I know, No-One here IAD, I get what I pay for (nada) and all that jazz.
Still, I’m randomly curious about the following:
I went to the doctor’s office for a routine checkup, and when my blood pressure was taken, the reading was 110 over 57. Now, the diastolic is fairly normal for me - I range between about 56-60. However, that systolic? That’s freaky high for me - I’m usually in the 78-82 range. (Yes, my doctor thinks I’m really a vampire. Yes, I have had nurses get new blood-pressure cuffs because they thought the first one was broken. Yes, I have had my diastolic so low that they had trouble actually reading it. (I think they decided it was around 45 that time.) Yes, I do pass out if I stand up/sit up/wake up in the morning too fast.)
So… what gives? I’m not having much luck teasing out what would cause one to jump and not the other, and I can’t really find much info because even 110 isn’t really considered “high” for normal people with normal blood pressure. Even my doctor told me it wasn’t unusual to have a spike once in a while, but he didn’t explain why.
I was having a pretty stressful day at work that day, but I’m not sick (other than a slight allergy because of the season) and I don’t have any medications that I take regularly, so that’s out too.
So - smart doper people, what causes systolic pressure to rise by over 20 points, but not diastolic at all?
They call it white coat hypertension because people often have higher readings in a doctor’s office. The stress that causes blood pressure to rise is not always something you sense. At extreme levels there are signs we can sense, but your numbers are so low you only feel the symptoms of too low pressure at times. Having low numbers is not always good.
Those are valid points, but it wasn’t 110 last month when I had it checked last. Despite being low, it is stable from check-up to check-up. This is a big change.
I’m in my 30s, so not really old, no.
And if it were white coat hypertension, wouldn’t it consistently be high, rather than just this once? It was just a normal check-up, just like all the other ones where I end up with it in the high 70s.
Or are you saying that white coat hypertension refers to any elevations due to stress, and that the stress of the work day influenced it? If so, I’ll agree with you, but it’s still a little weird that it jumped so high when it’s never done that (at least not when it was recorded) before.
Again, not really worried, but just perplexed. I guess I thought that hypertension hit both numbers equally, and that it took more than just general “bad/busy work day” stress to make it jump by 20-30 points.
I’m in my 30s and my blood pressure (also low, like yours, but usually in the 90/60 range, and yes I get dizzy standing up and all that jazz–hate it!) has definitely gotten higher than it was in my teens and 20s. It’s still low, but it’s not as low as it used to be. I’m not saying that you’re seeing an overall, permanent change–it’s more likely that something was stressing you a little and caused a spike. Don’t know what that could be, though.
Professional opinion from me is meh- nothing worth worrying about or even perplexing over.
BP is a constantly changing vital that is influenced by sympathetic/parasympathetic control of the vasculature and heart, stresses of any variety, conscious control, salt intake, caffeine, etc, etc, etc. Your blood pressure (systolic especially) can vary several points from one beat to the next. Machine readings are fine checks, but not especially accurate, and neither are most humans if they’re just taking a quick listen to a non-critical patient.
White coat hypertension specifically refers to people worrying about having their blood pressure checked, which has the effect of making their pressure rise since they have a rush of stress hormones and anxiety. You can see something similar when people know their respiratory rate is being counted, so they focus on their breathing and change what had been an unconscious process into something directed.
I’m betting residual stress from your day. I have a pretty normal BP (generally 110/70 ish) and once I cut my thumb with a knife. My husband was out of town, it was night and the nearest hospital was a thirty minute drive away in an area I had just moved to. I knew virtually no one and had to make the drive with my two kids (one a toddler) all while keeping pressure on my thumb. It was also my birthday.
My blood pressure was 186/112. Now granted, I was pretty panicked, but absolutely not in danger of dying. Stress really can affect you in a physical way. I bet you were back down to normal by the time you got home, poured yourself a glass of wine and put your feet up.
I’m not sure how accurate those automatic things at the pharmacy are, but the few times I’ve tried them (different machine each time) they put me at about 105-110 over about 75. @ the doctor it’s never been under 120/80, and when I was having anxiety issues it was sometimes 130/80 or 140/80 at the dr.
That happens to me a lot an no one seems concerned. I get it taken at my exercise class, (at a hospital), twice a week. It’s been running around 80/60 to 90/60, but once in a while it will hit 110 or even 120 and really surprise me. I notice that one of the people seems to have more difficulty taking it (he is new), and it seems higher with him. However, once in a while it will be an older,experienced nurse who gets a high reading. Some of it depends on how much water ivevhadvto drink, or the traffic on the way over, or just how I feel. My doctor doesn’t worry about it, so I guess I shouldn’t, either.
Adrenaline is another potent one. I won’t speak definitively, but I would have to imagine most of the commonly thought of ‘hormones’- the sex hormones- estrogen, testosterone and progesterone probably have some effect on BP and HR and all the rest too. The most basic definition of hormone is just something secreted by one part of the body and transport via the bloodstream everywhere. Mostly they just produce the desired effect on the target organ, but there tends to be a lot of co-stimulation of other systems as well.
Even then you have whole other factors affecting BP, enzymes excreted by the lungs (most people don’t think of the lungs as an excretory organ) plus about a million other things. Just look at this picture describing the various interactions of the ACE system. It’s got a hell of a lot going on there and this is just one piece of a very large and complex puzzle. We surely haven’t even found all the pieces yet, much less figured out how the majority of them connect to one another.
In short, blood pressure is a very simplified measurement of a very (very,very) complex system designed to maintain homeostasis. It’s occasionally useful to trend vitals over time to see if treatments are working and because medicine likes quantitative results like that, but in reality they could just have ‘normal’, ‘not normal but reasonably safe’ and ‘danger’ as three distinctions of BP values and most people’s lives and treatment wouldn’t change. And trending values should be taken in a very similar manner to be meaningful anyways.
Think of it like a speedometer, useful in some regards, but a value different from the speed limit doesn’t tell you why. It might be a flat tire, a stuck throttle, fuel problems or nothing more than a leadfooted driver. Even then you’re best off to look outside the car anyways and make sure the speed seems appropriate for the circumstance. That’s why doctors typically (should) start by making simple changes like lowering salt intake and strengthening the cardiovascular system with exercise before they start mucking around with your corporeal chemistry.
I don’t think much about that conclusion, purportedly garnered from a few studies. I am 74 and my usual BP is 118/74, but of course that varies throughout the day. BP is easily subject to fluctuations, as previously noted. It is probably true that the BP in many people increase as they age, but that is not due to the aging process. It is probably due to lack of exercise, increased weight, etc.
Thanks for that - it’s not really the answer I wanted (and frankly, a little depressing to get told ""eh, we don’t know that yet either! ) but it is nice to know that there’s not likely anything to worry about, and also that it’s likely to be just a blip, and my doctor isn’t sitting in his office going “nah, let’s just not tell her what that’s from - we don’t want to worry her.” (I know that’s not really happening, but my brains tend towards the paranoid.) I’ll try to remember that it was high when I get my next semi-annual (yeah right) and see what happens then!
I don’t see anything worrisome about the OP. Systolic and diastolic pressure are not necessarily married to each other, only increasing or decreasing in the same amounts at the same time, or moving proportionately.
) but it is nice to know that there’s not likely anything to worry about, and also that it’s likely to be just a blip, and my doctor isn’t sitting in his office going “nah, let’s just not tell her what that’s from - we don’t want to worry her.” (I know that’s not really happening, but my brains tend towards the paranoid.) I’ll try to remember that it was high when I get my next semi-annual (yeah right) and see what happens then!