High Blood Pressure

[chim_chim]

Recently my blood pressure has been in the 140-150/75-85 range. This is odd since:

• I'm in really good shape: 5'10" 185lbs, <10% BF.
• I workout hard (sprinting and lifting) for 1.5 hours three times a week.
• I have a decent diet. I only drink pop and eat out on the weekends if at all. I usually eat 5 medium sized meals a day. I'm taking in a lot of protein and red meat however.
• I don't put salt on my food, and I don't eat chips or fries often. The only salt I get is what's already in the food.
• My dad didn't have high blood pressure until he hit 45. My mom's is still 110/70.
• I'm a busy person, but I don't ever feel "stressed out".

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing my high blood pressure? I've heard from an unreliable source that alot of athletes have high BP when they're working out hard. Any truth to that rumor?

Also, to those of you who will tell me to see a doctor, I already did. He just said the generic stuff like eat less salt and stress less. If my BP doesn't go down he wants me to go on blood pressure meds which I would rather avoid. If I can't get this figured out myself I'll have to go to a health and fitness doctor that knows something.

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

First let me say that I have no medical training and I am not medically qualified to make recomendation regarding what drugs you should or should not take. Now that I've got that disclaimer out the way I'll give my 2c worth.

It is a well proven fact that athletes undergoing intense training have enlarged hearts. I would speculate that an enlarged heart will beat with more force and hence provide more blood pressure (probably not being too speculative there). So my guess is that your gym training is giving you a stronger heart that beats with more pressure.

From my knowledge of blood pressure your blood pressur level is not dangerous (or wasn't considered so a few years ago), at least thats what the last 2 doctors who measured my blood pressure told me and my blood presure is in the same rage. Admittedly though it could be better (and the medical cardiovascular community is allways revising downwards the recommended blood pressure).

Apart from drugs you may only be able to reduce your blood pressure by reducing your mass (including your hard earned muscle mass).

Blood pressure reducing drugs work by making your heart artificially weaker so it beats with less force. I'm no expert but I reckon thats got to impact on your training. I also wonder how a weakened heart is supposed to be a healthier heart in the long run.

Statistically though high blood pressue is a risk factor for heart attacks. That being said half to one third to two thirds (depending on what source you read) of people who drop dead from heart attacks have no previous indicators of risk but have normal blood cholesterol levels and normal blood pressure levels.

So you could stop working out in the gym and take your heart weakening high blood pressure tablets and loose lots of muscle mass (i.e. experience a drop in quality of life) and in exchange get a couple more years of longer quantity of life. Although there's probably only a 50% chance or so that your drop in quality of life will result in a longer quantity of life (assuming you want to make that trade any way). there's also a 50% chance your drop in quality of life won't do a thing to extend your life span.

 

[Ice Cold]

It is a well proven fact that athletes undergoing intense training have enlarged hearts. I would speculate that an enlarged heart will beat with more force and hence provide more blood pressure (probably not being too speculative there). So my guess is that your gym training is giving you a stronger heart that beats with more pressure.

No No NO!

Blood pressure is usually lower in athletes (when they're not actually exercising of course)

Even if you have a larger heart, your bp should stay the same because the heartbeat drops.

A thought: maybe your advice will worth more if you instead of guessing how body works, read a few books about physiology...

2 chim: Go to the doctor. He'll run some blood tests and you'll come up with something.

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

Originally posted by Ice Cold
No No NO!

Blood pressure is usually lower in athletes (when they're not actually exercising of course)

Even if you have a larger heart, your bp should stay the same because the heartbeat drops.

This may be true for the larger hearts of endurance athletes (due to the increased efficiency of the cardiovascular system) but it is not true for athletes who have substanially increased they're body mass through exercise i.e. body builders - which is what I am talking about. For example see this site

http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/rea/030224.htm

Most larger athletes (240 lbs or better), have above average blood pressure readings. In most cases this is due to a larger heart is required to supply blood to a larger body.

Also here is a link to a medical site that claims that "The cause of hypertension is unknown in 90 to 95% of all cases. http://www.lef.org/protocols/prtcl-060.shtml

Here is another link http://www.fhradio.org/fm/archives/2002/2552(FM).html that claims that "Blood pressure can be elevated for a number of reasons but more than 90 percent of cases result from what we doctors call "essential hypertension." This is a fancy label to indicate that we don't really know the cause".

In other words contrary to your claim that

Go to the doctor. He'll run some blood tests and you'll come up with something.
[/B]

it is actually unlikely that a trip to the doctor will reveal what the cause of his hypertension is other than to say that he should try to reduce his stress levels and not be obese etc. And indeed he has already been to the doctor and found this to be the case.

Also note that the above sites claims that
A blood pressure measurement of less than 130/85 is considered "normal," while 130-140/85-90 is defined as "high normal."

and

"Systolic values over 120 and diastolic values over 80 have slightly increased health risks associated with them. Values greater than 140/90 are usually considered "high" because intervention has been proven to reduce the risks associated with these pressures. Values of 160/100 or more suggest that more aggressive initial treatment may be needed".

So both sites back up my advise that his blood pressure level is not dangerous (though also not ideal).

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

I agree that it is generally accepted that the fitter a person is the less likely they are to have heart disease (because their circulatory sysem pumps blood more effciently with less resistance). Never the less larger athletes will still tend to have higher blood pressures (hence my recomendation that he can reduce blood pressure by lossing muscle mass - not that I recomend he do that).

I've already established that my claim that a larger heart produces higher blood pressures is correct despite your objection (see previous link).

Here are some sites that also show that the enlarged heart produced by exercise in some cases (though not most) can lead to heart disease or more specifically hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

http://health.indiatimes.com/articleshow/347865.cms

Tough Training May Leave Athletes At Heart Risk

Australia: Top athletes who suddenly quit rigorous training may be at risk of abnormal heart activity because of their oversize hearts, according to a survey released here.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia say they have uncovered evidence that when super-fit athletes stop training, even temporarily, their enlarged hearts do not function as well as they should.

During the lay-off, the athletes' hearts resemble those of people with heart disease or high blood pressure, they said.

http://www.vh.org/adult/patient/internalmedicine/prose/heartdisorder.html
Heart Disorder: The Disorder All Athletes Should Know About
University of Iowa Health Science Relations
First Published: November 2000
Last Revised: January 2004
Peer Review Status: Internally Peer Reviewed

It's a case of having too much heart. That's the simple explanation for one of medicine's more complex problems--sudden death among athletes.

The heart disorder, called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, is an abnormal thickening of the muscles in the walls of the heart. It causes half of the sudden death cases involving athletes under age 35.

http://myhealth.barnesjewish.org/HealthNews/reuters/NewsStory0807200317.htm

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Endurance athletes are known to develop large hearts. While this is thought to be a normal adaptation to their training, a new study hints that some athletes could be at risk for heart failure.

http://www.colorado.edu/Outreach/BSI/scientists/leinwand.html

"My work focuses on trying to understand hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is a frequent cause of death in young athletes," says Leinwand. "Even though most highly conditioned athletes have enlarged hearts, a bigger heart is not necessarily better.

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/cardiomyopathy/athlete's_heart.htm

In the vast majority of competitive athletes, absolute left ventricular wall thickness is within normal limits (<12 mm). In some athletes, however, left ventricular wall thickness may be more substantial, 13-15 mm, unavoidably raising the possibility of hypetrophic cardiomyopathy [that's bad, my coments]. In patients with HCM, the increase in LV wall thickness is usually marked; the average wall thickness reported in most echocardiographic studies of this disease is approximately 20 mm, and ranging up to 60 mm. However, an important minority of patients with HCM show relatively mild LV hypertrophy with wall thickness values in the range of 13 to 15 mm, and most of these patients are asymptomatic. Therefore, a diagnostic dilemma may arise in those athletes who fall into this morphological "gray zone" between physiological hypertrophy and HCM with maximal wall thickness of 13 or 14 mm, or possibly 15 mm.

http://www.medica-center.com/articles/haycock/anabolic-steroids-and-heart-muscle.htm

Title: Left ventricular wall thickening does occur in elite power athletes with or without anabolic steroid use.

Source: Cardiology 1998 Oct;90(2):145-8

Summary:
..........In the study above researchers identified left ventricular hypertrophy at or beyond 13mm in not only bodybuilders using anabolic steroids but also in "drug free" athletes as well. Although it was shown that those using anabolics showed significantly more ventricular thickening, at least one drug free athlete was beyond the 13mm limit.

In other words in some cases the enlarged heart caused by exercise does lead to a thickening of the left ventrical walls (see the above sources) and hence a restriction in blood flow, in this case the heart will have to pump harder at rest to pump blood around the body.

A thought: maybe your advice will worth more if you instead of guessing how body works, read a few books about physiology

My advice is quite sound, larger athletes do have on average higher blood pressure (hence one can decrease blood pressure by loosing size). Being larger goes hand in hand with higher blood pressure this is a basic physiological fact. Although endurance training leads to a larger heart with lower risk of heart attck, heavy weight training leads to a larger heart with thicker ventrical walls and hence higher risk of heart attack, this is also a well known basic physiological fact. Maybe you should take your own advice and do some more reading of physiology books yourself.

 

[Reto]

I didn't read all the BS above.

But, my BP does go up when I've had too much sodium in my diet...

Just a thought...

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

BS hey, anything in particular you object to?