Cardiologist explains why some young people can resolve certain kinds of hypertension with lifestyle correction.
On the face of it, you would never expect someone like 38-year-old Kemil Koshy to be having high blood pressure (BP). A physiotherapist who knows about human anatomy is rarely expected to not understand his own body. A person whose blood tests indicate his basic parameters, like blood sugar, cholesterol, liver and kidney function, to be in range is not expected to be at high risk. That too a person without a family history of chronic illnesses. So the day he had a headache and had a high BP of 169/100 mmHg, this young man from Bengaluru thought the machine had malfunctioned. His next reading was 166/98 mmHg. Later readings also never went down below 160/95. He had Stage 2 hypertension.
“At first, I had a headache and some discomfort in the neck. I thought I had a muscle spasm. But somebody asked me to record my BP. I then approached a cardiologist,” says Koshy. Dr M Sudhakar Rao, interventional cardiologist at Manipal Hospital, Bengaluru, is no stranger to severe hypertension in the 35 to 40 age group. “Many think a high BP patient needs pills straightaway. Of course, medication is needed when the readings go upward of 175/110 mm Hg. Otherwise, it is important to assess the type of hypertension the patient has. Some kinds can be resolved by lifestyle correction. If the patient follows this protocol seriously and still reports high BP after a four to six-week window, then we prescribe medication,” he says. He asked Koshy to take some tests.
