For the past year and a half I have struggled mainly on my runs with breathing issues and shoulder tightness. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure about that same time and went on meds. I never thought to tie the two together so for a year I spent time having almost every test you can have to find out why I was having breathing problems and getting so tight. No one could figure it out, so I asked my doctor could the meds have side affects and he said he doubted it. I guess most people on meds for high blood pressure are not athletes. Mine was hereditary. Anyway I decided one day to do my own test and went off my meds. After a few days I had no more symptoms. I was back to my old self. I was very happy. As I kept monitoring my pressure, however it crept back up high. So I went to my doctor and he did tell me that sometimes those certain types of drugs can cause asthma type symptoms. He put me on a new calcium channel blocker and I had no problems but my pressure was still high, so he has me now on a calcium channel blocker plus ace inhibitor combination. Well now I am back to having the same problems. I am not sure what to do and was wondering if anyone out there has had similiar issues and have found a drug that works for blood pressure with no other side effects while training. Thanks for any help
I started on Bp medication in Jan or Feb of this year. I am 56 years old and the hereditary thing finally caught up with me. I started on Altace (2.5mg) and things were fine through the spring. However I am a very heavy sweater and had some problems once it started getting warm. I was really struggling with my long runs and in fact crashed real bad after a couple of them when the heat index was real high. I believe I got deydrated and my BP crashed. Later I found out one of the side effects is “excessive sweating”. Just what a heavy sweater needs - excessive sweating! I ran a sweat loss test and found out I lost 5 lbs in 1 hour or over 3.1% of my body weight. I did not want to switch meds mid season and so I waited until the end of the season. I met with the Dr. this week and he switched me to Cozaar. I will start on it next week.
There isn’t a lot of information out there about what is appropriate BP medications for active athletes. I accept the fact that I will need to take my BP medication, I just wish I could figure out how to manage fluid replacement and sodium replacement if I am going to have to deal with this type of sweat loss.
Cozaar may be the ticket. I used to sell drug that was simialar to it (Diovan, also an angiotensin II receptor blocker) and on the whole that class of drugs has very few side effects if any; no slugishness, dehydration or sexual dysfunction. I’m not sure why drs don’s start all hypertensive athletes on them…