What Gives? Im losing weight and blood pressure is rising instead of falling,,,!

What Gives? Im losing weight and blood pressure is rising instead of falling,,,?

My bp is generally a bit high and i am on a low dose of medication for it,,but now that i am finally losing weight it is going up instead of down,,,any idea? thnx!

p.s. i walk everyday too.

1 week ago
im 44 female, the medication is Benicar, busy lifestyle.
i do have SOME stress good and bad.
How can weight not be related to bp?
Doctor has told me to lose weight.
And who is Harmony?

What's the medication? How old are you? and how healthy?
Hi Twinklestar. Thanks for the extra details. They help. Some numbers (high & lows) would have been welcome, but let's see.

First, three things determine systolic pressure, (1) the amount of work your heart is doing, (2) how efficiently it's doing that work, and (3) how well the brain dilates (or contracts) the blood vessels in response to blood-flow demand. Benicar is supposed to help dilate your arteries (#3). It might, or might not ... All people's responses are different, but it shouldn't do you any harm, and certainly won't be the cause of B/P's rising.

If you're actually losing weight, then the amount of cardiac work must be diminishing, so that (#1) isn't causing the B/P increase either. So it must be the way your heart is performing that is giving the apparent rise. (I say apparent, because it may be temporary, and illusory; In a month's time it may well have gone down, and in any case, what your doctor measures just above the elbow isn't the true pressure, -it's just a convenient "reflection" of the true pressure generated by the heart, within the left ventricle.)

What causes high systolic pressure peaks is usually too low a pulse rate compared to the amount of blood pumped out at each beat of the heart ("stroke volume"). So the heart has to work harder, pumping more blood per stroke, thus increasing the contractile forces on the heart muscle, and raising pressure. I'm sorry if this sounds complicated, but hope it makes sense?

So that's the most likely probability. But as I say, it's how your pressures change over the next few weeks/months that will tell. Keep a record, and you probably (almost certainly) will find they won't keep on rising. The key pressure ISN'T either systolic (the high one) or the diastolic (the low one). It's your Mean Pressure, which you get by adding 1/3rd of the difference between systolic and diastolic, to the diastolic.
Thus Pm = Pd + (Pp/3) where Pp is the pulse-pressure, the difference between systolic and diastolic. This is the crucial pressure........Most doctors don't even know what it is, let alone what it means, but it's the pressure that actually drives the correct flow of blood round your body. It varies all during the day, between narrow limits. But over days, weeks, and months, that's the one which best indicates the shape you're in.

Hope I haven't bored you, and hope it helps. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Have a long and happy life, and don't let your B/P figures scare the hell out of you. Mine frequently go as high as 215/110, and I'm 80!
The rough rule of thumb is that your systolic should be "100 + your age" on AVERAGE during the day. So if 144 is your average, it's bound to go up to 160 -odd maximum, isn't it? and down to about 130 when you're tired and ready to sleep.? Otherwise, 144 would not be average, would it?