High blood pressure

[JJeenn]

I have just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on Altace. :( I'm only 25 and I'm feeling really old! The only people I know with high blood pressure are 60+ years old. Is it common for type 1s to have high blood pressure? I don't have any risk factors other than diabetes and being slightly overweight. I've had "borderline" high blood pressure for years so I should have seen it coming. Anyone know of anything I can do to try and not have to take medication? Blood pressure is still high after four days on Altace ... anyone know how long it's supposed to take to kick in fully?

[lgvincent]

It's possible you've been given the medication to protect your kidneys. I started taking Monopril in 1996 not because I had high blood pressure but because it was helpful in protecting the kidneys from damage.

[JJeenn]

My doctor did mention the kidney protection as well, but he said he was putting me on it because of high blood pressure. My blood pressure was 170/80 in his office and I'd been getting high readings measuring it at the pharmacy, and he'd gotten several borderline high readings before.

[dmbfan_21]

My BP is what my doctor calls borderline. I am 28 and I usually read about 120-130/75 when she checks it. She has mentioned the possibility of going on some type of medication, but I have avoided adding that to my daily regime.

[owlyn]

Hey, don't complain. Be thankful there is medicine you can take to save your life, that it has very few side effects, and that it is reasonably priced. You could be dealing with much worse.

Any day above ground is a good one.

[JJeenn]

Hey, don't complain. Be thankful there is medicine you can take to save your life, that it has very few side effects, and that it is reasonably priced. You could be dealing with much worse.

Any day above ground is a good one.

Other than my frowny face emoticon I wasn't actually complaining anywhere in there ... just asking questions. I am very thankful it's not something worse or untreatable.

[BriOnH]

It takes up to a month to fully kick in. Be glad you are on it. High blood pressure * High Blood Sugar = cell death.

[DeusXM]

Could also just be generally genetic. I'm 23 and I've been on enalapril for the last 4 years. Everyone on my father's side of the family has hypertension.

Other options you can use to help are to exercise regularly and lower your sodium intake. However your blood pressure is pretty much set by your body so these are only small-scale measures you can take. On the plus side, despite what everyone says, caffeine has a relatively impact on your blood pressure so unless you're drinking gallons of coffee and Coke you won't necessarily need to cut down.

I know what you mean about 'feeling old' though. At the age of 19 I had diabetes and high blood pressure - I felt like I was already middle-aged!

[mg_2204]

The only people I know with high blood pressure are 60+ years old.


A friend of mine is only in her young 30s and has high blood pressure. It runs in her family.


For a while my BP was around 198/99. Eeek!! Now it's back to something around 115/75. Exercise really improved BP.

[sweetcheeks]

honey dont feel bad i was diagnosed with HBP at the young age of 19. and i was only a few lbs overweight then

i resisted for years to go to the doc cause i had no insurance....

my mom or dad dont even have HBP yet lol...

sadly enough most people will be on BP meds the rest of their life.

[notme]

I have always had low blood pressure. My Father tends to run low also. My Mother has always (until bypass surgery) had high blood pressure. I had low blood pressure during five pregnancies and all my life until my forties. After thirteen years of diabetes, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. I was on three different meds until my doctor found one that did the job of all three. I now take Lotrel once a day and my blood pressure is good.

Hang in there....this one is an easy fix.

[JJeenn]

I have always had low blood pressure. My Father tends to run low also. My Mother has always (until bypass surgery) had high blood pressure. I had low blood pressure during five pregnancies and all my life until my forties. After thirteen years of diabetes, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. I was on three different meds until my doctor found one that did the job of all three. I now take Lotrel once a day and my blood pressure is good.

Hang in there....this one is an easy fix.

Is there some way that diabetes causes high blood pressure, something high blood sugar does to your system? When I look at lists of risk factors the only one I have is diabetes (I could lose a few pounds but am not obese by any stretch of the word).

Yesterday I checked and my BP was normal, but I seem to be having some side effects from Altace that are making things difficult. I'm going to ask my doctor if I can either try a lower dose (he started me on quite a high dose) or else try a different medication.

Thanks everyone for your replies! I'm glad to know I'm not the only young adult out there with high blood pressure.

[notme]

Diabetes is definitely a cause of high blood pressure. This can be from kidney damage or uncontrolled blood sugar. Sometimes it is due to nerve damage.

I am on a medication called Lotrel. It has been wonderful as I was on three different medications with unpredictable results. I have had no side effects from lotrel.

Exercise is the best thing you can do for blood pressure.

[BlueSky]

Diabetes is definitely a cause of high blood pressure. ...
In 95% of high blood pressure cases, there is no known cause. Which is why it is refered to as essential or primary hypertension. In the remaining 5% of cases, secondary hypertension is caused by another medical condition or medication.

To the extent that diabetes causes kidney damage, which in turn causes high blood pressure, I suppose you could say that diabetes causes high blood pressure. But high blood sugar on it's own doesn't have this effect. And there is no reason why a healthy, complication-free T1 diabetic should have high blood pressure.

T2 is a bit different, though. High-carb eating has been linked to increased blood pressure. It is thought to be caused by high levels of insulin, which stimulate the sympatheic nervous system and cause the heart to beat faster. If this is the case, one would expect insulin resistance, which is typical of T2, to have a similar effect.

There is another good reason to lay off the carbs .... :D

[sweetcheeks]

most diabetics (most being the keyword, not all of them) will have cholesterol, HBP problems... they kinda go hand in hand, if you have one, you have higher risk for the rest, so on and so forth.

There are plenty who go years and will only have on or the other, then boom they get the others regardless of there control.....

Blame that one on our bodies lol

[numba1]

i might be a novice at this but from what i understand, as long as you take care of your bg levels, eat right, test often, etc, there is no reason to get high bp or any complications. if you, could be genetics (or god's will, the x factor, bad luck, etc), etc. I could be wrong so if there is anyone who can shed some light, feel free to do so

[REDLAN]

taking those actions reduces your risk - there are no guarantees, but it is possible to live a long time without any significant problems with complications.

there is most definitely however a luck/genetics factor involved - some people are more prone to complications than others - I'm living proof of that.

the interest in high blood pressure was down to several studies showing links with high BP, and diabetic complications - in some cases e.g. retinopathy good BP control was shown to be more important than good BG control - by some studies.

mind you caveat...

I understand that there is some reason to believe that diabetes may itself cause high blood pressure - high BP pressure is more prevalent amongst diabetics than the general population - not sure whether this has been corrected for factors such as diabetics being a monitored for BP a helluva lot more than the general population.

hence the correlations found between BP and complications - it may be that high BP is symptom of diabetes complications NOT a cause...

...or at least may not be as important as believed. the latest american study on which the latest a1c targets are based showed that good BG control had the greatest effect on the retinopathy.

[BlueSky]

... I understand that there is some reason to believe that diabetes may itself cause high blood pressure ....
That association comes from the fact that high blood pressure is one of the cluster of symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome, which is often a precursor of full blown T2 diabetes. One theory is that insulin resistance, which is the underlying problem with T2 diabetes, is also the main driver of metabolic syndrome symptoms. Here is a brief description of them :

Metabolic Syndrome

What is the metabolic syndrome?

The metabolic syndrome is characterized by a group of metabolic risk factors in one person. They include:


Abdominal obesity (excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen)
Atherogenic dyslipidemia (blood fat disorders — high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol — that foster plaque buildups in artery walls)
Elevated blood pressure
Insulin resistance or glucose intolerance (the body can’t properly use insulin or blood sugar)
Prothrombotic state (e.g., high fibrinogen or plasminogen activator inhibitor–1 in the blood)
Proinflammatory state (e.g., elevated C-reactive protein in the blood)

People with the metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of coronary heart disease and other diseases related to plaque buildups in artery walls (e.g., stroke and peripheral vascular disease) and type 2 diabetes. The metabolic syndrome has become increasingly common in the United States. It’s estimated that over 50 million Americans have it.

Metabolic Syndrome (http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4756)

So it seems, at least for a T2, that just keeping blood sugars down won't prevent high blood pressure or make it go away. Perhaps insulin resistance is the real villain of the peace.

[toyota1964]

I would have been glad to be medically treated for high blood pressure much earlier - my BP was considered moderately high for 8-9 years and in 2003 that same range changed to be considered high. My DR didn't want to treat it with meds and I wasn't as informed as I am now. Now I have congestive heart failure due to dilated cardiomyopathy caused by hypertension...... needless to say, I would always recommend now to anyone to take blood pressure meds if their BP is high or high normal.