 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Prostate Cancer / June 2005RP and rising BP?
Makes no sense to me and my surgeon, but my BP has been consistently high since my surgery. It ran about 120/70 or less for decades, right up through last fall, but has consistently been 140-150/80-90 since winter. Stress? (That ended with my ADT decision, as far as I can tell, but who knows?). Too much politics on TV/radio/internet? (I'm turning that crap off for a few months to see if that helps.) Physiological recovery issue from surgery? Lingering effects of single Zoladex shot? (T recovery can take many months, and it may never fully return; I'll get T tested again this fall). Coincidence, with age (61)? (I doubt it; too big, too sudden, too consistent.) I attributed it to a winter with little exercise, but the past month has included HUGE amounts of hard exercise and I "blew" a record 150/87 yesterday. Any others experience this? Ideas? BTW -- my surgeon was grinning from ear to ear at my 0.006 PSA yesterday @ > seven months post-op, confirmed by two different labs. I presume that tells him he got all that was existant at surgery. I.P. Accidentally a Lot Less I have to defer to the doctors on the cause, but mine has also climbed in the three years since surgery, much worse than yours. It was also high when I was in the service, then declined for a while after retirement. Now for the first time in my life I'm on medication for high BP. Since exercise has not lowered your BP, suggest you ask about medication. The doctors have many choices of BP medication, and it can take a while to get it right, so be patient. Congratulations on your PSA. Don't drop off the group just cause you're cured. jimhoney Standard RRP age 52, cured, no significant aftereffects > Makes no sense to me and my surgeon, but my BP has been consistently high > since my surgery. It ran about 120/70 or less for decades, right up through [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > I.P. Accidentally a Lot Less "James A Honeychuck" wrote > > Since exercise has not lowered your BP, suggest you ask about medication. > The doctors have many choices of BP medication, and it can take a while to > get it right, so be patient. > > Congratulations on your PSA. Don't drop off the group just cause you're > cured. First action: cut the political media, go back to music. Second: start cutting salt (never had a reason to before). Third: see the doc on 12 July. I'd like to hold off on the BP meds until absolutely necessary. Another month or three won't matter after a lifetime of low BP. "Cured"? Wish we thought so, but the charted odds of PSA returning within five years still hit 80%. I'll expect biochemical recurrence by five and claim a victory if it doesn't materialize. As for dropping off . . . still way too much to learn. I asked my doc about some of the pertinent new studies posted here in the past few months; none work for me. I'll post his brief comments when I have more time. Speaking of which . . . time, rather than being "cured", will cut into my presence here. There's just too much not getting done, and I need to try to regain some of the months this beast stole from me over the winter. And there's another reason for me to back off somewhat: my memory of the research I did is fading as though I were on Zoladex; I simply ain't got as much to say as I did a few months ago. (I'd also guess the ripples haven't all dissipated completely from the pond, either.) '-) The final reason? Surf's up! I.P. hi i.p. - i never had high blood pressure for 55 years. even when i weighed 325, it was 125/82. after i got the news of the pca, it skyrocketed. i came over in a snow storm and with the weather and the bad news of pca, it was 166/110. even when i went back to the VA clinic, it was 130/90, so they put me on BP meds and for the two month wait for surgery, it stayed in the high normal range. after surgery, they said my BP got down to 80/50 that night. for 18 months, it's been in the low 120's/70's. then, when i got the word that i might have a recurrence of pca, it has been in the 140's and they shifted it to another BP med and it's dropped a little bit. now, i have to go in for a stress test next thursday. no telling what that is going to say. yeah, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. ~ curtis knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional "Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so." http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc > hi i.p. - i never had high blood pressure for 55 years. even when i > weighed 325, it was 125/82. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > > yeah, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Sounds like I should add conscious relaxation to my BP regimen, too. I can't imagine any physiological changes which could spike my BP this quickly, but stress is certainly credible. The wife says I've gone from "intense" to "cranky" over the past few months. I.P. IP Don't worry about your blood pressure too much especially at the doctors office. It will normally be high from anticipation of doom. Mine would get up to 160/ 100 at the office and doc would want to send me for a stress test. He also told me to monitor it at home especially in the mornings. Before watching the news. I found mine would be in the normal range most of the time. I attribute the highs to stress and not enough exercise. One time when I went to the VA for a checkup the nurse told me my pressure was high and that she would take it again. She told me to close my eyes and think of being at the beach watching the sunset. She took it again in about 5 mins. and it was 120/70. I would resist taking any meds. Try focusing on more pleasent topics and keep up daily walks. Turn off the TV. Don't worry too much about situational stress, especially at the doctors office. I've followed a lot of your post and it would appear that you are getting too heavily involved in the research aspect of prostate cancer. Yours is probably cured like mine but like most of us we won't let it go. I asked my GP Doc for a prescription for androderm and he said he wanted another PSA first. The results came back 0.1 from Quest labs. He told me I still had some PSA. I told him that both times Quest did my PSA it was 0.1 and that they for some reason don't use the caret in front of the results. Four days later I went to AcuLab and had an ultrasensitive test done and it came back <0.06. I called Quest but got nowhere with them. I was talking to a foreigner and they didn't have a clue. The only two times I ever had a result that wasn't <0.1 was when I went to Quest Lab. I'm now two years post LRP and am 64. Ron S. Ron has made an excellent point, and I kick myself for not making that point in my earlier post. My in-office BP readings are useless. They soar due to "white coat syndrome." So I have a cuff-and-meter device which I use at home. I record those readings daily and make a copy for the doctor. jimhoney > IP > Don't worry about your blood pressure too much especially at the doctors [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > > Ron S. Thanks, Ron, for the thorough discussion. It brings up several valid points. But my BP has been between 95/65 (just a few years ago, during months of hard muscular and aerobic exercise 4-8 hours every day) and 125/70 (during more sedentary periods), and that's in the presence of white coats. For the last several months it's been > 140/80. I do consciously relax when having my BP measured, but don't want to overdo it enough to artificially lower the readings. Something's changed, and I need to find out what and correct it. I'm sure you're right that I was stressed when researching my cancers last winter, but once I made my treatment decisions I pretty much stopped reading about it unless someone put an interesting article in front of my face. I.P. > IP > Don't worry about your blood pressure too much especially at the doctors [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > Ron S. > Makes no sense to me and my surgeon, but my BP has been consistently high > since my surgery. It ran about 120/70 or less for decades, right up through [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > included HUGE amounts of hard exercise and I "blew" a record 150/87 > yesterday. Do you have a home blood pressure meter? There is a condition called white coat hypertension where your bp is high when measured in the doctor's office but normal at home. If you do get such a device, make sure the cuff is at heart level. There can be a significant increase in the systolic if your arm is below heart level, as high as 10 points or more. If your bp remains high, ask your doctor about medication. He will probably start off with a mild diuretic, which should have minimal side effects. But before that, you could try carefully monitoring the amount of sodium in your diet. I found I was taking in much more than I had thought and when I reduced it to less than 1.5 grams a day, my blood pressure went down to more like a normal range. > Any others experience this? Ideas? > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > I.P. Accidentally a Lot Less My usual daily box of salt (?) has never been a problem before, but I will cut it back as part of my shotgun approach to the problem to see if meds can be avoided. Diuretics dehydrate us, introducing a whole 'nuther set of medical threats. No, thanks. I work hard to deliberately keep my hydration up as it is. And it's easy to get a gram or two of salt in one can of soup or beans, which is but a small part of my daily diet. Something changed over just a very few months to spike my BP, and I need to determine what that was. I will dig out our sphygmomanometer, but won't put much faith in it until I can compare its readings side by side to what the nurses measure with their "professional" units. I.P "Leonard Evens" <len@math.northwestern.edu> wrote > > Do you have a home blood pressure meter? There is a condition called > white coat hypertension where your bp is high when measured in the [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > thought and when I reduced it to less than 1.5 grams a day, my blood > pressure went down to more like a normal range. My surgery was in August 2003, and last year I ended up on two drugs for high blood pressure. Both had to be increased from the original dosage before getting it down. No one suggested a relationship between the RRP and the rising BP, but I was having readings like 160/94. So, who knows? > Makes no sense to me and my surgeon, but my BP has been consistently high > since my surgery. It ran about 120/70 or less for decades, right up through [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > I.P. Accidentally a Lot Less > Makes no sense to me and my surgeon, but my BP has been consistently high > since my surgery. It ran about 120/70 or less for decades, right up through [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > I.P. Accidentally a Lot Less I.P., There is no question that low endogenous levels of T are associated with high blood pressure in men. If you check "Testosterone and Other Anabolic Steroids as Cardiovascular Drugs" in American Journal of Therapeutics, 1999, 6:167-174, you will see that virtually all cardiovascular risk factors, including blood pressure, are linked to low T. To quote from the paper: "In men, testosterone has been shown to have antianginal effects, and endogenous levels have an inverse relationship to systolic blood pressure." Ed Friedman Makes me wonder how thoroughly my T level rebounded from my one-month experiment with Zoladex. in February. We plan to check my T in December. Maybe if my BP drops back to normal I can resume watching the news and reading the Op Ed page. I.P. "Ed Friedman" <ed@math.uchicago.edu> wrote > > There is no question that low endogenous levels of T are associated with > high blood pressure in men. If you check "Testosterone and Other Anabolic [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Ed Friedman Ed...How do you square that refernce with the work of Zmuda, et. al.. who's right?..Ron Am J Epidemiol. 1997 Oct 15;146(8):609-17; Longitudinal relation between endogenous testosterone and cardiovascular disease risk factors in middle-aged men. A 13-year follow-up of former Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial participants; Zmuda JM, Cauley JA, Kriska A, Glynn NW, Gutai JP, Kuller LH "There was little relation between change in testosterone and change in total and low density lipoprotein cholesterol or blood pressure. This longitudinal study confirms a gradual decline in total testosterone levels with advancing age in older men and provides evidence that lifestyle and psychosocial factors are related to this decline. Decreases in endogenous testosterone levels with age in men are associated with potentially unfavorable changes in triglycerides and high density lipoprotein cholesterol." > Ed...How do you square that refernce with the work of Zmuda, et. al.. > who's right?..Ron Ron, The paper I was referring to was reviewing the entire literature, and making conlcusions based on the preponderance of studies. E.g., they say: "The majority of studies evaluating the effects of exogenous androgens on plasma lipids and lipoproteins have shown reductions in LDL cholesterol." Note that they are saying the majority, not every study. Personally, I think that all past studies evaluating the effects of exogenous T are flawed, because no efforts were made to prevent the conversion of T to DHT and to E2. Ed Friedman I don't know if any of us really knows what happens to us after removal of the prostate. I believe it's a more important organ than many believe. Especially how it affects our hormones. Three months after my surgery I had my testosterone checked and it was 375. A year later I had it tested and it dropped to 315. Eight months later it was 382. I checked it again one week later at my own expense and it came back at 452. The test were done around noon each time. Now my HDL is an other issue. Total was 209 a year ago and HDL was 40. This spring total was 192 and HDL was 28. Not so good. My VA GP put me on 250mg. niacin. Haven't had a test since to determine if it helped. I had first thought that removal of the prostate might be the cause of my falling testosterone. Now I'm wondering if it wasn't do to the extended time I spent in surgery that shut down my system and has taken a long time for my (Nuts) to get back to normal. I have no other explanation for the rise in testosterone. As for IP Freely and others recently out of surgery, I suspect it's too soon to come to any conclusions about much of anything for the first couple of years. I'm now reaching the point where I realize how much emotions drive our decision making, not only before treatment but for some time after treatment. By being two years post-op, I'm now becomeing more relaxed about the whole experience and not fretting about the future especially recurrence. I believe the statistics on recurrence is greatly flawed by including pre psa era patients. I believe if your numbers are right for surgery and your post pathology report is clean, it's unlikely you will have recurrence in your lifetime. And that's my opinion. Ron S. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.