Taking blood pressure medications at bedtime rather than in the morning may lead to significantly greater health benefits, according to a study published Wednesday in the European Heart Journal. Specifically, the study found that people who take the medications before falling asleep at night are almost half as likely to experience or die from heart attacks, strokes, heart failure or other heart or blood vessel conditions as people who take them upon awakening in the morning.
It’s not clear why the drugs worked better when taken at bedtime, but the researchers believe it’s related to the body’s circadian rhythms, the internal biological “clocks” that set the timing of the body’s physiological functions. “The same medication ingested at different times of the day actually has different pharmacological properties, behaving like totally different medications,” explained the study’s lead…
