Blood pressure question

My blood pressure is always low. 90-95/60s. It will occasionally go down to 87 over 60s.
My question is this. The cardiologist says go ahead and exercise, and it will raise your bp, but I read lots of places that exercise over time will LOWER bp.
Soooo, here is my question.
Is it possible that my complete inactivity has made my bp lower?
How does this work? If I start exercising, will this in the long run RAISE or LOWER my blood pressure even further?
I am drinking a lot of fluids and trying to eat more salt to raise it. I was told years ago by a doctor to not let anyone convince me to take drugs to raise my bp because that usually ends up a disaster.
Sooo, exercise or not?

[CrohnieToo]

You might want to read my post in this forum:

Pulse Pressure As An Indicator of Heart Disease

It might relieve some of your concerns about your low blood pressure and/or give you something to search for more information about.

[jrbon]

I am not able to find the indicated post but l thing that your BP is perfect. Do you have any symptoms ?


Jesus

[jrbon]

Hops !! I already saw the post. Jesus

[TX35]

I think that if you always had a blood pressure of 90/60, you're blood pressure is perfect for you. Your diastolic number (60) get lower sometimes? If so, did you have some symptoms of low blood pressure like orthostatic hypotension when you are sit and change position to a standing one (symptoms like lighthehead, dizziness, fast pulse rate). Do you feel tired? If so, maybe your blood pressure is too low for you.

For the exercise, it will increase the blood pressure while you will do the exercises but in a long term view, at rest, your blood pressure will decrease. Also, being inactive may lower your blood pressure, since I experience the same thing than you... I stop all kind of physical activities since I start having chronic chest pain and irregular blood pressure... Since i'm not active physically, I can tell you the difference, I feel more tired, I have a lot of muscles pain and when it's time to do something physical I have more chest pain and my blood pressure decrease and don't increase. It's maybe a part of my anxiety who do all of those weird things to my blood pressure...who know.

You are inactive physically since how many time?

Maybe start with light exercises will help, i'm thinking about small walk of 5-10 minutes day each day and increase by 5 minutes when you feel you are ready and able to do it. The goal is not to start aerobic exercises who will ask too much from your heart and make you feel tired... go slow...

I plan to stop smoking this week and start to take small walks... it will certainly help me, will see if it'S improving things for me.

For the pulse pressure as an indicator of heart disease, it's not recognize by many Cardiologist as a good predictor of heart diseases, they only start to make some link between the pulse pressure and heart diseases... only the future will tell us if it's good or not... I have a high pulse pressure normally... with a blood pressure of 110/50, I reach the 60 pulse pressure who is apparently BAD for a young male like me... and strangely all the Cardiologist will tell you that it's better to have a low blood pressure than a high one... but 1 1/2 months ago I had a normal-bordeline blood pressure of around 135/85, who give a 50 pulse pressure, so you see it's 10 points lower so it's suppose to be more good for my heart but I had almost high blood pressure who is not good for the heart at all... so who know what is good or not, they need to do more studies to find out if it's really bad or not to have a higher pulse pressure.

[bbxx]

Thank you everyone.:)

[TX35]

For the drugs to increase the blood pressure, I was put on the drug call "Florinef" years ago because I was on an old antidepressant med who was giving to me a low blood pressure and I can tell you that it's not good at all. It's keeping the salt into your blood so the blood pressure don't drop but at the same time it can lead to too high blood pressure and give some nasty side-effects like big headache, very slow pulse rate and hypertensive crisis... I will never take that med again.

My Cardiologist told me also to put more salt into my food and drink more water and it's doing nothing to increase my blood pressure... To be honnest in the past I was craving for salty food and now I hate salty food and it's seem that the more salt I add to my food or my water and the lower will be my blood pressure... I don't know what is the problem with me...but I hope it's working better for you with the salt. Also drinking more water is annoying cause I need to go to the bathroom all the time...

[CrohnieToo]

You can find the post I referred to at:

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/show/1576075

[CrohnieToo]

Under age 50 diastolic is more predictive. At ages 50-59 systolic is most predictive and after 60 the pulse pressure is most important. As one ages there is a gradual shift in the strength of prediction of risk from diastolic to systolic to Pulse Pressure.

[TX35]

I read that on wikipedia months ago and ask my Cardiologist, he said that it's more commont see in old peoples (the pulse pressure tend to be higher with low diastolic and high systolic blood pressure) BUT they don't use it as a prediction for cardiovascular risks diseases in peoples under 65... some studies show that even if someone have a high pulse pressure after 65 yo, it's not increasing the risks for heart diseases at all... and that's why it's important for some peoples who have high blood pressure to continue to take their blood pressure meds, cause those meds tend to increase the pulse pressure BUT they lower the blood pressure and it's a good thing to have a lower blood pressure , MUCH better than stay in the high level, who will increase a lot more the risk of cardiovascular diseases!!!

And for the diastolic, it can vary a lot and many factors can contribute to it's elevation, not only coronary diseases or other cardio problems... Anxiety increase my diastolic a lot more than my systolic and all the heart tests I had show that my heart is in a perfect condition... My diastolic blood pressure can reach 110 when i'm in a middle of a panic attack or in a situation that I fear... only peoples who have high diastolic blood pressure all the time will have long term problem and increase risk...

Even lower blood pressure can be dangerous, not just high blood pressure... I think everyone is different, someone can have a fast pulse rate and normal-high blood pressure and live a long life and never have a problem with the heart... and someone else can have low blood pressure or normal and die from a heart attack... it's all linked to factors like diet, exercises, anxiety-stress, smoking and many other things...