My doctor keeps increasing my dose of lisinopril. It started at 1...

I have this same problem of higher blood pressure in the doctors office. That place just makes me nervous, especially when I get near the nurse with the cuff. It's like taking a test.

In the old days, the doctor would take your temperature in the office. Now a days, they expect you to have done that at home, and hardly consider doing it themselves at all. They trust you to be able to do it right.

The bp measurement is like the temperature of olden days: they want to own that measurement, and, they want to see the bp low in their office. They don't trust us to take it at home properly. Also, some of these doctors are actually offended by the suggestion that visiting them is stressful and affects bp. However, this is a well known phenomon called white-coat-hypertension.

When it comes to bp, it is important to measure one's resting bp. This gives a more accurate indication of how much rest your blood vessels during your down time.

BP goes way up during activity such as exercise, but no one considers the bp measured then very significant (unless you're doing an echo stress cardiogram) - and, we know that exercise is good for us, so occasional rise in bp can't be that serious and may even be benficial or at least the exercise itself is.

I finally found a doctor who (mostly) trusts me when I say that I measure my bp myself at home. (I use an automatic machine, so I can't fudge the numbers.)

If your doctor insists on seeing your bp low in their office even after discussing your home measurement being normal, then, I say, look for another doctor.

Also these days, doctors just keep lowering the target measurement and simply ignore the quality of life issues of the drugs needed to keep getting below previously considered normal levels. They'd rather see us suffering now -- as if that increases our longevity! I don't believe that anyone suffering the massive side effects of this drug is benefitting from increased longevity - quite the reverse, I expect.

I think that if you can lower your bp somewhat by weight loss, diet, and exercise, you'd be so much better off (both in quality of life and in longevity), even if you don't reach the modern every plunging bp target than if you used these poisonous medications and reached their target but suffer these horrific side effects.

As always, best of luck to all!