Off Blood Pressure Med

Breathe Jimbo wrote:... Still, the sodium levels in many processed foods are appalling. ...

My wife and I have been cooking and living without adding salt (or sugar) to food for years. We sometimes find packaged foods that are WAY too salty or WAY too sweet. The longer we go without the extra, the more obnoxious it can taste when someone decides to dump a lot of salt or sugar into perfectly decent foods.

Breathe Jimbo wrote:
I experimented after losing 20 pounds. [ . . . ] I was able to stop because I have made huge lifestyle changes with respect to diet and exercise [ . . . ]

Would you mind detailing the changes you made? What did you find that works for you?

Something to think about that seems to be applicable is that elevated blood pressure might be better thought of as a symptom of an underlying problem, rather than something to be treated by itself. If that is the case, what use is it to treat the symptom, rather than the underlying cause?

A few years ago my GP (also a cardiologist) had me taking about four different meds, none of which did anything but render me impotent. Not being married at the time, I really didn't care about that. I charted my weight, systolic and diastolic BP and pulse during the 7 months the Doc was medicating me, and the numbers only crept down slightly. He advised me to get on a low-fat diet, which of course did nothing but make me feel hungry all the time. Fortunately, he then retired, and disillusioned, I got off all the meds.

Following is what 7 months on all the meds the doc prescribed for me accomplished. In 7 months on all the meds my doc prescribed for me my cyctolic BP came down only about 5 points:




Fast forward a few years. After getting on the hose I immediately began feeling well enough that I decided it was time to start working on being more healthy. About that time I discovered all the new information there was out there on the old Atkins-style low-carb diet theme. My how the world has changed! Continuing charting the stats:



In only a little over 2 months, using only eliminating sugar/starch from my diet and exercise (walking one hour every other day) cyctolic came down about 9 points. I'm on no other meds and have no other health problems. I thnk a lot of doctors are very quick to prescribe medications that really don't do anything to fix the problem. Like putting a bandaid over an abcess.

BP this morning was typical for the past few weeks, 121/72, pulse 61. I can live with that.

Hephaestus wrote:Would you mind detailing the changes you made?

Regular walking, on the treadmill or around the neighborhood, for at least an hour almost every day.

Cut out the crap foods. You know what they are. Just do it! Eat fruits and vegetables until they are coming out your ears.

Portion control and calorie counting with the LoseIt! iPhone app, budgeting to lose 1.5 pounds per week.

I do eat the bad stuff occasionally, but I compensate by adjusting all the other stuff I eat to stay within my calorie budget. For example, while typing this post, I pigged out on a free CPK Roasted Garlic Chicken Pizza (bad Jimbo!) which my wife brought home from a lunchtime meeting. I have less than 800 calories left for the day, but I will up that by about 380 when I take my standard 80 minute walk later today. For the rest of the day, I will strive to eat very healthy and stay within my remaining budget for the day. It will be hard to do that unless I take the long walk, so I have a strong incentive to exercise today.

Nice, thank you for the response.

I'd always believed that fad diets aren't the way to go. It has to be a change in diet for the rest of one's life, and add in physical exercise. Now if I can just stop munching while at the computer!

Hephaestus wrote:Now if I can just stop munching while at the computer!

It depends what you munch on. I'm eating 3 peaches at the moment.

Mayo clinic advice on BP:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge- ... r-04b.html