Went to donate blood yesterday and was refused due to high blood pressure

Rewind 2 1/2 years back: I was diagnosed with high blood pressure (at 33), during a routine checkup, this totally shocked me. Started taking medication and monitoring my bp at home. Medicine worked but it made me want to puke everytime I put on a collared shirt or put on my motorcycle helmet ( is the last thing I want to do inside my helmet). Stopped taking medication after about 6 months, stopped monitoring the bp at home and did not go back to the doctor until 2 months ago. Went 2 months ago to the doc for something and he checked my bp and said it was good and that I probably did not need to go back on medication. That made me . I attribute the lower bp to losing about 25 pounds and taking a less stressful way to work and back (bad drivers irritate me to no end). Also, I was a "clock watcher", I tried to curb that habbit as well after the initial diagnosis. For instance, I have no set time to be at work, but I told myself that if I was not there by 5:00 am, I was late. I sleep in a little now and get to work more relaxed about 6:30. Somedays I get in at 8:00 and its no big deal.
Back to yesterday and getting a high bp reading again. My wife is all worried (again) and urging me to track my bp at home for a while and then go to the doc again and see if I need medication. She went to some health website and they call high bp "the silent killer". Guess I will follow her course of action (I want to be around for a while longer). I believe work stress is the cause of my current high bp, but it also runs in my family (father) and is a hereditary disease.

Don't know why I'm typing all this, I guess just because it bummed me out yesterday when I realized at 35 years old, I might have to be on medication for the rest of my (hopefully long) life. I'm not the invincible person I thought I was at 20 or 25.
Also, I would urge everyone to get checked for high bp because it is preventable and treatable. At least do it for the ones you love.

~Rob

 

hotdram

Rob, in our socities, high BP seems to be a fact of life. I take 5 mg day BP med - mine is not that high - with no side effects.

Take care, exercise, keep up you life style change and enjoy.

Cheera f

 

I feel for you, but you have to play the cards you were delt. You have a responsibility to yourself, your wife, and the rest of your family (and your boss too )

If you need to loose more weigth, or excercise more, take meds, take a cab, or take up knitting do it. We all need to take care of ourselves.

A stroke or heart attack is not a good thing at 35.

I don't mean to shound harsh, but I think this is what you wanted to hear anyway? Good luck dude.

 

Yep, I'm 19 and checked it last night, 149/85 .

Between bad genetics, being fat, and some stress, I now need to watch a little closer.

But, I DEFINATLY want to stick around a few years (at least to pay down some debt )
Chris

 

I was also recently diagnosed with high BP. It got as high as 180/120....very bad. My doctor perscribed "Altase" and it seems to be working pretty good. I went in yesterday because of a nasty cough I got from a cold and it was 126/82...not bad considering how bad I was feeling.

I'm 41 and I manage an IT department....extremely stressful.

-Allen

 

If one med made you sick, ask for another one. There are tons of different meds out there that work to control hypertension in different ways. Mine is also hereditary. I've been on meds for over twenty years, and I've used half-dozen different meds. It's IMPORTANT to keep it controlled. High blood pressure can do lots of nasty stuff, not just heart attack and stroke, but can ruin your kidneys, etc.

Good Luck!!

 

Yeah I'm 47 and my BP fluctuates from 136/80 to 150/98.

My sawbones has me going in every 6 months to monitor it but hasn't put me on any meds yet.

I find if I get stressed it really goes up, but the temporary spikes aren't as significant as having it constantly high.

If your average BP is high 24/7 it can do some real damage over time.

If/when they recommend the meds I'll decline and start exercising on a regular basis. If that works, great but if it doesn't then I'll end up doing taking the meds route.

Hate the meds!

Great subject BTW.

I predict this thread will get alot of attentian.

 

I second everything DPG says here, there are plenty of medicines out there that will NOT make you sick. I too have dealt with this issue for many years, but it can be controlled and if you ignore it, it will NOT go away.

Now get your behind to the Doc and tell him you want to get your BP under control in a way that you can live with! ........Yep that's an order!

We don't want to lose that rapier wit of yours around here!

 

I've had high BP for years. While still working it was controlled fairly well with medications. It still ran above normal, but was not in the critical zone. It took 3 or 4 meds before we found the right one. High stress, both on the job and off (operation ran 24/7), resulted in an abdominal aneurysm to go along with the high BP. I had that repaired in 1999, took early retirement, and the BP is under control with minimum meds.

We sometimes don't have any control over our lives, but we HAVE TO control how it effects us if we want to life a long life. I can look back now an see how I was effected by most everything, and would go back and change it if I could. You have to look at your situation and MAKE YOURSELF learn to relax and unwind. If you can't learn this, take out a lot of life insurance.

 

I have had it for quite a while, I was diagnosed 5 years ago, took a while to find the right combination of drugs to lower it and that I did not problems with. I am on two different meds now and it seems to be under control. The main cause of it is overwieght, but having a high stress job and both parents with HP, both on medication for it does not help either. Going to make an effort to lose weight and lower stress, then maybe I can rid of the dependancy on the meds.

 

I had high BP for years.
When I retired, it went down (way down) without any medication.
I didn't think I was under stress while I was working, but apparently I was.
Don't know what else it could have been.

 

My doc gave me a recipe to control bp (mine was way low at times)- eat healthy but not too much and keep your pulse between 130 and 150 per min for at least 30 minutes a day- preferably in the morning. (like doing a light jog, ride a bycicle, lift weights or whatever floats your boat)

Works for me and a lot of my friends too.

AlpineRAM

 

One of the biggest causes of high BP is bad stress and eating the wrong food. It sounds like hotdram has it figured out!

I used to get worked up over little things all the time. At this point in my life if something happens that I don't like I have to just calm down and figure out if it's something that's really worth getting upset about. Usually there are worse things that can go wrong in life, and THOSE are the things you need to be upset about. If you're alive and the people you love still love you, what IS there to be uncontrollably upset about?

 

Aye, Aye Sir!

Thanks all for making me see that I am not alone with this problem and that my current treatment plan (the "ignorance is bliss" plan) is not going to work. I believe it is work stress related. I am an electrical engineer at a large defense company. I am designing power supplies for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and it is "crunch time" in the design cycle. Ray Roton said retirement helped his bp, as tempting a cure as that sounds, I don't think that is a feasible solution. I do lift weights 3 times a week, I need to start doing something aerobic more regularly. Maybe if I started jogging to the coffee pot in the morning, that would help. That reminds me of something else I did a year ago to help with the bp. I used to drink 1-2 pots of caffienated coffee a day (I was considering just getting an IV for it). I switched to 2-3 cups of decaffienated coffee a day, and have stuck to it. I think that helped with the normal reading a few months ago at the docs office. I would like to lose about 10 more pounds (back to eating rabbit food again . I am going to schedule a doctor's appointment soon and discuss different types of meds so that I don't wake up and hurl every morning (the hurling had nothing to do with the weight loss I mentioned in my first post )
My wife read an article in Time today that was about high BP. It stated that 1 in 3 adults have high bp!!! According to that statistic, almost 5,000 members of this forum are affected by high bp. Wow.

~mellowinoutRob

 

Amen