What do the BP numbers mean? (Hypertension)

Member Name: fitznstarts

Product:	Hypertension
Date:	12/06/01 (547 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: .

Disadvantages: .

At age 14 I lost my fit, "healthy" 40 year old father to a heart attack. The doctor said that it was quite unexpected and he would have died even if he had been ill in hospital at the time and not at home.

Six years later, my paternal grandfather too died from a heart attack. This time it was following fairly major surgery and it turns out that he had been told of the risks and decided not to tell the family so as not to worry us.

At that time I was 20 and considered myself healthy too. While I had a desk job in an office, I played competitive tennis and tried to keep fit. It was therefore a shock to be told that I had hypertension when I visited the doctor.

I thought that it only applied to middle-aged, overweight smokers and not me.

What do the Blood Pressure numbers mean though?

The heart has two chambers, one that pumps blood out an the other back in again. The two readings tell the doctor what is happening inside your heart.

Generally speaking, the first reading should not be much more than 100+ your age over about 70. Therefore at 20 I should have had blood pressure of around 120/70. You can imagine what a shock it was to be told that ie was 180/120. I had the blood pressure of an 80 year old man, and a sick one at that.

I have been on medication for over ten years now and while I am no saint (I don't play as much sport as I should and am a little overweight) my blood pressure has stabalised at around 140/80 for much of the last decade. In fact, I am growing into my blood pressure now.

While taking exercise, not smoking and keeping the weight down is vital, so too is not worrying unduly about it. However, modern thinking is that poor cholesterol is worse than high blood pressure, or that the two together are even worse than one of them. You guessed it, I have high cholesterol too!

I am married to a nurse so I try and take care of what I eat without being o
bsessive about it. However, I am pre-desposed genetically to these conditions.

It hasn't made that much difference to my life. I have to be careful about sudden bursts of energy or tension and I find I get headaches more easily. I also get palpatations from sudden bursts of energy and have had the odd dizzy spells too. But apart from that I am able to walk and cycle for miles (very steep hills can sometimes be problem).

The biggest problem I have found is getting life insurance. I have found that everyone wants to charge me lots more even though I probably less likely to die before normal because I am checked every six months by the doctor and am trying to be careful. Such is life though!

If you are diagnosed, read the literature, keep the weight off, watch your diet, but don't dispair. I'd far rather have hypertension than, say, diabetes or something similar.

It's not the end of the world.... yet!

Summary: