[General, non-medicamentous treatment of arterial hypertension]. / Allgemeine, nichtmedikamentöse Behandlung des arteriellen Bluthochdrucks.

This review focuses on the following aspects of nonpharmacological management concerning elevation of blood pressure: historical development, highlights and theses, possibilities of intervention, as well as favorable observations, advantages (in early diagnosis), disadvantages, fields of application, and integration of this form of treatment into a comprehensive strategy of hypertension control at a population level. A selection of detailed results is elaborated including: possible failure in primary classification of elevated blood pressure and its consequences, the reducibility of the hypertension problem if nonpharmacological measures are generally used, risk factor prevalences in medical and non-medical university cadres, blood pressure reduction in a spa, and hemodynamic changes induced by nonpharmacological or combined antihypertensive treatment simultaneously with drugs. Finally, reference is made to international results, as well as to the importance of the relation between diagnosing and treating blood pressure elevation concomitantly with a simultaneous management of other main risk factors that must be influenced in order to reduce the cardiac risk in hypertensives.

[Non-drug modification of blood pressure in a health resort]. / Nichtmedikamentöse Beeinflussung des Blutdruckes zur Kur.

1,049 patients between 30 and 69 years were treated in a sanitarium for 28 days. Here no change of the medicamentous therapy which had influence on the blood pressure took place. As remedies of cure were applied: physical conditional training, changes of nutrition including restriction of calories and Na, physiotherapy including sauna. The average decrease of blood pressure at the end of the cure was in patients with normal blood pressure 4.42 Torr (0.59 kPa) systolically and 3.52 Torr (0.47 kPa) diastolically, in patients with borderline hypertension 15.39 Torr (2.05 kPa) systolically and 6.32 Torr (0.84 kPa) diastolically and in patients with hypertension 27.59 Torr (3.67 kPa) systolically and 11.49 Torr (1.53 kPa) diastolically. In a former year of cure without conditional training and with more insignificant reduction of body weight no reduction of blood pressure was the result in patients with normal blood pressure, in patients with borderline hypertension a clearly more insignificant, and only in patients with hypertension simultaneously using antihypertensive medicaments a similarly expressed reduction of the blood pressure was achieved. On the basis of a rescreening the efforts for a permanent success of the non-medicamentous reduction of the blood pressure was discussed.