I'm always interested to hear how people manage their hypertension.
What worked for you?
Not to get too far off the original topic of diabetes, but basically it was exercise and weight loss that contributed the lion's share, I believe. For the sake of this explanation, I'm treating them as separate things.
Although I had been doing cardio exercises about 30 minutes, 3-4 times a week when I got the news about my blood pressure being high, I guess that didn't seem to be enough. I immediately increased that to 60 minutes on most days and increased the intensity, too, although not necessarily for the whole 60 minutes. Fortunately, my body was already accustomed to the exercise, so making a big jump like that was OK for me. However, someone going from sedentary to 60 minutes a day in one go could be asking for an overuse injury.
I found that this extra exercise resulted in a quick and substantial drop in my blood pressure by the time I returned for my second BP reading. I forget when that was. Maybe 3 months later.
However, despite all that cardio, my weight stubbornly refused to come down more than a few pounds and my blood pressure stabilized at about halfway between where I was and that 120/80 goal I had. I didn't really change my diet since it was already fairly healthy and I didn't think had too many calories anyway. I just tried to avoid restaurant meals even more than before and tried to avoid eating so much that I felt stuffed.
For more than a couple years, I kept up that cardio routine, changed around the exercises and such, but the weight wouldn't budge. However, all of a sudden, maybe 6 months ago, the weight suddenly started dropping. I have no idea why. Before you knew it, I was 20 pounds lighter and noticeably thinner! And my blood pressure made that last move to the 120/80 or lower range.
I quit coffee a couple months ago to save money, but I'm not sure it affected my BP any.
I didn't really change anything when the weight suddenly started dropping, so to my thinking, perhaps those 2+ years of stable weight did not mean that nothing was happening. I don't think the weight stayed the same because I was getting more muscle and muscle is heavier than fat. I mean, I still kept cursing the fact that I couldn't wear certain old clothes that I used to wear comfortably so I was still packing extra fat. Maybe things were gradually changing with my metabolism that after 2 years, finally got to the point that allowed me to drop that extra weight quickly.
That's why I encourage people not to get discouraged when they don't see results for a long time doing something that should help, like exercise. As I said, chronic conditions take years to develop, so it can take years to get healthy, too. Popping a pill to drop the blood pressure does nothing to address whatever underlying physiologic condition was causing the blood pressure to be high. Blood pressure that is too high, like blood sugar that is too high, are not good for the body, but I think it is more useful to view them as symptoms of a system that is out of whack, and less like a "disease" that we somehow acquire or something that happens "to you," like some random thing. We have far more control over our health than most realize and are far more responsible than we think when things start to go haywire with our bodies, so popping a pill or going under the surgeon's knife should really be the last options rather than the first options for many of the conditions that afflict us.
I don't mean to sound like some health guru selling books or anything. But if we're really going to get a grip on healthcare spending, a big part of the problem is *us* and people not taking care of themselves properly in the first place. I wish we'd focus more on staying healthy and getting back to health rather than simply trying to treat things that are really more like symptoms, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, etc.