Hypertension - Anyone Here Struggle with High Blood Pressure?

This right here, now @ima_drummer2k I don't know how old you are or your other particular details but some of us are more prone to high blood pressure. I'm 37 and it is a major issue for me. Reducing alcohol consumption, riding a bicycle or brisk walking for 20-30 mins a day will help, losing weight, and eating crap like whole grain oatmeal for breakfast has helped me get down from around 180/100 to 130/85 without medication over a 2 month period.

If you go into that doctor's office knowing you're good on your cuff at home, you'll walk out like a boss and better yet without any medication. I do take aged garlic supplements and that has also helped IMO.

 

That's awesome, man! Keep it up. I would cut all carbs after lunch. Good carbs for breakfast- I eat berries, protein shake for snack, then good carbs for lunch- I have sweet potatoes. Then no carbs or light carbs so you're 'fasting' carbs for 16-20 hours.

Sorry to hear that compadre. Dealing with my FIL's Alzheimer's downward spiral right now. It sucks.

Know what's crazy? Doctors I've talked to are are against whole-body scans. Last one told me that it causes a lot of questions for people who get too into the minutiae of their test results. That seems just stupid to me; total bloodwork, full body MRI, cardiogram, the works- tell me what's wrong. I'll work it out.

Yeah, it's a real cluster**** confluence of genetic, socio-economic and culture influences with African American hypertension rates.

But the alcohol is a big player there too. I rarely drink now. You don't see it when you drink on a regular basis but it is absolutely terrible for your health.

 

People (and doctors) are divided on the full body scans. I will do it anyway, as I work in that field and am just generally curious. I know people at both the leading companies offering these.

Here is a good article about it by a friend of mine, with doctors weighing in.

https://secondopinionmedia.substack.com/p/8-doctors-duke-it-out-on-whole-body

 

I am against whole body scans because they’re wasteful and are too low yield in otherwise healthy populations to justify. If you have genetic predisposition or a strong family history of a particular cancer, then the benefit shifts toward screening being worth it over not screening. The incidental findings are almost always benign and non-actionable for healthy people. The worst thing is paying $10,000 to an unnamed company in SF who will do your whole body MRI and have someone read it as maybe cancer and follow up on next year’s whole body MRI when in reality it is just artifact because the imaging protocol is garbage.

Health screening is an important public health resource but it has to be appropriately used and the benefits have to justify the cost.

Again, not medical advice. Just a take like any other.

 

From the sound of it, @ima_drummer2k has evidence of longstanding uncontrolled hypertension because his heart muscle was thickened on the echocardiogram. I am hopeful he can deescalate his medicine regimen with life long changes to diet and approaches to exercise. Even just walking for an hour in the evening after dinner can be beneficial in the long term.

 

Why are you getting so many tests done?

quit smoking, cut processed stuff / salt , exercise

 

Lol.

 

Yes.

A whole body scan ends up being more detrimental. Its literally not a thing unless you're staging CA or fishing for something in a very sick individual. For CTs , too much radiation. We all have incidental stuff. Wait till you chase an adrenal or pulm nodule of unknown significance, get a biopsy and suffer from comps for something completely stupid

 

Paywall- can you please post text?

 

Wouldn’t it be good to have the data to consider it at a meta, holistic level as well as feed the entire dataset into AI for some potential missed connections for physician review?

 

If I am reading between the lines, the overall issue is the low resolution for FB MRI's.

However if someone has 10k to waste, why not check for something very obvious that would otherwise be missed or a potential to find structural issues. Just dont go chasing waterfalls.

 

I wouldn't call it a waste. Peace of mind is priceless.

 

A lot of good posts here. As one poster noted we're all getting old. Sorry @tinman but 1999 was 25 years ago and the last Rockets Championship was 29 years ago. Most of us who remember those events are in our 40's and 50's now.

As such issues like hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, type II diabetes, gout, and etc.. all are going to start affecting us more. As mostly men we also need to look out for prostate cancer. I've been wrestling with this for the last few years now as going from a tough young Judoka who could spend hours on the mat fighting and then stay up late partying (along with working 80 hour weeks) just can't do that anymore.

If we want to be around for our families, friends and others we need to make changes like eating better, drinking less, getting regular exercise and getting sleep. Also regular checkups and taking care of health issues before they get too bad.

 

1999 was a glorious year for humanity

But you’re right
Can’t eat bacon double cheeseburgers on the regular

 

bacon double cheeseburgers are keto and are the secret to a long heart-healthy life

 

If we had unlimited resources it would be immensely beneficial on a scientific level. But we don’t.

The actual conversation is a bunch of biostats. How accurate is the test. How prevalent is the disease being tested in the group being evaluated. Is there a treatment for the disease being evaluated? How many need to be screened to prevent mortality or morbidity in a single person?

Medical imaging and tests are not perfect. If I designed a screening test that was 99% accurate for a disease that affects 1/100 people, is it a good test? Not really. It would have 99% accuracy if it says everyone tested does not have the disease (99/100).

The issue with whole body MRI is that its generally not optimized to answer any specific medical question so it’s sensitivity and specificity falls off in a patient with an already low pre-test probability for any given disease.

The issue with whole body CT is that you have patients with low pre-test probability getting ionizing radiation (5-7 years of the background radiation dose in single session). On a population level, that leads to increased cancer rates for no measurable benefit. Patients should get medical imaging and tests based on their chance of having a particular disease and not as a means of maintaining wellness.

Want wellness? Eat a balanced diet, don’t over indulge, and limit alcohol intake and don’t smoke. Limit stressors and exercise with both aerobic and anaerobic exercises.

But disease happens. Whether by chance or life choices.

Does obesity increase the risk of many diseases? Yes. Does not being obese eliminate that risk? Absolutely not.

Hypertension is incredibly common and with very affordable medications that treat the numbers and reduce the risk of complications from the disease.

 

Hmm. Well said.

 

I've been on losartan for almost 5 years. I tried losing weigh but gained instead.

 

Hasn't it been debunked that salt affects blood pressure?

Having just been driven down an insane rabbit hole of different tests and doctors from an anomaly that appeared on a random CT scan I got for an unrelated orthopedic issue, I can co-sign this.

 

only without the bun, and no ketchup