About a month ago, I started feeling sick: weak, poor circulation in hands, chest pain, left arm pain, and I felt really funny in the head like I was buzzed. I took my bp and it was high so I went to a fire station to check it and it was 158/108. Tried chinese herbs and acupuncture but was in the ER a couple of days later with 168/125. I have never had high b/p, no family history, I'm only 34yrs.old, all blood work including cholesterol is good. ER gave me Clonidine(horrible) and dr.gave me Diovan 160, and now I"m on Diovan HCT 80/12.5. All the funny feelings in the head are gone and for the first time in a month I feel almost back to normal. My pressure is staying around 120/70's or 80's so I've decided to take the meds every other day and see how it works. I'm hoping my bp just was up because of recent stress and I'll be able to get off the meds completely. Has anyone else tried taking the meds every other day and how did it work?

I doubt that a medication designed to last 24 hours will give good control for 48 hours. I don't know how much carry-over Diavan has. I believe some meds have more than others. I don't think the one I'm on lasts even 24 hours, at least for me. However, I expect that may also vary from one person to the next.

With blood pressure that high for someone as young as you, I would have expected the doctor would test for some secondary cause. Did he? Otherwise, it is just treating the symptoms without exploring what causes it. While it is true that the majority of people with high BP have essential hypertension (no known cause), with younger people especially, there is a chance that something else is causing it.

Stress certainly can affect BP, though. My own BP is highly affected by stress, and I expect that I may be able to get back off the meds again shortly when my current stressful situation calms down, which it should do in a few weeks.

The first dr I went to wasn't going to do any tests, he gave me the talk about 90% of hypertension being essential with no known cause,blaa, blaa, Fortunately, I did my research and insisted I be tested for the pheocryocytoma, thyroid, cholesterol, kidney function: Everything has been normal so far. Because of the chest pain, he sent me to a cardiologist and I'm still waiting for all those results. After seeing that cardiologist, I almost cancelled all my tests and was not going to see anymore conventional medicine doctors. He was so nasty and condescending. I was in tears when I came home from that appointment. Luckily, the new pcp dr. I've found is great and not intimidated by a patient who dares to research information. I now believe the stress and my heavy caffeine intake and smoking probably led to this crisis, and at first, not even the diovan 160 was keeping my pressure down, but I've stopped the caffeine, stress is slightly better and I'm working on quitting smoking so hopefully I can get off the meds.

The first dr I went to wasn't going to do any tests, he gave me the talk about 90% of hypertension being essential with no known cause,blaa, blaa, Fortunately, I did my research and insisted I be tested for the pheocryocytoma, thyroid, cholesterol, kidney function: Everything has been normal so far. Because of the chest pain, he sent me to a cardiologist and I'm still waiting for all those results. After seeing that cardiologist, I almost cancelled all my tests and was not going to see anymore conventional medicine doctors. He was so nasty and condescending. I was in tears when I came home from that appointment. Luckily, the new pcp dr. I've found is great and not intimidated by a patient who dares to research information. I now believe the stress and my heavy caffeine intake and smoking probably led to this crisis, and at first, not even the diovan 160 was keeping my pressure down, but I've stopped the caffeine, stress is slightly better and I'm working on quitting smoking so hopefully I can get off the meds.

Hi,

I'm 24 years old and I have been diagnosed with High BP since I was 16 or even before than that. I started medications and I have had many hard times struggling with the side effects. luckily I found those boards one year ago and I have got a lot of help from many people :D.

I must say that smoking was increasing my blood pressure by 20 to 30 points for the systolic and 15 points for the diastolic blood pressure. Coffee would send my blood pressure from 120/80 to 150/100 and even more. Thank god that I finally know a little bit about how to control my blood pressure, I will be happy to share this information with you.

1- Food: I don't add any salt to my food and I don't eat junk food at all. Potatoes reduce blood pressure, of cource not the fried, and I really felt that. You need to change the way you eat, I eat a lot of fruit and vegatables every day.

2- Exercise and losing weight: I don't have any other health conditions other than High BP so I exercise light weight lifting 3 days in addition to other 3 days but not weight lifting. I can't tell you how much that helped me to control my blood pressure, also if you are overweight you need to lose that extra weight. They say that losing 10 pounds will reduce your blood pressure by 10 points. I'm losing the extra weight now but still I need time. I also walk an hour daily.

3- Supplements: I take Magnesium 250 mg, Flaxseed 1,000 mg and Vtamin C 500 mg daily and those supplements are helping me a lot too. Read the other threads about Magnesium and you will learn that it lowers blood pressure.

4- The weather: the more cold the weather is the more high your blood pressure will be. I'm Egyptian and in summer it's very hot here, my blood pressure is very nice (of course with my medication) even if I consumed 5,000 mg of salt daily. In winter it's a different story, I can't control my blood pressure but the next winter will be the first after I have learned a lot from those great boards so I think that I will control my BP well :).

Good luck and I hope that you will be fine
Michael