My blood pressure is balanced!

I last reported on my blood pressure twelve days ago. Since then I've had family doctor and nephrologist appointments. In both cases, we went over the blood pressure readings along with the sleep apnea data, and in both cases we reached the conclusion that my current medication regime is both balancing my blood pressure and also reducing the number of apneic events per hour to a minimum. I'm not cured, but I'm definitely balanced!

With regard to the beta blockers that I mentioned last time, the family doctor agreed with my compromise of a half a tablet in the mornings. There exists a 'version' of the medication with half the amount of active ingredient, so I was prescribed this version instead of the original tablets, meaning that I no longer have to cut these pills in half. They are very small anyway, and half a pill is like a sliver that is easy to miss; I'm pleased that I have larger - albeit still small - pills to swallow.

I hinted that the nephrologist wouldn't have prescribed one of the blood pressure medications, but this time the subject didn't come up. It was clear that the current regime works, and if there are no problems caused by the various medications (e.g. changes in the blood tests) then it should stay as it is with no changes.

I am still occupied with potassium levels in foods. These days there are all kinds of vegan versions of food (there was an item about this on the news last night), but no one talks about potassium levels. There is more potassium in soy 'milk' than cow's milk. There is no information on the internet about proprietary prepared foods, only for raw materials. Although I make maybe 80% of my food intake from raw, unprocessed, materials, it would be nice to know about these innovative goods.

Hopefully this will be my last post on blood pressure for the time being.

The only topic that still needs to be addressed is the amount of deep sleep that I get every night. This is still in the range 0-15 minutes, an amount that I imagine is insufficient. I have an appointment with a new sleep doctor at the beginning of December; it will be interesting to hear what she says. According to the website that deciphers the data from my CPAP machine, The deep sleep indicator marks the time you spend in deep sleep – an especially restorative sleep phase. During deep sleep, breathing is more even than in all other sleeping/awake phases. The new prisma RECOVER algorithm on your therapy device continuously evaluates the respiratory pattern and calculates the duration of deep sleep from the evenness and quietness of your nocturnal breathing. 

A quick Google search brought up this site with ten tips on how to increase the amount of deep sleep, and I've been doing nine out of the ten tips for years. The odd man out is 'doze off to binaural beats'; normally listening to music keeps me awake as I'm interested in the music, but I'll see what I can do about this. Of course, it doesn't help that I get up between two and four times a night due to nocturia that is probably due to the diuretic effect of at least one of my medications.