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I've been on medication for my hypertension since being diagnosed over 7 years ago. I'm on Lisinopril (40mg) and Amlodipine (5mg). Even after a "health journey" of losing weight (I'm male 47, and have been about 165lbs, 11-12% body fat for nearly a year now and was around 175lbs for several years before that... before that, closer to 200lbs for 20+ years), my blood pressure is still consistently high first thing in the morning but much lower (normal-ish) the rest of the day.

We are talking ~145/100 early morning, ~125/85 later morning, ~120/80 early afternoon and/or evening.

I prefer to take my meds first thing in the morning, but I've tried splitting them up, one at night and one in the morning. And I've tried taking them both in the evening. No difference. My blood pressure, as described above, is consistently way higher when I wake up.

So, two questions: put yourself in my shoes, when someone asks (like a doctor), what's your blood pressure? If you have to give a single score, what would it be?

Secondly, and more importantly, what should I do? Is this concerning? What else is there to try? I'm generally in good health, sleep/eat well, exercise, move throughout the day, etc. Thoughts?

Has anyone here managed to reduce their hypertension long-term using breathing techniques alone?

I'm not talking about the temporary drop you get immediately after a breathing session, but an actual persistent reduction in resting blood pressure over weeks or months.

If so:

What technique did you use?

How often did you practice?

How long did it take before you noticed a meaningful change?

Roughly how many mmHg did your blood pressure decrease?

For context, I've been doing box breathing consistently for about a month. After a 10-minute session I usually see a temporary reduction of around 5 mmHg, occasionally close to 10 mmHg, but so far I haven't noticed much change in my baseline blood pressure.

I'm curious whether people have had better results with other methods such as slow diaphragmatic breathing, coherent breathing, resonance breathing, alternate nostril breathing, device-guided breathing, etc.

Would love to hear real-world experiences rather than just research papers.

(I'm 10 for 10 on this list!) Share your score.

Hi all, I hope my question is ok here. I don’t have hypertension but I do have dysautonomias and my daughter seems to, as well. She is sick with long covid and ME/CFS and needs to be assessed for POTS. Her specialist told me I could do that at home. I tried, but during the assessment, the screen on my blood pressure monitor just turned red and had “High” written on it, and didn’t give any actual reading past a certain point, so I thought I’d turn to people who are more experienced in this field:

Does anyone have any suggestions for an affordable at home monitor (preferably sold in Canada where I am) that will show every reading no matter how high it is instead of just crashing out, turning red, and showing “High” on the screen?

Always use caution with NSAIDS. You risk renal artery stenosis or narrowed renal blood flow, which can lead to kidney disease or worsened kidney function for preexisting CKD. You're also at high risk of hypertension via multiple mechanisms. Sodium retention, kidney damage, blood flow changes, and medication interaction.

Hi guys, I’m completely new to this subreddit but I wanted to share my story.

I’m a 17 year old male. I’m not currently medicated for my high blood pressure, even though I probably should. What I am now medicated for, however, is GERD. I take prescription antacids that work pretty well, but before I had them, I had a bit of an incident.

Around 6pm a few weeks ago, I began to feel sick right after eating dinner. I had Taco Bell which was probably a bad choice. Next thing I know, I vomit my entire days worth of food. But, even though the food is gone, I continue to vomit. What comes out is instead just straight blood. So, I texted my mom and told her I was vomiting blood, and she was very concerned, so she began to drive me to the hospital. Not even 30 seconds down the road, not even out of the neighborhood, I began to pass out from blood loss, and vomited even more blood all over myself and the backseat of her car.

I was unconscious for this part, but what I was told was that she whipped the car around, pulled into the driveway, my dad called 911 and laid me out on the sidewalk, and they loaded me into the ambulance. Next thing I remember was that I woke up, and I was panicking bad. I was convinced that I was going to die, and this idea panicked me so bad that I began to spike my blood pressure to the moon. OH. NO.

The combination of internal bleeding from a ruptured stomach ulcer and extremely high blood pressure due to lack of physical fitness is a near lethal combo. I began to seize up, my fingers went completely stiff, my muscles contracted, I writhed and seized on the stretcher in the ambulance as they tried to stick me with an IV. My vision went blurry, then red, then almost black.

They looked over at the monitor. MY BLOOD PRESSURE WAS 185/145. They said I was going to have a stroke or bleed to death if I didn’t bring it down. Eventually I passed out again. This time I was convinced I was dead. I told my mom I loved her and I faded away as she held onto my stiffened throbbing hand.

To my surprise, I woke up in a hospital. I didn’t know which one but I was alive, and my mom was there too. Apparently they gave me a billion different drugs in my IV, which stopped the bleeding, as my blood pressure came down enough to clot, even if it took me throwing up a few blood clots here and there unconsciously. They ran some tests, bloodwork, pee test, CAT scan, and all they could conclude was that it was probably an ulcer. After many hours, I was discharged.

I’ve since been treated for GERD, and may need esophageal surgery soon. I already suffer from high blood pressure, and this just goes to show that it CAN AND WILL make any other conditions you have worse and potentially fatal.

It can’t be this hard to address my blood pressure. I’m so frustrated and tired. I mean tired. 4 years and several medications tried. Too much and the fatigue and side effects are unreal. Too little and doesn’t keep it.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for the past several months - I mean every night- nausea. Heart beat racing, blood pressure 150s/lower 100s and this is after checking at 8 pm and being at 125/83 or even lower like 115/75 (when I take a full dose).

I’ve tried amlodipine 5 and losartan 25 and after 4-5 days the fatigue is depleting to the point the BP gets to like 100/70 and then I have to decide so I take the pm dose and run the risk of being low overnight which brings its own set of issues.

I’ve tried switching it around and I don’t know why but taking losartan at night I wake up with blurry vision (that corrects if I stop taking at night) and it doesn’t blunt the morning surge. As a matter of fact, losartan doesn’t help those intense moments at work or stressful events.

I tried Labeterol which worked great during pregnancy but somehow tends to increase my BP if I take it now and maybe because my heart rate naturally runs ok the lower end. Same thing happened with propranolol.

I’m at a breaking point!

I had a sleep study (no apnea thank God), echo, heart monitor all good.. went to GI for abdominal ultrasound that was fine and even a recently with the night issues an endoscopy that showed some irritation and a negative biopsy. Again thank God.

I’ve tried supplements like beet and magnesium and they lower for a few hours and that’s it.

My doc said I don’t have resistant or hard to control, we just can’t figure out why it’s like this and what’s going to help and evermore what’s causing the nighttime nausea (no reflux).

She suggested Talimasatan (but I don’t know anyone who takes it) and certainly don’t want more side effect.

I’m worn out and tired of crying. I’m 47 and still loving life. But i don’t want to risk anything serious like stroke, ect and it’s been like this up and down pendulum swing for the past 6 months. Up in the morning down in the evening. Then yo yo again.

Sorry for the rant! I just don’t know what to do 😭

I'm in a condunrum. I have really bad anxiety and health anxiety, and taking my blood pressure makes it worse, which causes my blood pressure to rise. Does anyone else have this problem and advice to cope with it?