Health Topic

Blood Pressure Medicines

If lifestyle changes do not help to control or lower high blood pressure (hypertension), your health care provider may prescribe blood pressure medicines.

Reviewed Reviewed by a registered pharmacistGeneral information

Also called: Antihypertensive medicines · High blood pressure medicines

Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.

About Blood Pressure Medicines

High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is when blood puts too much pressure against the walls of your arteries. Almost half of American adults have high blood pressure, usually with no symptoms. But it can cause serious problems such as stroke, heart failure, heart attack, and kidney disease.

Healthy lifestyle changes can help reduce high blood pressure:

  • Losing weight
  • Being physically active
  • Managing stress
  • Reducing sodium in your diet
  • Avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs
  • Getting enough sleep

Sometimes lifestyle changes alone cannot control or lower your high blood pressure. In that case, your health care provider may prescribe blood pressure medicines.

The most commonly used blood pressure medicines work in different ways to lower blood pressure:

  • Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) keep your blood vessels from narrowing as much and allows blood to move through them with less pressure.
  • Beta blockers help your heart beat slower and with less force. This means that your heart pumps less blood through your blood vessels. Beta blockers are typically used only as a backup option or if you also have certain other conditions.
  • Calcium channel blockers prevent calcium from entering the muscle cells of your heart and blood vessels. This allows the blood vessels to relax.
  • Diuretics remove extra water and sodium (salt) from your body. This lowers the amount of fluid in your blood. Diuretics are often used with other high blood pressure medicines, sometimes in one combined pill.

Often, two or more medicines work better than one. If these medicines do not lower your blood pressure enough, your provider may suggest that you take another type of blood pressure medicine.

While taking the medicines, it is still important to keep up with your healthy lifestyle changes. Doing both helps keep blood pressure lower than lifestyle changes or medicines alone.

It sits within Blood, Heart and Circulation and Drug Therapy.

The lead U.S. institute for this subject is the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.

Research on Blood Pressure Medicines

662 studies areregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.

What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.

Research currently under way

Research already completed

Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.

Where to read more

Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.

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Related Issues

Genetics

Clinical Trials

Medical subject headings

Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Antihypertensive Agents. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.

This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for Blood Pressure Medicines, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.