In our bathroom, up on a top shelf, lies an electronic blood pressure monitor, velcro fabric strap and all.
For most of the past few years, it has sat there collecting dust. I bought it after a visit to my dentist, where a routine blood pressure check showed a number I thought couldn’t be real.
I took few readings at home with it, but the results were a lot closer to normal, so my worries subsided and I put it away. Until a couple of weeks ago.
That’s when I realized, yikes — I’m about to turn 55. My annual physical was in a couple of weeks, so I thought maybe I ought to take a peek at what my numbers might look like.
I pushed the big button on the front and the digital display lit up, which meant the batteries inside were still good. So, I strapped the velcro cuff around my arm, pushed the button again, and listened to it hum as the fabric slowly squeezed.
Now, the numbers it showed me… were a little scary. I turned to my wife, who was next to me on our bed reading, and showed her.
“Maybe you should try it again,” she said, seeing how rattled I was. “Give it a few minutes and do it over.”
So I did. I followed the instructions inside the box, this time giving myself five minutes to calm down and relax — not moving, not even talking.
And this time… I breathed a sigh of relief. Not perfect, but better. Closer to “normal,” closer to the green zone on the side of the monitor, the zone you want to be in.
I’ve never had to worry about my blood pressure, ever in my life. Every time I visited the doctor in the past, my numbers were within that green zone.
But lately, whenever I talk with friends my age, I’ve realized how many of them take medication for it. And a little digging around unearthed the fact that the vast majority of men my age in the U.S. have some degree of hypertension, many of whom don’t even know it.
(When I found that out, I was like… whoa.)
On the day of my physical, all of this is rumbling in the back of my mind. As is the awareness that, over the past couple of years, several numbers in my lab results — like cholesterol, triglycerides, etc. — had been trending up. Not dangerous up, not yet. But not the direction you want to be going in, either.
After I finish my appointment and head back home, I’m anxious to find out what’s in my new lab results. I check the app on my phone that connects me with my doctor, once, twice, a third time. But there’s no update.
It’s not until later that night that I decide to check one more time, and… the results were good. Better than I expected, even — several of the numbers that had been trending up took a nosedive, some even back from “high” into “normal.”
Which makes me wonder: how did this happen?
For so long, I’d been worried that as my age rose, those lab numbers would just keep on rising and there was nothing I could do about it. But there’s one thing I haven’t yet shared with you, the thing I think may have caused all this.
Starting December 31, my wife and I quit alcohol completely. Not a drop has passed our lips since then. The day after I got my lab results, I messaged my doctor to ask him if this brief a period of laying off alcohol could have that kind of effect. His response: “It does look that way.”
Now, I should add that I’ve sworn off alcohol before and later resumed. So I don’t want to make any big predictions just yet about where I’m headed from here.
But these results from something as simple as quitting drinking for just ten days are pretty undeniable. (It also got me thinking that, if I can see lab numbers like I’m seeing now, there’s no reason I can’t make it to age 90 or 95 — and not just make it, but a healthy 90 or 95. Who knows?)
Of course, to make it to that age, I’ll need to maintain my running — we all knew that was coming, right? — and I’ll need to keep following the plan I shared with you last week: