Can you FEEL high blood pressure?

Yep! A diuretic increases urine production and will essentially dehydrate you. Less fluids in the blood -> lower blood pressure.

hmmm...I wouldn't exactly use the term dehydrate.

What a diuretic does, suprisingly enough, is cause diuresis


A diuretic is not perscribed unless there is a need for one. Meaning one is experiencing edema, your body retaining too much fluid.

I take a diruetic. If I forget one day, my hands, feet, ankles etc get swollen. My cells are retaining too much fluid. Clothes get tight. When I forget to take it, and take it the next day, I will literally drop 3 pounds throughout the day. When I first started it, I dropped about 6 pounds of fluid in the first few days, and felt much better.
The diuretic I take does most of its work in the first 3 hours, which means frequent trips to the bathroom. I also take a potassium supplement because you will also expell that when urinating.

Drinking plenty of water is important. If you don't need a diuretic, but occassionally feel bloated, drinking more will actually help, as it encourages your kidneys to work.

As far as foods, coffee is a good example of a diuretic.

When you urinate after taking a diuretic, your urine has absolutely no color, your kidneys are expelling mostly water.

Funny that The Today Show this morning had a report on salt intake in America. A high percentage of the population eat too much salt. Restricting salt means less than 2/3 of a teaspoon. It's tough if one buys any prepared food, including canned soups, as they tend to add way too much salt. One of the worst offenders are the frozen prepared meals like Bertolli's pasta dishes, way over 50% of daily salt which I assume is an average daily requirement. Not that plain salt is a requirement -- there's natural salt in a lot of unprocessed foods.

I didn't notice anything about my HBP but it wasn't in the hypertension range. Nevertheless, my doctor gave me one, then two, now three different medications and I'm down in the normal range even if I occasionally overdo the salt. The medication I did feel at first in some dizziness and sleepiness but that went away.

My doc made an appointment for me for my annual check up last month, and my BP was pretty high so she prescribed another med for it called Lisinopril 20MG. She told me that as we get older, our blood vessels are not as pliable and also collect plaque, and our BP goes up. I've also been taking hydrochlorothiazide for a few years, but I don't feel any changes to my liquid intake or visits to the toilet. I take my BP almost every day, and the average count since I started taking Lisinopril is 132/81.

My doc recommended more excercise.

I had been taking Lisinopril 20MG and Atenol in the morning. Adding the 4 mg. of Cardura at night works much the same as Flomax and additionally lowered my BP to the 68 - 125 average range. No particular side effects noticed but I do sleep a lot better as the Cardura relaxes the muscles around the bladder and you don't get up to do number one except may once of twice. I've done that since I was, well, as far back as I can remember. Before the radiation treatment it was really disturbing my sleep -- I'd get up for the bathroom six to eight times at night and during the day. That's now subsided considerably.

Deep breathing exercise and just some light dumbbell exercise, and calisthenics or a brisk walk will help.

Yeah, that's what I was doing; getting up about a half dozen times to go pee at night. It's back to normal now; once or twice. How about your proctitis? I still bleed occasionally, but the incidents are fewer.

No bleeding -- I'm getting a new PSA test next week (although they aren't entirely accurate).