Who Has Dropped Their Blood Pressure? Tell Your Story!

It wasn't my primary reason for losing weight but the combination of increased activity and better eating dropped my BP from around 140/100 ish (about 14 months ago) to 124/81 (3 weeks ago).

Over that time lost about 70 lbs (lost a few before joining mfp)

Originally my dr said to either lose weight or possibly in the near future to be on medication, too bad he stopped working at the practice and I never got a chance for him to see my reading this year lol

When I went for my check up and to the doctor for common colds, the doctor would tell me my BP was high. I started checking my BP each day myself and it was consistently high. I changed my eating habits and begin exercising before they put me on meds and now I am seeing normal BP readings. Thanks for sharing MFP!!

Not only was I taken off insulin(yeah!!!),I also had my blood pressure med lowered and my diabetes pill lowered. Hoping to be off of both. I feel so much better. My doctor was so pleased. I want to say this was done with only 20lb weight loss. Amazing. I still have about 50lbs that I need to lose. By losing some weight and getting some exercise you can improve your health immensely. You can do it!!

Before losing weight I was in the warning stages. I don't know specific numbers, but they told me to keep an eye on it the next time I came in. At that point I was obese and in my mid 20's. Now at a healthy weight my BP is so low they don't bother to comment on it. I again don't know numbers, but at Christmas my in-laws (they are doctors/pharmacists) and they went around measuring BPs as a joke, and I was the only one with a lower than average BP. I'm just a bit more active and a bit healthier in what I eat, I think most of it was just dropping the weight.

Before I lost weight I was on 10 mg Lisinopril for high blood pressure. 160/95. In February my doctor took me off because my blood pressure had been in the normal range for 6 weeks. Still there.

Sorry this is long....

Each year the company I work for gives the employees a free health screening (height, weight, BP, finger stick blood draw).

2014 results I had some numbers that were over the normal range and some that were within the normal range but, on the cusp of being bad. All of the numbers had heart disease and diabetes written all over them. I was scared - my father is a diabetic and has some heart issues..

So, I decided that I would make some changes and I would start small so that they would stick.

I started drinking more water. I drink 4-6 glasses up until lunch and then I allow myself to switch over to diet coke. Previously the only water intake I got was the melted ice in my soda This has helped my heart burn tremendously.

I also started walking at break every day (most days). 2 times around the building is about 1 mile and takes me just under 20 minutes.. In the winter I went to the fitness room and walked for 20 minutes watching Live with Kelly and Michael.

2015 results - ALL numbers are with in a good range now my BP went from 113/80 to 110/79. My waist measurement went down 1 inch, weight went down a few lbs (but, really up as I had lost/gained weight). The only number that is still not where it should be is my good cholesterol.

My BP has not yet been a concern but, even that improved w/my walks.

Unfortunately, that's the one thing that hasn't been fixable with diet and exercise...I'm off all of my other meds though.

I was on medication in my early 40s to manage my high blood pressure. Although I exercised regularly I was overweight. Also, one of my brothers, who was in his mid 40's died of an aneurism. Which although not caused, would have been exacerbated by high BP and being obese. So that and being fed up with being fat again! 3 years ago I lost 45lbs and my blood pressure was good and I no longer required any medication.

Unfortunately I have regained some of the weight. I haven't had my BP checked but have restarted losing so hope that If my BP rose it will drop again as the weight comes off. I need to get rid of not just the fat that is visual but, the stuff lurking around the organs and clogging up the arteries.

My BP has been high for over 30 years, regardless of my weight or activity level. After a year on a raw vegan diet, I'd lost 80 pounds but still averaged 150/100 BP.
Then I read a medical study where every participant (around 180 from what I recall) lowered their BP significantly and permanently by water fasting for 10 days. I considered using a fasting hospital, but after thoroughly researching the topic I fasted for 21 days at home. My nutritional reserves were high from my healthy diet, so I never really even got hungry after the first day or two. My BP dropped to 101/62 by the end of the fast, and is still low 6 months later.

After a car accident where I was hit from behind at 60 mph, I was not up for moving around a lot and cut a lot of my activity. I wasn't overweight when it happened, but over the course of the next decade, I gained 42 pounds and was basically sedentary - work, home, couch. I didn't go to the doctor because I didn't want to know how bad any of it was (didn't go for 7 years). When I went in my BP was 150/90, so they had me re-take and monitor it for a week. Same. I did South Beach and lost 15 lbs within a month. BP dropped to 130/85 or so. I maintained it for a while, then started walking again. I didn't watch what I ate as closely and went up a few pounds...BP went with it, even though I was walking more. Finally, fast forward a couple of years and I decided to get real about it all. I started boxing, watching what I ate (chose healthy, nutrient-dense foods). Currently BP hovers around 124/82 with pulse of 74. Doc is happy, I am happy and I can see the correlation with what I do to how my body responds. So glad I made the decision to take charge of my health again!!!

Had normal BP as a fat person, dropped buttloads of weight and it went up to hypertensive even though I was doing "all the right things". All the doctors I had to see throughout the process of donating a kidney told me to just "keep doing what I'm doing", but what I was doing was dropping my sodium lower and lower (because lower is supposed to be better, right?) and doing more and more exercise (because all the literature and doctors say that's supposed to lower bp, right?) and adding more and more potassium to my diet (because they say maybe if you have high blood pressure and are already low sodium and doing enough exercise it might be that your potassium is not high enough...right?) And it turned out that I wasn't getting ENOUGH sodium to balance out my loss from exercise and my excess potassium intake. Nobody was able to figure that out for me. Luckily I figured it out for myself by trial and error before it became a huge health problem or caused the donor team to decide I was not a suitable candidate. Now I add salt to everything under the sun and keep my BP around 106/64. If I have a few low sodium days I notice it creeping back up to the 130/84 range.

meganjcallaghan wrote: »

Had normal BP as a fat person, dropped buttloads of weight and it went up to hypertensive even though I was doing "all the right things". All the doctors I had to see throughout the process of donating a kidney told me to just "keep doing what I'm doing", but what I was doing was dropping my sodium lower and lower (because lower is supposed to be better, right?) and doing more and more exercise (because all the literature and doctors say that's supposed to lower bp, right?) and adding more and more potassium to my diet (because they say maybe if you have high blood pressure and are already low sodium and doing enough exercise it might be that your potassium is not high enough...right?) And it turned out that I wasn't getting ENOUGH sodium to balance out my loss from exercise and my excess potassium intake. Nobody was able to figure that out for me. Luckily I figured it out for myself by trial and error before it became a huge health problem or caused the donor team to decide I was not a suitable candidate. Now I add salt to everything under the sun and keep my BP around 106/64. If I have a few low sodium days I notice it creeping back up to the 130/84 range.

Since I have been on BP medication, whenever i have any sort of blood test, my doctor automatically adds potasium and sodium to the tests.

mwyvr wrote: »

Hey that's an interesting story @meganjcallaghan thanks for sharing it. I'm aware of too-low sodium causing problems in runners and other athletes (and we are all athletes here right?) so it's interesting reading your case.

Yeah, I had no idea running as much as I do could be what was causing the issue. The doctors all knew how much I was running and never said anything, so it took all kinds of hunting to find what the minimum required amount of sodium is per day (500mg....but I had a heck of a time finding that. Everyone always wants to tell you the max, but never the minimum) and one day deciding to figure out my sweat rate just for kicks. Turns out I was losing around 6 pounds in a 2 hour run. Apparently that's about 3 liters of sweat/exhalation etc....which would (on the low end) equal about 7500 mg of sodium lost. I run 2 to 3 hours every day. So it's no surprise that after months of taking in only 500 mg, losing 7500 and ending up in a 7000 mg deficit of sodium every single day, I had right messed myself up.