Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Blood pressure question / potassium

1. Be sure it really is high and not a temporary situation.
2. Follow all these tips: http://www.dietdoctor.com/blood-pressure

A good reminder from Amy Berger:

Quote:

P.S. Regarding tracking bloodwork: I’m not a doctor (and I don’t even play one on TV), but if I were one, I would try to avoid becoming alarmed based on any one-time snapshot. I think it’s more important to pay attention to how things are trending over time. This is especially true when it comes to prescribing side-effect riddled medication. This is completely different from the current standard of care, which would have everyone with a total cholesterol over 200mg/dL on statins (which we know are disasters), and similarly demands that other drugs be prescribed for other single measurements that are out of the normal range. Obviously, many of us in the LCHF/Paleo worlds are better educated in some of this stuff than the average patient. But we’re not immune to freaking out if something in our bloodwork surprises us. SO: what I said above, about keeping an eye on trigs, HDL, CRP, etc.? The same thing holds true. Don’t get overly alarmed if one or two things seem out of whack, particularly if they’ve been fine in the past and you haven’t made any dramatic changes (for the worse) to your diet & lifestyle. Some of the markers we keep an eye on—fasting glucose and blood pressure, for example—can be affected by things that happen just days—and sometimes minutes—before the blood is drawn. Did you get stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the lab or doctor’s office? Your BG could easily be 20 points higher than it would otherwise be. Did you have an intense workout the night before, or do you have a mild infection somewhere, or have you had dental work recently? Any of those things can temporarily elevate serum cholesterol. So yes, we should keep an eye on these things, but we should keep an eye on how they’re moving over time, and not scare ourselves silly over one marker at one point in time.

http://www.tuitnutrition.com/2015/1...lin-8.html#more

You mentioned in your first paragraph, during the summer your BP was fine, you're a teacher so fall would mean more stress after having three months of little, etc. Look at the overall pattern. And very closely look at all the Side Effects from any of the BP meds.