4 ms·

Many people have very different responses to stimuli: Some people see a spike from salt. Many don't. Some see a spike from coffee, while others actually see a d

Many people have very different responses to stimuli: Some people see a spike from salt. Many don't. Some see a spike from coffee, while others actually see a decline! I merely gave my own personal observations from my own rigorous monitoring/hacking regime. I found no "do this and improve nn mmHg" simple solution, beyond the stated observation about avoiding coldness. I have zero reason to disbelieve your own observations about your own carbon machine, however. Some people will be like me, many others won't, but the real lesson is that there are no hard and fast quick fixes.

sph 3y ago
Certainly, but I'd like to see the methodology of your experiments if you're able to say that a stimulant like coffee doesn't do anything, nor exercise. It might not do anything in the short term, but I dare you to drink 3x your daily coffee intake and see if you can't see any change, or to increase/quit your fitness routine and whether it doesn't do anything over a year. I have tracked by BP over 50 kg of weight change, and BP correlates really nicely with fitness level, stress, etc. even though trends are visible over months, not hours. There certainly are no quick fixes, apart from taking a BP pill (I take telmisartan+amlodipine, the latter replacing a diuretic that made me drier than the Sahara desert)
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  I went a week with no salt (and serious minimization of dietary sodium), no coffee or caffeine of any sort, adjusted my sleep schedule to be idealized, no alcohol (although I was a minimal consumer already and now am a zero consumer), very little sugar or simple carbs, took potassium supplements, etc. After seven days my BP was just as insane. And while people always have a stereotype of people with hypertension, I've been very active and fit over my entire life. I started donating blood -- some report it as beneficial to BP -- and the effect was extremely short lived for me and very minimal regardless. I still donate blood regularly now as I'm an O- and they remind me constantly. People are different. Someone who has mild hypertension probably can tweak some lifestyle dials and control it. I had severe hypertension with nothing to point the finger at (e.g. obesity, lifestyle, etc). For whatever reason my body was malfunctioning and in a recursive death loop of escalating hypertension.
  - sph 3y ago
    What is your diet? FWIW I'm in the same boat: both my parents have hypertension, one is a smoker, the other isn't, one is overweight, the other isn't. My mum has taken heroic hypertensive doses to keep hers at bay, for decades. I've been diagnosed with it in my 20s when I was fit as a fiddle... it must be a genetic component, though these days I do believe it's because of a diet too high in carbs than my genes can handle. Have a look at the effect of fructose on blood pressure. Low carb seems to work well for me, but I'm not consistent enough to see my BP trend down to the point I can throw my pills away. I'm working on it. And yeah, the entire salt scare is pretty much nonsense that's slowly being debunked. I have a friend who eats more salt than a goat, and he's got hypotension. Go figure. Hyponatremia is not fun, I tend to use salt liberally these days.
- davidjytang 3y ago
  I was replying to another thread. I repeat here. My dad has hypertension due to [Conn's syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_aldosteronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_aldosteronism). The only thing that helped tremendously was surgery. You could of course argue that if he ate a ton of salt, his blood pressure would surge. But I wish he would've taken the surgery sooner rather than trying to out-diet and out-exercise his genetics as the diet/exercise had really small effect.
mint2 3y ago
Isn’t being cold leading to an increase in blood pressure a well known physiological reaction to cold temps, that will spike BP but not be the under lying cause?
spott 3y ago
> many people have different responses to stimuli… My favorite example of this is from figure 2g of [0]. It shows the time series of blood glucose levels from two participants after eating a cookie or a banana, and they have nearly the opposite responses to each other. It was the thing that convinced me that a ton of modern nutrition that isn’t personalized is basically useless. [0] https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6 https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6

sph 3y ago

Certainly, but I'd like to see the methodology of your experiments if you're able to say that a stimulant like coffee doesn't do anything, nor exercise. It might not do anything in the short term, but I dare you to drink 3x your daily coffee intake and see if you can't see any change, or to increase/quit your fitness routine and whether it doesn't do anything over a year. I have tracked by BP over 50 kg of weight change, and BP correlates really nicely with fitness level, stress, etc. even though trends are visible over months, not hours. There certainly are no quick fixes, apart from taking a BP pill (I take telmisartan+amlodipine, the latter replacing a diuretic that made me drier than the Sahara desert)

llm_nerd 3y ago
I went a week with no salt (and serious minimization of dietary sodium), no coffee or caffeine of any sort, adjusted my sleep schedule to be idealized, no alcohol (although I was a minimal consumer already and now am a zero consumer), very little sugar or simple carbs, took potassium supplements, etc. After seven days my BP was just as insane. And while people always have a stereotype of people with hypertension, I've been very active and fit over my entire life. I started donating blood -- some report it as beneficial to BP -- and the effect was extremely short lived for me and very minimal regardless. I still donate blood regularly now as I'm an O- and they remind me constantly. People are different. Someone who has mild hypertension probably can tweak some lifestyle dials and control it. I had severe hypertension with nothing to point the finger at (e.g. obesity, lifestyle, etc). For whatever reason my body was malfunctioning and in a recursive death loop of escalating hypertension.
- sph 3y ago
  What is your diet? FWIW I'm in the same boat: both my parents have hypertension, one is a smoker, the other isn't, one is overweight, the other isn't. My mum has taken heroic hypertensive doses to keep hers at bay, for decades. I've been diagnosed with it in my 20s when I was fit as a fiddle... it must be a genetic component, though these days I do believe it's because of a diet too high in carbs than my genes can handle. Have a look at the effect of fructose on blood pressure. Low carb seems to work well for me, but I'm not consistent enough to see my BP trend down to the point I can throw my pills away. I'm working on it. And yeah, the entire salt scare is pretty much nonsense that's slowly being debunked. I have a friend who eats more salt than a goat, and he's got hypotension. Go figure. Hyponatremia is not fun, I tend to use salt liberally these days.
davidjytang 3y ago
I was replying to another thread. I repeat here. My dad has hypertension due to [Conn's syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_aldosteronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_aldosteronism). The only thing that helped tremendously was surgery. You could of course argue that if he ate a ton of salt, his blood pressure would surge. But I wish he would've taken the surgery sooner rather than trying to out-diet and out-exercise his genetics as the diet/exercise had really small effect.

mint2 3y ago

Isn’t being cold leading to an increase in blood pressure a well known physiological reaction to cold temps, that will spike BP but not be the under lying cause?

spott 3y ago

> many people have different responses to stimuli… My favorite example of this is from figure 2g of [0]. It shows the time series of blood glucose levels from two participants after eating a cookie or a banana, and they have nearly the opposite responses to each other. It was the thing that convinced me that a ton of modern nutrition that isn’t personalized is basically useless. [0] https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6 https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6