submitted 7 months ago by remotelove@lemmy.ca to c/fitness@lemmy.world

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It's been roughly 3 months since I was diagnosed with sky-high blood pressure and renal artery stenosis. I also spent a night in the ICU after a false alarm for a stroke. (I was on a super strong blood pressure med for the night and it required continuous supervision.)

Since then, I started taking walks. At first it was a quarter of a mile, then gradually pushed up to 5-6 miles, every day. Sometimes even up to 8-10 miles if time allowed.

Jogging started slow, as I could only handle about 1/8 mile at a time. [Insert knee strain injury here]. I worked up to 1/4 mile run + 1/4 mile walk for as many reps as I could handle for my daily routine.

Rucking once or twice a week was added and am almost at 40lbs of weight. (It hurts, but has taught me pain management.)

Sprints once a week for 10 seconds for about 5-8 reps somehow worked itself in to the routine. (Dunno where that came from.)

Finally this evening, I ran a full continuous mile and celebrated with a round of sprints after that.

I am 46 and hadn't ran a full mile in over 20 years. 3 months ago I thought I was going to die walking up a hill. Walking one solid mile was a huge milestone for me not so long ago.

I guess the point of this post is just a checkpoint and a reminder to myself that things are actually getting better and there are more milestones to reach.

Cheers.

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[-] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is such a huge achievement, nice work! Starting out is always so tough and it sounds like you've done the hardest thing which is establishing the habit and sticking with it. Hopefully now that you've seen that progress you'll get addicted to that feeling of being able to do something that seemed so far off before. You're kicking ass!

Edit:. Just wanted to add that rucking is amazing. I've been doing it for a little while now as well and absolutely love it.

[-] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 1 points 7 months ago

Fuck yeah, well done mate.

If I can offer some advice from when I started running,

If something hurts take a break, missing two days beats 3 months of pain and rehabilitation etc. Swap it with swimming or something, I learnt that the hard way when my knee hurt on a 5k and then the next day did 5k and it hurt and again and again for 2 weeks until I could hardly walk. Turned out the main cause was always running on the same slope of road, building muscle on the outside of my leg pulling thr knee cap across.

So if it hurt rest and run on varied terrains don't do all the runs on the same left or right slope on the edge of a road etc.

Secondly what really helped me with increasing my distance was when I got running i didn't stop, I just ran slower as I got tired.

Doesn't matter if you're running slower then a walk just keep the same motion and keep pushing.

Best of luck with it.

Also runners highs are real and great, when I hit 8k I started getting them and felt awesome after.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 7 months ago

Great improvements!

In the last 3 months have you seen your blood pressure improve as well?

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 months ago

Absolutely! Accurate numbers are impossible, because of the different medications I was on to pull me out of hypertensive crisis. My Dr and I are both data junkies, so we were able to openly discuss and hypothesize about how to tweak multiple variables in my immediate treatment. (It's been fun, TBH. She obviously is the expert at diagnosis and treatment and I could provide her with useful feedback about what was and wasn't working.)

However, after about a month of walking 3 times a day and about when I started to learn to jog again, we had to cut one of my meds as I was dropping into hypotension range a couple times a day.

For the last couple of months, we made a couple of adjustments to my meds while I was also increasing the intensity of my workouts (rucking and more running).

While resting heart rate is not directly correlated to blood pressure, it's a good indication of some level of improvement. There is also a bias in this chart when we finally found the proper dosage of metropolol. Metropolol will decrease resting heart rate and put some fairly hard caps on peak heart rates:

With meds and with exercise, I also hit a new personal record the day before yesterday of 111/80 during the evening, about an hour after my workout.

Meds seem to keep my BP in-check and below the danger zone and my exercise routine does seem to correlate with BP improvements. Now that my meds are steady and its effects are hitting a healthy plateau, exercise has the greatest impact on day-to-day changes.

Sorry for the extended answer and could have just said "Yes" but there have actually been a ton of changes in-play.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 7 months ago

I Love the detailed reply. Keep it up!

Using average heart rate as a proxy for improvement is neat!

Have you looked at other blood pressure interventions as well?

sauna
low carb

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Diet and lifestyle tweaks are next. Aside from the immediate and massive caffeine reduction, nothing else has changed drastically. My Dr. temporarily put my request to quit nicotine on hold until we flatlined every other immediate problem, and I do agree with her approach.

There also the dangling issues of renal artery stenosis and peripheral neuropathy that stem from quite a few years of serious alcoholism. My point here is that what would usually be basic changes to lifestyle may have a higher impact on other ongoing treatments than usual.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 7 months ago

Wow, I'm glad your so thoughtful and on top of things!

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