Posted by Elizabeth on August 22, 2001, at 14:16:02
In reply to Re: MAOI diet short list, posted by Rick on August 17, 2001, at 19:56:08
> Adam, 186/104 is not generally an "emergency" blood pressure reading, although perhaps if you're typically on the low side a sudden rise like this could be risky...especially if you feel symptoms.
Whenever my BP has been that high, it's been symptomatic. The time when I actually had a hemorrhage that showed up on an x-ray (and caused some nasty symptoms like coughing up blood and stuff) my BP was around 240/140 or something like that. (Normally I run about 110/70, a little lower on MAOIs.)
> I have a hypertensive friend who is taking five (!) blood pressure meds and attaining quite good control...usually 110-130/70-85.
Hypertension is very complicated to treat. When you take one med, your body makes adaptive changes and you have to have another med to counteract that, and then your body adapts to that med and so on... My father takes at least 5 meds for it that I know about.
> (Before treatment his previous doctor gaped in disbelief at a completely asymptomatic 220/120...but no secondary causes were found.)
I think, as you suggested, that paroxysmal elevations in BP in folks whose BP normally runs low or normal are more likely to cause symptoms than are sustained high BPs.
> Every week or two his generally-controlled BP asymptomatically spikes to as high as 180/105, but his doc -- a nationally-prominent hypertension specialist -- tells him not to worry about that. In fact, he recently told my friend to STOP monitoring his BP at home!
That sort of behaviour can actually lead to pretty bad hypochondriasis, yup: people become obsessed with their blood pressure from doing that. It wasn't a problem for me but I've seen it happen.
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:75408
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/75976.html