My step father has had serious drops in blood pressure that warranted calling an ambulance about once a year for the past 3 years. His BP will drop suddenly causing him to lose consciousness for as much as an hour. The doctors have done numerous tests like a tilt table test, stress test, cath, test on the electric circuitry of his heart and they all come up with nothing. Today they tried to induce the condition in him by varying his BP, heart rate, etc and they could not do it.
Here is where it gets interesting. My mother, God love her, thinks that it is related to his chewing tobacco (actually dipping) and swallowing it. He doesn’t spit it out. Yech- I know.
IANAD, but seeing how nicotine is a stimulant, I would expect the opposite to be true. That is, chewing tobacco causes elevated blood pressure. I know smoking causes increased heartrate and constriction of blood vessels (and increased blood pressure). So, I don’t see how chewing tobacco could cause that.
Because his BP is extremely low during the episodes, almost undetectable with the equipment in an ambulance. The BP is a symptom…the mystery is the cause of the BP drop…
there’s a post here by a fella name of Scyllla where he describes a similar thing happening to him that might be applicable to what happens to your pop.