High and strange blood pressures.

[h_setter]

Background: I have been dealing with an unknown issue for the last six months. I am a 38 year old male and was suffering from shortness of breath and a racing heart while just sitting. Also earlier this year I had some pretty bad hip pain and they found that I need a hip replacement. When I went into the doctor they found that I had some high blood pressure 160/100 and a high heart rate of 100. They put me on lisinopril to bring down the blood pressure and metoprolol to bring down the heart rate. These med didn't sit well with me so I am now off the lisinopril and trying to get off the metoprolol.

I have been taking my blood pressure regularly and keeping averages and my average blood pressure is 124/83 without the drugs. This seems pretty good and I think the original high readings were due to stress and anxiety. The thing is the second I move around a little bit it goes up to 130/90 or 140/90. I even have been taking it during exercise and I get really high readings of like 160/110 sometimes. Then it will come down over the longer I exercise . Also the other day I got a reading of 160/110 in one arm and 155/78 in the other arm. The one arm is usually higher but this diastolic reading was a big difference. Is this cause for concern? Are these high spikes in blood pressure something I should be worried about? They usually drop right away when I sit down and return to normal. Also I have been having really bad anxiety and panic attacks and it seems like I am getting worse. I am having a lot of trouble finding good information on blood pressure online because everything just says that if your blood pressure is above 140/90 you are at risk. So I am hoping someone can shed some light on the situation.

[specialmom]

Hello there.  I'm a fellow high blood pressure readings person. Sad to say.  I started medication for it for the first time in December.  I will say that I physically feel better now even though blood pressure is supposed to be a silent disease.  Truthfully, I think there were physical signs I had it but just wasn't aware.  Are you taking your bp at home due to monitoring suggestions by your doctor?

What is the update on this situation?  Let's talk!

[Loggycat]

To root out what’s happening to you, do one thing at a time. The anxiety and panic can interfere with a physical diagnosis so get it under control by medications and non-medical means such as mindfulness and yoga. Anxiety responses to stress in your environment can alter your BP responses. Next, look at the anxiety as a symptom of a physical problem. A complete work-up should be done. The fact that you have the hip pain let alone could be causing anxiety because physical pain revs up your system. Your worry reaction to both physical and environmental stresses could make BP reactive, up and down. Lastly, you could have an internal problem yet to be discovered that alters your stress responses that you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of unless you get the tests from a work-up.

[Paxiled]

For one thing, with what are you measuring your BP?  Most h0me devices aren't all that accurate so unless you're using something a doctor prescribed, such as using your phone or a fitbit or something, that's not actually going to be all that accurate and might explain the differences in one arm vs. the other.  Or it could indicate your stronger arm has a stronger blood pressure.  But as to the rest, exercise should be raising your heart rate.  That's what it's for, as the heart is a muscle and exercising it makes it stronger.  The harder you exercise the harder it works.  But in those who exercise regularly, assuming you aren't constantly increasing your energy output, starting out makes everything speed up but then the body, being used to it, relaxes and eases into the exercise and everything regularizes.  This means the heart is handling the stress of exercise well.  You can notice this particularly when you do cardio.  On a long run, at first breathing can be hard, but then a runner settles in and breathing gets easier until exhaustion, when it starts to become difficult again.  Stress and anxiety are very different things, but can have the same problems, and one of them can be high BP.  Or not.  But it does manifest itself somehow so if you do have a chronic anxiety problem, or if you're under stress for a long period of time and it isn't easing up, then it might be time to see a therapist and beat it.  As to anything else, obviously we're not docs here, so if you do have lingering concerns that haven't been addressed by your docs get better docs.  But to me, the fact they gave you meds, which is unfortunately the only thing most docs know how to do, and they didn't sit well for you but also didn't seem to do much for you and stopping one of them hasn't been a problem, it might be you never needed them to begin with.  Also, look at your diet and your sleep and your lifestyle really closely, as they have the biggest impact on these things other than those with some chronic disease state.  Peace.

[h_setter]

There is no way to edit the post so I figured I would add that I had a heart stress test and that came back normal. They put an event monitor on me and didn't find anything out of the ordinary and everything was sinal. I did take a sleep study and the found I had mild sleep apnea and took a lung test and mild athesma. But nothing that would suggest anything major. Thanks again.