6 ms·

Very interesting. I'm affected by high blood pressure so I monitor it pretty closely. If I need to get my blood pressure down, there are three levers that cons

by nxc18 8y ago

Very interesting. I'm affected by high blood pressure so I monitor it pretty closely. If I need to get my blood pressure down, there are three levers that consistently work: ° reducing sodium - note: I really like salty things, so it's very easy for me to push 6-7k mg or more, especially when I was in college eating cafeteria and frozen food constantly. Also, drowning things in hot sauce, to which I am mildly addicted. ° exercising. ° cutting out alcohol and certain other vices. Everyone's different, so if you're worried about it, talk to your doctor and consider starting a monitoring program. I like home monitoring; IME knowing exactly the impact of my choices on my blood pressure helps me make good choices. It's good to hear the guidance might become a little more sane - it is extremely difficult to eat a normal (by any American standard at least) diet and be less than a few thousand mg.

Swizec 8y ago
> 6-7k mg Why not say grams? A thousand miligrams is a gram. I've always "suffered" from low blood pressure. Never quite to the point of fainting when I stand up too quick, but it's been close a few times. Exercise for me means I have to go out of my way to supplement sodium or I start getting muscle cramps. So I wonder, what does high pressure feel like? How do you know when it's too high? Or is it just something you notice on a device and know to fix because doctors say so?
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Most people find out from having it measured at a doctor's checkup, but, if it gets high enough it feels like someone's squeezing your brain. The lack of symptoms for most people is why the US has things like free blood pressure checkups, and automated machines in the waiting areas of pharmacies.
- smhost 8y ago
  It feels like there's too much blood in my head/face.
- dharness 8y ago
  Most food packaging measures sodium in mg, so I feel using those units is easier to reason about for most people.
  - namibj 8y ago
    There is a reason the SI system uses decades. It's exactly that it makes this trivial, but I guess if one is not that accustomed to thinking in decimals/metric, it might not be as obvious. mg is also just composed of the SI prefix m = milli, and the SI unit g = gram, where the latter is a little weird due to naming problems early on leading to it being the only SI unit where the base unit, the kg = kilogram already has a prefix. The milli means thousands, so you are just saying 6 thousand thousands gram. If you internalize SI units, and decompose them automatically, this seems at least confusing, possibly worse, depending on how picky the reader is about unnecessarily contorted grammar in general. I myself advocate the use of prefixed gram for the cases where people use tons, but I accept that people in general don't like them being called megagrams = Mg from now on. This is by the way the reason why mb != MB when denoting storage space, but 8e9 mb = 1 MB, due to the former denoting millibits, and the latter megabytes. There is also MiB, mibibytes, denoting 2^30 B. Microsoft denotes MiB as MB, which is wrong, and lead to great confusion. Be careful, embrace SI units, they make your life easier.
    - commandar 8y ago
      Using SI doesn't mean you shouldn't maintain consistency between units you're actively comparing to avoid inadvertent conversion error. If your working units are mg, using mg across the board is completely sensible. It lowers the mental load involved and reduces the chance of the human factor introducing errors. It has nothing to do with being uncomfortable with working with SI units and everything to do with having a consistent working environment for me. For example, If I were drawing something up in CAD and needed a particular face to be 120mm, I'm completely aware that could be represented as 12cm, but I want the software to label that as 120mm so that it's consistent with e.g., a 23mm face next to it. Your working units for sodium in food consumption are milligrams. Labeling the final sum the same way is a good thing.
- narag 8y ago
  Terrible headaches.
- seandougall 8y ago
  In most cases, it feels like absolutely nothing. Above roughly 150 systolic, it can start to manifest as headaches (as others have mentioned), but doesn't always. In my case, after it had gone undiagnosed long enough (by an incompetent doctor), I had extremely severe headaches, constant nausea and vomiting, and vision problems that turned out to be capillary hemorrhages in my retinas. That was at around 240/120. BUT: I am extremely lucky to have had all those horrendous symptoms. They alerted me to the severity of the problem, and caused me to escalate to a competent doctor. For many people who get up to that level of blood pressure, the first (and potentially last) symptom is a stroke or a heart attack.
greglindahl 8y ago
I don't think there's any confusion that people who are sensitive to sodium & benefit from cutting back should cut back. If you know it works, great! The argument is about everyone else, especially all the folks who have no idea whether reducing sodium helps them or not.
xaduha 8y ago
> reducing sodium What do you mean by that? If you're talking about salt, then that's sodium chloride, not sodium. Can't you just say reducing salt?
- Justin_K 8y ago
  Is this a joke from the literal police?
- nomocrypto 8y ago
  Referring to salt as sodium is a commonly understood shorthand in the US. If you look at nutrition facts, you’ll see they don’t say “salt”, they say “sodium”. And technically, there are lots of different salts, so I’d argue that sodium is much more specific (from a pedantic point of view).
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Sodium is what has a RDV and a listing in products' nutrition facts, so it makes the most sense to discuss it in that fashion. You can also get some of it from things like baking soda - salt isn't the sole dietary source.
- dpark 8y ago
  What do you mean by that? If you’re talking about sodium chloride, then that’s sodium chloride, not salt. Can’t you just say reducing sodium chloride?
CptFribble 8y ago
Do you also use caffeine? I have a low-moderate salt diet but had high-ish BP a couple years ago, turns out I was drinking too much coffee.
lr4444lr 8y ago
I haven't looked into it, but are there really no other cations besides sodium that can create the salty flavor sensation on human taste buds? I would find that surprising, given all of the work and industry around sugar substitutes. Also, what is your personal experience - if any - with heavy potassium supplementation?
- sincerely 8y ago
  potassium chloride tastes salty but also has a strong metallic feel, it's what most salt substitutes are made out of
  - NickNameNick 8y ago
    I see Aluminium Chloride salt sachets in fast food outlets from time to time.
  - lr4444lr 8y ago
    The last time I tried it, I detected only bitterness, not saltiness.
- billfruit 8y ago
  I also wonder why potassium chloride is not being promoted heavily, in the face of low recommended intake of sodium, IIRC the recommended potassium intake is much higher than that of sodium.
  - Herodotus38 8y ago
    The reason is that there is a lot of overlap of patients with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. When your kidneys don't filter as well, one of things that your body holds onto is potassium. High potassium levels (among other things) cause cardiac conduction issues and arrhythmias which can be fatal if not intervened on. I. The general population we have to be careful that we don't trade one problem for another.
    - 8y ago
aviv 8y ago
It's amazing to me that people still believe high blood pressure is some lifelong ailment you need to learn to cope with. Of all "diseases" it is pretty much the easiest to fix. It is well known that as short as a 8-10 day water fast is sufficient to drop any medication and restore a normal life, provided of course that you resume at least a somewhat normal diet and not McDonalds, high protein Keto crap, etc. It's really remarkable how such a "disease" can be sold to the public as a lifelong issue.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  I am interested in your hypothesis and would like to see the research supporting it.
  - aviv 8y ago
    If reducing high blood pressure is important to you, don't trust a random dude on HN. Spend some time researching the concept of water fasting as well as dry fasting and you will find the literature that leads you to conclude it is a worthwhile effort for your best shot at curing many man made "diseases" such as high blood pressure, diabetes, Crohn's and all other IBS/Ds, among many many many others. The information is readily accessible and available to be found if you do it with an open mind. I don't have links or whatever to send you. This is not a new topic for me so I don't have a folder with bookmarks I keep around to include in my replies here or elsewhere. I have been around fasting (water, dry, and grape fasting) and herbal remedies for the last 20 years and have seen hundreds, probably thousands, of people cure diseases their top doctors once said were incurable. But again, don't believe me (and most don't, hence why I always get downvoted or flagged), believe yourself once you open up your mind to life changing information that's out there. When you realize your health is quite literally in your own hands, you free yourself to find the right information.
    - mmt 8y ago
      > hence why I always get downvoted or flagged), Actually, I suspect this complaint itself that causes it. Especially combined with words and phrases that tend to inflame skepticism. It's a bit disingenuous to imply otherwise.
mrfusion 8y ago
Does caffeine affect your blood pressure? I found mine went way down when I quit.
- seandougall 8y ago
  From what I've read, that's another everybody-is-different sort of thing. The median effect is marginal (like a few mmHg, if I recall correctly), but there's a wide distribution, and some people are affected much more than others.

by nxc18 8y ago

Swizec 8y ago

> 6-7k mg Why not say grams? A thousand miligrams is a gram. I've always "suffered" from low blood pressure. Never quite to the point of fainting when I stand up too quick, but it's been close a few times. Exercise for me means I have to go out of my way to supplement sodium or I start getting muscle cramps. So I wonder, what does high pressure feel like? How do you know when it's too high? Or is it just something you notice on a device and know to fix because doctors say so?

greglindahl 8y ago
Most people find out from having it measured at a doctor's checkup, but, if it gets high enough it feels like someone's squeezing your brain. The lack of symptoms for most people is why the US has things like free blood pressure checkups, and automated machines in the waiting areas of pharmacies.
smhost 8y ago
It feels like there's too much blood in my head/face.
dharness 8y ago
Most food packaging measures sodium in mg, so I feel using those units is easier to reason about for most people.
- namibj 8y ago
  There is a reason the SI system uses decades. It's exactly that it makes this trivial, but I guess if one is not that accustomed to thinking in decimals/metric, it might not be as obvious. mg is also just composed of the SI prefix m = milli, and the SI unit g = gram, where the latter is a little weird due to naming problems early on leading to it being the only SI unit where the base unit, the kg = kilogram already has a prefix. The milli means thousands, so you are just saying 6 thousand thousands gram. If you internalize SI units, and decompose them automatically, this seems at least confusing, possibly worse, depending on how picky the reader is about unnecessarily contorted grammar in general. I myself advocate the use of prefixed gram for the cases where people use tons, but I accept that people in general don't like them being called megagrams = Mg from now on. This is by the way the reason why mb != MB when denoting storage space, but 8e9 mb = 1 MB, due to the former denoting millibits, and the latter megabytes. There is also MiB, mibibytes, denoting 2^30 B. Microsoft denotes MiB as MB, which is wrong, and lead to great confusion. Be careful, embrace SI units, they make your life easier.
  - commandar 8y ago
    Using SI doesn't mean you shouldn't maintain consistency between units you're actively comparing to avoid inadvertent conversion error. If your working units are mg, using mg across the board is completely sensible. It lowers the mental load involved and reduces the chance of the human factor introducing errors. It has nothing to do with being uncomfortable with working with SI units and everything to do with having a consistent working environment for me. For example, If I were drawing something up in CAD and needed a particular face to be 120mm, I'm completely aware that could be represented as 12cm, but I want the software to label that as 120mm so that it's consistent with e.g., a 23mm face next to it. Your working units for sodium in food consumption are milligrams. Labeling the final sum the same way is a good thing.
narag 8y ago
Terrible headaches.
seandougall 8y ago
In most cases, it feels like absolutely nothing. Above roughly 150 systolic, it can start to manifest as headaches (as others have mentioned), but doesn't always. In my case, after it had gone undiagnosed long enough (by an incompetent doctor), I had extremely severe headaches, constant nausea and vomiting, and vision problems that turned out to be capillary hemorrhages in my retinas. That was at around 240/120. BUT: I am extremely lucky to have had all those horrendous symptoms. They alerted me to the severity of the problem, and caused me to escalate to a competent doctor. For many people who get up to that level of blood pressure, the first (and potentially last) symptom is a stroke or a heart attack.

greglindahl 8y ago

I don't think there's any confusion that people who are sensitive to sodium & benefit from cutting back should cut back. If you know it works, great! The argument is about everyone else, especially all the folks who have no idea whether reducing sodium helps them or not.

xaduha 8y ago

> reducing sodium What do you mean by that? If you're talking about salt, then that's sodium chloride, not sodium. Can't you just say reducing salt?

Justin_K 8y ago
Is this a joke from the literal police?
nomocrypto 8y ago
Referring to salt as sodium is a commonly understood shorthand in the US. If you look at nutrition facts, you’ll see they don’t say “salt”, they say “sodium”. And technically, there are lots of different salts, so I’d argue that sodium is much more specific (from a pedantic point of view).
ceejayoz 8y ago
Sodium is what has a RDV and a listing in products' nutrition facts, so it makes the most sense to discuss it in that fashion. You can also get some of it from things like baking soda - salt isn't the sole dietary source.
dpark 8y ago
What do you mean by that? If you’re talking about sodium chloride, then that’s sodium chloride, not salt. Can’t you just say reducing sodium chloride?

CptFribble 8y ago

Do you also use caffeine? I have a low-moderate salt diet but had high-ish BP a couple years ago, turns out I was drinking too much coffee.

lr4444lr 8y ago

I haven't looked into it, but are there really no other cations besides sodium that can create the salty flavor sensation on human taste buds? I would find that surprising, given all of the work and industry around sugar substitutes. Also, what is your personal experience - if any - with heavy potassium supplementation?

sincerely 8y ago
potassium chloride tastes salty but also has a strong metallic feel, it's what most salt substitutes are made out of
- NickNameNick 8y ago
  I see Aluminium Chloride salt sachets in fast food outlets from time to time.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  The last time I tried it, I detected only bitterness, not saltiness.
billfruit 8y ago
I also wonder why potassium chloride is not being promoted heavily, in the face of low recommended intake of sodium, IIRC the recommended potassium intake is much higher than that of sodium.
- Herodotus38 8y ago
  The reason is that there is a lot of overlap of patients with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. When your kidneys don't filter as well, one of things that your body holds onto is potassium. High potassium levels (among other things) cause cardiac conduction issues and arrhythmias which can be fatal if not intervened on. I. The general population we have to be careful that we don't trade one problem for another.
  - 8y ago

aviv 8y ago

It's amazing to me that people still believe high blood pressure is some lifelong ailment you need to learn to cope with. Of all "diseases" it is pretty much the easiest to fix. It is well known that as short as a 8-10 day water fast is sufficient to drop any medication and restore a normal life, provided of course that you resume at least a somewhat normal diet and not McDonalds, high protein Keto crap, etc. It's really remarkable how such a "disease" can be sold to the public as a lifelong issue.

dsr_ 8y ago
I am interested in your hypothesis and would like to see the research supporting it.
- aviv 8y ago
  If reducing high blood pressure is important to you, don't trust a random dude on HN. Spend some time researching the concept of water fasting as well as dry fasting and you will find the literature that leads you to conclude it is a worthwhile effort for your best shot at curing many man made "diseases" such as high blood pressure, diabetes, Crohn's and all other IBS/Ds, among many many many others. The information is readily accessible and available to be found if you do it with an open mind. I don't have links or whatever to send you. This is not a new topic for me so I don't have a folder with bookmarks I keep around to include in my replies here or elsewhere. I have been around fasting (water, dry, and grape fasting) and herbal remedies for the last 20 years and have seen hundreds, probably thousands, of people cure diseases their top doctors once said were incurable. But again, don't believe me (and most don't, hence why I always get downvoted or flagged), believe yourself once you open up your mind to life changing information that's out there. When you realize your health is quite literally in your own hands, you free yourself to find the right information.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > hence why I always get downvoted or flagged), Actually, I suspect this complaint itself that causes it. Especially combined with words and phrases that tend to inflame skepticism. It's a bit disingenuous to imply otherwise.

mrfusion 8y ago

Does caffeine affect your blood pressure? I found mine went way down when I quit.

seandougall 8y ago
From what I've read, that's another everybody-is-different sort of thing. The median effect is marginal (like a few mmHg, if I recall correctly), but there's a wide distribution, and some people are affected much more than others.