About a year ago, I went in to the doctor and my blood pressure was pretty damn high, about 170/100. I was surprised. I read up about it a bit and found that taking a reading while standing and while talking is a good way to get a high reading. The ‘normal’ numbers that everyone likes to see are easier to obtain while sitting quietly. Anyway, the number was still very high – and I was spooked.
Part of the reason I went into the doctor was that I felt ‘weird’, and wanted to get a new prescription for my thyroid medication. Hypertension is one common effect of untreated hypothyroidism (”patients with hypothyroidism have triple the risk of developing hypertension” from one source, or this paper listed in PubMed, or a study that looked specifically at the two), so I knew that not being on meds could be a problem. My first goal was to get back on thyroid meds, continue workout out, and continue losing weight. Not being on the medication was itself a gross mistake, one that I really only made because of the hassle of dealing with medical insurance. Moving on — I’m back on thyroid medication.
Strength training has sometimes been associated with higher blood pressure, but most of what I’ve seen in that regard says that it is while lifting weights that one’s blood pressure goes up. Nearly every source I’ve checked says that athletes have low blood pressure, mostly related to cardiovascular health & fitness. I don’t think that building muscle tissue should cause hypertension. That seems weird. So I didn’t stop strength training, especially since I was working on other avenues. Normally when one says “athletes” I think what comes to mind is runners, sports players, cyclists, and the like — people engaged in long-term cardiovascular exercise, who can exert themselves for hours at a sport or exercise. So running should help lower my blood pressure, although I expect that benefit to be slow and gradual as I step up my running.
Blood pressure is also correlated with weight loss. But I’m losing weight (on the paleo diet), so that should also be a continuing benefit, again slow and gradual as the weight comes off.
Of course, the doctor wants to give me pills for the hypertension and then pretend the problem is solved. She didn’t know of any pill that I could take once that would cure the problem, so the “only option” is lifetime medication. Blech! I didn’t want that solution. I want to be healthy, not just have “healthy numbers.” A really high BP reading is actually a serious condition; it’s correlated with stroke. As for the cause… dunno. Does having a high BP cause stroke? Or is the underlying cause shared? Anyway, I didn’t want to take meds and their scary side-effects (which tend to be things like… stroke!).
Thyroid function is harder to restore, I know, as Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease. I expect to continue to be on thyroid medication for a long time. Some people have been able to reverse autoimmune diseases after fixing their gut (by removing lectins such as WGA and other stessors from their diet) and eating nutrient-dense food, but all the anecdotes I’ve read about it says that it takes a year or more for your body to restore itself to health. I’m not sure B-memory cells every go away; if the continuing presence of foreign proteins will continue to cause Hashimoto’s, or if I’ve trained my body to kill my thyroid from now until eternity.
Some relief can be found immediately depending on the specific auto-immune disease, but hypothyroidism doesn’t cause pain or other severe effects like some of the others. I would like to restore my thryoid to normal functioning; I don’t want to be on that medication for life. But that depends on how damaged my thyroid is, and if removing antagonists will eventually convince my immune system to leave my thyroid alone.
After eating better and jogging for months, my blood pressure numbers have been coming down. I’m through the pre-hypertension range and into normal, around 110/70. I bought a BP cuff to use at home shortly after the high reading at the doc and I’m using that to track my BP – a few times a day at first, then mostly daily, and now about once a week. Although my diet’s fluctuated in the past year, it’s been mostly paleo. The high BP reading was enough to convince me to be more consistent in my workouts (running every other day, strength training every four — until I started snowboarding, at least, and then until the crash). The high BP has also been a motivator to stay on the diet.
I’ve lost over 60 pounds so far. I figure strength training has helped me put on some lean mass, but I haven’t been tracking body fat % so I can’t really judge that. At some point I’ll post my weight and BP readings, probably in one big chunk, for those that would like to see hard numbers.
Normally, when doing a scientific test, you only want to change one variable at a time. For example, if you change a half-dozen things about your diet and your weight plateaus, what caused your weight to stabilize? It’s much easier to find what works by doing one thing at a time; cut out this food, eat more of that, etc.
Except the problem in diet studies is that food isn’t simple. Eating more bananas (say) means not just getting the potassium and other nutrients from the fruit, but also getting more fructose and more calories. Replacing one food with another is better, but still a non-trivial change. Was the old food good or is the new food bad? Is it calories? Sugars? Micronutrients? Or even something you’re not paying attention to — like the fact that you’re eating breakfast now? Or eating carbs early in the day rather than late?
If you’re working out at the same time, a change in workout or diet might produce a change in body composition — more fat & less muscle, or more muscle & less fat, or maybe you’re gaining water weight, or all that fiber is just sitting in your gut.
Blood pressure is a bit easier. It’s just a number. And my goal is really to get that number to go down.
A few things I’ve learned:
* Taking several measurements throughout the day has shown me how crazily volatile BP is. If I take a BP measurement then wait a few minutes and take it again, that second number can be much lower. I don’t usually take two readings, and I think I’ll start to — and use that to see how the minute-to-minute volatility changes with time of day.
* Taking a measurement first thing in the morning is great for consistency. My morning routine is the most consistent time of my day and I think that reading (even though I’m normally in a rush out the door and don’t have time for a second reading) has been the most consistent.
* I don’t think I’m salt-sensitive, but I might be. I think that’s genetic and runs in African gene lines. Cutting out the salt didn’t have a big effect on my BP, but adding it back in seemed to send it up. So I went very-low-salt again for a couple weeks to check – no noticeable effect.
* Walking on a consistent basis (five or six times a week) has helped my heartrate a lot, and my BP some. Jogging increased the benefit, and long and fast runs pushed the benefit further.
* Alcohol and working out will both push my BP and heartrate up; alcohol for maybe a day, while sometimes just an hour after working out those numbers will normalize.
* Being sick does crazy things to the numbers. I don’t recommend internal trauma.
After a few months from that first reading, at least at home when I can sit down and rest for the few minutes it takes to get a couple readings, my numbers got back into the prehypertension range: around 135/80, plus or minus 10 points for both numbers. My heartrate also come down, from the high eighties to 70, sometimes in the 60s.
After a year, my BP has stabilized to around 110/70, and my heartrate has been fairly stable at 70. I’d like to improve that further but right now recovery takes the upper hand.
I’m going to keep my diet goals the same: no sugar, no grain, no fructose, and walk/run five or six times a week. It’s worked so far, I’m still burning off weight, and the hypertension is gone!
