The best time to take blood pressure medication to avoid diabetes

It’s all about timing when it comes to taking your blood pressure medication according to a new Spanish study. The study has determined that the difference between daytime and nighttime could actually impact whether or not you develop type 2 diabetes.

Two large scale studies recently examined the impact of sleep-time blood pressure on new-onset diabetes risk.

At the moment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that approximately 1 in 3 adults in the United States have high blood pressure – that is around 70 million people! To add to this problem, only 52% of those people have control over their condition. This instability can lead to a metabolic syndrome, a collection of disorders, such as increased risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. It can be difficult to manage one condition let alone multiple other medical conditions.

The study used the measurement of blood pressure to help determine new-onset diabetes. It investigated 2,656 individuals with varying blood pressure levels, many of which did not have diabetes at the beginning of the study. They then followed up nearly six years later and 190 participants had developed type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, it found that sleep-time blood pressure levels were an indicator of the development of diabetes. The researchers therefore suggest that lowering sleep-time blood pressure would be a new concept for helping to lower the risk of new-onset diabetes.

The second study sought to understand the link between taking hypertension medication before sleeping rather than in in the morning. This study looked at 2,012 people with high blood pressure and they were randomly assigned to take their medication in the morning or at bedtime.

There were no participants with diabetes at the start of this study and again the researchers tracked the participants over 6 years. They found that 171 participants developed type 2 diabetes. However, those who took their medication before bedtime had a much lower average sleep-time blood pressure and a greater sleep-time relative blood pressure decline compared to the participants who took the medication in the morning.

Overall, the study determined that the risk of new-onset type 2 diabetes decreased by 57% in those participants who took medication at bedtime.

So, does this mean that the ideal time for blood pressure treatment is at night? The study results do indicate that ingesting hypertension medication at bedtime does have its benefits.

Tell us, do you suffer from high blood pressure? Did you find these findings interesting?