Hi,
I'm new to the board, but I just spent about half an hour reading them and was very impressed. My husband recently had by-pass surgery, he's also diabetic...he's been put on BP meds and seems to have some kind of reaction to them all. He's been on atenolol, toprol, altace, zestril and diovon, and probably some others I've forgotten! The main problem seems to be a drop in BPs immediately after taking the meds. Right now he's on 50mg Toprol in evening and 25mg Toprol and 80mg Diovon in AM. About 2 hours after taking the meds (if his BP is say 160/80 before med) his BP drops to under 120/60 (as an example) this gives him lower back pain and shoulder pain. (He's on l,000mg Glucophage 2x's daily and small dosage of 70/30 insulin) Does anyone have any ideas? He's going to an internist who is really trying to help along with a cardiologist...but the problem seems to be that he's super sensitive to just about any meds...I was hoping someone else out there had a similiar problem (sorry!) and maybe had found the answer...any suggestions or comments will be greatly appreciated!
Fay

My doctor put me on Micardis 80mg about 3 weeks ago and I have had no side effects at all except for some minor back pain that comes and goes.I am not diabetic,though.My blood pressure went from an average reading of 165/105 to a normal 130/80,so it has been effective so far.Try it if you haven't already.Others in this discussion board have tried it and have had good results without harsh side effects,too.

Be very careful with the Toprol. I was on it for a year (I am not diabetic) for BP and am tapering off it now, you can't drop it on your own, so if he had too make sure he asks his Dr.

I believe it has given me lots of side effects and I have been going thru a very hard time since August. Although I can't say 100% yet that it was the Toprol, I believe it was one of the major causes of my sudden out of the blue anxiety. There are some good posts on Toprol on this board, take a look just in case.

Sil

Thanks for the response. I haven't heard about the Micardis, but will ask our Internist. We're both cautious about the Toprol, my husband spent 3 days in the hospital earlier this year (really getting to know all the staff!) with a pulse rate of 30 from Toprol, it took 3 days for it to return to normal...the onstaff cardiologist was "this close" to getting him to put in a pacemaker...our Internist was not happy! So we're trying different things...but both the Internist and the Cardiologist (ours, not the hospital's) seem to like Toprol, so we need to have a meeting with them about what to do. So far when he's on 50mg Toprol in evening and l/2 pill of Toprol (25mg) and an 80mg of Diovan in the AM his bps are fairly good (125-130/65-80, pulse rate in the high 70's or low 80's), but it seems that after a few weeks the meds "go haywire" and his bps either go up or go down really low (they've been as low as 89/45!), so we're trying to find the right combination...something that seems to be hard for his family to do (his mom had the same problem and the med she's on now he can't take either!)
Just wanted to see if others had had some similiar problems and found a solution. His problems might be with the meds he's on for diabetes (glucophage and insulin) and cholesterol (zetia) who knows!!
Thanks, though for the posts, if you or anyone else has some suggestions they will be greatly appreciated..

Maybe your husband's blood sugar is low and this is causing his blood pressure and heart rate to drop drastically.It could be the medication that controls his diabetes that is the culprit here.Where I work they check blood sugar and blood pressure together.It seems that blood pressure meds will cause a rapid drop in blood pressure if your blood sugar count is low.Toprol could be the problem ,also.My wife had problems with this drug causing her blood pressure to drop too quickly.

Right now my husband's sugar readings are a little high...in the 150-200 range, so I don't think low blood sugar is the culprit...however, we've both thought that the meds he's taking might also have some effect on his bp...so that's also a topic for discussion at the next doctor's appointment.
Any suggestions will be appreciated, at this point we're grasping at straws to find out how to make the bp readings stablize, we're both getting depressed and I know he's worried, as am I, so all suggestions/clues as to what we can do will be appreciated. At some point in time maybe we'll get the right combination!