21 year old active male with hypertension

[u0462639]

i am a 21 year old male. I am very active and do not drink or smoke. I am 6'3" and 160 ibs. I worry a lot about my health. I recently took my blood pressure and it was 140/65 with a pulse of 65. I was confused so i have taken the reading numerous times since and on different moitors and all of the readings are realative. Is their a chance that this is white coat syndrome or what else. I currently take no medications but have been told that I stress a lot and have anxiety through genetics. Is this something I should be worried about?

[heart8]

I have no real medical knowledge but thought that what I do know may be of some help.
In order for you to be diagnosed with high blood pressure you have to have a systolic reading(top number)  over 140, a dyastolic reading(bottom number) over 90, or both. It has to be consistently high over several months to actually warrant a diagnosis.
Worrying about your blood pressure can definitely make it go up. I would say if you are genuinely worried the best thing to do is discuss it with your GP, at the least this may stop you worrying about it.

[NTB]

some things to consider:

a consistent systolic of 140 will cause damage over time

what portion of a day are you at that level? It is possible that stressing over the measurement can make it go high. But then what else causes a similar stress reaction in ordinary days?

term: you have "Isolated Diastolic Hypertension"

term: you have a high "Pulse Pressure" (the difference between the two), which is not good

how's your salt intake? some people are very reactive

you're not eating real licorice, are you?

[u0462639]

It is during all times of the day although I did take it today and it was 117/79. I eat a pretty healthy diet and I would guess a normal amount of salt. And I hate licorice! Thanks for your reply

[NTB]

Well then, you're quite lucky, eh? :)   That is quite a big drop. If you can isolate what you did (or didn't do), you might beat your ISH without any drugs. E.g. you might have been less stressed, or just eaten, or hadn't eaten for a while. Whatever it might have been.

One note: if a person gets a reading that is way off from what they expect, it's a good idea to wait a couple of minutes and take it again.

I believe docs used to dismiss white coat syndrome. But eventually they figured that if a person gets high BP at the office, they might be getting it on and off all throughout the day elsewhere. High BP is still high BP, regardless of its origin, in a way.

BP that changes a lot might be due to some endocrine dysfunction - or maybe not.

Just to show how nothing's simple: now there is the opposite concept of "masked hypertension", in which the patient is okay in the office but has HTN elsewhere.