Blood Pressure (update #2)

Rochester Flyers is NOT Rochester Minnesota's bicycle messenger service. Rochester Flyers is NOT a cycling club or race team. Rochester Flyers is NOT a bike shop or a company. Rochester Flyers is just me, going on rides, attempting to return to racing, doing alleycats and spewing my opinion online.

Gunnar Soroos A lifelong cyclist born on the tropical island of Oahu, racing in Minnesota. His passion of cycling is combined with his faith in God to keep him focused on the real mission - the golden rule, love others as you would want to be loved. Peace.

One's first glimpse of freedom, in fact is often snatched from
a bike. By turning the pedals you can move more quickly towards
your most secret dreams.
-Bernard Hinault

Hi. It's been a while. Alot has gone down since I last reported on my blood pressure situation.

First, I bought a home blood pressure monitor. It's pretty cool. You just lift up your shirt (if you have long sleeves), wrap the cuff around your arm, press the button, and it does it's thing. About 15 seconds later you have a reading. If you press another button, it calculates the average of the last three readings. Keep pressing the botton and you can view each of the last 60 individual readings. Here's how I use it. Usually the first reading is pretty high. I think it's because I usually just plop down and do it. You should really be at rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Then I'll try to not move or be distracted for about 5 minutes. This is a little harder to do when you have kids that seem to like to interact with you and stuff. This is when I scream at them and throw pillows at them till they go away (usually in tears). Actually this isn't true. They get the old "Daddy's trying to relax for a couple of minutes so he can get a blood pressure reading, can you sit quietly till he's done?"

Then I take another reading. If it's lower, I'll take 3 more readings in a row. Then I get the average of those three and record them in my log. In fact, SportTracks allows you to record the information under the athlete view. Then you can chart it out like this:
Under Pressure
you can see that it is on a downward trend. The Doc (as well as the fam and meself) is happy about that.

Next thing is medication. I was first prescribed Hydrochlorothiazide. I didn't like the idea of taking it at first because it's a duritic and could lower the level of potassium in my system. Not really the best things for an endurance athlete. Then I found out it's on the list of banned items by USADA. I finally found out that the reason is that it is considered a masking agent. I could get a use waiver so i could take it. But it's easier to talk to the doc about it and get on something else.

We decided together to try Doxazosin. It's an Alpha Blocker that has virtually no effect on heart function. The doc was concerned the med wouldn't do anything to help, but was willing to try a low dose to see. Well that was at the end of February. If you look at the cart again, you'll see that when I started taking the med, my blood pressure has been more consistant and under (or at) 130/80. It'd be cool if it could get a little lower, but I have a feeling that as we get into warmer weather (and I keep from getting more colds) we'll see it go down.

Info to discuss with your doc: Managing Hypertension in Athletes and Physically Active Patients.
Related posts: Monday 01/28/2008, Wednesday 02/20/2008

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