Pressure increasing with age

So after all that exercising and those ever-changing eating plans I struggled to stick with … The Talkmistress has had to face facts about blood pressure.

Dang it, I was so hopeful. My folks had all the “Black” chronic diseases, including — and especially — hypertension. But I wasn’t going to be a sitting duck.

The exercising and the eating plans were my high-blood-pressure-avoiding version of the things we do to slow the aging process cosmetically: spraying or sprinkling thinning-hair camouflage on one’s pate. Wearing hip clothes from Venus and Chico’s (or, if you’re a man, wearing that sweater with the “cool” geometric design over relaxed-fit leather pants). Buying a sports car. Dating some young chick or cat. And yeah, using slang of any decade.

With the exception of a diuretic pill prescription used and discontinued some years ago, I hadn’t taken anything for blood pressure, which back in the good old days hovered at, or just above, the top of what’s considered the healthy range (120 or less over 80 or less, according to the American Heart Association).

It went up, of course, according to willy-nilly readings with one of those home blood-pressure cuffs and a checkup three or so years ago at a pre-pandemic health fair at one of the malls. Noting the nurses peering at me with concern, I decided I needed to stop starting, then stopping, then starting, then stopping exercising. Exercising needed to be elevated to showering status in terms of importance, and for the most part, that has been the case.

Every once in a while I’d go and find that cuff and take my blood pressure. It still didn’t say what I needed it to say. But I figured that look, with a fitness trainer who decides during a single Zoom class to make everybody do 100 burpees in 10-burpee sets (I have to modify mine with a chair, but they’re still burpees!) and once made us do 62 tricep dips straight … this BP is gonna come down! Right? I even added some freestyle dancing and, as shared here recently, added a Peloton to the mix.

The come-to-Jesus moment was ushered in by a mild, come-andgo but persistent problem — dizziness/vertigo, with some nausea — for which I decided to make myself go to the doctor. At the back of my mind, I knew what else was gonna happen. The nurse was gonna take my blood pressure, and it still wasn’t gonna be pretty. And it wouldn’t just be about dizziness anymore.

It was as I’d feared. Just as the scale loves to do, the blood pressure had headed in the wrong direction.

At least the doc believed me when I told him of my efforts to try to stave off the hypertension. It’s a hereditary thing, he said.

(“Hereditary” usually describes the bad, life-hindering stuff we always seem to get from our folks/ ancestors. If you notice, the good stuff never seems to get passed on.

You rarely hear, “Oh, this thin, eat-what-you-want frame/ thick hair at 60/ability to figure out technology no matter how recent — it’s hereditary!”)

Oh well. I came away with two prescriptions: One for Losartan, a nondescript blood-pressure pill that I can’t use if I become pregnant (ha) and another prescription, Meclizine, for the dizziness.

Interestingly, a side effect of the Losartan is … dizziness. Lovely. I went right from zero prescription pills to a “second pill to battle the side effects of the first pill” situation. And I’m about as much a fan of going to the pharmacist as I am a fan of going to the doctor.

Let’s hope I have a while before there’s more to come. Biggest nightmare? Having to take enough pills to need one of those insanely rectangular, divided pill organizer boxes found in catalogs and on websites of retailers that cater to “the aged.”

Hmmm, well, actually those organizers have come a long way. Do a keyword search and you’ll find such state-of-theart incarnations as a “stacking pill tower,” a chic pill-box case with various finishes, and a circular organizer reminiscent of those stupid old, dial-outfitted birth-control pill containers.

At least these incarnations would allow pill takers to respectively play Jenga with themselves, own yet another “age defying” fashion accessory and pretend they’re still young enough to be fertile.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t urge all and sundry not to be like me and live in denial. Keep a check on your blood pressure, especially if you’re old enough to still be calling women “chicks” and guys “cats.”

If you find that your systolic and diastolic blood pressures readings are more than what you weighed as a thin 20-year-old over what you had in the bank at that age, talk with the doc about what medication might be best for you.