Blood Pressure Medicine (getting off)

Has anyone here been able to get completely off their blood pressure medicine?

I'm on a very low dose of lisinipril, and it's giving me headaches and fatigue (same symptoms as with HTCZ combo I stopped using). Going to call the Dr. today about it.

I would suggest monitoring your cpap therapy, and your BP, before making any changes. My understanding is that it's the apneas and corresponding oxygen de-saturations that affect blood pressure, so that needs to be stabilized 1st. And then, the BP may or may not come down sufficiently to get off meds. Life style changes in diet and exercise may help with this. And of course, whatever your doctor recommends.

Yes. I was able to stop BP meds. It was combining xPAP treatment with a low carb diet that has made the difference for me. With exercise, it tends to get even better, but I'm still not as consistent with that as I should be.

Daffney_Gillfin wrote:Yes. I was able to stop BP meds. It was combining xPAP treatment with a low carb diet that has made the difference for me. With exercise, it tends to get even better, but I'm still not as consistent with that as I should be.

I'm right behind Daffney. I'm on the minimum dosage for one BP med (used to be on 3 different ones at the same time). My BP numbers are actually sort of low now ~ 100/70 so I think I'm about ready to get off completely.

I too am on low-carb and have lost a bunch of weight.

PS - Get yourself a BP monitor. You can get them with data storage cpability that you can upload to PC and make PDF plots of the data.

KatieW wrote:I would suggest monitoring your cpap therapy, and your BP, before making any changes. My understanding is that it's the apneas and corresponding oxygen de-saturations that affect blood pressure, so that needs to be stabilized 1st. And then, the BP may or may not come down sufficiently to get off meds. Life style changes in diet and exercise may help with this. And of course, whatever your doctor recommends.

I'm going to get my DR ok for any permanent changes! This is way to critical to just stop yourself!

I was just curious to see if it was possible to completely get off of BP medicine.

Tielman wrote:I'm going to get my DR ok for any permanent changes! This is way to critical to just stop yourself!

When my pressures started dropping after about 18 months, I was able cut 1 med in half (could NOT take lisinopril coughing switched to an angiotension receptor blocker which is one of the best strategies for dealing with oxygen-deprivation caused hypertension like we hoseheads develop). Then, as I continued to lose wt on a low-carb diet, I was able to drop the ARB altogether. I remain on half a pill of the lowest dose diuretic. All of this under my cardio doc's approval. He OK's my dropping the diuretic for a few days to see what happens...so far, can't stop yet.

Muse-Inc wrote: All of this under my cardio doc's approval.

Free bump and emphasis for the right way to do it.

I got off mine totally in about 4 months after using CPAP.