Learning about the uses of Blood Pressure & the associated checks does help our understanding with this.
All right girl so i’ve got a confession lead segue for you i had a had a discussion with my father-in-law on the weekend as to what’s a good blood pressure rating to have and luckily this week you’re gonna tell him tell me about you have many discussions telling me what his blood pressure is i think about it i think a better segment is just talking about you and i
Bet a second would be a recording of indy’s blood pressure while driving while his father-in was in the car my blood pressure that would be i don’t think i would i don’t get flustered i just get annoyed oh bro i i think yeah now what do you think of this with blood pressure all right all right you’re correct no no we need some we need some data on this baby right
Science is going to hook you up right we’re gonna do this secret blood pressure monitoring you’ve got to make sure your father-in-law doesn’t know right so like only a jacket or something and just record your vitals like your blood pressure your heart rate pupil size anyway blood pressure ratings so blood pressure that’s the first that’s the first i will come to
That that’s the first important thing blood pressure can be affected by many things being scared being unwell being stressed these things can make your blood pressure fluctuate so think of blood pressure more like a yo-yo it goes up and down but no one time only your purpose should be the same so no one reading is important that’s first thing a lot of people come
In hospital on the back of one high reading means nothing so before the way gps used to diagnose high blood pressure was used to take three random readings that’s all we used to do now we put a box on you that takes blood pressure for 24 hours takes about six seven hundred recordings every 15 30 minutes and then right it takes an average and what that’s trying to
Do is you have you know you have your normal working day you have your previous where you’re at work not work with friends sleeping so it’s trying to get a good you know picture and idea of all facets of life is it just some points today we blood pressure’s high but your average is still then okay or is it consistently constantly high so that’s the first thing so
Now here’s the thing about blood pressure so unless your blood pressure is super high i’m talking like your top number is like more than 180 190 200. then you may not have any symptoms so kind of that mid-range of high blood pressure so again top number wise let’s say 150 160 bottom number anything more than 90. 90 is kind of the magic number for gps anything more
Than 90 at the bottom is kind of considered potential high blood pressure or hypertension as we call it and at that level you’re not going to have any symptoms right only at the very very high levels can you have headaches loss of vision nausea vomiting difficulty walking very very high obviously a super high blood pressure that’s been there for a while can lead
To a stroke heart attack kidney failure blindness so but those are very extreme things but this kind of mid-range thing initially won’t have any symptoms and the problem with that is that when you tell people they have high blood pressure they’re like really and i’m feeling well then you give them a tablet the tablet doesn’t make you feel any better because it
Doesn’t feel anyway so there’s empty the point of it so they’re not complying with their medication yeah yeah that’s true so you kind of side effects so one of the most common blood pressure tablets is something called amlodipine which is a calcium channel blocker will give you well can give you swelling of your feet or ramipril which is never take can give you
A dry cough so yeah you’re right so you can either have no effect or have a side effect you’re like well i had nothing to begin with apart from this number which i don’t know is is higher not high and now i’m on this tablet now what i say to people because often some of the work i do is screening based medical work and uh if i find someone with a suspected high
Pressure i’m like look the best thing you can do because it’s going to be hard to see your gp adjust your blood pressure like that’s just it’s just not no it’s not that it’s not sexy enough it’s like gpm weapons are so rare so like the complexity what’s needed in gpu is so high now that this kind of blood pressure checking is kind of been out so it’s not farm
Season kind of other settings like that i literally say like hey give me a phone give me amazon i’m gonna find your blood pressure machines like five quid take your own blood pressure get your own readings if you come to any medical setting say before an operation or for a job which will cause you have medical assessment you’ve got your readings i’m going to use
Those readings they’re much more accurate you’ve taken them in your own kind of place of comfort you’re not stressed you’re not worried a reason to give me your excuse one thing that can happen is something called white yes and we call that effect white coat hypertension coin because in the past doctors used to wear white coats patients see the light coat they’re
Scared blood pressure goes high so it’s not really high but looks high so to give an example my uh daddy my grandmother her blood pressure is one i think 120 over 64. so she has like better than texas blood pressure 83 years old super fit her secret is basically she walks like three miles every day and she lived in a in an age kind of before mcdonald’s and that
Kind of stuff so she’s eat what she makes now if i take it to your hospital for an appointment she has blood pressure there more than 200 the same lady just does not like it i always tell myself look it’s going to be high so one reading in itself not a problem what we have to be mindful of in a developed country like we are in england in america canada places
Like that is chronic disease so things like high blood pressure and diabetes are the real killers for us so in the past we die from things like pneumonias and heart attacks and things like that but our management of these acute conditions these emergency conditions has got a lot better you have a heart attack you might have a stem put in you don’t die you carry
On but these things like blood pressure and you know diabetes they are the things that need to be controlled it’s like i said you’re not going to feel any benefit but what you’re doing is by being on this medication and controlling the blood pressure offsetting the risk of you know kidney failure blindness risk of stroke so all these things uh are super super
Important blood pressure is you know the cornerstone of that i think in the uk once you get to the age of 50 you start having these well-man checks which is kind of like once a year cgp have a blood pressure high weight i have some blood tests done we screen you for diabetes we’re screening for cholesterol so what we call the cardiovascular risk factors we live
In a society now where we’re not really hunter-gatherers anymore we’re very we’re much more sedentary i’m happy that my job involves me walking around and having to see things i imagine you’re you do that a little bit as well or was it beautiful going for a walk minimum every day and i have to exercise at least three times a week otherwise i don’t feel good see
Ya gucci making a conscious effort i think that that’s the point isn’t it i think whereas ancestors kind of had it built into their day you know uh and i know like for example on saturday we’re undercut jason we did a lot of walking and then we went out for dinner afterwards it felt like you know we earned our dinner we’d done a lot of uh walking around we don’t
Have that unless you you build it in and because of that because that’s sedentary um these chronic diseases creep in and you think about it like oh so it’s all to do that we eat too much that we have way too much convenience and we should exercise diabetes is the product of a so yeah it’s really a simple i had lady coming today actually with hype she woke up in
The morning she felt a bit hot took her blood pressure blood pressure’s high carried on kept taking a blood pressure all day but worrying and thinking about it kept getting higher and higher and higher she’s on a pressure tablet rang one one one answer please get to any he came to any asura i’ll say don’t worry it’s fine but we should come down we had a good chat
I said right for next week please take your blood pressure readings if it’s high see gp and i’ve given a recommendation for how we can tweak your blood pressure tablet so this stuff really does happen people do present the hospital sometimes we diagnose it for the first time the thing i guess to be mindful of is if you’re a young person and you genuinely have
High blood pressure so if you would have high blood pressure then as opposed to somebody’s elderly when we say they have essential high blood pressure essential hypertension which is age-related expected high blood pressure in someone like you of your age that would be concerning why have you got high blood pressure what is the underlying cause there has to be
Something driving up blood pressure so then you would be subject to a larger battery of tests to try and work it out whereas an elderly person would be like well let’s just commence them on treatment it’s probably age-related so that’s important when it comes to um when it comes to blood pressure and the only other important group of people is pregnant people so
We talked about pregnant ladies last week and blood clots there’s a condition have you seen downton abbey no okay so one of the characters in downton abbey is pregnant and has a complication of pregnancy called eclampsia these two conditions preeclampsia in a clampsia um one of the things that happens in that condition uh is you start passing lots of protein in
Your urine and your blood pressure goes super high and the combinations two things can lead to eclampsia which is a very very dangerous condition which can lead to seizures in the mother and death and that’s what happens in the show as well um so high blood pressure in the context of pregnancy is can also be very concerning as well so not something to be ignored
If you’ve got a machine and we’ll you know we can talk about your father on a second um it’s just worth doing it every once in a while so for example i i do blood pressures on everyone in my family twice a year so have like a kind of medical check-in thing i do a couple like twice a year so have a chat with them are you concerned about anything let me take your
Blood pressure make sure you get your eyes checked and then for mum and dad and like daddy and granny and people like that it’s i review their blood tests make sure you get your blood test done they end up going to india for holidays and then to be able to test them over there as well and i’ll review those so just keep on top of them but even at our age now and
Again just doing the blood pressure i mean what’s the actual number that you should be looking for then like let’s just give like a quick summary so i’ll let you finish your drink okay so quick summary textbook is uh 120 over 18. okay so quick summary is gone ask me the question number that should be on the top so 120 yeah but that will increase your age 80
Anything above 90 we consider to be high blood pressure and how often should you be doing this if you’re i don’t know in your easter 50s 30 to 50 in between 30 and 50. those 50s twice a year unless you get a high reading and going on blood pressure medicine the closer you get to 15 you know you might go to a frequently on blood pressure medicine is that better
Or worse for you yeah depends what you mean by better or worse it obviously affects you blood pressure is a good thing from a medical perspective if you’re delaying the onset of certain serious complications so are there side effects associated everything on side effects but you’re trying to no no no i think look any tablet can give you any side effect the problem
Is not every side effect happens in every person so it’s a bit of trial and error until you get to a tablet that you can tolerate so that’s that’s the important thing is what where is your tolerance and then you’re trying to be on the least smallest dose that gives you the effective output you want to be on the highest dose of everything just because you know it’s
Going to give you the you know the result but often that can be more harmful so for example you take too much blood pressure medication you’re gonna have a low blood pressure you’re gonna get dizzy you’re going to pass out so that does happen sometimes people they’re over medicated so for example like uh we have this often people coming to hospital and we take the
Observations blood pressure is really high i mean look at that drug history right there are four tablets for blood pressure and what happens is because they’re in hospital we give them the medications what’s happening at home is not taking them so in hospital they take them all and the blood pressure goes really low so it’s not really high it’s just because you’re
Not taking it we had a guy coming today with low blood sugars and then the gene doctor came down and said so why is blood sugar learning goes oh he takes his insulin we just never check his blood sugar and i was like that’s great isn’t it i was like so the his body’s having an uh the appropriate response he’s not adjusting his insulin units he just he’s just taking
It he’s like yeah insulin insulin he’s not checking his blood sugar and it comes in when it’s like super low because something happens like oh let’s check sugar man he just needs to get that scanny thing that sanchez the freestyle welcome to you and just get anything yeah yeah yeah yeah funding baby funding get it on your prescription man not everyone’s from london
You know everyone’s partially like you guys you guys are too polished you’ve got access to all yeah people commoners don’t have in west midlands that’s what it is yeah yeah mate that’s right upgraded yourself then yeah it’s a prescription called the access to all the premium stuff oh yes you did one day one of us on prescription you know the technology is better
Than what it used to be when it comes to checking your blood sugar absolutely it’ll be you first be second thank you wow yeah absolutely because you play so much pro basketball that you obviously tennis of course mastery mastery mastery mastery no football i’ve never mentioned before i wish you could to hand that right you want to be dr j it was bad i’ve just
Uh just signed up to two new sports what we calling dr today i’ve uh i’m taking up fencing and archery so uh yeah because the current ones you do ain’t enough in it okay it’s not that they’re not enough i think you get to a point where you’re like i’m not going to get any better and that’s fine like i’m at good level of badminton i enjoy it i don’t play all the
Time but it’s like the you’ll know this because you talk about in the gym you know like the initial bit you get the growth and then you get the diminishing returns the incremental the very small incremental growth when you kind of reach down things you’re like actually what i enjoy is this your plateau yeah so you enjoy the initial thing so i’d rather do more
Things where i can have that something great nds today i’ll tell you to listen as well the secret of living is growing and giving i was like wow it’s blew me away but it might be the fact that it primes a little bit but the secret of living is growing and giving i give my time to you and in turn i grew up this is not a self-help podcast but i feel like you’re
Turning into that feel good i know i’m just i’m just feeling it today that reminds me tell the listeners and please give a shout out to the uh the lady that reached out to you who didn’t remember my name and just specifically for lady my name is dr jazz his name’s got it yes don’t get it it’s a very very nice message and i definitely made my day it is nice dr
J the lady’s name is brenda you’re like it’s not that fun so she basically the end of saying listen to the podcast online uh because she listens audio at the moment i said jump onto youtube follow the link tree on our bio have a look i said out of interest how did you get into this and she said she stumbled across it so that was very nice to hear uh thanks for
Listening and we genuinely appreciate your support man and dms are there are always welcome if you ever want to shoot this one let us know you’re still alive and kicking we see the numbers we know you’re listening we just don’t know who it is so please tell us that’d be really great and uh we can make some adjustments from there and give you guys shout outs like
How we have done here see ya cheers foreign
Transcribed from video
Blood Pressure & Wellman Checks | Episode 86 By Indy And Dr Podcast