Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Stress Test (good) and Squats (bad)

Monday morning I went to the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi clinic for an exercise stress test. The physician I saw in the ER a couple months ago suggested that I have one, and my primary care physician agreed. After losing a little chest hair to a razor and getting wired up, I hopped on a treadmill and started walking. The grade and speed inclined every three minutes until I was running to keep up. I beleive I almost went 12 minutes. I could have gone a little longer but the doctor was already praising my performance up to that point so I called "uncle." They had set up my target heart rate at 165bpm and told me they wanted me to get to 90% of that. I was up to 169bpm when I quit. They then had me sit down while my heart rate recovered. They seemed pretty impressed how quickly my heart rate dropped back below 100bmp. The doctor said everything looked great and that I out-performed a lot of younger, active-duty sailors that they had tested.

I know there are cases of people who have done great on a stress test only to drop dead a couple weeks later, but I feel pretty good about this.

HOWEVER...

Yesteday I attempted to do one of my press & squat workouts, and once again I felt dizzy after doing one set of squats. This time I can't blame it on taking two kinds of blood pressure medication because I have only taken one kind for several days. I've checked my blood pressure and it's been pretty low--several readings around 100/60. I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on television, but I suspect I'm over-medicated for blood pressure. I may still need some--just not as high a dose as I'm taking now. This will be one topic of discussion with my doctor on July 3rd.

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