More about blood pressure - another Health Information PSA

[dreamshark]

Sometimes I forget what I know very well - reading everything you see about personal health mostly causes you to reread the same  rudimentary and incomplete information over and over without ever learning anything new. Unfortunately, getting to the next level of info usually requires knowing a bit of specialized terminology. Once you find the magic phrase, google turns up tons of articles on the topic, none of which your doctor has ever apparently read. Do they not know this stuff? It's only one level deep in the general Internet knowledge glut, not something that requires you to read to the end of a long technical report or even subscribe to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Anyway, my last installment in this series was about separation of the vitreous humor, a phenomenon that all myopic middle-aged individuals really should know about. Today's piece is about yet another middle-aged phenomenon: Isolated Systolic Hypertension. My  question - why does the top number on my blood pressure keep going up while the bottom number is going down? Or, to put it another way, why is my systolic blood pressure borderline high while my diastolic pressure is low-normal? Once I thought to google on "high systolic low diastolic" the specialized term I was looking for tumbled out of the internet woodwork. A couple of introductory paragraphs from this article summarizes it better than I can:

Blood pressure is typically recorded as two numbers – the systolic pressure over the diastolic pressure. The systolic pressure is the pressure of blood in the vessels when the heart contracts. Diastolic pressure is the pressure of the blood between heartbeats when the heart is at rest. In most people, systolic blood pressure increases steadily with age, while the diastolic blood pressure increases until about age 55 and then declines.

Optimal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mm Hg. High blood pressure is defined as a systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg or greater or a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or greater. ISH is defined as a systolic blood pressure greater than or equal to 140 mm Hg and a diastolic blood pressure less than 90 mm Hg. In people younger than 55, elevated diastolic blood pressure is a major concern. In older people, elevated systolic blood pressure, even in the absence of elevated diastolic blood pressure, is a concern.

If this describes your situation, I recommend following the link and reading the rest of the article.  And maybe this one, which mentions the reason that this is worrisome: it's an indication of hardening of the arteries.

Now that I know what it means (and know that the most benign bp medicine available is also the best treatment) I think I will restart medication for my own borderline high systolic bp. I wonder why the doctor I saw two years ago couldn't explain the discrepancy between my systolic/diastolic readings. And why the doctor Richard has been seeing prescribed a totally inappropriate beta blocker for the exact same syndrome (which had to be discontinued almost immediately due to side effects).

Comments

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Beta blockers also affect the nervous system response of the heart, besides lowering blood pressure. I think.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I'm sure that it's just the perfect medication for certain conditions. But it was inappropriate for my husband in so many ways... starting with the fact that he has a normal resting pulse of about 50 - and this particular medication is often prescribed to LOWER pulse rates! So he started taking the stuff and his pulse dropped to about 39. I don't know if that caused the dizzy spells or not, since dizzy spells are one of the many distressing side effects of this drug. So why not prescribe the much more benign diuretic that is apparently the medication of choice for ISH?