Falling Apart

Having just come from the doctor’s office, where I went for a routine yearly checkup, I was shocked to be told that my blood pressure is high, 150/120. For the last 60 years, my blood pressure has been perfect - 120/80. No matter what I ate or how I lived, it never fluctuated.  But today, it decided to shoot through the roof. My doctor was very concerned and told me to purchase a digital blood pressure meter and monitor my blood pressure 3 times a day over the course of the next week and report back.  Having never been overly concerned about blood pressure, I was clueless as to how blood pressure affected my healthy. So, as soon as I got home, I decided to do some investigation on the Internet. 

BP Sucess Zone has several videos explaining the basics of blood pressure, what the numbers mean and what damage high blood pressure can do over time.  It was a real shock to see that my blood pressure could put me at such risk but the thing that really bothered me the most is that this might just be something that I can’t control with more exercise or a better diet.  It could have much more to do with my age and the genetic makeup I inherited from my parents. I am not one for taking medication if I can prevent it.  Over the years, I have chosen to live a healthier life style.  I quit smoking in my 40’s, eat organic as much as possible, take vitamins and walk 3-4 hours a week.  Now that the kids are grown, I have less stress in my life and get more sleep.  By rights, I should be healthier now than ever before in my life.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case.  As I get older, I see myself discretely falling apart on the outside with a wrinkle here and a sag there, so it only makes sense that what I can’t see inside my body must be doing the same thing. The question is, will I handle this as gracefully as I do a new grey hair?  Probably not, no one ever died from grey hair but many have died from strokes caused by high blood pressure.

The best way to deal with this is one step at a time.  I was curious as to why my doctor wanted me to monitor my blood pressure as opposed to sending me off right away for testing. But according to an article in Reuters, blood pressure readings done in the doctor’s office may have very little value at predicting which patients who continue to have high blood pressure despite treatment will have a stroke, heart attack or heart failure.  I might just have been over-reacting to the onset of the holidays, or the worry about going to the doctor’s office in the first place so before I get all worked up over this, I think that this is a good place to start. I need to know my numbers.

The next thing I can do is re-evaluate what I am eating.  Web MD suggests a diet low in sodium.  I do tend to use a heavy hand on the salt shaker, so this might be a good thing to monitor.  They also suggest that my body might need more potassium because potassium and sodium work in opposition to one another in the body. A decrease in potassium causes your body to hold on to sodium and water which might increase blood pressure.  An increase in potassium causes sodium and water to leave the body which might decrease blood pressure.  They recommend 4700 mg of potassium a day.  I generally eat a banana every day to supply potassium, thinking that this was enough, but I was surprised to learn from the USDA that one banana only has around 400 mg of potassium.  Even though I eat other foods that supply potassium, I definitely don’t get the recommended daily dosage.

I also need to rethink my physical activities.  I tend to sit much more now than I used to and I am not as physically active. I do try to walk several times a week, but I think I will try to restructure my walks so that I am walking more times a week and I plan on picking up the pace.  In fact, I have  an old Richard Simmons tape that is a lot of fun, I thing I will dig that out and workout to it a couple of times a week also.  It might be fun with winter turning me into a recluse and I know it might help stave off those winter pounds I put on each year.

And finally, I need to cop the right attitude.  I will sing ”Don’t Worry Be Happy” with Bobby McFerrin every night and fall asleep counting my blessing.  Aging might take more maintenance that youth did, but the price of living longer and living healthier is worth it.’; //leave this line

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