High Blood Pressure - any serious advice

tebbit

Hello folks, I have just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and will be heading back to Blightly early, feel like s**t, any good advice for getting myself back to together again.

Much appreciated

dennisn

tebbit wrote:

Hello folks, I have just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and will be heading back to Blightly early, feel like s**t, any good advice for getting myself back to together again.

Much appreciated

Never forget to take your medication. If it comes to that.

johncp

Why do you feel like sh1t? Most ppl with high blood pressure do not have symptoms - unless it's sky high??! Listen to drs unless they tell you to not exercise (highly unlikely but if they do on second thoughts might be best to listen :shock: ) and theres a lot you can do in lifestyle to reduce bp - diet, exercise, stress levels etc. If you cycle already no need to think you have to stop as long as medics are ok about it. High bp not the end of the world. Several types of medication available if it comes to that, so if one doesn't suit you and your cycling lifestyle, ask for something else - if GP not helpful, try another one!

coelecanth

I don't know your personal medical circumstances, and this is general rather than specific advice.

The first thing is to ensure that you actually have high blood pressure- if your diagnosis was made just with a reading in the doctor's office, there is a small but significant chance that it was wrong (google "white coat hypertension"). For a secure diagnosis it is useful to have a 24 hour recording, which means that you will be have a blood pressure monitor on your arm for 24 hours, and this eliminates the "white coat" effect.

If your diagnosis is secure, then a few things that you can do to avoid having to take medication are:

- obviously I don't know how much you weigh, but if you are even a little overweight, then even a small loss of weight (eg loss of 1-2 kg) can be the difference between needing treatment with medication, and not.
- if you can bear to do it, then reducing salt in your diet can also be very helpful in reducing blood pressure non-pharmacologically. Apart from not adding salt to cooking, processed foods such as preserved meat and fish (eg ham, anchovies) and mature cheese are high in salt and should be used very sparingly, or not at all. You will get used to the taste of things with less salt, but food can taste a bit bland at first.
-Finally if you drink more than the recommended number of units of alcohol will raise your blood pressure, so again if you can cut back, it is likely to reduce your BP.

Remember that there is lots that you can do to alter your circumstances- you are by no means powerless.

Best wishes

timestar

A one-off reading is pretty useless - it usually needs 3 over a period of time, or over 24 hours as pointed out. Would reinforce comments made re: lifestyle changes - i.e. reduce weight, reduce the booze, reduce salt, reduce processed food. And - increase fruit and veg' and oily fish. If you need do medication - will usually start you off with an ACE inhibitor on a low dose (2.5 mg often) for couple of weeks. If it's not coming down quick enough they may push this is up to as high as 10mg per day. Or they may try you with a combination of drugs which can be more effective for some. It's really a case of just getting on with your life. Keep on your bike and keep utting in the miles. Depending on how high your reading, and how you respond, you may be on medication for the rest of your life. Sounds depressing at first but trust me there are worse things. There are also several BP support groups/sites on the Net if you Google them.

Tempestas

I was diagnosed with high blood pressure by a doctor at hospital a while back, he told me to go see my GP to get 3 tests done during a week to get a base reading. He used a digital BP reader.

The first day I saw the doctor who also used a digital BP machine, it was a high reading.

The 2nd and 3rd time I saw the nurse who used a hand pump type and a stethoscope, both these readings came out fine so she used the digital method immediately after and it returned a high reading...

After speaking with a few people this isn't that common, so may be worth being checked using the old fashioned method?

keef66

I suspect what you are advised to do will depend on what the cause of the high blood pressure is.

Headhuunter

Try supplementing your diet with co enzyme Q10? Recent scientific research has shown that as you age, particularly beyond the age of 40 or 50 and even more so if you take statins for a heart condition, you are very likely to be low in co Q10...

http://www.inspiredliving.com/heart-car ... nefits.htm

jimmcdonnell

Diagnosed with surprise MONSTER high BP about 13 years ago (at 34); doctor monitored my BP every week for 3 MONTHS to make sure it wasn't a spike on the graph. Eventually diagnosed as 'Essential Hypertension', as is 90% of the high BP population - which means 'you have high blood pressure but there's no particular reason for it'. I have no family history, no dietary or 'lifestyle' factors, never smoked, drink little, no other conditions which could cause it. As for high BP causing no other symptoms, in my case it was the cause of huge regular& frequent headaches as a youth which vanished after the BP was treated.

Was, over the course of a year, put on 3 medications daily (for life), as well as being told to exercise more (I'm 5' 10" and hover around the 83kg mark, which is at the high end of ok BMI apparently). The meds brought the BP down from 210/110 to 140/90, no adverse side-effects for me although there are lots of dire warnings about the possibility of them.

My weight is down, my fitness is good, but my BP over 13 years kept steadily rising (to around 160/95) so I'm now on 4 meds, careful diet etc. I've never felt better and to be honest I'm not worried about it - although if I'd not found out and had it treated I might have a different opinion now (or have dropped down stone dead of a stroke or other related unpleasantness).

Get yourself looked at and get it treated then forget about it. Don't ignore it by finding a method of checking your BP that gives you low readings - that's just head in the sand thinking. The treatment that works for you will probably be quite specific to you; and asking about it on a bike forum is NO substitute for a real doctor's opinion, no matter how well-meaning we all are!

huuregeil

Heart disease runs in my family so I take a pretty keen interest in this. The most surprising thing I found reading around the whole area is that vegan diets have a very strong positive impact on the development of cardiovascular disease. E.g. research by:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish
http://www.heartattackproof.com/news_info.htm
http://www.utoronto.ca/nutrisci/faculty/Jenkins/

Harsh (particular for me, I like my meat!) but well worth knowing about.

tebbit

Thanks folks, they used the old fashioned method which gave a reading of 170/110, I was put on medication immediately, the other symptom was chest pains, with the medication these have subsided. However as an expat I have decided to try and find a job nearer home and stay there. I am over weight, but have lost 2 1/2 stone over the past 18 months, however still have another stone to go before I am happy. There is a history of heart disease, but as Alexi Sayle pointed out it is not what kills your parents that you have to worry about but what kills off your grandparents that you have to worry about, damn heart attack.

Stencho

What kind of high blood pressure symptoms do you have? Is there perspiration ( read about the perspiration symptom - http://highbloodpressuresymptoms.info/perspiration-symptom.html)?
I'm pretty sure that when you change the climate you might be normal again.

Langman

Eat beetroot