High Blood pressure

ribenagirl

I can't help but think that the professional disagreements on this thread have rather taken over from what could have been a supportive and constructive thread for the OP who is clearly worried about their mum's diagnosis.

As a 32 year old recently diagnosed with high BP during pregnancy which still hasn't gone away 10 months later, and having had all the tests which are all negative and being in otherwise good health, I now know that there isn't always a 'cause' and there isn't any one thing that works for everyone.

I've gone away and spent hours reading stuff and getting more and more confused about conflicting evidence, which is why I don't think the protracted arguments between two people specifically that have hijacked this thread are helpful. They certainly left me with a bit of a headache.

One of the most helpful sites I found was this one which has already been referred to:

http://www.nice.org.uk/pdf/CG018publicinfo.pdf

It's the National Institute for Clinical Excellence site, which talks in plain language about high blood pressure, how it is defined, and what you can do about it. A lot of it is common sense, but as you will see it depends on your mum's age and whether she has any other medical conditions.

Just remember for now though that just because she has high blood pressure, it doesn't mean she's going to drop dead of a stroke or heart attack (which is what I thought would happen when I was first diagnosed!!). It means the risk is increased but, if you smoke, that increases your risk of lung cancer but doesn't necessarily mean you'll get it. And luckily, it is something that they have good medication for these days! Good luck x

Savvy_Sue

calleyw wrote: »

Rather a sore point with us about advice and total lack of help since he came out of hospital.

He does go for a walk around the block everyday.

As well as the stroke he has underlying medical condition so is on enough tablets to sink a ship.

We try and have food as natural as possible. And don't add salt to any cooking.

Yours


Calley

Calley, I am sorry to hear that. Did you get in touch with Different Strokes? It looks as if there might be some useful information on their website.

twink

i have hbp and nursed my husband at home during his last illness and as you can imagine it was a time of great stress and tiredness but because i lost about two stones in weight my bp went down to 120/80 which was excellent
i have no idea of vit D but i do know it is important to have potassium and magnesium in your diet and oily fish which contains vit D
when my dh had a heart attack, which he recovered from, i made sure he had the above and light meals, the consultant came to talk to me as dh's irregular heartbeat had righted itself and he was surprised

Ted_Hutchinson

First I must make it clear to ribenagirl that this is not a dispute between professionals. I have no professional medical knowledge. I speak only from common sense. It is the failure of Mr_Rush and the medical profession generally to apply common sense when considering Vitamin D and sunshine exposure that so angers me.

mr_rush wrote: »

........only if i started you on vitamin d instead of an ACE inhibitor..............

This is not a forum for medical advice but one for general health related moneysaving advice. The original answer I provided was to the question

It there anything that anyone takes to reduce it?

My suggestions were not in place of medical treatment, which is the responsibility of the person making the medical diagnosis, but of value for money supplements to support that medical opinion and treatment.

My suggestion that increasing vitamin d has been unfairly described as nonsense by Mr_Rush but he is unable to support his claim that there is no sense to my suggestion. It is clear from the abstracts I've provided that blood pressure varies seasonally and the controlling factor appears to be Vitamin D status. It follows that raising your vitamin d status to optimal 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L) will enable you to take advantage of the seasonal reduction available to those who regularly expose their skin to summer sunshine and allow you to benefit from the lower blood pressure levels enjoyed by those who live at higher altitude (nearer the sun) or closer to the Equator (greater availability of more effective sunshine)

We know from Hypovitaminosis D in British adults that the majority of the UK population have low Vitamin D status and in addition to the treatments Mr_Rush offers a 25‑hydroxyvitamin D test and raising Vitamin D status to optimal (125nmol/L) by administration of sufficient Cholecalciferol is surely simply common sense. We expect hospitals to correct nutritional deficiencies when patients enter hospital malnourished, isn't it negligent and incompetent that Vitamin D insufficiency is totally ignored? Indeed Mr_Rush boasts about his failure to address this aspect of his patients care despite the evidence Low Vitamin D status is a risk marker for Stroke.

The cost of 8 weeks Cholecalciferol (Vit d3) @5000iu/d is £2.50 (£13.75 for 250x5000iu) this will also ensure the original poster has the high status of Vitamin D known to reduce the risk of 16 or so most common cancers, improve her feelings of well-being and indeed improve her physical fitness. The links I have provided in post 19 are sufficient to show there is some sense in the claim that those with higher vitamin d status have lower blood pressure levels and I once again ask Mr_Rush to edit the word nonsense from his message 6 or to provide links to an abstract of scientific research showing there is no sense to this suggestion.

Mr_Rush still hasn't explained the Plasma 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and Risk of Incident Hypertension. findings for us, I would find his explanation interesting. (and I feel the need for a good laugh)
Vitamin D linked with blood pressure reduction

colchambers

barber1982 wrote: »

My mum has just been diagnosed with HPB. It there anything that anyone takes to reduce it?

Looking through this thread I couldn't see any detail about possible reasons for your mums high blood pressure.

Did the doctor give any reasons or do you know of any such as stress, being overweight, diabetes etc.

The reason I ask is that the effectiveness of any advice depends entirely on the source of the high bp.

My wife was repeatedly told she had high blood pressure. She had a fear of going to the doctor and she wasn't given time to relax. When they started taking a second reading after say 10 minutes her blood pressure was right down.

Put simply my wife did not actually have high blood pressure the nurses simply didn't test her blood pressure properly. So explaining this to the nurses fixed the problem. If there is a real cause the more we know, the more we can help.

Also would you mind listing the bp values if you know them to give us an idea how high the blood pressure is. My understanding is that the lower value as in 80 from 120/80 is more important as it defines the pressure on your blood system "at rest".

LondonDiva

colchambers wrote: »

My wife was repeatedly told she had high blood pressure. She had a fear of going to the doctor and she wasn't given time to relax. When they started taking a second reading after say 10 minutes her blood pressure was right down.

Put simply my wife did not actually have high blood pressure the nurses simply didn't test her blood pressure properly. So explaining this to the nurses fixed the problem. If there is a real cause the more we know, the more we can help.

Or to be more specific and truthful, your wife had a fear/anxiety of drs etc which raised her blood pressure and which they were unaware of:rolleyes:. The bp was taken correctly, but this factor wasn't known to them so they acted on the information to hand.

Now that they are aware that she stresses herself out over medical stuff, they can take this into account.

My best friend's mum has this and it's called white coat syndrome

What is white coat syndrome?
White coat syndrome is a situation where patients have high blood pressure in the doctor's office but nowhere else. The situation is generally not this clear-cut, however, and often the patient has occasional episodes where the blood pressure is high when taken at home, but it is reliably high when taken in the physician's office. Some patients with sustained high blood pressure will have higher readings in the doctor's office than at home.

....Some studies have suggested however that white coat hypertension may "turn into" sustained high blood pressure

http://mens-health.health-cares.net/white-coat-syndrome.php
http://www.bhf.org.uk/questions/index.asp?secondlevel=1155&thirdlevel=1208#5657

calleyw

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Calley, I am sorry to hear that. Did you get in touch with Different Strokes? It looks as if there might be some useful information on their website.

Sue,

We have thank you. Has lead to something extra to try to help with the stroke related problems.

But it looks like his high blood pressure is related to the steroids that he is on for the underlying condition that he has that caused the stroke :rolleyes:

yours


Calley