I’m a 40 year old male with from high BP. In an effort to control it I reduced my salt intake from around 5000mg to 1500-3000mg a day. This has helped some but I’m still over and have lots of room for improvement. I’m thinking that 20-30 min of steady state cardio at 125 BPM, four days a week while running the Bridge would benefit my BP.
What do you think?
You reduced his salt or sodium? Is he medicated? Is he overweight?
He’ll probably do better with the conditioning just with the volume, but we need some more info.
I reduced sodium.
I’m not on BP meds but I am on Zoloft and amitriptyline.
I’m 250# about 20% body fat.
I’m on week 7 of the bridge.
And what is your blood pressure?
Sometimes 164/97 after I cut sodium.
Dr. Google said that my meds might be causing it, so I backed off the meds and its 145/76 this morning.
I’m not sure if decreasing psychiatric medications without discussing that with a psychiatrist or the prescribing doctor is a good idea, you know?
Are singular blood pressure readings by themselves terribly useful for guiding management? Would it be better to get a group of readings at similar times of day to try to tease out some pattern?
The diagnosis of hypertension requires at least two elevated readings taken properly at separate times. Beyond that, individual data points can be helpful assuming attention is paid to the context in which they’re measured - for example, is there pain, anxiety/stress, alcohol/smoking/drug use, medication issues like taking decongestants, NSAIDs, etc. and an number of other things we have to consider that can affect BP measurements. Getting patterns is always helpful, but not always possible in all patients.