Tuesday

Discovery of the day: Things is always better'n they seem

After listening to all of my whining yesterday, my boyfriend helped me out of my funk by suggesting adding fruit to my BAS. Last night I did a BAS topped with mango, orange, cucumber, cannellini beans, toasted sliced almonds, and a sherry vinegar/orange juice vinaigrette. I'm doing something similar today, although I have peas and avocado instead of cucumber.

It's a small change, but it seems to be enough to get my head back in the game.

The scale is back to where I expected today (whew!) and there's been another benefit that I keep forgetting to mention: my blood pressure seems to have dropped nearly 20 points in the past two months! Hard to believe, as I've only lost 10 lbs and I wasn't extremely overweight to begin with, maybe ~10%-15%. But it's true!

This is very good news, as my bp has crept up slowly but steadily over the past decade or so to something around 135/84. I was starting to get concerned, especially last fall when I was at the doc and the nurse read my bp as something horrific like 171/92. Even worse, I got the same reading at home that evening, so I couldn't blame it on the stress of the hospital visit. Which I didn't, really, since it had never bothered me before.

I was able to determine that that spike was likely caused by the large amounts (2400 mg) of ibuprofen I had been taking after my wisdom tooth extraction a few weeks prior. My doc didn't believe me, but I did find multiple sources online (yes, credible ones!) that said Vit I, as I call it, can cause (or contribute to) hypertension. I quit the Vit I and my bp went from the scary 150/? average back down to the usual 135/84. Proof enough in my book.

Even so, 135/84 was just too high, especially since I don't have any other scary medical issues. The only thing was that at my last physical, my doc mentioned that my sodium was high, but I didn't think much about that.

Until I changed what I ate. Last week, on a whim, I decided to take my bp. I hadn't done it for some months -- I didn't want to know. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of a long day, after climbing the stairs and hauling around laundry baskets, my bp reading was 118/78! And the next morning, it was like 108/72. Yay!

I am relieved, yet curious. The 10 lb loss can't be it -- it's not that dramatic. My current theory is that I'm prone to salt-sensitive hypertension. Whatever the cause, I'll take it!

And pass the romaine, please.