# I'm kinda freaking out about my blood pressure.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-kinda-freaking-out-about-my-blood-pressure/739725>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 7, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-kinda-freaking-out-about-my-blood-pressure/739725 "2015-12-07T18:31:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-kinda-freaking-out-about-my-blood-pressure/739725/21 "2015-12-14T02:40:07Z")

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> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> The last two days have been substantially better, though by my own decisions, not by anything my doctor has said. I’m still on 4 bp meds, each a once a day dose. I’ve been taking them all first thing in the morning, and morning and early afternoon has been the most problematic. I decided on my own to split up the meds – I take two in the morning and two at night. Not only have I felt better in the daytime, my bp has gotten more stable. At night, 12-15 hours after the meds, the systolic number was climbing up into the 140s, and now that’s not happening. I’ve felt just a little shaky if I move around too much, but the morning bp isn’t plunging down into frightening numbers.
> 
> In retrospect it was such an obvious move I’m surprised neither me nor my doc thought of it sooner – especially her.

Goes to show, even good doctors don’t know everything - and sometimes you have to put your foot down and do what you think is right.

I imagine the theory behind “take it all in the morning” is that you’re more active during the day, which is (presumably) when your BP is going to climb the highest. Given the half-life, there’s some still “on board” by evening time which might be enough.

I wonder if another approach might be to take some subset of the ones you’re on, but twice a day?

As an example of putting my foot down: 6 years back, my BP started creeping up even with the beta blocker. My blood sugar was also misbehaving so the doc put me on an ACE inhibitor (which is recommended with blood sugar issues, to help protect the kidneys). She warned me that it could cause a dry cough.

Sure enough, I developed a dry cough after a couple of weeks. Reported it. Doc listened to the description, and said it really sounded more like my GERD was acting up (based on when I had the symptoms, i.e. only at night). We went down that path for nearly 4 months, symptoms worsening despite increasing attempts to control the “GERD”, when I said NO MORE ACE INHIBITOR. The cough went away within a week. The doc put me on an ARB (related, but less risk of coughing) and it’s never bugged me since.

But I’m not bitter… I’m not, actually: this got me a gastroenterologist referral, who wanted to do an upper GI because I did have a long history of real GERD… and I said “while we’re at it, how about the other end”, which turned up things that were best dealt with promptly and repeatedly :eek:.

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