It seems I am rather on the high side (152/100 average over 24hr test), this follows a few months of feeling on and off – some days I am sprightly, some I feel like dragging a lead weight around with me and a headache.

I would prefer not to be on medication, if I can do anything else.

I am 2stone overweight. I don’t eat too much salt, probably eat too much processed sugar, I barely drink.
I do a half active job, and could get fitter (alongside loosing the weight).
Lots of other tests have been done and are normal (thyroid/cholesterol/liver/white and red counts etc)
Heart issues/high blood pressure/hemochromatosis runs in the family. 🙁

How to get it down?

Relax chill out, take diruretics, and urinate frequently, mate suffers and thats what he does

Put your kids up for adoption?

They’re not helping 🙂

Lose the weight. Meditation / relaxation exercises. Reduce the salt in your diet ( could be much more than you realise and the recommended amount is low and hard to achieve)

Could be tho that you are one of those folk that have high BP for no real reason. Whats the rest of your cardiovascular disease / stroke risk? I can’t remember all the risk factors but stuff like family history and so on. there are calculators for working this out some simplistic some quite complex.

Sorry – just read you have a bad family history. Medication might be the only answer to get the risk down then. But try the non medicated measures first.

152/100

Mine’s that even on medication! 😀

I average 140/100.

The only thing that really brings mine down is exercise.

I’ve tried cutting out alcohol and caffeine but for me it has no discernible effect.

Could be tho that you are one of those folk that have high BP for no real reason.

This is me – I’ve been tested loads but there’s no obvious reason for it. My cholesterol is a good way below average and I’ve exercised at a decent level for 25+ years.

I was a porker as a kid though!

I always thought you were a sprightly fit young fella Matt 😉

That is a high average! Just finished a week of self testing and mine at rest varied between 159/101 and 125/72 the at rest high was while I was at work! The low one was 10 minutes after getting in from an evening ride 🙂 (proving that cycling is good work is bad)

I’m a few more stone overweight than you & drink way to much red wine & cider, though I do eat healthy stuff (just too much of it) are you stressed about anything as with me I get stressed about going for blood pressure tests etc and it shoots up.
Genetic pre disposition to it would be your main issue I guess.

Put your kids up for adoption?

They’re not helping
That was soooo the case yesterday.

Sorry – just read you have a bad family history.

This is the real bit – seems (at an amateur guess, having seen brother and now 4 cousins in the space of 4 months diagnosed with hemocrhomatosis) that we have a cause running in the family. My father and 8 siblings all have heart issues (irregular rhythms and dicky valves), of which three have died from. 😐

I get tutted at by the diabetes nurse for 130/85, avoided the Ramipril so far, but wouldn’t refuse it if got bad enough.

Known a few people on BP medication now and the side effects aren’t that bad. Certainly nowhere near how crap you feel with high BP and no where near as bad as the longer term damage of high BP.

You can always cut down on dose or come off them if things get better.

There is a school of thought that what matters is not an arbitrary normal but what is normal for you – however the headaches would make me concerned as that is often a symptom of high BP.

Do your research on the net – not forgetting your tin foil hat and scepticism as there is a lot of nonsense to search thru to find the good info.

Are you stressed?

Are you stressed?

I do a busy job, father to three lads, usual permanent feeling skint feelings. So no, no stress…..

I don’t *feel* stressed.

Mines similar to yours op, diagnosed as high in my late thrirties and recommended duretics. I didnt fancy a life on pills at that age so lost some weight, dropped some habits and changed my lifestyle.

After a year or so there was sufficient improvement for the docs to say we could just monitor it without medication which remains he situation now 10yrs later.

Sleeping well? You can be stressed without necessarily feeling it although in your position I wouldn’t think it a large part ( only from what I know of your online presence)

In your position I would be looking at the meditation / relaxation exercise and have a close look at salt in your diet. Thats the first things to do IMO – then lose the weight. Easy to say. Go veggie? Vegetarians have a lower rate of raised BP IIRC

Conventional medicine will tell you cardivascular stuff is not under concious control but IMO / IME there is some control. I can alter my heart rate by 15% up and down just by concentrating on it ( I get to play with monitors at work) ( Biofeedback)

Had pins and needles in my left hand for about 3 weeks, following advice in the pub (haha, I know) who said it was heart problems, went along for a check up, BP was 172/90. All other tests were fine but that reading freaked me out (especially when I checked the ‘net out afterwards!).

Anyway, like you, I was determined to lower it without pills. Researched things quite a bit, bought a book called “The abs diet” which was just common sense really but helped me focus a bit. Changed my diet (just cut out processed stuff, tried to make sure the checkout looked colourful with fruit and veg) and started going for daily walks (2 miles in 30 mins was enough to raise heart rate). Also bought a decent blood pressure monitor…checked it daily and in 4 weeks levels had reduced drastically (cannot remember the numbers, but I also felt the best I had in ages, got my highest score at cricket, felt so full of energy, no more pins and needles etc). Dr happy to let me go on my way without any medication, so in my case it can be done.

I second others as well about the salt – I never ever added any salt to my diet but putting stuff that I eat through ‘my fitness pal’ the levels of sodium in foods were a great surprise. I now try and make sure I have a lot of potassium as that counteracts the sodium (bananas and spinach my go to items).

Good luck, its a worrying thing to have but now you know you have hopefully you can ‘treat’ it.

Mine is moderately high like the ops. I’m slightly and on the face of it have similar diet. My mum also has hypertension and has always had a good diet and is slim so suspect it is hereditary.
The issue for me is that I also have PAF which in combination puts me in at high stroke risk 🙁
Have taken Ramapril for a few months and BP has come down a little with no side effects. Also take magnesium supplements which haven’t help BP but has helped sleep.

Why the objection to medication?
Ask about ACE inhibitors, which drop BP with very few side-effects. I’ve been on Lisinopril for several years, as have my brothers. (I’m early 60s now)

High BP also makes maintaining erections more difficult for the body, so there are positive sides to taking the drugs.

mate got tested and was 202 / 160
Got signed off for a month and had alot of tests.
Was work related stress , family stuff , poor diet , zero exercise and being 8 stone overweight.
Drugs got it down to around the 150’s , and he has changed his job role to a less demanding one.

Lose weight. I don’t mean to be harsh but 2 stone overweight is a lot.

If that doesn’t work take the drugs..been on ramapril for 5 years for high bp (crap genes)…no side effects, and bp is under control.

Might be worthy trying beetroot juice.
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/superfoods/Pages/is-beetroot-a-superfood.aspx

(And buy a new bike!)

It was all stress-related with me Matt. I had a long conversation with myself about the job I was doing, made some changes to my life, and got it back to normal. No meds required. I wouldn’t be focusing too much on the weight thing. An active overweight person is a lot less at risk than a sedentary one.

About 10 years ago I had slightly higher BP than OP, 155/105 and family history of CVD. Doc gave me 6 months to sort out through diet and exercise. I got fit and lost a bit of weight, and BP down. Doc said good, but only putting back time I go on meds. Still not on meds, annual check with nurse and monitor at home.

I think it was mainly exercise and getting fit for me, but I also think losing weight, drinking less help. Work stress can blip my BP up but only temporarily, and exercise helps with that.

In the end I will go on the meds as soon as the doc said I needed to. My dad had a big stroke in mid fifties, just a bit older than I am now. I will do anything to avoid that.

Agree with the job point, I changed my direction a while ago raking a more technical but with no people manager responsibilities, much happier.

You’re in a better position than many who find out about HBP for the first time. You’re only 2 stone overweight, have a reasonably active lifestyle and fitness base, so you will be able to shed that pretty quickly with a bit of application. And your BP is not critically high, just a timely warning that you need to make changes.

Look at moderate changes in diet – more good stuff, less processed stuff, slightly fewer calories, and start tapering up the exercise.

I’ve got rid of about 2 stone + over the past year or so (after seeing my holiday snaps from last August!) My blood pressure was never that high in the first place, but I feel so much better in myself.

went in for angiogram and they spotted 140/95 … drugs straight away
without a thought to i might be stressed a touch given i hate hospitals
and this was heart related investigations !
my resting average now (on ramipril) is 106/60 with 43bpm. doc now reckons
i may not need the ramipril after all, but chatting to him and he’s seen
many cases where patients have high bp for no obvious reason !

I had very high BP even with medication, but after changing my diet by cutting out a lot of (but not all) carbs and started taking Montmorency Cherry Juice and beetroot juice every day plus changing my breakfast from cereals to blueberries/raspberries/strawberries with natural yoghurt, my last reading was 122/73 and is consistently 20 points lower on the upper reading.
I’m not saying it’ll work for everyone but it might be worth a try.

Put on meds at 140/95, was there something that made them take that action immediately. As an absolute minimum they would normally look for 3 readings on separate occasions for a diagnosis. But I know the threshold s have been lowered?

Mine is 140/90 and has been like that for 30 years. Hereditary. At least its not getting worse.

Medication is best avoided as once you start you are on it forever.

IMO you should do a bit of everything

Attention to diet – I eat very little prepared food, jars of sauce etc as that is always high in salt. We use a normal amount of salt in cooking. I eat mainly fish and vegetables now, fairly little red meat although I do love my cheese (have high cholestorol too 😐 )
Excersize – assuming you ride quite a bit and an active job so perhaps not the focus for you
Lose some of the extra weight
Stress is definitely a contributor, working out to reduce that though is not easy – job, family, etc. My divorce not surprisingly made mine worse and gave me tinitus which has never gone although stress levels now much lower and life much better. The suggestion above of some medidiation or that style of excersize eg yoga might be good – focus on relaxation, breathing rather than body contortions

You should it down with Mrs OB or someone else and go through the various things above and see where you can make some changes, target achievable things

Bikes

Solution to everything. Ride loads, or loads more than you are. Cut food quantities, which to be fair is tricky with exercise as you want to stuff yourself post ride.

Not only helps lower blood pressure but relieves stress, anxiety, depression, is great for mental health. All of which are things that can push you towards comfort food and booze, so if you feel better and less stressed then you may not resort to them so much.

Looking at particular foods to cut out is fine, but generally just cut the portions and exercise more is really the key.

Oh and if you do ride a lot and use a lot of gels, you might want to cut those gels down or out. There was a medical guy on the radio a while back into his fitness stuff with running and cycling, using a lot of gels and became diabetic because (in his opinion) of the gels. They can be extremely high in sugars.

@gibby Chapeau on that reduction. I’d like some of that. Montmorency Cherry Juice will look that up, as an aside its the name of a park just outside Paris with a few mtb trails I ride from time to time.

Jamba
I get the cherry juice from here

http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/holland-barrett-montmorency-cherry-juice-concentrate-60060313

It’s a bit pricey but there’s an offer on at the moment where you can get a second item for 1p

Avoid liquorice, can raise blood pressure.

I have been diagnosed with haemochromatosis (sp?) this week – and a new doc cross that it has taken 4 months to do so, and previous doc has not had some of the most basic, related bloods done (iron levels for a start 🙄 ) . All the results have been communicated by the reception (as I am encouraged to phone in, not make appointment), so I have had a ‘all fine’ answer all the way along, including specifically asking about iron levels….

So, more bloods on Tuesday and bet from new GP that high iron = sticky blood = could be factor in why blood pressure is so high.

meh

Just been to a charity thing, lady from stroke assosiation asked if i wanted blood pressure taken, and guess what im high blood pressure, she filed in the form and said make appointmet with gp next week to get checked out.

I’m on a low dose of Amlodipine and Ramipril. No side effects whatsoever and blood pressure now within target range.

Some people hate them, and those are the reviews you find on the internet. Not me.

Family history here too – mum died of heart attack aged 51.

Ramipril and amlodipine here too – was ramipril only for years

No side effects other than a dry cough for first few weeks

Never get headaches any more – used to get lots – not sure if that’s a coincidence

After reading the thread I ordered some Montmorency Cherry concentrate, only 2 days in but it will be interesting if it lowers my blood pressure as the research says.

FWIW my pressure fell when 1) I was in Singapore (hot weather) and 2) I was away from my first wife – further the better !