Trying to get started again

A couple of months ago my blood pressure suddenly jumped from it's usual 130-150/70-90 to 180/102.  I only know this because I donate blood twice a month and they take my bp.  The first time I just put it down to stress . . .being a passenger with my son driving.  But when it happened again 2 weeks later, I realized it's a wake up call.

The next day, I picked up some potassium and a diuretic.  I started taking them on a Monday and by Wednesday I was starting to feel puny.  But with me it's hard to tell when something is new bad or just old bad acting up.  By the next Monday I was feeling like crap, plus my nearly gone period had shown up, so I stopped taking the supplements and tried to stablize myself.  Of course, because I suck at keeping record, I am relying on my memory to sort things out. And my memory is not all that great for stuff like this.

I have experimented with various digital ways to store variables like supplements taken, level of pain, etc.  But the best thing for me seems to be good old paper and pen. 


That was about a month ago.  Last week my bp was 158/98.  Something is working.

Obesity link to high blood pressure has weakened

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It seems that the association between body mass index (BMI) and high blood pressure or hypertension has decreased since 1989, researchers say. The finding suggests that obesity may not have as much of an impact on heart-related disease as previously thought.

"High blood pressure is a leading cause of the global burden of disease," Dr. Pascal Bovet, of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues write in the medical journal Epidemiology. "The prevalence of hypertension, and of several other conditions (including diabetes), is considered to be linked to the worldwide epidemic of obesity."

The researchers examined trends in blood pressure and BMI over a 15-year interval in the Seychelles. Their analysis was based on two independent surveys conducted in 1989 and 2004 using representative samples of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 years.

There was a slight decrease in average blood pressure between 1989 and 2004 in both men and women. The prevalence of high blood pressure changed little during this time -- from 45 to 44 percent in men and from 34 to 36 percent in women.

The percentage of people who were overweight, defined as a BMI of 25 or more, increased from 39 percent to 60 percent between 1989 and 2004.

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