For years I had taken blood pressure medicine and that kept my blood pressure in check. I was very conscious of the consequences of high blood pressure because my father had died of a heart attack. He started to take heart medicine and blood pressure medicine right after his first of five heart attacks. He was 48 years old at the time of that first very bad attack. But I have been keeping an eye on my blood pressure since I turned 30 so I think that I have an added advantage over him.
What’s all this got to do with Meniere’s disease?
Well, about 2 years before my Meniere’s started I was feeling lethargic and light headed. I went to my regular doctor and he took an EKG. The EKG looked a little irregular so he sent me to a cardiologist for tests.
I went through a battery of tests such as the treadmill and another test where I was put in a chair and spun around. These tests came back fine according to the cardiologist but he told me that my blood pressure was 90/60! He advised me to stop taking the blood pressure pills but to keep track of my BP.
When my meniere’s started my blood pressure was okay, a little high, but okay. It started to come down again when I went on the first diuretic that I took for meniere’s. It was going to be a balancing act to keep my blood pressure right and continue to take the diuretic.
I didn’t stay on the diuretic long (it didn’t seem to help with my meniere’s). After two years and my gentamicin injections I went back on a diuretic, triamterene-hctz.
I had my blood pressure checked a few weeks ago and it was sky rocketing and I have been feeling like I am going to have an attack almost on a daily basis.
Is there some connection between my blood pressure and Meniere’s disease? I have to wonder if my strange bp doesn’t in some way affect my meniere’s disease. When ever there is a problem with it there also are problems with the MM.
I haven’t read any thing that makes a connection but I have to wonder if there is.
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Thanks
Saturday, July 4, 2009
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6 comments:
What a coincidence, I was looking into this very area myself yesterday! Whenever I've had it checked I've always had relatively low blood pressure, which generally doesn't seem to be regarded as a problem in the way that high blood pressure is. However, looking into it, many of the symptoms are similar to Meniere's and I'm wondering whether sometimes when I'm feeling rough it's my blood pressure rather than the disease; I've had long stretches of feeling bad but with no attacks. Or maybe the Meniere's is magnified by blood pressure problems, in the same way that other issues - tiredness, stress and so on - seem to seek out the weakness of our condition.
Anyway, I've ordered a blood pressure monitor from Amazon and will be checking myself out very regularly to look for correlations.
It's difficult to say which controls the other bp or mm.
thanks for the comment
David/Jeff: don't be surprised if you discover 'blood pressure' has very little if anything to do with your Meniere symptoms/attacks. I have faithfully monitored mine for twelve years now, and have found absolutely no correlation. Wish the answer were that simple!
You may be right.
thanks for the comment!
Talking about heart problems, I was taking part in a phone survey last week and the lady asked me about health problems. I said I had something she had probably never heard of, Meniere's Disease. She said that actually her father had it, but that when he woke up from heart bypass surgery his dizziness had gone!
Seems he'd had it pretty rough before that, with ongoing problems compounded by abuse from people thinking he was drunk and so on.
that's interesting about the dizziness being gone after the surgery. It's strange what causes and what stops the spinning.
I certainly feel bad for anyone that has this terrible disorder and also have to put up with people thinking he was drunk!
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