Is this something that occurs amongst endurance athletes or should I be concerned?
How high?
And while at rest or during exercise?
If it’s at rest, and above 140, then yes. And see a doctor.
Isolated systolic hypertension. Usually caused by stiff/hardened vessels. And not good.
Also can be caused by medication, high salt intake in your diet, alcohol, anemia…Better safe than sorry, see a doctor
Its not happening because you are an endurance athlete.
It might be.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-7176.2009.00100.x
Isolated Systolic HTN
Many conditioned athletes (particularly young men) have “athlete’s heart”: very high resting stroke volume and cardiac output with low PVR and heart rate.17 Pulse pressure and SBP are high in these individuals, very often in the range of pre‐HTN and occasionally in the range of stage 1 HTN, because cardiac stroke volume is increased.18, 19 DBP is usually normal.
I freak doctors out with this all the time. Luckily one figured out it was the blood pressure cuff size that was the problem. If they use a normal size cuff on me, the systolic will be high, but use the “large” and everything is fine.
I have excess skin from big weight loss that cases this problem in me, but the doc also said this can happen to people whose arms are just simply between sizes.
Something to ask the docs about but definitely get it checked!
130 or above is now considered stage 1 hypertension.
Probably not accurate at all but I down loaded a phone app when I was bored one day which usually puts me at about 133/66 (its actually 129/67 now). High normal one way, ideal the other. I’ve had a few other issues over the last few year so have regularly had my blood pressure taken by the NHS and they’ve never said anything other than fine
I think it was a combination of undercuffing and drinking too much. I reduced alcohol consumption and have already lost a few pounds. Hehehe. Just need this kick in the pants…
I have this exact thing, I’ve always had a high ish systolic B, I used to be a 20 hour a week training person that raced when I was around 20 and had a high systolic then. Now at my mid 40’s I’m training a fair amount (much less) and have a resting HR of around 44 and BP of 127 ish over 75 ish. Not to say I’m not about to keel over and die at any minute, I usually assume that anyway being a bit of a hypercondriac, but so far so good.
I just had my annual physical yesterday and noticed my BP was 132/82. First time it’s ever been elevated. My nutrition has been spot on this month, but work stress has been incredibly high so hopefully that’s all it was. Thanks for posting guys, I just wrote it off as a fluke, but I will have to keep an eye on it.
Anyone ever take their BP whilst exercising?
I would think you need a special type of continuous blood pressure monitor, as a normal blood pressure monitor would either be incapable of compressing the cuff enough to cut off blood flow, or it would be incredibly painful to do so, especially at VO2Max.
Not so. During medical treadmill stress tests they use cuff mechanisms. It’s not going to give you highly accurate readings, but a ball park idea.
The reason I ask is because I was misdiagnosed after 2 “failed” tests. Turns out I was just in really good shape.
I tried this today and the BP monitor just said ERR. I tried a few times. And it felt like it was really right as hell!
Took this soon as I got off the bike though
Blood pressure is a function of cardiac output and peripheral vascular resistance. During graded exercise testing (GXT), systolic blood pressure (SBP) is expected to increase gradually along with work rate, oxygen consumption, heart rate, and cardiac output. Individuals exposed to chronic endurance training attain a greater exercise SBP than in their untrained state and sedentary counterparts, but it is currently unknown what is considered a safe upper limit. This review discusses key studies examining blood pressure response in sedentary individuals and athletes. We highlight the physiological characteristics of highly fit individuals in terms of cardiovascular physiology and exercise blood pressure and review the state of the current literature regarding the safety of high SBP during exercise in this particular subgroup. Findings from this review indicate that a consensus on what is a normal SBP response to exercise in highly fit subjects and direct causation linking high GXT SBP to pathology is lacking. Consequently, applying GXT SBP guidelines developed for a “normal” population to endurance-trained individuals appears unsupported at this time. Lack of evidence for poor outcomes leads us to infer that elevated peak SBP in this subgroup could more likely reflect an adaptive response to training, rather than a pathological outcome. Future studies should track clinical outcomes of those achieving elevated SBP and develop athlete-specific guidelines.
This doesn’t trump an actual medical assessment by a physician in person.