Regular high blood pressure / family history

[sleepwouldbenice]

Hi all
My DHs family has a history of heart issues. His mum dies in her 40s from suffer heart failure. His dad also died of heart issues although he was much older and this would at least in part be due to lifestyle issues

My DH has high blood pressure. He's on meds. He exercises regularly, running or cross trainer. Our diet and drinking are ok, not excellent.

He has always had a negative attitude with regard to his blood pressure, saying it's inevitable, he'll die young, there is nothing he can do etc.

the key issue to me is that he often doesn't take his blood pressure when he is supposed to. So he'll be put on a mix of meds, they seem to work in terms of bringing the levels down, but then x months later he avoids checking up on himself, it drags on, when he finally does it the results are high again etc. surely he's doing himself harm here by delaying changes to treatment ? Surely there are always other options to try?

Any advice appreciated

Hopeful bump

Tricky; so he doesn't believe bringing down his BP with meds is going to extend his healthy life?

He just thinks that he's battling against the inevitable, that there is not much he can do

I get it to a certain extent. He's doing quite a lot but seeing little progress, or it slips back.

But I assume there is always something more to do?

Sometimes it's better to have the surgery do the BP check. When people do it at home they get anxious and it's artificially high, or they get anxious and don't do it.
Might be better for him to be careful about his meds and get the checks at the surgery periodically.

Thinking you will die around the same age as your parents is very common, whether they died age 42 or 102.

For your DH, thinking he'll die around 40 is clearly stressful but probably has some positives too: no need to plan for a retirement, living for the moment and not having to worry about his health or take tablets he doesn't want to.

However he doesn't sound as if he has thought about this accurately. He is a fit young man, who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink too much, exercises, no diabetic - the only risk factors he has are his family history and his high blood pressure.

He isn't the same person as his mum or dad - and you imply that his dad at least has a lot more risk factors for heart disease than he has due to lifestyle.

It's also common for people to not fully understand what their parents died from, especially if your DH was in his teens/20s and not medical. His mum may not have shared what was going on with her young son. A woman dying in her 40s from heart failure is incredibly rare which makes me wonder if something else was going on.

But the biggest thing he hasn't considered as how much medicine has changed since his mum died. The whole of cardiology has developed so much in the last 20 years it's barely recognizable. A man developing severe heart failure in his 40s would have medication available to him that wasn't even invented when his mum was ill, and would expect to be assessed for a transplant. The standard treatment for a heart attack now is completely different to 20 years ago.

Yes, high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease and a life long condition. But it is also totally treatable - as he has proven by the fact that when he takes his meds and keeps up with the monitoring, he gets better!

He may feel 'there isn't a lot I can do' but actually he is doing most of it - not smoking, eating healthy, exercising (which sounds already like more than his DF did). The other thing he can do is take his meds regularly and follow the GP plan for monitoring it. Which is dull, but effective.

Thanks but unfortunately the pattern continues in the surgery

Thank you v much for your long and supportive reply!
I probably should have said he's in his mid 50s. He's had high blood pressure for about 5 years I think
In terms of his mum, yes he was in his mid teens at the time, so mid 80s and yes much has changed. She had a sudden heart attack, that's all he knows really.
Just a slight correction if I have misled. He doesn't stop taking his meds at any time that I know of, he just avoids doing the ongoing checking of seeing if his blood pressure is still under control.

I don't really know how often he's supposed to check it, but after a while I ask, he ignores, I ask again etc....in the end he checks it and the meds impact seems to gave wained and his bp is high again.

So I guess underlying it is getting worse, so he avoids confirming this, I suppose....

It's good to hear that he doesn't stop taking the meds. Does he have regular check ups at the gp to check his BP?

Why don't you get a home blood pressure machine (wrist or arm) and suggest that you BOTH do it regularly to keep an eye on any problems? Once a month would be fine I should think, no hardship really.

My grandfather died at 52 of a heart attack. My father has followed the same pattern, but instead he has had a quadruple heart bypass and a new valve. 50 years ago he wouldn't have survived. Because of this family history, I've been on statins for many years and watch my BP. High BP is not a death sentence anymore as long as it's kept under control. By not checking his BP regularly your DP won't know if he needs to increase his meds.

Hope you can persuade him to stop being so fatalistic and actually monitor his health better. Good luck.

Mid 80s - so no cholesterol testing, no statins, no home BP monitors, goodness knows what the treatment for high blood pressure was. And everyone smoked like chimneys.

DH and I recently watched The Singing Detective which is set on a medical ward in the 80s. No coronary care unit and the treatment for a heart attack was basically spend a week in bed and hope you don't die. It couldn't be more different now.

Do you know what readings he gets for his BP? Even the definition of high blood pressure has changed since the 80s so it's treated much earlier than in the past.

One off readings aren’t much use. You have to take twice a day for a week and be sitting down property. There are apps to use. Also be calm and relaxed first. I usually take 2 and put I. The lowest. Anyway if he hasn’t got other risk factors and it’s not super high then it’s probably ok.

if you can talk to h8m calmly persuade him to take his bo fo4 a week and do something if persistentltpy high…

Thanks all

He does have the machine at home and does do it properly when he finally concedes to assessing it again. Unfortunately always has risen when he does it. Good idea that I do it too.
He just hates the increasing meds and feeling he can't improve it and it's a downhill slope. But I always say that you have to keep an eye and face up to any symptoms and ailments, to get help....

Part of this is accepting he has a long term condition. Yes there are always things you can do yourself but for loads of them - diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, high blood pressure ... you often need medication.

And there is a period of faffing about trying to get the treatment right. Or it's right for ages and then needs sorting again for no apparent reason.

It doesn't mean the condition is getting worse, or he isn't trying hard enough - it's just how long term conditions behave.

I have high blood pressure which is controlled with medication. Similar story, family history of high blood pressure both my parents died of heart attacks at the ages of 58 and 62. Paternal grandfather died at age 61. I have had high blood pressure since my early 20s, it has always been considered borderline 130-140/90 ish and until my 40s drs wouldn’t give medication for it. At age 40 I insisted on trying medication to bring it down and this has been successful and is now normal. I find that taking readings regularly helps me to overcome the anxious feeling. If I haven’t taken it for a while I feel myself getting anxious about it and my readings are higher than normal. I then take it every few days sometimes 2-3 times a day and find the more I do it the less anxious I feel and the numbers start to come down. I also take 3+ readings over a period of 10-20 minutes if my first one is higher than it should be. I sit quietly between readings and generally by the 3rd reading it’s come down nicely.

That's a good viewpoint thanks

Thank you for your experience. I appreciate many people have this, and of course much worse

Oh, I have so much fellow feeling for your DH!

Almost all my family die of strokes (both parents, two grandparents, maternal aunt....) and I go through phases where I just feel like I'm waiting for it to happen and what's the point of carrying on? Most of the time I can cope but it's hard sometimes.

I'm on a low dose blood pressure med, exercise and eat healthily. The one bright spot is some of the family did have theirs quite late in life so I try and think about delaying it as long as possible.

It's so frustrating when you're trying to do everything you can - my latest readings have gone up a bit (although not enough to need a dose change) and I'm cursing like a sailor!

Doing the readings is a nightmare. I take them over a period of maybe a month, don't look at them, keep them in the memory and then look at them about a week after taking the last one. I wish I could do it like @cassgate (which sounds infinitely more sensible) but even the thought of looking at a "live" reading sends me into extreme panic. I did it once and never again.

I really wish I could send a magic solution to your DH!! Other than to say, he is not alone.

Thank you

I feel for your DH too. I have inherited HBP and have to take medication.

I also don't monitor mine as just the thought of taking it is enough to send it soaring. It gets checked at the GP maybe once a year if I accept the annual review ( I don't always).

Does he suffer with the drug side effects? My quality of life is much lower on the medication and I would be very resistant to increasing the dose or taking a second drug myself.

It can feel like such a balancing act between checking which feels like the responsible thing to do - but knowing that the act of doing so will actually contribute to the problem it's supposed to solve.

My dose is low enough not to have serious side effects so far - although it's difficult to tell with the aches and pains I attribute to being in my fifties - I'd prefer not to increase the dose as I know this will increase the likelihood.