceutical companies and in other medical industries are trying to reduce the burden of compliance. That just makes sense. So your birth control is now often a once-a-month treatment for many women, and you'll see this across different types of health issues, occurring health issues.

Kevin Geddings: 4:27

And when it comes to hypertension and all sorts of other health issues, there's another great website we want to do a plug for, right, Doc?

Dr. Michael Koren: 4:33

Yeah, that's the MedEvidence platform or the truth behind the data. So, Kevin, you and I were were talking before we got on about the sound issues at the Super Bowl. And I I you know, it's it's a hard thing to discuss because everybody's in their own environment and you don't know actually what they're hearing. But I think you and I had a similar experience, which is that the the national anthem in the beginning had perfect sound. Uh Chris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico did a great job, I thought, and their sound was pristine. But the halftime show was all garbled. We were saying, is this really the way it's supposed to sound? And um when the referee on the field was announcing penalties, it was all garbled. So there's clearly some sound issue. Now, I don't want to blame the the the halftime act for this, but I was joking in my household that I'm I'm not sure if the name of this act is Bad Bunny or Bad Sounding. And um it was uh very distracting and it I thought it was interesting that there was little made of this after the Super Bowl. So I again I don't know if this was my environment or if this was something that was more ubiquitous, but I didn't see a whole lot of chatter about it on the internet this morning. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because this is a common problem in the internet age, is everybody has their own experience and it's really hard to penetrate that experience when you're just pushing everything out on the internet and you really don't touch the people who are experiencing your messaging. And we try to get over that with in MedEvidence by actually having conversations. And when you have a conversation, there's a much deeper way of analyzing the issue and expressing the issue in and and helping people understand how that issue applies to their individual circumstances. So I'd like uh if you could to just keep help me spread the word and let people take a listen or a look at their their podcasts and their video clips and see if this is indeed helpful. You know, hopefully we can build some momentum with this particular way of educating the public.

Kevin Geddings: 6:39

Dr. Koren, we appreciate all your time this morning. Be safe out there driving, okay? Have a great week, Kevin.

Announcer: 6:46

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