It will not come as a surprise to some of you that I have hypertension. (Ahem.) It runs in my family, both sides, and I’ve been on low dose Diovan HCTZ for some months.
Regrettably, I’m not always the most compliant patient. I forget, and sometimes skip my meds if I am hustling to get out the door for work, or busy on an engaging prospect, or… or… or.
I am not precisely a sterling example.
But my intermittent compliance has led me to an interesting observation. After two or three days on my meds, I notice a distinct… buffering? blunting? of my moods. It’s not depression, or the like; but I notice that I am a lot less likely to fume and steam over things like… oh, having BOTH cars break down in the same day, less than a week after being serviced by our local mechanic.
I am annoyed. Before I was on my BP medications, I’d have been livid.
This effect is not unpleasant, exactly. But it’s odd to have my emotional state affected so noticeably, so identifiably, by a medicine which has no reported psychotropic effects.
Many patients who are on antidepressants report that they feel like different human beings entirely. Sometimes that leads to noncompliance, as people don’t like being a “spokesman for my pills”. And others… feel “better than well”, taking certain antidepressants to enhance their moods rather than treat depression.
I haven’t run into anyone who’s been psychologically affected by BP meds, unless you count fatigue or the varied sexual issues which can happen. But those are physio-mechanical effects which the patient responds emotionally, not an actual alteration of the emotions themselves.
Maybe there’s something to the humoral theory, at least observationally. Choleric humours? Affect the choler, and change the mood.
I wonder if there are other case reports of such reactions…
Hmmm. Guess I have *another* reading-and-research project to occupy my “spare time”.
Heh.