MY LATEST ADVENTURES WALKING ON A GOLF COURSE WITH BLOOD PRESSURE AND PULSE RATE

No, I don't have blood pressure and pulse rate for my golf partners.  But I do take those measurements with a wrist device.  I treat my body not unlike a white rat or guinea pig or oriental fruit fly.  That is, I conduct personal experiments on myself.  I many times don't agree with conventional medical practice.  Thus, you most assuredly should not apply what I do without first checking with your personal physician.

I regularly bring back this subject, and a particularly comprehensive one appeared almost five years ago:

MY BODY IS LIKE THE UNITED NATIONS:  Part 3--Blood Pressure

In that posting I also included two previous blog spots:

• A SIMPLE SOLUTION FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
• AN UPDATE ON LOWERING YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AND LOW DENSITY LIPOPROTEIN

I thought it was time to bring you up to date on my latest experiment.  For those who tend to get a bit dizzy when you strenuously exercise, or, like me, walk on a golf course, let me first provide some background:

• There was once a time when I just could not lose weight.  I was never really overweight, as such.  The past few years, my Body Mass Index has ranged from 23 to 26 (26 is the lowest overweight number).

• Don't know how to calculate your BMI?  Try this:

Supplied by BMI Calculator USA

First, if you're not into METRIC, click on IMPERIAL.  When I then type 5 in the ft box, 7 in the inch box and 160 in the weight box, I read 25.05, which is on the borderline of Healthy and Overweight.  But that is actually okay, if not good, because at my age, it's best to have some extra resource within me in case I get sick.

Weight, condition of my knees, weather conditions and obligations determine how many times/week I walk 18 holes on a golf course.  If the latter three are okay:

• 160 pounds or higher:  three times/week...which is really agonizing, but I don't go if I can find any reasonable reason not to, like rain or high haze (which totally disappeared after Kilauea stopped erupting last year) because it's fine to be a little fat.
• 158-159:  twice per week...almost tolerable
• below 158:  once per week...hooray.

• I now and then reward my body for surviving this regimen, wagyu (from Japan and South Korea) beef in particular, for it has up to 300% more monounsaturated fat than normal beef found in  the high marbling of the meat, introducing incredibly high omega 3 and 6 concentrations.
• The outrageous cost of this delicacy actually serves as inspiration.

I don't really enjoy golfing.  I place this extreme stress on my body so that I can eat and drink whatever I want.

Anyway, a few years ago, I noticed I felt very weak through the first third of the round, and picking up my ball in the 6th hole made me slightly dizzy.  Then I usually had an apple after the 7th (that was my lunch for the day), and things got a little better, but still iffy.

I bought a wrist blood pressure device to see what was happening.  Typically:

• before golf:  135/80 with a pulse rate between 70 and 90
• sixth hole:      90/60 with a pulse rate from 85 to 110

Why was my blood pressure dropping so low (sometimes down to 80/50) when I have long suffered from high blood pressure?

So I analyzed my life.  Many times I bought a bento from Zippy's or Rainbow Drive-In, went up to the Diamond Head lookout to eat this meal, then immediately drove to the Ala Wai Golf Course to sign up for golf.  Usually, half an hour after lunch I was golfing.  Maybe food in my gut plus movement was the cause of low blood pressure.

I thus gave up  the bento and ate breakfast at home, not golfing until at least an hour and a half later.  The dizzyness seemed to subside, but yet sometimes return.

I take Irbesartan-HCTZ, a generic blood pressure pill once called Avalide.  I cut it in half and swallow one piece with water after breakfast, with the second half to be taken before dinner.  On golf days I decided to just skip that first half.  Just that change and having an earlier breakfast allowed me to avoid dizzyness, and my blood pressure seemed to drop only to 100/65.  Sometimes this rose to 150/80 at the 13th hole, so I took half a pill. Half an hour later, my pressure usually fell to 120-130/65-75.

On occasion the drop was to 110/60, which was okay, except that this caused my pulse rate to race up past 120, and as high as 140 beats/minute.  I always drank a lot of water, so that was not the problem.

I then thought to add some gatorade and sucked on dried ume (pickled Japanese plum, which is salty).  That tended to lower my pulse rate to a hundred or so, with my blood pressure thusly slightly increasing.  Something about replacing electrolytes and adding sodium probably served to increase my blood pressure, allowing my pulse rate to decrease.  Or maybe it was the reverse.

A final refinement.  As I did not take that half a pill after breakfast, there have been times when my blood pressure rose to 150/85 at the 13th hole.  When I took that other half, the pressure at times dropped too much over the next few holes.  So, I then cut the half into quarters.  This adjustment now seems to have my blood pressure nicely within a range, close to 120/70, with the pulse rate rarely exceeding 100.  It is important that you take both your blood pressure and pulse rate when exercising.

Interestingly enough, medical researchers seem to think, for good reason because they do the experiments, that pulse rate and blood pressure tend to move up or down together.  My body is just the opposite.  If my blood pressure is very high, my pulse rate is typically very low.  If my blood pressure is low, my pulse rate is usually high.  This is especially so when I wake up in the morning.  My blood pressure can be from 130-150 / 80-90, when my pulse rate is 60.  

When I'm hungry, such as after missing a lunch, by 2PM my blood pressure can shoot up to 170-200 / 75-100.  Half an hour after eating, the pressure drops to 120-135 / 65-80.  Here, pulse rate does not seem to matter.  I notice now that after dinner, my blood pressure consistently drops to 110 / 65, with a pulse rate varying between 70-80 pulses/minute.

My doctor prescribed a second blood pressure medication, Amlodipine Besylate, which I take when I need to go to the bathroom around 3:30AM.  I also swallow a little bit of cranberry juice.  The logic is that my body feels that it is not so hungry.  I tried different kinds of milks, apple juice, and so on, but cranberry juice tended to keep my blood pressure lower when I awoke.  Then I learned that cranberry juice does help for hypertension.  Science News reported that low calorie cranberry juice lowers blood pressure...however, the study was funded by Ocean Spray Cranberries.

Eating Well recommends milk, hibiscus tea and pomegranate juice.  One drink to avoid?  Alcohol.  They might be right, but every test I've made on myself, using wine, scotch and beer over a one hour period showed that my blood pressure dropped with alcohol at a relatively steady pulse rate.  Then again, my body might be different.

I've noticed that most medical reports do everything possible to steer you away from alcohol.  Doctors go through comprehensive training, where the traditional belief is that alcohol is terrible, ruining bodies, lives and families.  Some practitioners now seem to feel that a little red wine is okay.  Even beer has now been shown to be good for you.  Yet, these studies generally qualify their recommendation by adding the term "may." 

Hard liquor remains in the doghouse, but again, this could be that lingering professional angst that this potion is too high in ethanol concentration for healthy human imbibition.   In Scotland, they add only a tad of water to their scotch.  I use a lot of crushed ice to soften the taste.

Experiments have shown that some alcohol does lower blood pressure temporarily at the supposed risk of cardiac problems.  Plus the field's ingrained conscience bemoans the long-term problems and can't help but worry about those binge (four to five drinks or more within two hours) drinkers.  Sure, too much alcohol will damage your kidneys and liver.  Too much of anything is bad, including water.  But what is optimal?  None?  Probably not.  People who drink live longer than those who don't.  Teetotalers also die from cancer and kidney failure, but more so from heart disease.  Note the top three causes of deaths:

Here is a history of drinking and health effects worthy of your time.  But keep in mind this is from Bon Apetit.  Yet, this year,  the pendulum is swinging towards alcohol being bad, for the National Cancer Institute lists alcohol as a known human carcinogen, and studies show that the more you imbibe, just like in smoking, the quicker you will die.  The medical field regularly swings like a pendulum, as last year one global study indicated that no amount of alcohol is good for your health.

But, aha, from Medical Daily of IBT Media:

7 Health Benefits Of Drinking Alcohol

• It Can Lower Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease. ... 
• It Can Lengthen Your Life. ... 
• It Can Improve Your Libido. ... 
• It Helps Prevent Against the Common Cold. ... 
• It Can Decrease Chances Of Developing Dementia. ... 
• It Can Reduce The Risk Of Gallstones. ... 
• Lowers The Chance Of Diabetes.

Those don't even include making you happier and gregarious and, as for me, enhance euphoria.  Here is an article that says drinking gin makes you sexier, with the science to back it up.  Now how did I get here from blood pressure and pulse rate?

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