ABSOLUTELY GUTTED!

[alijoy60]

I'm a nurse (that's not relevant but thought I'd chuck it in there!) and I've had high BP (medicated) since I was about 30. I had pre eclampsia (high BP plus other things!) very very early in all 4 pregnancies. I smoked for many years, since my teens.

My Dad had high BP from age 40 and died after several heart attacks, (his first massive one at 60), DVTs and vascular dementia. He did not smoke or drink and was always slim and active.

My Mum is 84, looks like death, has terrible heart function as a result of damage from undiagnosed underactive thyroid), (and has had from age 65 - so bad, she cannot have any kind of surgery under any kind of anaesthetic), has just been in hospital after a "turn", and has just smoked 220 cigs in ONE WEEK!

BUT she has never had high BP in her life.

Make of that what you will!

This stuff is all guidelines - IMO a lot of what happens to us is genetic, and for some, nicotine does raise their BP to an unhealthy level. But clearly, not all.

I also had pancreatitis last year and the number of times I was asked how much I drink (alcohol abuse being the commonest cause) - er, I don't, except a snowball at Christmas. Seriously, I'd rather have a cuppa any day, and do.

However, the Bendrofluazide "water" tablet I had started 12 days previously to improve control of my high BP has this dreadful, potentially fatal, illness as a possible side effect......

So, not everything applies to everyone. And the "cure" is often worse than what it is intended to heal......you have to balance risk, is all.

A happily whiffling Ali x

[Chrissie]

brilliant post ali

sorry to hear about your dad though

[Tetsab]

Just read out Ali's entire post to my partner, his comment: Wise. Very, very wise.

I wholeheartedly agree and add my thanks for posting this.

[charleski]

Mar 9, 2012 0:09:06 GMT Martin said:

but the first time I used the bp monitor my mind got me into an anxious state so it course it went up lol.. doh!.. so I breathed, relaxed... and tried again and it was fine..

the only thing now is I'm addicted to checking everyone else blood pressure when they come round lol

LOL.

Ok, the trick to measuring BP is to take lots of measurements. Blood pressure naturally varies to accommodate demand (or things that are related to increased demand, like fear - if you see a lion about to attack you your blood pressure will go up, because you're going to be running very fast), so one single measurement really doesn't have much significance. The trick is to measure it many times over at least a week, and always measure it when you're physically at rest. You only get a true idea by looking at the average.

As far as ecigs and the medical profession goes, unfortunately there's a lot of politics involved. For anyone who's interested, I'd recommend reading the paper that Phil Busardo linked on this page. It's written by a couple of academics involved in public health policy and towards the end they talk about the antipathy that the anti-smoking groups in the US have towards ecigs. (That's after they list a bunch of studies that show that ecigs are many orders of magnitude safer than smoking tobacco.)

Though some of this may be ancient fall-out over the 'light cigarette' con that was tried by the tobacco companies, a lot of it is because ecigs are fundamentally a harm reduction rather than harm cessation measure. In other words, ecigs are a way of enjoying the act of smoking (which involves several factors, such as the physical sensation or 'throat hit', the flavour, and also involves taking nicotine) in a manner which won't give you cancer and COPD, rather than being a part of a program aimed at getting people to give up entirely (though there's no reason they can't used for that).

It's an unfortunate, but very real, fact that there's a vocal element of the medical profession who are against any use of drugs by 'non-qualified' personnel if there's even a remote possibility of harm. And therefore they don't like the idea of people routinely medicating themselves with nicotine. All doctors of course, myself included, prescribe medication every day that can cause far more harm than ecigs - in fact we often prescribe it knowing that such harm will occur, in the informed opinion that it will be a lesser harm than the disease that it is treating. But sometimes people in the medical profession lose sight of the fact that doctors are not the only people capable of making an informed opinion.

In a nutshell, the nicotine from vaping does carry some risk, but then so does crossing the street. It hasn't been around long enough for proper long-term longitudinal cohort studies, but every analysis shows that it's massively safer than smoking tobacco. It takes time to produce the full weight of scientific evidence needed to prove this safety, but all the preliminary data is very clear that every smoker who switches to vaping is removing a significant and major source of harm.

[maccafan]

Great post Charleski. That Harvard paper was very illuminating..

www.hsph.harvard.edu/centers-institutes/population-development/files/article.jphp.pdf

Thanks man.

[Chrissie]

Thank you Charleski for that excellent post I wish more doctors felt the same as you do.

[Perpetua]

Brilliant post Charleski . . . pity that more in the medical profession aren't as enlightened as you.

[Tetsab]

Just wanted to add my thanks as well - must admit that the bulk of my own research (as a consumer) was carried out prior to my first e-cig purchase, now well over 3 years ago, and things have actually come quite a long way since then.

Keeping abreast of attitudes in the scientific community is amazingly time-consuming and not always terribly illuminating so I tend to largely rely on the forums to stay up-to-date-ish nowadays despite obvious bias!

(Mostly I'm just delighted to see that Charleski is still dropping by and happy to contribute his view from within the medical profession!!)

[Phoenix .]

Just thought I would share with you;

My BP has come down from 177 to 143.

[Perpetua]

Great news Phoenix!

[bel]

great news Phoenix!!

[Chrissie]

Brilliant news Phoenix

[Anne (fuzzy)]

Excellent Phoenix Keep it up down!

[nicky]

Mar 24, 2012 19:40:08 GMT Phoenix . said:

Just thought I would share with you;

My BP has come down from 177 to 143.

Well done, tell me what you're secret is cos since i've packed in mine has gone up pmsl.

[Phoenix .]

nicky, I have done nothing different other than vape, but my stress levels have gone, I don't worry about things and my self esteem has increased with all the support I get these days.