Posts from HeroesWorld City Hospital

Mort, my dad treats his illness like this: for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he drinks strong black tea with rum.

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I suddenly recovered, lol.

Does Neira wish me dead? What a pity.

HOW TO LIVE WITH THIS:

1. Accept your peculiarity as a feature of your body that needs to be compensated for, rather than a chronic disease that needs to be cured. It's like diabetes. You just have to learn how to live with it.

2. If this started in your teenage years, do not give up physical education in school, despite doctors' desires to grant medical exemptions, write in VSD (vegetative-vascular dystonia), and prescribe the extremely limited lifestyle of a sickly person. If I and my parents had agreed to this in school, I would already be a wreck living only in a sterile little world with a daily schedule like a child's.

3. Inform your loved ones about your peculiarity and explain that "eating more," "eating bread, meat, carrots, etc.," "taking pills," or "starting to pour cold water over yourself right now" does more harm than good, or is simply irrelevant.

4. Get checked and rule out problems with blood sugar and the heart.

5. Accept that there is no medicinal treatment for hypotension and likely won't be in the near future, because the entire focus of medicine over the last few decades has been on hypertensives—they are in the high-risk zone for heart attacks and strokes; hypotensives are not in this risk group in youth or old age, they simply usually have a low level of energy and vitality throughout their lives.

WHAT TO DO:

1. Hypotension is compensated not by pills, but by lifestyle. First and foremost, by physical activity. To put it simply, the heart and blood vessels need to be trained. Regularly. You don't necessarily have to go shopping at Nike and run 15 km immediately, but running 3 km 3-4 times a week is highly desirable. If you're not into running and don't have the funds for a gym or pool, walk. And not just walking 1-2 stops, but getting out to walk on rough terrain. Both Botanical Gardens in Kyiv are great for this, as they have elevation changes.

2. Organize your schedule so that you have the opportunity to sleep at least 7-8 hours. Hypotensives have a "smaller battery reserve" in the body for weather changes, increased workload, etc. In short, we are less adaptive. The reserve is formed only through sleep. This point was the hardest for me, as my husband sleeps 2 hours less and I always felt ashamed that "I'm a sleepyhead," "I sleep through everything," "everyone is active, but I'm not," etc. It helped to simply accept it. Either I sleep as much as I need, or I am an angry and unproductive dinosaur.

3. Only leave the apartment in the morning after having a snack of something. Usually, hypotensives can't stomach porridge, flour-based foods, or animal fats in the morning; it's not necessary to have a heavy breakfast if it doesn't go down. It might actually make things worse. Relatives will complain that it's not real food, etc., but they aren't the ones sliding down the wall.

4. Do not overeat or undereat. The norm is when you are slightly hungry and there is no feeling of heaviness in the abdominal area. Better 5 small snacks a day than 2-3 heavy lunches.

5. Always carry water with you and drink regularly at the slightest feeling of thirst. With dehydration, there is a high risk for hypotensives to lose consciousness.

6. Carry some kind of sweet—an energy boost. I always have a Snickers or some healthy honey and fruit bar in my bag. If you get tired in the middle of the day, your head starts spinning, and you want to lie down right there at work—eat a treat and everything will be okay.

7. Get out of bed slowly in the morning. For us, this is not laziness, but a necessity. Wake up, stretch, and do your first morning exercises while sitting in bed, and only then get up, get ready, and proceed to more active exercises.

8. Morning coffee can indeed be a lifesaver and a "slow morning" ritual, but you shouldn't turn it into 10 cups a day.

9. Do not overheat. Do not wear overly tight clothing that constricts the body and skin, pressing on the vessels. Do not wear thick sweaters or turtlenecks. The neck should always remain free. Do not dress too warmly in winter. And even in freezing weather, when entering public transport where there is no ventilation and many people—take off your jacket and hat, despite the fact that we suffer from "chilliness."

10. The best and most optimal hardening and vessel training for us is a contrast shower and getting used to sleeping with an open window. Start in the summer, keep it open in autumn, and close it slightly in winter.

11. We handle climate change poorly, so give yourself rituals and concessions for one day of adaptation.

12. And alcohol. Ideally—eliminate it. Preferably—reduce the amount to the absolute minimum. Alcohol does indeed dilate blood vessels, but for hypotensives, it crashes the pressure even lower, so we often don't have fun, but fall asleep after the first glass with spots in our eyes.

That seems to be all.

And some good news. Even 2:

1. Those who suffer from arterial hypotension rarely encounter atherosclerosis and we age beautifully with a sound mind.

2. According to statistical results, people with chronic peculiarities identified in youth live longer than those who were exclusively and ideally healthy in youth and early adulthood. The former simply get used to the obligation of leading a healthy lifestyle and following a daily routine from a young age, and they go for preventive medical check-ups more often, rather than when it becomes urgent—because for them, their whole life is "urgent." :)) So maybe this isn't your punishment, but a golden ticket—a reminder to take care of yourself as early and regularly as possible :)))