I mean, it was a best-case reading - weekend, good night's sleep, no work today, kids behaving, quiet room - but still, it definitely shows it's going in the right direction. I'm having one of those 24-hour ambulatory BP monitors fitted on Tuesday morning. Also had the ECG results back: apparently my heart is "acceptable," which feels like a weird word to use - but better than "unacceptable!"
Be prepared to get zero sleep with a 24hr BP monitor. I've not had one before but I know plenty in work who have, and it goes off throughout the night every x hours. You'll get the pump noise, which isn't quiet and then arm strangulation which will definitely wake you if the pump doesn't... Clear the diary for the following 24-36 hours!! Zzzz...
You're not wrong - only had the thing on a few hours so far, and I'm already well over it. Feels like it's stressing me the hell out, too, so I'm not expecting good readings. Speaking of, a slip: I was back at Grade 1 hypertension Monday and Tuesday, and High Normal today. Guess it's influenced by stress, and work days are worse. Still, it's better than where I was. Weight-wise, I'm down to 93kg now - still a long way to go there. Sticking to the diet, and not denying myself treats - had a doughnut a couple of days ago, which was surprisingly low sugar despite having icing and sprinkles on top. Just avoiding anything too big, and obviously still sticking to a low-sodium diet - I'm averaging below 3g of salt a day, which I reckon is a good place to be (if only 'cos getting it below there would be a monumental pain - keeping it to 3g ain't easy as it is!)
My colleague said the same RE stress. It ended up skewing his readings, requiring a second monitoring period the following week. Grim... Sounds like the weight loss is going well though! I've always been told (and agree with...) that weight lost gradually has a greater chance of staying off. Faddy diets and extreme exercise regimes can drop the weight very quickly but your body doesn't have time to adjust its composition, so still tends to store and burn fats differently. I've no idea how you've achieved a salt intake that low!! I must admit, it's not something I've ever tracked, as it hasn't been an issue for me thus far. I don't tend to add a lot of salt at the table though. I season to taste during cooking and then I'm usually good, with the exception of a treat night fish and chips. As for the rest of the foods, tinned, packet or otherwise not fresh, I've never really checked sodium levels! I'd probably be very shocked if I did...
Mostly very careful reading of packets! The bulk of what I'm eating at the moment is fresh veg - a stir fry for lunch, something on a bed of kale for tea, that kind of thing - and I don't add any salt during cooking. What I am using a tonne of is garlic granules - adds flavour, not salt. When I need something more, there's Old Bay - it's got salt in it, but only 25 per cent. I also picked up some half-sodium salt substitute (actually, a 50-50 mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride) with fish-and-chips in mind, but I haven't used any of that yet. It's surprising how much salt is in stuff, though. Kellogg's Fruit and Fibre, for instance: nearly half a gramme of salt in a bowl of that. Morrison's Fruit and Fibre, less than half as much. Shocker, right? Two eggs, that's another half-gramme - just what's in the egg naturally, before you add anything at the table. Ready meals are a killer, too, especially and ironically the low-fat reduced-sugar "healthy" stuff. If you're careful, you can pick ones around the 1-1.5g mark, but it's easy to pick one up that's 3g on its own. It's a salty minefield out there!
I am a huge fan of Old Bay.... *licks lips thinking about Old Bay chicken wings... If you're exercising too, just make sure your salt intake is sufficient to prevent muscle cramps and lactic acid build up. It's different for everyone, depending upon physical composition etc. You'll know when you know!
I am not getting on well with this bloody thing. I was hoping it was reading wrong, but I've just stuck my own monitor on my other arm and it's showing off the charts. Rang the docs, and he said it's straight to A&E where they can give me something to calm me down. Deep effin' joy. Haven't finished today's work yet, and I'm not walking distance from the hospital like I used to be!
Good luck and hope its nothing serious! I thought I posted here when I started but just finished my first full season at ManVsFat. I have lost 7.2kg since early Sept which is just over a Stone. Had a little blip at the begining of the month, as I have been struggling with achilles tendinopathy and had to pause playing football for the next month or two. Either way I am really pleased and feel amazing from it.
Bugger!! Let's hope they get you sorted out pretty quickly. It's obviously nullified these results but if you can get it under control before you start it again, you should be able to get some good metrics from it and move forward. On the plus side, at least you'll be able to sleep tonight... unless they've told you to wear it anyway, which I'd question the value in...
Eventually saw a doc: my BP's high, but not like this thing's saying. Sadly, he's suggested I keep wearing it for some reason. Just waiting on blood test results then I can go home. What a waste of time. EDIT: Taken it off. It just read north of 200/120, minutes after an Actual Medical Doctor told me it was 170/103. We ain't getting anything usable out of that thing. The doctor can use my week of three-times-a-day readings, like back in the day.
That's been my experience of those things too [medical spec or not]... they all say 'you have no pulse that we can find but your bp is so high your heart is about to pop'... The last actual quack visit said 136/86 which is... some numbers I guess...
I have had a couple of occasions wearing one of those 24 hour BP monitors - I always get a high reading at the doc's. I have had a couple of issues, first time, the nurse didn't fit it correctly (she was all but useless anyway and no longer works at my local surgery as a result, she is not missed), second time the cuff was too small and the velcro kept giving way on inflation, and the last time it did work, but always seemed to inflate just as I was in the middle of doing something, so I'd have to sit back or sit down whilst it did it's thing, not exactly conducive to keeping things calm. Another thing that winds me up about them is the 2m of tubing from the cuff to the pack, why the need for all of that bundled up in my shirt for a kit that has both parts within a couple of feet of each other. I do have a meter at home, but that seems to read a little higher than the surgery one, despite being much the same meter so that didn't help. Thankfully by last test at the surgery was only high by a couple of points being around 130/82 or thereabouts so they are finally leaving me alone for a bit on it.
Had about four calls from the doctors' surgery today, 'cos the left hand has no idea what the right hand's doing. They'd got the results from the cardiology centre, and immediately went into "you need to come in right away for a blood test and 12-lead ECG" panic mode - because apparently nobody at cardiology though to mention the damn thing was reading high, and nobody had looked at the letter A&E sent with the results of blood test and 12-lead ECG... two days ago. Final call was with an Actual Medical Doctor who, judging by the volume, was in Leeds while the phone was in Bradford. I *think* he's asked me to do another week of twice-a-day readings ('cos that's a good way to kick the can down the road and have a different GP handle it) and I've an appointment to go in with 'em and get a professional read on the 29th. Which is my eldest's birthday, but they'll be too distracted with their friends round to notice me nipping out for an hour. Anyway, this morning's reading was 131/88 - High Normal. My problem clearly isn't high blood pressure, it's acute stress... causing high blood pressure. On the plus side, weight loss continues: I'm now about six kilos lighter than when this all started - nearly a stone, in old money. BP's higher than I'd like: But maybe if the doctors stop STRESSING ME OUT it'll go down again. Look at those weekend figures!
Doc diagnosed stage 1 hypertension back in late spring/early summer this year and I was prescribed ramipril for it. I still take blood pressure readings pretty regularly, I try to aim for at least 3-4 readings a week. The trigger for all this in the first place was starting - or trying to start - stimulant ADHD medication. Before ramipril my BP was a little higher than it needs to be, around 130-135ish over 80-90ish, but once I tried methylphenidate it regularly read well north of 140/85. So I had to knock off the ADHD medication for a while and go get the blood pressure under control with my GP. Ramipril has honestly done wonders in that regard. I hadn't taken any readings for a couple of weeks, as going into the office 5 days a week makes that difficult (I need to do a reading when the stimulant is active, and that's when I'm at work). But now that I'm doing more days from home I started again earlier this week, and it's still right around where I'd want it to be: anywhere from 125-134 over 75-85. I still drink coffee, and I still vape, so both of those are going to push up the reading as well as the Elvanse or Amfexa that I might be taking for ADHD. Of course the real answer to high blood pressure is to lose some goddamn weight. That's been a vicious spiral for decades. "You just need willpower! You just need to try harder! Just eat fewer things - simples! It's hard but anyone can do it!". Oh, ok, I see. Sure, no problem. Just one question though: why has my weight yo-yo'd up and down for over 30 years then? You think that in all that time I haven't tried? Or I haven't put the goddamn effort in? Since getting diagnosed with ADHD late last year, I've discovered that obesity is actually extremely common in adults with ADHD. There are a whole raft of issues with ADHD which make it extremely difficult to stick to a healthy diet or avoid overeating (the linked article explains this way better than I can). I've come to learn that in my case it's a combination of: misunderstanding the body's feedback signals: "I need something I am not getting... I know, I must be hungry!" when in fact I'm thirsty, or tired, or just plain bored eating as a form of stimulation - nice things that taste good are often bad for you, but they taste good which makes it pleasurable and rewarding, which is mana from heaven to an ADHD brain starved of dopamine... so you eat more of the nice tasty things because it makes more of the make-feel-good brain juice and all the usual stuff with long term planning, executive dysfunction, etc, that affect so many other parts of my life. However. ADHD is a reason, not an excuse, for obesity. But I can't fix everything all at once - I've tried that countless times before and it's the perfect way to fail before I've even started. So I'm trying to take things one step at a time: Get on ADHD meds and find something that works for me (if anything). I started at this step in December last year, but had to stop because my blood pressure was too high, so... Get blood pressure under control - check, done the best I can for now Now get on ADHD meds and find something that works - I think I'm nearing the end of that process, both Elvanse (when I can get it!) and Amfexa really help - although methylphenidate... ehhh... not so much... Get some kind of therapy. I've learned so much in the last year, and I can already see a massive improvement in my outlook and how I feel. But the decades of self-harm that's resulted from undiagnosed ADHD is not going to go away so quickly, and these days I'm far less reluctant/afraid to admit that I might not be able to manage that on my own. Eat Better Stuff And Damn Well Stick To It. I'm yet to face this particular bridge, but I'm trying to make small changes where I can. The reality is that there's no magic wand for this. ...? Maybe not be such a fat git any more...? IDK really... Honestly, since starting stimulant medication I'm already noticing a massive difference in my approach to food. I don't feel as "hungry" throughout the day (because it turns out it wasn't actually "hunger" in the first place!). I can quite happily eat a hell of a lot less than I used to without feeling "unsatisfied". I've come to realise that pre-prepared veg (i.e. pre-diced) isn't "lazy"; for me it's actually the difference between "getting a takeaway because I can't face the prospect of an hour and a half in the kitchen at the end of the working day" and "actually cooking something because a lot of the work has already been done for me". I still often binge on snacks and junk later in the evening - which, funnily enough, is when the meds have worn off - but I'm trying to recognise that craving for what it really is and reduce the amount of indulgence. It's already making a difference. I haven't weighed in a while - the scales and I don't get on because they tell me the truth and I don't like that - but a couple of weeks ago I noticed some clothes being less tight than they used to be. The other day I was quite surprised to discover that I need to tighten the blood pressure cuff a lot more than I did earlier in the year; 6 months ago I could barely get it around my arm even at the cuff's loosest point; if I fasten it to that same point now, it just falls off my arm. I really do need to get back on the scales regularly again, but... ehh.... the batteries are dead and... I'll get round to changing them... at some point... when I remember...!
Diet went awry over Xmas, as you'd expect, but I'm back on it now - had a chicken stir fry for lunch (with a pack of pre-cooked barbecue chicken from the Co-op, £2.50 or "£6 for two." I bought one.) Weight's taken a hit, but I'm still 5kg down from where I started so we're good. Blood pressure's stubbornly high still, but also quite variable: sometimes it's High-Normal, sometimes it's Grade 2. Most of the time it's Grade 1. Speaking of, went to see the nurse with my week's (actually, month's) home readings: I'm now booked in to talk to one of the "pharmacist clinic" team. Got a text message to book a telephone appointment, clicked the link, no appointment slots... until the 7th. Of February. That'll be, what, four months since diagnosis? How hard is it to prescribe some BP meds?! This also ignores that sometimes my blood pressure isn't high, meaning that high blood pressure isn't actually the problem but the symptom of the real problem (which, if you made me guess, would be generalised anxiety.) Which does mean there's a good chance that if I take the medication to bring it down generally, I'll pass out when I relax... Still, that's a problem for Future Gareth. Right now I'm concentrating on eating well, keeping up the mild exercise, and trying to figure out why my smart scales have stopped syncing with my phone - I think I need to delete the device and reconnect, the BP monitor did the same thing earlier this week.
Post-Xmas check-in: So, yeah, went a bit flat for a while then up again, but it's going back down again now. (Dunno why today's reading's not showing, it is on the phone - 91.4kg.) According to MedM, when I started this on the 30th of November I was 98.4kg - so that's 7kg lost on-the-nose, in about six weeks. Although not really, 'cos I keep forgetting the scales were reading 1.6kg high back then - so 5.4kg in six weeks. I've an arbitrarily-set target of reaching 75kg, so if I kept up the same rate of loss we'd be looking at a smidge over 18 weeks so... late May? It'll be longer than that, I'd guess - I remember last time I was dieting I hit a plateau for a bit and had to cut another couple of hundred calories off to keep it going. Also, I've a week's holiday to Holland booked later in the year and like chuff I'm dieting then. Still, I'm being good for now - it was the youngest's birthday this week, so we've had a double-layer Millie's Cookies cookie cake in the house and I ain't had more than a sniff of the thing! Blood pressure, not such a good story: Yeah, that's not going where it needs to go. I'm supposedly getting some medication to sort it, but not until I've spoken to the pharmacy clinician on the 7th of February. Don't think I'll bother buying any more of the over-the-counter supplements I'm taking, though - they don't seem to be having any effect.
The readings come from a Bluetooth upper-arm BP monitor connected to MedM. I then type 'em manually into Garmin Connect. Those charts come from the Garmin Connect web interface, with the bigger dark bars representing the range of two (or more, but I only do two) readings that day. The ones with just a little round blob top and bottom, I only did one reading so there's no range to cover.
I'm having success with it being a lifestyle change not a diet change. It's been a bit all over the place atm as I'm staying down near the office instead of at home but anytime I've stayed at home it's like clockwork.
