Uhm… D’you ever wonder where on earth your common sense went? Does common sense take vacations in the South Pacific? If so, is it possible for us to join it now and again? Preferably beside the gentle waves on an unspoiled white-sand beach?
So the blood pressure has now dropped, pretty consistently, into the “normal” range. Figures are pretty much the same now, all the time: 125/73 this morning; 127/77 after dinner last night. Not bad, for an old bat pushin’ 70. Years, that is, not millimeters.
Whence, you ask, this miraculous change?
Whence, indeed: from the coffee pot. As far from it as one can get.
I happen to favor very high-test black coffee: the best espresso beans I can get my hands on, fresh-ground and brewed in a French press. As you might imagine, this substance will raise the hair on a normal human’s head. Moi — it just wakes me up and gets me going, a desirable result in my book.
It’s not like I drink this stuff all day long: imbibulation is normally confined to about 16 ounces first thing in the morning. It is enough, however, to bring on a monumental withdrawal headache if I quit cold turkey. One time after I quit, the headache lasted a full week. That was fun.
Welp, the other day I was contemplating the return of the accursed palpitations and the painfully evident link between the palps and the elevated BP numbers. Got palps? Got systolic pressure upwards of 150. Don’t got palps? Systolic is down in the mid 130s. Hm. Exploring the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest for clues to this phenomenon, I realized that most sites discussing control of blood pressure mention caffeine and alcohol as culprits…naturally, my two favorite self-medicating prescriptions.
One site indicated that you need to go on quite the little binge for booze to push up your numbers; I don’t do that — presently I have a shot of whiskey a day, liberally watered down.
But then I recalled that spates of palpable heartbeats and light-headedness are nothing new. When I was in my 30s, a stretch of these moments visited. Once I was on assignment for Arizona Highways in southern Arizona when such an intense episode occurred that I really thought was was going to pass out. So did the people around me. It went away, though.
At that time, the connection between the amount of coffee I was drinking (in those days it was a lot more!) and the unpleasant chest sensations dawned on me. Quit drinking coffee for a few weeks, and all the irregular heartbeats and vertigo disappeared. Presto-changeo!
Like diets, though, coffee fasts do not last forever. I love coffee. I live for coffee. And so inevitably, every time I would go on a coffee-asceticism jag, sooner or later I’d take up the habit again.
And over time, I forgot about the coffee/palps connection. In fact, it takes quite a long time for enough caffeine to build up in the system for me to notice anything that looks vaguely symptomatic. Takes even longer when you’re only drinking it once a day.
So, not paying much attention, I’ve been consuming two cups of coffee so thick you can stand a spoon up in it every day for years now. Week or so ago, I decided to knock it off for awhile, just to see what would happen. And lo! After about three days of caffeine detox, the BP measures went down and stayed down. They’re pretty much the same now, all well in the normal range.
Dang…who’d’ve thunk it?
If you have stress attacks or “palpitations” (sensation of your heart racing, skipping a beat, or thumping), you might want to try kicking all sources of caffeine, including soda pop. This gives you a roaring headache for a day or two (or more, depending on how much you habitually consume). You can ameliorate that, though, with a cup or two of green or white tea, both of which contain smaller amounts of caffeine than coffee and soda. Use the tea to ease yourself off the drug over the course of two to five days and then quit drinking that, too.
Hey. Nothin’ ventured, nothin’ gained. And it’s free.
I am a coffee drinker when I eat out or during my working in an office decades. A decent cup of tea is next to impossible to get when eating out, although, I did have a wonderful pot of tea and bowl of fish chowder many moons ago at Logan Airport. I drink my tea the “Irish” way, with milk and sugar.
However, my husband is a coffee drinker [he gave up coke when he left being a mechanic for Civil Engineer]. He had some issues and when he is home or working from home he does the 1/2 and 1/2. Half decaf, which is found locally in Folgers and Hills Brothers [Hills Bro. are our grease cans]. Eight O’clock also has a 1/2 & 1/2, too but it only comes in bags. It seems to work for him and does not raise his bp and he drinks it now the Midwest way – black.
I’m not sure if you want to restart coffee, but it is one way to try it and it seems to work ok with bp issues.
Glad to hear you are getting your bp where you want without pills.
Yeah, I’ve heard about the 50-50 system. I don’t know…seems to me if you’re not slugging back the caffeine, the coffee part is kinda redundant. 😉
Often you can get a decent cup of coffee, even at a Starbucks, by asking for “cafe Americano.” This is a shot of espresso in a cup of hot water. Because espresso beans are often better quality than the schlock that Starbuck’s and those use to mix with sugar, fake flavoriings, and milk, the cafe Americano tastes more like a decent cup of coffee.
Tea is good…but the good stuff is also mighty hard to find in restaurants. I’m thinking of bringing my own teabags to The Good Egg for our weekly SBA meetings. Otherwise…there’s literally nothing there. Picky, picky, picky, eh?
Coffee has similiar effects with me…The crazy thing is I can tell when I have had too much coffee/caffeine. Many years ago in another life the symptoms and chest pain was so bad they thought I was having a heart attack. After much testing the neurologist concluded the combination of nicotine with caffeine and stress caused me to suffer “classical migraines”. So I cut out the nicotine and cut back on the caffeine and the migraines subsided. BUT caffeine is addicting and I too find myself drinking too much sometimes…Hard habit to kick.
Caffeine actually seems to help when I have a migraine. But it surely does build up in the system and create exactly the phenomenon you describe. I also ended up in an ER one time, thinking I was having a heart attack. Same diagnosis: stress. No doubt aided & abetted by the caffeine habit.
Caffeine doesn’t really bother me, thank heavens. After I had my kids, I couldn’t wait to start on the coffee again.
Ditto! Dearly love coffee. But I guess that’s another one of those things one has to learn to do without in old age. Senility is such fun. 😀