Most of my regular fans are aware that, to put it mildly, Ive had some cardiac issues in the not-too-distant past. And many of you are also aware of how much I love riding my new bicycle. (Have I mentioned that I have a bicycle now? Its red.) Well, lets talk about how those two things have come together in an unexpected way. Cycling is really relaxing, and its reasonably good exercise. So good that my blood pressure has dropped substantially in the past few weeks. (Example: I woke up this morning at 106/65 WITHOUT medication.) And my nurse practitioner did say a while back that I shouldnt take blood pressure medication when its already that low, so for a few days now Ive been off that stuff (low doses of metoprolol and lisinopril) completely. Whoops. Guess what happens when you stop taking ACE inhibitors? Nasty, keep-you-up-all-night headaches! Ouch. I felt like carp until about 3pm today, and I barely slept after 2am. This is very unusual for me. I can ALWAYS sleep. They didnt warn me about this because, Im going to guess, nobody in a million years would have expected that my unmedicated BP would stay consistently TOO LOW over a period of several days. Long story short, it seems that Im too healthy to take the pills that keep me from getting really bad headaches. Thats something I never anticipated. So tomorrow, that will be a call to my cardiologists office. Until I hear back about that, fine, Ill go back on the pills (because they actually have other benefits having to do with the heart muscle itself) but I have to pay attention to hypotension. The moral of the story: When your cardiologist tells you to lose weight, eat less sodium, and exercise, ITS A TRAP. Dont do it. :-)
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 00:25:00 +0000
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