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

[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.