some preventive-use advocates propose that everyone over a given age (e.g., 55) should take such medications for preventive health, irrespective of individual risk factor levels. the idea is that most people in western countries are at high overall risk, thus lowering risk factor levels will provide broad benefit. this approach emphasizes the perspective that risk factors are continuous, and rigid dichotomies such as "hypertension" and "no hypertension" may be over-simplified and can be viewed instead as continuums of inter-connected factors.