I had had high blood pressure from the beginning of eating low carb, through my lowest weight, years of running and swimming, years of trying to relax it away, eat better, etc. It got stuck high and medication was the talk with some providers but it never progressed to that. My mother has bad high blood pressure so I figure it would just keep going up until I had to be medicated, too.

About a year and a half ago, after bouts of illness that left me couchbound and climbing to the highest weight since I started low carb, it suddenly dropped to normal for no reason at all. It's been hovering around 125/85 for that time, but the other night the nurse got a reading of 107/67 which is more my "normal" from before it went high.

No idea what I did. Maybe it just took years of healing on LC, and hoping it sticks.

I remember you used to do a lot of running. Could excessive cortisol have something to do with it? Like overtraining syndrome?

It was high before I was running and high after I stopped running, when I was completely sedentary for three years after leaving my job and when I was working full time. It was high before I started LC and was eating SAD and it was high after I completely overhauled my diet. It started just after the birth of my last child - that was the turning point when it shot up. The only factor I can think of is my youngest turned 7 and didn't need as much care as when she was younger and that reduced the stress? I now have anaphylaxis on a regular basis due to food allergies, so I'm sure that's not great for my cortisol levels. But yet it magically came down.

I think healing comes slow on LC sometimes and it's measured in years, sometimes cmaybe even decades.

Congrats on the BP, whatever the reason. Our bodies can be mysterious things sometimes.

Aw thanks. I've been still thinking about this and I think what I finally came up with was giving up coffee. I lost the taste for it after I had the flu last year and I think maybe that is what changed? I didn't know coffee could raise blood pressure.

Me too. i have been on BP meds for over a decade. 180/90. i have been on low carb since 2006. Still on BP meds until last week when I began experiencing some very strange bouts of dizziness both sitting and standing. I experimented with going off the meds for a day, taking them at night etc. Finally spent one day tracking my BP. Took the results to my doc and now I am off BP meds and tracking my BP frequently during the day.

Low carb books always warn that BP may drop with LC but it took me almost 10 years for it to happen. Maybe it is just my age that it took so long.

Congrats on your success too.

I think you're onto something with the coffee. I know that if I hit caffeine really hard it drives up my BP.

Benay, that's amazing! I do really think it can take years sometimes.

I went in to a screening for a pre-hypertension study today and my average BP reading over 6 readings was 116/76. I was excluded from the study.
I think I am permanently back to normal now!

That's very cool! I get readings like that when I take my BP at home, but it's always more like 190/100 when taken in a doctor's office.

I'm sure yours at home are correct! One interesting thing they insisted on was taking it with my nondominant arm. I never knew that made any kind of difference.