Low blood pressure info

Wow; I am so relieved! I recently read an e-mail that really helped me, and I wanted to share it, just in case anyone else has this problem.

I have had low blood pressure for most of my life (usually in the 90/60 range). I never really thought about how that affected me, physically; I figured that it didn't, to be honest. But I receive a daily e-mail called "Daily Health News," which is a free e-mail service from Bottom Line: Health, and the e-mail that I received on Monday, December 12, was on the symptoms associated with low blood pressure.

While it cautions that a sudden drop in blood pressure is a medical condition to be treated, and chronic low blood pressure (CLBP) is just something to learn to live with, it does say that there are several things that people who have CLBP live with almost all the time. I know that I have had these symptoms, but I had never known that it was because of CLBP.

Some of the symptoms listed were:

"No doubt you have experienced times when you've gotten up quickly from a prone position and become instantly light-headed, perhaps so much so that you had to sit down. Imagine having that happen to you all the time -- that is what life can be like for many of those who have symptomatic low blood pressure."

Constant fatigue is another symptom, and the one that blew me away: salt cravings! Many people that I am around during mealtimes tease me about my salt intake (I have even been compared to the "salt-eating monster" from the original Star Trek series, or asked if I wanted a salt lick like those put out for deer). Apparently, salt cravings are my body's attempts to increase fluid retention to increase blood volume and hence blood pressure, according to this article.

Another thing that the article mentioned was this:

"Another... problem is that when patients are lying down, their pressure goes very high. Medication taken at night will lower the pressure, but then, when patients get up during the night to urinate (common among these patients), they tend to fall down. [Mark Pecker, MD, a specialist in low blood pressure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City] says that this night pattern is the major problem associated with low blood pressure. Patients are advised to sleep with their heads raised."

This is indeed a problem that I have experienced, although I didn't realize that it was simply a manifestation of CLBP. It would be terrifying to be lying down, trying to relax, and have your heart start racing like crazy. At least now I know what's happening, and that helps a lot.

Anyway, this article just cleared up so many nagging concerns for me; after all, I have had every single one of the symptoms described in the article. I thought I was becoming a closet hypochondriac, but it's really just the effects of low blood pressure. What a relief!