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high and variable blood pressure

November Girl

Senior Member
Messages
328
Location
Texas
until my mid 40's my blood pressure was always low to normal. Now it's high enough that I take a blood pressure med. What surprises me is that when I'm feeling the worst, it takes almost nothing to raise it considerably. If I stay flat on my back in bed, it becomes normal. I'm curious if anyone else notices this. The only reason I can think of is that stress tends to raise our blood pressure, and sometimes sitting up too long is a physical stress.

I still have OI at my higher bp, but I think it's not as bad. Based on a 5 minute test, I had NMH 25 years ago, and assume I still do.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Hi November Girl, you are not a lot different to me. I have long suspected that our high bp is to compensate for the OI, a different strategy than increasing heart rate. Anything that can worsen our OI is therefore likely to raise our bp to compensate, but this is only speculative. The real answer is we don't know yet what this is all about I think. Bye, Alex
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
Hi.. its called orthostatic hypertension and isnt normal hypertension. In our case often caused by having too low a blood volume and is our bodies way to trying to compensate for that (to get enough blood to our brains etc). I have it and my BP goes up to 156/138 at times when Im standing (but I can have low BP when Im laying eg 80/58).

Ive read of ME expert Dr Bell treats some of his patients with this with saline IVs to get the blood volume up and hence lower BP (which at times can spike up dangerously high.
 

john66

Senior Member
Messages
159
I seem to have the same issue, and I take 20mg of Benicar each day for BP. When ever I go to the doctor, my BP is usually high. Last time I went to Dr Enlander it was 180/110, which is very high. The next morning in my recliner it was 100/60, where it usually is when I am home. My own theory is that my body can not dissipate the stress of driving into NYC, parking and getting to the office. I dont really notice any side effects from Benicar and it does take the edge off anxiety, at least for me.
 

rydra_wong

Guest
Messages
514
I don't know about the orthostatic thing but I use DHEA to bring my b.p. down from stage 3 hypertension (184/117) to pre-hypertension (140/83) + 500 mg potassium to bring it to normal (120/80).
 

Marky90

Science breeds knowledge, opinion breeds ignorance
Messages
1,253
Hi November Girl, you are not a lot different to me. I have long suspected that our high bp is to compensate for the OI, a different strategy than increasing heart rate. Anything that can worsen our OI is therefore likely to raise our bp to compensate, but this is only speculative. The real answer is we don't know yet what this is all about I think. Bye, Alex

I have been thinking the same..Interesting question is; why one, not the other?