I did a treadmill stress test today. There wasn’t any pressing health reason. My blood pressure has been running mostly normal the last couple of months after going off of blood pressure medicine. But my cardiologist and I both wanted to make sure it was safe for me to do the intense time-trial training I just started recently.
I had little concern because I had no indications of any problems. My EKGs and echocardiograms have been excellent in the last year. My cardiovascular conditioning has improved tremendously and I have never had any signs of any problems.
But today during the most intense part on the treadmill, my blood pressure rose to an alarming level. As a result, my cardiologist became concerned that during my high-intensity time-trial sessions on the bike there may be a risk of the blood pressure going high enough to cause damage. We decided to put me back on a very low dose blood pressure medication just to be safe.
I’m very glad I got it checked out! I was under the false impression that if your resting blood pressure was normal then you didn’t have to worry about it being an issue. But it can still go up a lot during exercise.
So please gang, if you’ve had any issues with hypertension or high-blood pressure get a stress test before you do any intense workouts!
BTW – I’m 50 yrs old, 5’ 10", 205 lbs and there is a history of heart disease in my family. I’ve dropped a lot of weight and hopefully once I get down to about 170lbs, I won’t need any medication at all.
Jim, you are most probably right, if you drop 30 lbs., you’ll probably drop your BP, too. Still, you must keep an eye on it, in case it doesn’t drop by itself…so, I’m saying to make sure you take your own good advice, and continue to monitor it even after losing the weight. Good luck!
In a related boat as you. I lost a lot of weight, but check my BP every morning - mostly so I can fulfill my obsessive need to fill out all the fields in the TrainingPeaks log. My blood pressure is really low.
Anyone know what is too low? I tend to be as low as 129/68 on a regular basis. I never feel lightheaded or anything…
I was under the impression that there is not such a thing as too low blood pressure, assuming that you are feeling fine. A few years back, I was tested in the 100/50 range and my doctor said there was nothing I should worry about. Some people would faint if their BP would fall that low, but you should be glad that you just have low BP. (He did mention though that if I was found in a car accident with that kind of BP, emergency workers who did not know anything about my history would be all over me)
" I was under the impression that there is not such a thing as too low blood pressure"
except of course, 0/0 Well, you actually run into trouble way before 0/0. Kidneys don’t work well at all at pressures below about 40 mmHg in an adult. But, babies can do fine at 70/40. By the way, it’s almost never 0/0 unless you’ve lost almost all your blood volume. Lots of dead people have much higher bp, such as 15/15, for a very long time…that’s why if you puncture a blood vessel of a dead body, you can get a surprising amount of blood flow from that vessel.
sorry… my post was an apparently weak attempt at humor. my guess is (and i am not a doctor, so just a guess) that if you have a blood pressure of 0/0, your heart isn’t working at all, and you are more than likely dead and not feeling much of anything.
