-=> Quoting Bob Lawrence to John Tserkezis <=-

Hello Bob,

 JT> AFAIK, I don't have any blockages, (at my age I would bloody
 JT> well hope not!). 

 BL> I'm not saying that everyone with high BP has blocked arteries, just
 BL> that in my case I suspect that it was the other way around: a blocked
 BL> artery in the heart caused the high BP. On the angiogram, I could see
 BL> where small veins around the blockage had grown to try and bypass it.
 BL> I hope that the blockage was just bad luck, and not something I can
 BL> expect annually.

 Yeah, it gets a bit worring.  I've heard of people who have been through
multiple by-passes.  Mind you, they've abused their "second chance" quite
thoroughly.
 
 BL> The trouble is that you can't "feel" it.
 
 JT> I've not been able to *reliably* tell from feel alone. It
 JT> sometimes goes both ways too. "Feel" only works on the extremes
 JT> as far as I have observed. 

 BL> In my case, it's almost the reverse: if I feel stressed and tense BP
 BL> is low, if I feel at ease it's high. It's mad. I just can't tell. I
 BL> can "feel" a high pulse rate.

 I can feel my pulse as well.  My quack tried to imply this is not normal. IE,
one should not normally feel their own pulse.  I sometimes feel it more than
other times.  I've noticed I feel my pulse more when I inhale, if I exhale
completely, I can't feel it.
 
 BL> Yes! As I said, the measurement with the least variation is the one
 BL> taken first thing in the morning. Some of the things are surprising.
 BL> Every afternoon before tea, I water the pot plants. I had thought this
 BL> was a toally relaxing pastime... but it puts up the BP!

 Better not water the plant then. :-)
 
 BL> I don't measure any difference left to right, standing or lying
 BL> down. I was told that the inportant thing is to have the arm on the
 BL> same level as the heart. If you hold your arm up, you lose pressure. 
 
 There is a measureable big difference when I sit cross-legged or lay down.
It's the cuff itself that should be at the same level as the heart.  The elbow
on the table while seated tends to put the arm in the right position.

 BL> The other odd thing is that my heart has large arteries. The doctor
 BL> commented on it (but the actual size he mentioned didn't register in
 BL> my memory). A large *blocked* artery!
 
 I know the heart grows depending on how much work it does.  Normally this is
not a problem, but it starts causing problems with really high BP when the
heart grows so big, that the arteries around it can't supply oxygen fast enough
as the heart uses it up quite quickly.  You can't "rest" your
heart (stop it)
so this is a major factor.

 JT> That puts too far away on the wrong side of borderline for a 23
 JT> YO. Which was I think when he first noticed it.

 BL> 23! In my mind, I imagined you older. 

 That was around when he first found out, I'm 27 now.

 BL> In that case you are one of those people with inherited high BP!

 I dunno.  It has come down a fair bit, so it was either stress, weight or
lack of exercise (or all of above) that did it.
 I do believe that my high resting heart rate is inherited though.  To some
degree anyway.

 BL> I don't think doctors have much of a clue about heart disease, and
 BL> they're grasping at indicators. I remember being told the same thing
 BL> about ulcers, 15 years ago. They were caused by acid (it's cholesterol
 BL> in hearts), and the indicators were hereditary, what you ate, smoking,
 BL> stress... the same things they tell you about hearts. In fact, ulcers
 BL> are caused by a germ. Get rid of the germ... ulcer cured forever.

 Is it that some people are more suseptible to this germ, or if you get this
germ you will have an ulcer, no ifs no buts?

 BL> I'm not saying that the heart indicators don't exist, or that if you
 BL> follow the best medical and lifestyle advice you won't get a result (I
 BL> lived with my ulcers for 15 years and avoided them pretty well), but
 BL> as far as I am concerned, nothing about heart disease is written on
 BL> stone. It may be that inherited high pulse rate and BP means bugger
 BL> all... your body may be designed to run that way.

 That's true.  I have a friend that has a higher than normal body temperature.
It was weird whenever he went to the quacks, he got told he had a fever.

 But if "normal" for you causes a problem, then it must be
addressed.  If your
BP is too high for your own good, then you must live an "abnormal" lower BP
lifestyle with drugs or whatever, or just die from the extra stress your heart
was not also designed to handle.

 BL> The catch is, you *have* to follow the best advice, and it's pretty
 BL> obvious that it's plain good advice anyway: don't smoke, low fat diet,
 BL> steady daily exercise, keep the weight down, manage stress. Whatta
 BL> mongrel.

 Bummer, no more lard sandwiches then. :-(
 
 JT> Cool, then most of the time I'm just fine.

 BL> At your age I weighed 63 kg (19 in the m/d^2 calculation), had a low
 BL> pulse, low BP, under tremendous stress and smoking 60 a day. At 35
 BL> (1975) I went as close to a nervous breakdown as I ever want to go

 Beat you to it.  I had my near nervous breakdown about 6-7 years ago.

 BL> and made a large change in lifestyle (I left Pye).

 Suprising how work is related eh?  My present boss left one job because it
gave him the shits.  Literally.  He went every hour on the hour.  He was ok
after work, or on weekends.

 BL> As a consultant I was still under stress and got ulcers.

 What about the germ?  Although I know someone else who got stress-related
ulcers.

 BL> At 40 (1980) it was so bad I thought it was stomach cancer. I gave up
 BL> smoking and stopped worrying... and went up to 86kg but my BP was 120/70
 BL> as late as 1990 when I had a complete heart test. The cardiologist told
 BL> me to lose 3kg and I did. Seven years later I had the heart attack.

 As you said once before, it's the long term damage that does it.  Even when
you clean up your act, the damage is done.

 BL> With hindsight, the only things I would have done differently was to
 BL> never smoke and to keep my weight at 72kg... but the 83kg limit was
 BL> with the blessing of a Professor of Cardiology. Figure...

 That's just a limit.  Generally the ideal weight covers a range.  It depends
on your build for one thing, and a bit of excess body fat is ok.

John Tserkezis, Sydney, Oz. Fidonet: 3:712/610  Internet: jt{at}suburbia.com.au

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