All blood pressure medications — and there are at least eight categories of them — are used to lower the pressure inside blood vessels, so the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood throughout the body.
Top-selling blood-pressure medications include lisinopril (Prinivil, Zestril), an ACE inhibitor; amlodipine (Norvasc), a calcium channel blocker; hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ and various other brand names), a thiazide diuretic; furosemide (Lasix), a loop diuretic; and metoprolol (Lopressor, Toprol), a beta blocker. Fatigue is also one of the most common side effects that occurs with aliskiren (Tekturna, Tekturna HCT), which belongs to a newer class of drugs called renin inhibitors.
Blood-pressure medications may slow down the pumping action of the heart as well as depress the entire central nervous system, or, in the case of diuretics, deplete electrolytes that the body needs.
Check the safety information that comes with your blood pressure medications and you may well see “extreme tiredness” listed as a side effect. That’s an important sign that your fatigue could be drug-induced.