3 ms·
100% hard agree. I'm now paying most attention to my overnight rate, like in the middle of the night - but even that takes a few hours to get down to the minimu
by corry 2y ago
100% hard agree. I'm now paying most attention to my overnight rate, like in the middle of the night - but even that takes a few hours to get down to the minimum value. Fascinating to see the big spike prior to waking up that signals your body is preparing for rising.
Did I eat late before bed? Higher BP overnight. Drink any alcohol at all after, say, 12pm? Higher BP overnight. So it's still useful and interesting to see the overnight values change and shift around.
However, the contrarian in my mind says that it's not smart to ONLY pay attention to your deep rest state BP, since that only applies to a fraction of the day. And if you're running around at high values for the rest of the day, you're still potentially doing damage to your kidneys, retinas, etc - the sensitive blood vessel stuff.
So it's a useful device, it's useful to have the data, but it's also still a bit of black box.
The fact that 80% of all high blood pressure is of unknown physiological cause is a real head scratcher considering that cardiac misadventures are the leading cause of death in the Western world.
- sph 2y agoThe cause is actually known: high amounts of fructose or sugar (which is 50% fructose) -> decrease in nitric oxide production in the liver -> high BP Like many things, it is diet related. It seems "unknown" because GPs are still lagging well behind modern dietary research and are often nothing more than pill pushers. Lowering your sugar and simple carb intake over the long term, and fixing potentially hidden metabolic syndrome (see skinny fat people with unhealthy livers) is how you reverse it.
- corry 2y agoHey I hear you, appreciate the perspective but I'm borderline keto most days -- almost zero sugar, very few carbs, etc -- and yet still here. So while this may explain some amount (perhaps most?) of peoples idiopathic/essential HBP I doubt it's that simple. "It's your potassium levels", "it's your homocysteine levels", "it's your fructose", "it's white-coat syndrome", "it's...." etc. Surely we're making progress but it's also not a silver bullet thing. Good thing the treatments are so safe and effective.