June Blood Pressure Results: Mistakes Were Made … Or Were They?

I’m grateful for the lessons this experiment has taught me. Not just about lowering blood pressure results, but about the process in which I achieve this goal.

My lesson in June?

TAKE A BREAK.

Breaks are good. They allow us to recharge, to relax, to regroup. They give us a chance to step back from everything and reexamine our goals. And to decide how we are going to come at life.

For instance, one could look at my June results as a bust. Or, one could see them as a win.

I’m going to choose to see them as a win. And a lesson hard learned.

The original intention of June was to add two days of additional workouts, bringing our weekly total to five days a week. We added this on top of the January  goal to practice yoga three times per week, the February goal to eliminate added sugar from our diet, the March goal to meditate three times per week, the April goal to drink tea three times per week and the May goal to eat salmon once per week.

The idea was to incorporate low-impact workouts like walking, swimming or pilates into our three-days-a-week-of-yoga schedule.

But as we all know, good intentions don’t always pan out.

And that’s okay. The ultimate goal here is to change my life. And life sometimes throws things at you that alter your best laid plans.

At the beginning of June, I was feeling some burnout. But I ignored it.

Then I sprained my ankle.

If you’ve ever sprained your ankle, you know this is debilitating. There’s no real cure, except to relax and let it heal. Which means SEVERAL WEEKS of time off from working out. In the very month in which I was supposed to step up my workouts. I fought this for a bit, trying to do yoga in the bed or a chair.

Then my eleven-year-old was bit by a dog.

And I had to consider the possibility that the universe was trying to tell me something.

The message? TAKE A BREAK.

So we did. Yes, I should have listened sooner. Yes, it should not have taken my son getting injured to spring me into action. Or de-action. Un-action? But it did.

So. We forgave ourselves for missing some yoga and not incorporating more exercise in the middle of all the chaos. We forgave ourselves for being unable to focus on meditation and cooking salmon while our baby was in pain and susceptible to infection. We decided to listen to the warnings and just call the month of June a break.

Six months in sounds like a good time to take a break, doesn’ t it?

Blood Pressure Results

My average blood pressure for June was 135/88 with a resting heart rate of 74.

To give some perspective, let me share with you where I started and what my goals are. I started by taking a baseline in December. I take my blood pressure every Monday morning. I take an average of three readings in one sitting. If one reading looks much lower or much higher than the others, I adjust the blood pressure cuff and take it again, throwing out the abnormal reading.

Here are those results:

As you can see, my blood pressure went up in June. To be fair, I only took my readings twice during this month, instead of four times per month, which is my usual method.

Stress clearly impacts my blood pressure results, so I’m assuming the increase I saw this month had a lot to do with my results. I also let go a bit, as I was too busy focusing on recovery from my injury and my son’s injury, to pay attention to my specific health goals this month.

But that’s okay. The lesson here is, sometimes we just need a break. Sometimes, life gets in the way.

My Systolic pressure (the amount of pressure in the arteries during the contraction of your heart muscle) increased by 8 millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) during the month of June, but remains down a whopping 19 mm Hg since December 2020.

My Diastolic pressure (the amount of pressure in the arteries when the heart rests between beats) went up by 2 mm Hg in June, but is still down by 17 mm Hg since the start of the experiment. 

My heart rate (the number of times the heart beats per minute while at rest) went up by 5 beats per minute (bpm) in June, but has come down by a total of 5 bpm in 2021.

The good news is, I did not go up a category in the American Heart Association rankings. I am still in Stage 1 Hypertension. While my goal is to keep going down, and my ultimate goal is to reach Normal Level, I’m just glad my month off didn’t result in an increase back to Stage 2 Hypertension.

Back in March, I achieved  my first small goal, which was to naturally lower my blood pressure to the same levels as what my body was seeing when I was taking 20 mg of hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) without any use of pharmaceuticals.

In the above table, the first two readings are those I recorded myself, back when I was tracking my progress on the pharmaceuticals my cardiologist prescribed in 2019 and the early months of 2020.

In April, I met two other goals:

I’m no longer in Stage 2 Hypertension AND my blood pressure is now at the same levels as what it was seeing when I was taking 50 mg of HCTZ. Without any kind of pharmaceuticals. I never went higher than 50 mg on the HCTZ. By that time, I was reacting negatively to the medication and knew I needed to find another path. 

That’s what’s great about this experiment. I’m finding my own path. Deciding what is going to help me meet my goals.

In the month of June, I didn’t meet any goals, and now, I have to rework my ideas of how to achieve my goals for July as well.

Looking forward to getting started.