High resting pulse rate and low blood pressure

[girlinthesnow]

I have only recently acquired a machine to test my pulse and found it to be 87 at its lowest, it rapidly escalates to 130 + if I stand or do any moving. At the same time, my blood pressure remains low, while seated it's usually 80/ 55 but can drop to 80/45. If I stand, it rapidly rises and then drops again when I lie down. I am curious to find out what could cause this apparent contradiction of high pulse and low Bp.

Does anyone else have similar symptoms?

 

[Athene]

Yes, I have the same. The only difference for me is that my BP doesn't rise when I stand up. (Oops I just accidentally mistyped BP as BO, which made a fairly comical sentence).

High pulse seems to correspond completely with low BP. In fact I had assumed this was a standard/normal correlation.... but now of course I realise I just invented that for myself! My assumption was derived from my reasoning that low BO (there I go again) I mean BP means oxygenated blood is not reaching the extremities as required, so your heart works harder to try to compensate.

I think it's past my bedtime so I'll come back to this tomorrow!

 

[Tammie]

girlsinthesnow, the rapid rise in pulse is one form of orthostatic intolerance.....I'm too wiped to look for them rt now, but there have been many thread about it on here and the CFIDS association has also had some good info about it in their online newsletters

and athene, you are rt re the pulse/BP thing -though not the pulse/BO thing! ; )

 

[dancingstarheart]

My heartbeat averages in the mid 80s. Once my heartbeat went up to 124 while I was resting in bed. I wasn't upset or agitated.

My BP is 110 or lower. I have noticed that BP goes up to 135 when I am over exherting myslef and feeling very ill and feeling faintish and my right arm shakes. I know it is not stress that causes it because my BP was 110 when checking in for a lumbar puncture and I had just sat down after walking into hospital with help from hubby.

No med staff ever comments on BP or heartbeat.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Does anyone else have similar symptoms?

Yes. It actually freaked my father out a little as he was so used to seeing his own very low (<50) heart rate (as a marathon runner in his 50s).

 

[Resting]

It is called POTS= Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

It is common with this illness although not enough information about it is given to patients. This is often because doctors don't know much about it.

You can go to the following link for more info. Scroll down a little once on the link.

www.dinet.org

Hope this helps some.

 

[Sallysblooms]

POTS doesn't need low bp for a symptom like OI. It can vary. I have done TONS of reading about it. I have a varied bp. usually high, but the pulse gets high when standing, headaches, lightheadedness, dizzy, hot, heart racing.... Then I lie down and my numbers are good. I sit most of the day. There are some good You Tubes about it. One gal has nice videos, really makes me feel better.

 

[girlinthesnow]

Thanks very much folks for all the answers and links. I have ordered some compression hose and upped the salt. Said 'no thanks' to the beta blockers and suggestion of melatonin based on the good information at http://www.dinet.org. What flummoxed me was the very low blood pressure coupled with the high pulse rate. I now understand that in my case the high pulse rate is caused by the heart trying to compensate for low blood volume.

At the bottom of the list of the causes on http://www.dinet.org was

Viruses are thought to be the provoking factor in approximately 50% of POTS patients (Low & Schondorf, 1997, p. 279). There are reports of dysautonomia occurring after the Epstein-Barr virus (Itoh, Oishi, Ohnishi, Murai & Imawatari, 1993). Viruses may directly affect the autonomic nervous system or lead to an immune pathogenesis (Grubb, 2000). Roughly one-half of post-viral POTS patients will make a good practical recovery over a 2-5 year period (Grubb, Kanjwal & Kosinski, 2006).

Which neatly answers the 'why'.

 

[helsbells]

also just as a little but of additional info, I was told to increase my salt dramatically to help the blacking out but something I came upon when doing that was a little interesting. I wouldn't say I have consistently low BP but very unstable BP also similarly tachychardic as you would expect in POTS (it will quickly rise to 150 plus on climbing stairs) but when I did the salt it was my pulse pressure that changed. That is the difference between the diastolic and the systolic and I have read a big gap in these two can be just as dangerous as high BP. It make sense really i suppose ie that your heart is pumping in faster than it can pump out (I think thats what it means - someone else is welcome to jump in to correct my crude understanding). This got quite wide at one point and I did feel peculier - just something else to perhaps watch out for. this might even fit in with something cheney says but brain fog means if i didn't read it today its lost to the mists of time.

 

[Athene]

Thank you so much for that link!!!
I've never been given ANY information about POTS by any doctor I've seen even though I have this problem so severely. I hadn't realised so many of my symptoms (eg headache) were also part of the same thing.

 

[ahimsa]

Here are some more links on orthostatic intolerance (POTS/NMH)

Here's an overview page from emedicine.com

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/902155-overview

List of symptoms for Chronic Orthostatic Intolerance from the web page above:

Defining symptoms of chronic orthostatic intolerance include dizziness in all patients, with high incidence of the following conditions:

* Altered vision (blurred, "white outs", "black outs")
* Fatigue
* Exercise intolerance (frequently post-exercise malaise)
* Nausea
* Neurocognitive deficits
* Sleep problems
* Heat
* Palpitations

A large proportion of patients also experience the following symptoms:

* Headache
* Tremulousness
* Difficulty breathing or swallowing
* Sweating
* Pallor
* Other vasomotor symptoms

These symptoms are divisible into symptoms of sympathetic activation and symptoms of reduced cerebral blood flow.

A couple of other web pages:

List of treatments for dysautonomia
(thanks to member glenp for posting this one)

National Dysautonomia Research Foundation

I hope this additional information is helpful!