It's all downhill from here

[johnridley]

My blood pressure has been borderline for several years, even with 90 minutes of cardio a day. Since stopping the daily bike rides back in October, I got a home monitor on the advice of my doctor, and it's been creeping up as I expected it to, but yesterday for the 2nd time it spiked up enough to raise a real alarm, so I decided "now" rather than "maybe after the holidays."

Today the doctor put me on a base level drug. This is the first time in my life I've had a drug that I will have to take every day forever (or one of its cousins). It was inevitable given my family history (my mom's BP is frightening), and blood pressure control meds at the level I'm likely to need for quite a while to come are cheap and straightforward, so I'm not all that bummed really. Beats destroying my kidneys.

Oh yeah, and I just ordered my first pair of bifocals.

Pass the Geritol.

Comments

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

You're 46, John. Welcome to middle-age. :-)

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Thanks. How's the weather here? :)

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, what do they call borderline and spike in the US?

My BP cam edown a big chunk after IO lost weight, but not down to the optimum 120/60 or something.

Good luck with the bifocals, I tried varifocals but they drove me mad. I either use distance glasses paired with some limited vari's - ie read a book to view a monitor range (I can love with the optical oddities caused by my severe astigmatism).

Or, I just use distance glasses only - then squint, curse and swear a lot.

Wait until you reach another 12 years like me - then maybe you'll have cause to grouse...

On a not-terribly-related topic, I've decided definitely not to have a PSA test - at all - unless frank symptoms develop.

It doesn't run in my family and the more papers I read, the more convinced I become that is a bad plan due to a large number of false positives. Are they a standard test in the US?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Diastolic at around 90 is borderline. I've been running about 135 to 145 / 88 to 92 for several years, with the exercise.

After 6 weeks off the bike, I saw a slow general trend to where the diastolic was always at least in the low 90s, with an averaged reading of about 150/104 a couple of weeks ago, and 150/110 on Thursday, confirmed by the nurses at the blood drive where they deferred me.

I'm 46 and my doctor has not mentioned the PSA test. He said he really doesn't start talking to men about prostate stuff until they're at least 50. So I don't know if it's standard or not.

I was listening to a science show about prostate cancer a few months back, and they said that eventually every male WILL develop prostate cancer, current research is just trying to push that point back to longer than their lifespan.

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK, I was around 165/95 and thinking seriously about medication when obese, now more usually 135/75 but occasionally a bit higher when stressed.

On the prostate front, yes, both you and I have probably already started to develop it like every adult male on the planet, but in most cases, something else gets you first - like old age.

New reasoning:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11930979

Certainly a lot of men suffer a lot of discomfort and worry when the positive test result turns out to be a flase positive - but of course you'll always find the odd case where a random test does save a life.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

The ideal bp is supposedly less than 120/70. IIRC the diastolic going up is actually more worrisome than the systolic.

Out of curiosity, which base level drug did they put you on? I'm betting on hydrochlorothiazide or lisinopril.

My dad had high bp but mom had chronically low bp. Like Dermot, my bp was creeping up when I was heavier and I've seen it go down steadily with the weight loss and exercise. I haven't been on a bike regularly for over a month but yesterday my bp was 111/65.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Yes, diastolic is the one they're really looking at.

Those two were the choices to start with, and my doctor prefers lisinopril, so thats' where we started, 10mg and I seem to be responding fine to it. For the last 2 days I've been around 130/80. The doc says linsinopril typically takes a couple of weeks to reach maximum effectiveness, and after just 2 days I was down to 132/77 so hopefully I'll stay with that. I have had no side effects at all; the only thing I notice is that I feel a bit better just all around than I did before, and I can't FEEL my heart beating in bed at night like I could before.

I could stand to lose 20 pounds.