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firstfrostI woke up this morning with the faintest of sore throats. Normally, I wouldn't pay much attention to this, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tirinian turns out to have strep as of yesterday, so I was suspicious, and made a doctor's appointment. The magic instant culture says I'm fine, and the sore throat seems to have gone away entirely, so I am not sick, just suggestible.
However, at the mini-checkup, I got my blood pressure taken by the nurse, and it was way in the Good range, no longer in the pre-hypertension range! So apparently the bicycle thing is working. Yay!
tirinian turns out to have strep as of yesterday, so I was suspicious, and made a doctor's appointment. The magic instant culture says I'm fine, and the sore throat seems to have gone away entirely, so I am not sick, just suggestible.However, at the mini-checkup, I got my blood pressure taken by the nurse, and it was way in the Good range, no longer in the pre-hypertension range! So apparently the bicycle thing is working. Yay!
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Date: 2010-09-03 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-09-03 11:23 pm (UTC)Um, I've had a sore throat for a few days. Until now I was assuming it was caused by miasmata.
Hmm, that wasn't very good. OK, how about this: I'm kind of confused about the prescription of exercise for high blood pressure. On one hand, there's a set of lifestyle changes that are always recommended both for prevention and treatment. These include the usual stuff: exercise, weight loss, less sugar, less salt, not smoking, etc. On the other hand, all the discussion of the etiology of primary hypertension seems to be dominated by the theme, "we have no idea what's going on."
This makes me wonder if maybe the standard set of recommendations is just the default treatment for mysterious chronic physiological conditions, for no better reason than the knowledge that they're valid for arteriosclerosis and some cancers, and they're at worst harmless. So maybe your reduced blood pressure is due to some totally other thing and we're all attributing it to the exercise in some sort of mass confirmation bias phenomenon.
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Date: 2010-09-03 11:43 pm (UTC)Actually, we've found that for a couple of hours after exercise, our blood pressure is lower than normal. I guess that's why you're not supposed to use that as your baseline. But it stands to reason that if you can lower your BP at least once a day for several hours, then that's good for you in the long term.
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Date: 2010-09-03 11:56 pm (UTC)My circulatory system, like much of the rest of me, is wussy and flabby, and thus not able to do... whatever the right thing is. When I exercise, it is clearly working harder, getting more in shape at, you know, blood-pumping stuff. So then it gets better at doing the right thing.
Of course, this makes almost no sense when I think harder, given that higher pressure in most circumstances is due to pushing things around faster and with more force, rather than being lazy about it. We certainly don't get better water pressure out of puddles.
(Hmm. It could also all be due to more time having passed since the one time I smoked! That must be it!
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Date: 2010-09-05 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 10:34 pm (UTC)Possibly true, but (talking out of my hat here), surely there's some correlation between higher baseline blood pressure and problems resulting from arteriosclerosis and/or clotting (more chance of dislodging something and having it end up somewhere bad)? I'm predicating this assumption on the idea that everyone has some baseline level of sclerosis and clotting to begin with, but that there's an "actionable level" where it becomes worth worrying about. Which I vaguely hope is actually wrong, but suspect is probably true.
She's ready!
Date: 2010-09-04 01:06 am (UTC)