Blood pressure and sailing

[RupertW]

I was fitted with a 24hour continuous blood pressure kit this morning - have to give it back tomorrow lunchtime to find out the results.

So - I had to decide what I could do today to mimic a normal day, but without meeting people or having colleagues saying "Whats that on your waist, what are all those rubber tubes doing and why is your left sleeve being like a balloon every five minutes. Oh, and also I had to write a diary of my body position, my mood!!, and my activity every 20 minutes. Strange.

Being a bit shy, my solution was to get on a train (to do loads of work, well mostly) to Brighton and take the boat for a sail for the first time since October. Train journey was mostly fine apart from an iPoD singer next to me. Both boat batteries read 7.5 volts????? So charged the batteries for half an hour and cheated by starting the engine on the marina mains and headed out.

What a perfect sail - sunny mostly, northerly therefore tiny waves and a great if gusty sail to Shoreham and back, then dead calm under the piers and onwards to tieing up, on the train back to London and a Thai with lots of wine near home with slightly stressed wife.

So - now I'm wondering what will the BP machine show for each bit of the day? I'm expecting high BP for the battery probs and perhaps the iPod man and low when I'm sailing, but who knows?

 

[Shakey]

I think your blood pressure's meant to be more or less constant over the day.

What does change is your pulse. Grinding a few winches would put that up!

The medics are probably looking for some sort of resting baseline, and to take an average reading to compare with when you're active and/or stressed.

I assume you didn't fall overboard - cold water immersion sends your blood pressure through the roof apparently!

 

[jimboaw]

Here we go down the American Road to medical paranoia. Screw BP and Cholesterol. I smoke, I drink, I enjoy a fry up and I love whole milk. No way am I giving up these "unhealthy" pleasures just to extend my life. I would guess most of the males on this site suspect they will die before their spouses?

 

[Benbow]

I suggest you ignore these rufty tufty prats. Assuming you are having hypertension checked-out - high blood pressure is extremely dangerous but treatment to lower it is extremely effective in reducing risk (especially of stroke) back to near normal.

Do take it seriously!

 

[Rowana]

Yesterday must have been . . .

. . . a day for heart problems. I've been having abnormal rhythms in my heart since before christmas. Had some blood tests last week, and get the results on Friday.

Yesterday I had an echo test in hosp. which showed up a leaky valve, so now I have to go and see a specialist to see what's the next step.

If it was a non-return valve on the engine, I could just bolt in a new one, but I somehow don't think this will be quite so easy.

Ho hum - Signature looking a bit wobbly /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[tillergirl]

I sympathise. They told me I would get use to it at night and it wouldn't wake me -wrong, ended up feeling totally knackered. Never had it when I used to work but I had one of those executive types that you can put on your wrist. Basically it told me that if I felt I was busy and a bit stressed then my blood pressure was high - well very high. The thing about the 24 hour machine is it tells the doctor what your blood pressure is like when you off duty and resting etc. I always manage to get the highest readings when I go to the doctor! Hence the 24 hour test.

But its a good thing to do as its a silent killer. A lifetime of pills for me I'm afraid. I don't take my blood pressure on the boat on the principle that I don't want to hear that sailing is stressing me!

 

[boatmike]

Hey Rupert! Join the club. And don't worry. The only people who die as a result of high blood pressure these days are prats like those who do smoke, drink, and eat greasy fry ups and ignore all advice and warnings as jimboaw suggests. You can be pretty safe in assuming they will not only die before their wives do but before those of us who live healthy lives and follow good medical advice.
In 1999 I was being assessed as you are now. My wife had just died, I had become depressed, overweight, unfit, and was drinking too much. My BP went as high as 170/110. Today I am an ideal weight for my height, am happy, fit as a fiddle and have a BP of 120/75 which is not bad for a guy of 62. I still enjoy my food, drink about 1/2 bottle of red wine per day, and have a new love in my life who is 11 years younger than me. While I pop 2 pills a day they have no side effects but it took a while to find the right balance. Don't despair regardless of the outcome of your test. Just work at it and you will improve.
If you want any hints and tips just PM me. I am not a doctor but I have researched the subject thoroughly and found out some very interesting things that the doctor may not tell you.....
Oh by the way, the advice that BP does not vary during the day is also crap. It does, even in very fit young people. Pulse rate in itself tells you little. The rate of recovery from a high pulse rate to normal tells you something about cardio-vascular fitness but nothing about why your BP is high.
Live long and prosper.....

 

[StugeronSteve]

"A lifetime of pills for me I'm afraid."

Same here, the drugs don 't seem to have done me any harm, so far, slowed me down a bit (metabolically speaking), but that's no bad thing.

Over the last couple of years the regular "lads" crew, on 2J's3, have all joined me on the medication, must be the air of calm that I exude.

 

[snowleopard]

i too have to take what the tabloids would call a 'cocktail of drugs'. the odd thing about blood pressure is that you can't tell if you're affected unless you take a test and you don't know it's doing you any harm until you have a stroke or develop diabetes.

the pills don't normally seem to affect me but i did have an odd instance that fellow sufferers might like to take note of. one of my pills is a beta blocker that reduces heart rate. a side effect is that in cases of extreme exertion it prevents the normal speeding up of the heart and that can affect other parts.

our boat was aground on the beach and the tide didn't quite come high enough to re-float. i managed to push it off and scramble aboard at the cost of a huge effort, then motor to our berth and moor up. when we were tied up i realised i could remember nothing from the point the boat floated off. i was taken to hospital and everything checked out OK but i've been wary about extreme efforts since then.

 

[RupertW]

Sailing works - it seems

Well looks like sailing works for me - the results were a little high while I was rushing for trains/sorting batteries etc. but dropped to normal virtually the moment I untied the boat and stayed low throughout the rest of the day, evening and night.

So, all I have to do now is to sail every morning - hmm...perhaps I should start looking at the Liveaboard forum?

Re: pills and all that - thanks for the advice and I'll certainly take them if I can't get back to normal in any other way. I've had diabetes for far longer than I've had high blood pressure readings, so adding one more pill to the many times per day injections/pills/blood tests wouldn't be the end of the world - but I'd rather not if I can avoid it.

 

[graham]

Re: Sailing works - it seems

Best of luck with it mate.I believe there is some truth in the saying that"God doesnt deduct from our lifespan time spent on the boat"

(I think that was someone on the forums footnote at one time)

 

[pragmatist]

Re: Sailing works - it seems

Have you looked at the Liveaboard forum lately ? It doesn't appear to have any "health" threads and the only bit about drugs is about Class A ! IRMC

 

[ShipsWoofy]

Re: Yesterday must have been . . .

Wishing you all the best.

Isn't this a pretty standard op now days were you receive a pigs valve.

Good luck anyhow, hope you are sorted quickly, the season is about to start.

 

[Rowana]

Re: Yesterday must have been . . .

Thanks for the good wishes Woof. As I said, still waiting to see specialist, so hopefully op is last resort. I believe that they can use drugs to stop things getting any worse, but I'll just have to wait and see what the expert opinion is. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[ashanta]

But they do tell you that exercising reduces blood pressure and if you exercise you improve your cardio vascular system.This means that your recovery rate after exercise is improved. This means your pulse rate can go much higher and settle at rest to much lower.

Regards.

Peter.