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Shes reluctant to go on medication as this may make it difficult to have children (correct?)

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I dated a Chinese woman from Vietnam at one time who's lower BP number was 170. The upper was 200 something. She's in her late 40s now and aside from the doctors freaking out when they take her BP, she's never had any health problems. She refuses to do anything about it, too.

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I think you should look at diet before commiting to drugs for the rest of her life. I think this is the great problem with western medicine, they almost never consider any course but drugs and surgery. My mom was put on some drug for HBP and in a year's time, she was on seven more, each an attempt to counteract the side effects of the one before. She was feeling sick all the time from it. I convinced her to stop the drugs and eat a non fat diet, which she did (for a while), felt better, and the BP went down.

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Check out a diet course by a Dr. McDougal. Essentially, it's a 0 fat diet. I was on it for years (until I got married) and would prefer to still be on it.

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Eating good means different things to different folks. It seems a lot of modern ailments are caused by diet, and diet is almost always ignored by western medicine.

While I agree with the first statement (for example, there are people capable of saying 'vegeterian' and 'natural' in the same sentence ), I would not say we ignore diet. On the contrary, enourmous industry is built around it. You might be right that it often just masquerades as having anything to do with medicine or indeed health. (Besides, my physician does keep pestering me about losing weight and does not suggest any drugs for that )

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HBP rarely kills before the victim is past 40; that's why it has not been weeded out of the gene pool. Using isolated counterexample as an excuse to do nothing about a medical condition (I know you are not proposing doing nothing) is a very bad idea. Use statistics instead.

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Side effects are very individual; I never had any, but I know people with serious HBP who searched for appropriate therapy for years.

My point is that doctors tend to do what's easiest for them, and that's prescribe drugs. I know way too many older folks that are taking a lot of pills, and mostly to counteract side effect of other pills. I think this practice is insane, and yet, very common. Diet was never suggested to my mom as a way to control HBP.

But then, maybe the doctors know their audience. She didn't stick with the diet for long. Now she's back on the HBP drugs, but not accepting any others. At least some progress was made.

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Any physician will tell you to lower your stress level and intake of salt, caffeine and alcohol first, carefully increase the level of physical activity, lose weight etc.

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'Non-western' medicine(s) also used drugs they were able to prepare.

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Well, I am skeptical (what is the right preposition here? 'of'?) any '0 anything' diets. That said, it is pretty clear that we eat much more fat than we evolved for; only few hundred years ago it was very difficult to obtain much fat of any kind in food.

Actually, he doesn't advocate the fanatical avoidance of fat, but to use it as a treat, rather than the main course. I looked at it more like, what would I eat if I were in the wild? Probably not hamburgers every day. Vegetables are much easier to catch.

When I was on that diet for a few months, any fat would actually make me feel sick, so it was easy to avoid.

It's almost impossible to dine out and find non-fat stuff, tho.

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Besides, my physician does keep pestering me about losing weight and does not suggest any drugs for that )

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he also risks strokes (ask Mike Tempsch about that - boy, was he lucky)

So they say - and the rational part of me knows it as well, just don't feel all that lucky...

Bleedings vary in danger depending on how large a vessel broke and where it's located - one big lottery.
Intracerebral (as for me) is probably worst if near the brain stem, as involontary lifesupport functions may be affected. IIRC, bleedings in the surrounding membranes tend to be from larger vessels...

BP measured as I arrived at the hospital was in the 210/180 region - no idea what my normal level was as I hadn't had a checkup in a loong time. With medication I'm currently around 115/75, no sideeffects that I've noticed.

Back at work 3x4h per week since 2 weeks. Not really working - have tasks but initially no pressure of deadlines etc, doing stuff of the "it would be nice if..." type, and then using that to evaluate my usefulness/capacity.

Don't know why I've missed the hread previously - denial? - but good advice has been given. Do get that BP under control - the potential consequences are seriously unfun.

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From 210/180 to 115/75 without dizzyness, drowsyness, vertigo? Amazing!

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Anyway, it's great to hear you are back to work.

It does feel good to have some structure to the weeks.