high blood pressure

[Austin Baraki]

What is your age, height and weight? Do you smoke or drink? Why were you referred to a cardiologist? Have you been tested for sleep apnea?

[zar9star]

Who is Hans Selye and how does it help me to ask the cardiologist about him?

I'm 17 so if i show him the study, he will say it doesn't apply to me because all the people in the study are adults. I don't smoke and don't drink.

I went to my regular doc for a general controll. He heard some sound from my heart and sent me to the cardiologist. The cardiologist said my heart is fine but my BP too high.

I really need a solid way to prove the cardiologist wrong. Otherwise my parents won't allow me to lift anymore.

[Christopher Anderson]

My wife has high BP and has a kidney disease. What's your BP like normally? Is it high like that normally like when you get out of bed in the morning or only after you lift weights? If it's a normal occurrence that is happening when you're not lifting like when you're waking up or sitting in class then it's clearly not lifting that causes this issue.

[MarkSnyder]

High blood pressure is a substantial risk factor for early death and disability. It's in your best interest to get it figured out ASAP so you can continue to lift and stay healthy. Just as there are substandard lawyers and plumbers there are substandard doctors. If a doctor feels your high blood pressure is due to weight training, the odds are much greater you have a substandard doctor than weight training being responsible for your high blood pressure.

Some people show high blood pressure when it is tested in a doctor's office, but much lower blood pressure when tested in the comfort of their home. This is the first thing you should check. Buy a blood pressure monitor and test your blood pressure at home several times a day for a week. See if the average readings are substantially lower than what you get at the doctor's office. The Omron 10 series BP785N is only $65 on Amazon and is a great blood pressure monitor. The Omron monitor can store up to 200 blood pressure readings with a date & time stamp. It's important to check your blood pressure several times during the day as it can vary considerably during the day.

If you balk at $65, keep this in mind. Consistently high blood pressure causes cumulative damage over time. You risk losing decades of life, or decades of healthy life, if you don't get it under control. And spending the $65 gives you a vital tool for seeing the effect of changes you make to discover the root cause or causes of your high blood pressure without having to continually make doctor appointments.

If your home readings are substantially lower, bring your blood pressure monitor to your next doctors appointment. Use it there to take a blood pressure reading and compare it to the reading the doctor gets with their monitor. This will prove that your monitor is accurate and the issue, or part of the issue, is "white coat hypertension". Google it.

If your home readings are above 120/80 but less than at the doctors office then white coat hypertension is only part of the problem and you still need to get it below 120/80. Shoot for 110/70. Diet is the most common cause of high blood pressure. A good overview on how diet can affect blood pressure is here: how-not-to-die-from-high-blood-pressure

If you don't have "white coat hypertension" and or diet changes don't help then you can stop weight training for a couple of weeks and track your blood pressure using your monitor to prove that weight training is not the cause. This should be enough of a test to get your doctor off his or her ass to find the real cause or convince you to change doctors.

I'm impressed that at age 17 you don't smoke or drink and have started weight training. Wish I was half as smart back when I was 17. Bet a few others here feel the same way. ;-)

[zar9star]

Thank you!
I do own a BP monitor and it always shows something like 150/85.
Doesn't matter if I just woke up or when I'm getting measured by the doc, it's always around that. I already took 1 month off from the gym and BP didn't change. Doc was like: 1 month is too little to make a difference.
Also, I started lifting in october 2015. The BP thing came up in july 2016. I see no correlation and absolutely no logic behind this. Unfortunately my parents believe everything this moron says.

[Murelli]

Thank you!
I do own a BP monitor and it always shows something like 150/85.
Doesn't matter if I just woke up or when I'm getting measured by the doc, it's always around that. I already took 1 month off from the gym and BP didn't change. Doc was like: 1 month is too little to make a difference.
Also, I started lifting in october 2015. The BP thing came up in july 2016. I see no correlation and absolutely no logic behind this. Unfortunately my parents believe everything this moron says.

Diet, sleep, water intake, stress... How are those?

[zar9star]

Diet:milk, Oats, potatoes, rice, bread, veggies, meat, cottage cheese, peanutbutter, chocolate... good food most of the time. Slight caloric surplus.
sleep: never less than 7 hours
water intake: about 3l a day
stress: lot of studying (does that count?)

[MarkSnyder]

Glad to hear you have a blood pressure monitor! You are making progress towards discovering the true cause of your high blood pressure so don't be discouraged. This is a process of elimination and you are just getting started.

So we know you have a monitor whose home readings matches readings in your doctor's office. That means you don't have "white coat hypertension" and you have an accurate blood pressure monitor. You have seen a cardiologist who should have picked up on any genetic causes for blood pressure so, for now, let's assume you don't have a rare condition that is responsible for your high blood pressure. Focus on the of the most likely causes, your diet.

People can vary tremendously in how they react to food. I'm one of those unfortunates who when eating the standard american diet with plenty of meat, dairy, eggs, fats, and sweets ends up with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. I spent years on three medications for those conditions and while they helped some it was not enough. I almost permanently lost vision in my right eye due to a stroke (Amaurosis Fugax). I was fortunate, the clot dissolved after a few minutes and my vision returned. A day and a half in the hospital, over $20,000 in tests and expenses, and wearing an implanted heart monitor for 9 months that required an operating room to implant and later remove was the end result and a wake up call.

Others can eat the same diet as I and not have the same issues with atherosclerosis and high blood pressure. You being 17 I bet have not spent much time thinking about your diet. Looks like it's time to do just that. Some of the foods you eat daily may be the ones causing your high blood pressure. You won't know for sure until you experiment. The good news is that it only takes a few weeks for dietary changes to show substantially improved blood pressure.

I'm not going to suggest what foods to eat and what not to eat. Food is a touchy subject and I don't want to confuse you by starting a discussion that is filled with heartfelt yet conflicting advice. I can say that after making a substantial change to my diet I'm no longer on any of the three meds and my test numbers are all in the normal range. But anecdotal evidence is the weakest. You need to do your own research. There are certainly other possible reasons for your high blood pressure but most can be easily checked and eliminated. Changing your diet takes time and effort but can give you additional benefits besides just lowering your blood pressure.

Given you have taken a month off from weight training with no improvement in blood pressure I'd guess your doctor is wrong. Put him or her on the spot to back up that theory with scientific documentation. You deserve to know the truth. If he or she can't provide it, then getting a new doctor might be a prudent choice.

A new article "Heavy Lifting and Heart Health" was just posted on this website. Your parents should read it.

[zar9star]

Glad to hear you have a blood pressure monitor! You are making progress towards discovering the true cause of your high blood pressure so don't be discouraged. This is a process of elimination and you are just getting started.

So we know you have a monitor whose home readings matches readings in your doctor's office. That means you don't have "white coat hypertension" and you have an accurate blood pressure monitor. You have seen a cardiologist who should have picked up on any genetic causes for blood pressure so, for now, let's assume you don't have a rare condition that is responsible for your high blood pressure. Focus on the of the most likely causes, your diet.

People can vary tremendously in how they react to food. I'm one of those unfortunates who when eating the standard american diet with plenty of meat, dairy, eggs, fats, and sweets ends up with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. I spent years on three medications for those conditions and while they helped some it was not enough. I almost permanently lost vision in my right eye due to a stroke (Amaurosis Fugax). I was fortunate, the clot dissolved after a few minutes and my vision returned. A day and a half in the hospital, over $20,000 in tests and expenses, and wearing an implanted heart monitor for 9 months that required an operating room to implant and later remove was the end result and a wake up call.

Others can eat the same diet as I and not have the same issues with atherosclerosis and high blood pressure. You being 17 I bet have not spent much time thinking about your diet. Looks like it's time to do just that. Some of the foods you eat daily may be the ones causing your high blood pressure. You won't know for sure until you experiment. The good news is that it only takes a few weeks for dietary changes to show substantially improved blood pressure.

I'm not going to suggest what foods to eat and what not to eat. Food is a touchy subject and I don't want to confuse you by starting a discussion that is filled with heartfelt yet conflicting advice. I can say that after making a substantial change to my diet I'm no longer on any of the three meds and my test numbers are all in the normal range. But anecdotal evidence is the weakest. You need to do your own research. There are certainly other possible reasons for your high blood pressure but most can be easily checked and eliminated. Changing your diet takes time and effort but can give you additional benefits besides just lowering your blood pressure.

Given you have taken a month off from weight training with no improvement in blood pressure I'd guess your doctor is wrong. Put him or her on the spot to back up that theory with scientific documentation. You deserve to know the truth. If he or she can't provide it, then getting a new doctor might be a prudent choice.

A new article "Heavy Lifting and Heart Health" was just posted on this website. Your parents should read it.

Thank you man!
My diet is not the best one. The main reason for this is that it's pretty hard for me to eat a lot of calories so I eat shit sometimes. Don't know if gomad is any better for health than peanutbutter. I'll try to stick to clean foods.

[Murelli]

Thank you man!
My diet is not the best one. The main reason for this is that it's pretty hard for me to eat a lot of calories so I eat shit sometimes. Don't know if gomad is any better for health than peanutbutter. I'll try to stick to clean foods.

Depends a lot on the quality of the peanut butter. Dial down the sugars and overall refined food. Try to dial in your macros also, with a focus on 80% clean food, like Jordan recommends. BTW, read his article:

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