welcome mystery

In my own health picture

I have been heard to complain about inheriting Tom’s ataxia and Isabel’s blood pressure -- it seems a bit unfair. When I was walking a LOT and watching my diet closely, I kept it down in the 135/70 range, but recently it has been a good bit higher, 160/80 or sometimes more. On the Friday after breaking the ankle, it went up to a systolic reading in the 180s, which is mostly why they wouldn’t let me home from the hospital that evening. I got some medication for it, I don’t know what, and it did come down to the 150s again.

Then after I was home, I started measuring it periodically, after Amy retrieved my monitor. It was often quite low, for me, which I attributed partly to the hydrocodone I was taking regularly.

Summary of 23 blood-pressure readings 
from late June to early September:

                 systolic  diastolic  pulse

maximum reading    152        77       70

minimum reading    116        59       49

average            134        68       60


However, I have taken very few pain pills since late July, and the BP numbers are still quite respectable. In the last couple of weeks, I have gotten my exercising amounts up to  an hour or more most days, but it still is not a great deal. 

I am thinking that diet must be largely responsible, though there again, it’s pretty moderate, especially as regards the Meals on Wheel lunches. While respectable nutrition, they are are nothing special. It’s not like I’m devouring heaps of kale and no salt. Generally, in a day, I eat 4-8 servings veg and fruit, though it’s much heavier on the tomato-squash-peach end of the spectrum, not green leaves. (Yay, farmers’ market!) I'm nowhere near the three platefuls of vegetables Terry Wahls recommends. I get reasonably low salt, but not to any extremes.

In short, my pretty-healthy blood pressure readings are a mystery. I just hope they stay that way.