Off Blood Pressure Meds

Went in to see the doc last week for my annual physical and he looked at my blood pressure history and decided to take me off the meds. I've been averaging 109/65 for the past year or so and he felt it was stable enough to try coming off. Since going on the meds in 2005, I have changed my lifestyle and started exercising every day and doing so lost about 70 pounds, but could still lose another 50 or so.

It's been a week, no noticeable difference so far. Don't know how I feel about it yet, I've been on them so long. I wonder how long it would take for my blood pressure to increase again if it was going to. I would love to stay off them, but don't want to go back to the numbers I had before. Is it normal for people to be able to get off these meds completely?

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Jon

[erijon]

Sorry about that double post, I was posting it on the expert forum and it didn't show up there, just kind of disappeared after I hit submit. I then decided to post it here without looking. The first one was here instead, not sure how.........

[mammo]

I'm about to do the same.  I've been on BP meds for many years, but thru diet, exercise and reducing my stress, my numbers have been low.  I have been taking 1/4 of my BP pill a day for one year and it has stayed down, so now he wants me to stop.  I think hypertension can be reduced, by what we have done.  I have a BP monitor at home which I use to keep track of my BP and often take it with me to the doctors to make sure it's reading the same as their's.  This is a good way for you to keep a check on yours, and if it starts climbing back up, you know what to do. Hypertension is controllable thru exercise, diet and lowering stress, so I hope we can both remain off of the meds. I'm sure your medication is out of your system by now, so hopefully this is a good sign!
Take care......

[kenkeith]

It seems reasonable to expect the medication is not necessary if the underlying cause is corrected.  But as you know there are individual that have high blood pressure secondary to another medical condition and sometimes the cause is not known.  

My doctor wants the blood pressure is as low as possible without side effects...but that is treatment for heart failure, and I can go along with that as there are no side effects.

Half life for the medication I take (lisinopril) is 12 hours (half remains).  Interestingly, no matter what the half-life of a medication is, it takes about 4 half-life units for the concentration of a medication in the system to reach a steady state. Thus if you begin taking a medication with a half-life of 24 hours, on the fifth day the rate of intake of the drug will approximately equal the rate of elimination. If the half-life is 12 hours, you'll reach that state at the beginning of the third day.