About four years ago (when I had just turned 31), I started working at a local startup. It was the typical startup gig with huge hours and even bigger responsibility. Being somewhat dysfunctional, I began living the worst possible life. I was working huge hours, so I decided that it didn't make sense to cook. Consequently, I started eating out at least two meals a day. And, since I was working too many hours to cook, I couldn't justify going to the gym. Heck, why work out if you don't have enough time to cook???
Within a year, my body decided to rebel. I started getting weird symptoms - my chest often felt hollow, I'd get weird pains across the tops of my shoulders and through my neck, and occasionally, I would have to stop while walking up a flight of stairs. It wasn't because I was out of breathe, rather, it was because my head would start to spin and I was afraid that I'd fall.
Being stubborn, I put off going to the doctor. But, eventually, I started having bigger symptoms and I had to go. My blood pressure was extremely high. So high that my doctor took two readings, then took me into another office to try a different machine. I'll never forget that conversation:
- "Greg, your blood pressure is very high." - "How high?" - "High enough that if you keep doing what you're doing, you will have a stroke."
Hearing the word 'stroke' when you are 32 years old is a pretty big shock to the system. So, I made some changes. I went back to the gym. I started cooking. I cut my salt intake drastically. Things settled down...
But, as they often do, stress started creeping back into my life and my habits started to slip. My attendance at the gym started to drop off. My eating habits started to slip.
Things culminated one horrifying morning, when I was sitting at my desk at work and things went....well, uh...things went. Half of my body went totally numb. I looked at my computer and, even though I knew it was a computer, I could not, for the life of me, remember what the heck it was called.
There I was...33 years old and I saw a computer in front of me. I knew what it was for. I knew what I could do with it. But I could not, for the life of me, remember that it was called a computer. I'll never forget the sheer terror of that moment.
My company's Biz Dev guy rushed me to the hospital, where I got to experience a full battery of tests. Thankfully, it wasn't a stroke, but it was freakishly close. I am a touch claustrophobic so they were afraid that a CT scan would elevate my blood pressure, so they drugged me. The combination of extreme fear and a heavy dose of Ativan was unlike anything I have ever experienced. When I'm afraid of things, I like to intellectualize. I like neuroscience a whole lot, so, until the Ativan kicked in, I was rapidly going through my symptoms and trying to localize them to a region of my brain. Once the Ativan kicked in, I knew that I should likely do, uh, something, but uh, yeah, oh wow, this is, uh, pretty relaxing and.....
Long story short, I did not have a stroke. Rather, my blood pressure went through the roof and my body decided to flip the reset button. I took blood pressure medication for awhile and, with my doctor's help, eventually got off of it.
Now, I live differently, but I still see my inner demon trying to make me sick again. The old habits - working too much, exercising too little, and eating out a little too often - still rear their head. But, this time, I know that if I don't take care of myself, I might end up in the hospital again.
Sorry for writing so much, but I wanted to share my story. We are involved in a very stressful industry and, though I don't know many of you, I care about all of you. Please be healthy.
I invested heavily into my startup, now I must invest heavily into my health to make my life come together. So I invested in doing CrossFit and doing the "Paleo" diet. A year later, I have gained 15 pounds of muscle and am now in the best shape of my life.
I'm able to think, act, and have a consistent amount of energy especially when times are tough. I'm 10x more productive and have a lot more ideas.
I wish you the best Greg.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/the-best-gym-for-startups-c...
Have had a similar experience like you. I had to change my life. First i started to walk, that was very easy for me. Immediately i felt better, which gave me a big motiviational push. Now i go either swim or to gym every second day. I eat a full breakfast in the morning, a normal meal in the noon and a fancy salad in the evening. No coffein. I also learned simple relaxation techniques. Gymnastics and stretching before going to bed. I do not feel much pressure, actually my body is pretty determined in what it needs now. I just have to follow. So it seems to work for me.
I can sleep again. Back, neck and head pains have vanished, unless i sit longer.
And intellectually, well, yeah, i actually re-think a lot. The past 10 years i have worked at a startup, umm, that is not really a startup anymore, but still feels that stressful and immature. Like i do feel about myself. I did not feel being in control. Anyhow my life was/still is pretty dull. Thats what i try to achieve now, to bring color, beauty and warmth back to my life again. Tough.
Trying to establish more options to chose from. If one thing doesnt work anymore, i can change to something else. I am not getting younger. And who knows, maybe this little attack, that i have experienced, maybe the blood pressure was just one of the symptoms. I could still be dead tomorrow.
Also a way to grow up, folx. Privileges of the youth disappear one day.
Can you share how exactly you got off the blood pressure medication? I know it is possible with appropriate diet and lifestyle changes - but would love to hear how you did it. Specifically, how high was your blood pressure and what changes made the most difference. I have been on daily medication for over 5 years now, and would love to try a natural drug-free approach to bringing it back to normal.
Today I am back to 92 kg, and off bp medication, with a bp of 120/70. What worked for me in the end was a combination of a few things, but I think the most important one was this: do not treat food consumption as a form of or a substitute for entertainment!
This manifested for me in snacking on sweets when things were going slow at work, eating to excess at restaurants, snacking while watching movies etc. These habits were actually really easy to kick, once identified.
One other easy but significant change: I bought a soda syphon (like this one:http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/280607022341?hlp=false). I reduced my soft drink consumption by at least 90%. I find carbonated water delicious, and now Coke et al taste unbearably sweet. Judging by the CO2 cartridge count, I drank abt 200 liters of carbonated water last year... that much Coke would be roughly equivalent to 10kg fat, calorie-wise.
YMMV, of course, but perhaps the above can provide another tool in your good health toolkit!
First off, sorry to hear that you've been on daily medication for five years. I'm not a doctor, but I'll tell you everything I know. As well, if you have any questions you don't want to share here, or if you just need some support, my email address is on my profile page.
The worst reading I ever had was 240/120, but I lived in the 200+/100+ zone for a long time. Over my entire battle, my average would have been around 220/110...
It will likely be easier if I basically open source myself. At the time, I was 5'11 and weighed about 210 pounds. I should weigh 170. My daily regiment looked a whole lot like this:
- The only time I ate breakfast was when someone brought in doughnuts, at which point, I'd usually eat at least two.
- My caffeine consumption was extremely high. I'd have a minimum of three 500ml travel mugs every morning. 500ml equals two cups, so, that was pretty heavy. In the afternoon, I'd usually cut back a little and only drink two travel mugs. The fact a liter of coffee was considered cutting back is somewhat scary to me now.
- For lunch, I often (at least 2x per week) went to a great Thai restaurant, where I often had Paht Thai. Sushi was another common lunch food. I was one of those sushi eaters who downed prodigious amounts of soy sauce.
- We normally worked until 6pm, then went out for dinner and drinks. After dinner, I'd usually head back to work until 2am. This is when things really hit the crapper. I had no willpower after two pints and my nights at work usually had at least one or two convenience store breaks. Potato chips were common snacks. When I wanted to be healthy, it was salted peanuts.
- I'd be satisfied if I got an average of four hours of sleep a night.
- Water? Did people drink that??
Long story short, nutritionally, I was a complete mess. That's where I did most of my work.
- My first step was to fix my diet. I all but stopped going out for lunch and started making my own lunches. Breakfast became a new friend - poached eggs are actually really good. And I started going home and cooking dinner. Finally, I cut my salt intake dramatically.
- Not only did I change what I ate, but I also changed the schedule. I wrote a Chrome extension that replaced all images with cats every two hours. That wasn't sign to go eat something and drink some water. Old me would eat two huge meals and snack at night. New me had breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, and a healthy dinner. Snacks were usually something like raw asparagus, or maybe some carrots.
- I cut my caffeine consumption dramatically. This was the hardest part of the whole process. Turns out that caffeine is really a drug (and I'm an addict).
- I started drinking water. I didn't follow that eight glasses crap, but I made a point of drinking water with every meal.
- Exercise was huge. At first, I couldn't really exercise. Rather, I had to spend 20 minutes on an exercise bike barely moving. The idea was to slowly introduce myself to cardio while keeping my heart rate very low. When that didn't kill me, I bumped it up to thirty minutes. Then, I kicked up the intensity. After three months, my doctor authorized me to start lifting weights. At first, I could only lift really tiny amounts of weight, though I could do lots of reps. When that didn't kill me, I could start lifting a little heavier (10 reps to failure). And when that didn't kill me, my doctor finally agreed to let me lift heavy (ie - less than 5 reps to failure).
- A few months into the process, I went through a very deep, dark bout with depression. It was a mid 30s, I'm a complete loser, I hate my job, I hate my life and, if I died right now, nobody would care. Sounds crappy, but it was helpful because I got to realize that I wasn't living. I had a job. I worked with my friends. I didn't have hobbies and had forgotten everything (and everyone) I loved. I went through a few months of apologizing to th friends I abandoned in favour of my gig and worked to find myself again. That's when I realized that real life doesn't feel like a giant ball of stress. Rather, there was thus weird state called "being content in the moment."
- With that sudden interest in mindfulness, I started meditating. Meditating sucked and was likely the hardest thing I ever tried. Meditating is still very hard, but it is part of my life now.
- Between getting back into collecting vinyl, going to punk shows, working out and playing in a really excellent World of Darkness campaign (I never said my interests were terribly cool), I began to see two distinct versions of myself. There was crazy Greg, who worked all the time, had no joy and was always stressed out. And then, there was laid back, totally chill, happy Greg. Joy is, I'm both of those people and am in control of which persona I choose to wear around. It sounds like crap, but I decided that I wanted to be happy. I can't tell you how critical that was in my recovery - learning that stress happens (and that I can deal with the stressor and then be fine) was amazing. I realize that I was in the habit of feeling stressed. I made a new habit.
I'm not sure this is going to be helpful. I can't point to one particular thing that helped because I changed many different things. One thing though, changing my mind helped me so much. Becoming mindful of stress, learning to recognize it, and then using things like exercise, meditation, or a really kickass Werewolf to put it someplace helpful was amazingly beneficial.
On a pure, statistical level, my body is dramatically different today. When I started lifting weights, my max bench press was 1/4 what it is today. As far as lower body goes, my squat has increased 5 times since I started. When I started exercising, I couldn't run one kilometer without stopping; today, I routinely run 8km. While my raw measurements haven't really changed (I'm 5'11 and 195 now), my body is different. You won't get me and Arnold Schwarzenegger mixed up, but four year olds don't beat me in arm wrestles anymore....
However, I also seriously owe my doctor. Seriously, the man went way beyond the call of duty. He could have easily kept me on meds forever. Rather, he knew I wanted to be natural and worked hard to get me there. He put me on a very harsh regiment, where I had to check to check in with him once a month. He monitored me constantly and that is the biggest factor in how I got off the meds.
Seriously, I hope this helps and please feel free to email me!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension
After my doctor noticed high-ish blood pressure, I bought a meter and started measuring at home. Always below 120/80, sometimes below 110/75. I brought the same meter to the doctor's office and measured 135/85.
Strange, isn't it?
"In general, individuals with white coat hypertension have lower morbidity than patients with sustained hypertension, but higher morbidity than the clinically normotensive."
One of the many reasons we pay for our employees gym memberships.
If you really want to get in shape and turn your health around, find your local Crossfit (www.crossfit.com) gym and get hooked.
6 days a week, 2 hours a day.
Another one to look at is pomegranate. A friend of mine was having side effects with his BP medicine, and I made the suggestion to try it, LEF brand pills or POM juice. He was able to get off, had same BP as when on meds, without side effects. There are lots of studies to look at on this on at pubmed, essentially a beta-blocker with some other actions.
Lastly, most people are deficient in potassium. Get some potassium glutamate powder to supplement (not pills as they are regulated to be under 100mg). RDA is 5g, and most people are under 2g a day intake. I have taken 500mg worth of potassium, daily in water, for years without issue.
From their discussion there are some caveats:
- mostly white people checked (so if you're Asian, this might not happen)
- MRI has a known bias towards participation of healthy people, as unhealthy people don't like to hear the "news" about their condition
- the study is "cross-sectional", i.e., the MRI is just from one point in time. Having several measurements from the same people over a period of time (in years) would be much, much better.
Here's the original paper in case anyone's got access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147444221...
P.S.: To lift your mood, the first comment in the news-article is hilarious: "now the government obama care will start to penalize people with high blood pressure? absurd, they just need more cash."
This effect has been attributed to the lifelong exposure to low cholesterol levels. This is not a closed, certain conclusion, but it is supported by the data.
The parallel would be that lifelong exposure to high blood pressure leads to changes over time and produces accumulating harmful effects. The notion is reasonable on its face.
before we post the same link to "The Best Gym for Startups: Crossfit" two dozen times, let's reflect that Crossfit has a number of issues -- completely absent quality control being chief, with poor exercise selection logic being a close second.
Let me put it this way: injuries per kilowatt-hour.
Kettlebell swings, prowler pushes, etc -- good!
High rep Oly lifting, high rep box jumps, kipping pullups -- terrible!
Crossfit does not distinguish between these exercise selection options.
As far as diet and exercise go, researchers from UCLA conducted an experiment. They found that (in mice) a high fat diet reduces the level of brain derived neurotrophic factors. These levels are a predictor of how well you will learn. However, exercise can counteract these effects.
Dehydration causes a range of neurological problems. Essentially, if you don't have enough water to cleanse your system, your body starts using amino acids. These amino acids would normally be used up building neurotransmitters, so, this can cause all sorts of problems, from what resembles ADHD, to depression, or even conditions that look like autoimmune disorders.
Actually, now that I think about it, there are a bunch of articles on this. I'm not familiar with the field as much, but I can point you to a free review paper that goes over the topic. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22141190
I don't like losing time going to the gym and this machine seems to train a large number of muscle groups and could be a good gym substitute to maintain health.
Ps. lots of things can damage your brain long before you are old. Don't go flipping out because of this one article.
If you are interested in learning more about disease, etc, go to www.pubmed.com and search for info there. There you will find links to actual studies (not from the media) and you can inform yourself. If you are interested in a particular topic, look for review papers. NIH has mandated that these must be available to the public (free) for at least 1 year after publication.
Although this one article is not as bad as others, I can't stand when the media talks about scientific experiments. "This just in, study shows that normal drinking water will murder your whole family!!!!......[small font] if you are a bacteria in Antarctica and it's Tuesday night following a purple moon. [fontsize]
For now it's just an interesting correlation, and it's kind of disappointing to see the Heart Association making recommendations based on it, particularly since the evidence for the benefits of reducing salt intake is so weak.
I got high blood pressure without noticing it, i gained about 10kg in weight, lost a long term (8 years) relationship and always felt stressed and guilty of not doing enough. In the end the product didnt find success and i realized that even if i love my work and love to work hard, i dont want to sacrifice my health and life as a yound adult. Now i go to the gym 4-5 times a week and try to maintain some balance while still working hard and most importantly more efficient. Even in 8 hours of highly focused work you will get alot more done than in grinding it out for 12 hours each day, and with regular exercise you will feel much better and be healthier! I love working out, not only is my blood pressure in excellent condition again and i feel fitter than ever, but it also gives me something else than my coding work to excel at, which is very important to me.
This is just my experience and YMMV, but i learned it the hard way. Think of your health and happiness first!
Correlation does not imply causation.
"Do you know if your blood pressure is in the normal range?"
It could mean "Do you have normal blood pressure?" or "Do you know your blood pressure?"
I think grammatically it means the latter, but my guess is most people are reading it as the former. I'm not sure which one the author intended.
