High Blood Pressure

I don’t have the best relationship with my mother. There have been periods in my life where we don’t talk for months, even years and this is always my choice. I had a conversation with my mother last night that reminded me of why I choose not to have her full time in my life. During a recent health screening at work I had high blood pressure and yesterday I took my blood pressure again and it was high also. Now it is not extremely high but what is called pre-hypertension. I am not overweight and I exercise regularly. I don’t smoke either, so the high blood pressure is some what a mystery to me. So when my mother called last night I asked whether there was a genetic predisposition for high blood pressure on her side of the family. There is a genetic predisposition on my paternal side.

This was the wrong question to ask, because I was subjected to a 30 minute lecture on how I don’t handle the stress in my life correctly and that I need to be medicated. My mother is very fond of her medication and believes it to be the cure all for life’s problems. My entire family is on some form of mode altering drug, many of my family members are on multiple forms of mode altering drugs. I am the only family member that lives my life unmediated. I should have asked her if I medicated myself it would make up for being raised by her, of course this wonderful retort came to mind after I hung up the phone.

I am not sure why my blood pressure is high, but the work position I am in right now is less stressful than the one I was in 7 months ago. The stress in my personal life is basically unchanged, stressful but unchanged. For right now I am going to try a change in my diet and see if that has an effect; limit salt and alcohol consumption. I am also going to finally go get that whole kidney thing checked out.