_{I Have high blood pressure and IIH}

It was discovered I had high blood pressure at the first eye clinic appointment I was sent to by my optician (December 2009). I was admitted to hospital from the eye clinic outpatient appointment and was put on high blood pressure medication. I was finally diagnosed with BIH in June 2011 but I didn't have an 'ideal' blood pressure reading until after I had my lumber puncture in July. I asked my neurosurgeon if the BIH caused my high blood pressure but he said it would more likely be the high blood pressure causing the BIH. I was surprised as I'd never had blood pressure problems before.

Has anyone else experienced this too?

There is no medical connection between IH and high blood pressure they are two separate things and have different causes but you can have both. I would suggest talking it over with your neurologist if your worried or if you find that your blood pressure goes up when your CSF pressure goes up. Sometimes things can have a domino affect like with me when my CSF pressure is up I have heart palpitations and my heart beats extremely fast and I have to go on a ECG monitor though there is no connection between IH and heart problems.

Hope this is helpful

I see that this thread is old but I specifically was looking for anyone discussing blood pressure. The truth is the have never proved that the two are not linked, nor have they successfully proved that IIH may not cause for some people to develop high blood pressure.

They have done a couple medical studies to evaluate this connection and concluded with mixed certainty that while they did see a trend of either high blood pressure or elevated blood pressure readings in the IIH study group they feel that due to the fact that these patients were also overweight and/ or above normal BMI that could also indicate the culprit of high blood pressure, as high BMI can cause people to develop high blood pressure.

However, I am an atypical case of IIH, mainly because I have a normal/low BMI yet I developed high blood pressure and was trying to control it 3 months before being diagnosed with IIH with an LP in the hospital. My blood pressure had been very difficult to treat and was not responding well to the BP meds. Yet! Lo and behold after my first tap my blood pressure plummeted so low that I had very low blood pressure for two days and had a post- tap headache.

My doctors after a year are now starting to have a hard time ignoring that my IIH cause high blood pressure for me as it has been a very specific trend, it gets high as I get symptomatic and drops into abnormal low ranges with each tap I've done. I now use my blood pressure one of the more sensitive markers that my IIH is glaring up again and it has been quite helpful to my docs involved, finally!

So if you have high blood pressure don't write it off I would record it and see if you can find trends that may help your doctors recognize its, as inmy case, obvious implications, and maybe help open their eyes a bit. As I'm sure you have all experienced when ever a topic comes up that your doctor may not know the answer to or may not have yet been proving it is easily dismissed and that's when it's up to us as the patients to make sure they hear what we are saying and at least consider that thier may be an explanation that they just happen to not have the answer to : )

Best of luck to all,
I sure hope this helps someone else as BP has been a big thing with my IIH!

P.s. another reason why it's so important to be aware of your blood pressure, aside from cardiac health is that these studies did conclude that people who had IIH and high blood pressure had a much higher chance of suffering permanent visual damage. So they did recommend it be kept under good control.

Thank you for refreshing this topic. I find this a very interesting topic and I do hope other members do too. I myself have spent my whole time with IIH the other way around and suffered low blood pressure, which I put down to the medication, but have since found out it is linked to my heart condition Wolfe Parkinson White. I also have permanent visual damage because I have no peripheral vision or depth perception.

I hope other members add to this topic about what they have found out about their blood pressure as it would be good to be able to have an idea and some statistics on whether you all have a common problem with blood pressure.

Thank you for adding your thoughts...

8 months on and I am now almost 48 years old, still trying to lose weight and still on low dosage of 2 different blood pressure medication and Diamox. Since my lumbar puncture, almost a year ago now, I have my blood pressure checked every 2 weeks by the diet nurse who also monitors my weight. My blood pressure last week was 130/70 and it's been around these figures since the lumbar puncture.
I guess the doctors just think the medication are doing their job rather than the lumbar puncture making the blood pressure be more normal. Who knows? :?:

It's great to hear from you and that you're doing well so far. Perhaps your doctors think you are stabilised enough not to be too worried. Keep us updated and good luck with the weight loss.

OK, I definitely have some info to contribute here.

1) there IS evidence that if the blood pressure is elevated AND there is impairment of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), that arterial hypertension can increase intracranial pressure (ICP)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=11535896
one of the many things that can damage the BBB is hypertension.....

2) there is evidence of ICP causing activation of the sympathetic nervous system:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=8595618
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=16463884
my theory for how this might occur is via pressure on the brainstem. we see this in the ICU in patients right before they "herniate" from end stage brain edema, it's called a "sympathetic storm".
the sympathetic nervous system creates the "fight or flight" reaction which involves adrenalin and increases heart rate and blood pressure.

3) a condition which I believe most humans have to some extent or another, sleep disordered breathing (SDB) as either obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) or upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS), has been associated with IIH, and is also known to cause problems with blood pressure. hypertension is commonly seen in OSA, and hypotension, even orthostatic hypotension, may be seen in UARS. SDB is significantly (not a strong enough word) underdiagnosed. and with IIH, it doesn't matter how mild it is; we are known to increase our ICP with only mild hypoventilation, potentially too mild to detect on a typical sleep study.

what most people do not know is that as humans evolved, our airways evolved VERY DIFFERENTLY from other animals, expressly for us to be able to generate speech. this was an adaptation that served us and could be selected for because the consequences of SDB generally do not get you til after you have reproduced. but all of the changes in the human airway also made us exquisitely susceptible to sleep apnea. so for humans, it is not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN it hits and HOW BAD is the sleep apnea.

the take home message is this: if you have IIH, get a sleep study. and if you have unexplained blood pressure issues, get a sleep study. snoring does not need to be present to create a problem for US.

-Dr. Deb

sorry about those smiley faces; they were inserted automatically and are not appropriate to my discussion. I was trying to talk about the sympathetic nerv-ous system.

Wow. Seems there is still so much we don't know. But I can see the problem of "ignoring" those who are thin as not bein capable of IIH and so skewing the stats. I hope that as more and more doc are being forced to think outside the box that these "unusal" associations are given more study and we get better answers. Thanks for the additional info Deb. And Socks and Cdottie, I hope a better understanding of your cases develops.

Thank you so much for contributing to this topic! I should look up the articles I have read about it too so I can share them.

My question is, the first article seems to suggest that increased arterial pressure can secondarily increase intrcranial pressure. Is this an accurate read out? As this does not fit quite with my experience of my ICP continued increases have seemed to elevate my blood pressure more and more. It had seemed like ICP can lead to high BP my doctor had speculated that this may be to do larger efforts my body makes to adequately perfuse my brain. Which is why BP meds only lower my systolic and never my diastolic. My doctor had a theory that in order to continue to provide adequate baron perfusion my body would need at least an elevated diastolic so that it therefore increases my MAP. Not sure whether this coincides or goes against the theory of this article?

Also are the other two articles talking about the reverse happening? That it leads to a depression and state of hypotension? Or did I misread?

Thanks so much for providing imput it means so much to share and exchange this information with others experiencing the same disorder.

Take good care!

yes, and people with UARS are typically THIN.
but I suspect that those with UARS are actually more prone to IIH but so little is known about it. most docs have not even heard of it. I think UARS underlies all chronic fatigue syndrome and I wouldn't be surprised if many with CFS actually have undiagnosed IIH, probably without papilledema.

I was terribly ill when I was a stick, 40 lb lighter than I am now, with orthostatic hypotension etc, having "ocular migraine" which I now think was probably papilledema. I didn't end up seeing ophthalmology until I had already been on CPAP for a month and the "ocular migraine" was gone.

i have never suffered with high blood pressure despite being overweight but recently due to a rather
difficult time with headaches my blood pressure has shot up and they are now worried about it. I too have
heart palpation, and it often feels like my heart is racing away.

Is anyone diabetic - i have just been diagnosed as type 2

Bonnie

hi Cdottie, I am sorry I did not reply to your question sooner; I posted again same time you did and didn't see your question and then was out of town.

first, Bonnie; diabetes is known to be associated with sleep apnea, which is also associated with IIH and hypertension. sleep apnea also causes heart disease. they showed at Stanford that during the intrathoracic pressure changes in the chest during apneas that the heart can actually collapse on itself. if you have all of those conditions and have not been diagnosed with sleep apnea yet, you should get evaluated. any snoring at all is abnormal, but snoring is actually not even required in cases of mild sleep apnea, which I believe is enough to elevate our ICPs.

OK, the first article does imply that arterial hypertension can secondarily increase ICP.
the second articles address the issue of ICP leading to an activation of the sympathetic nervous system. this activation leads to an increase in heart rate and blood pressure. I suspect this explains what you have seen with your BP, and I am grateful for your observations. my BP was up again on monday and so was my ICP, so I am wondering if I am having the same effect. it can probably go either way. an increased BP will increase cerebral perfusion pressure and increase cerebral blood flow and increase ICP. an increased ICP will decrease cerebral perfusion pressure and the body will compensate by increasing BP. but your doc's theory about the diastolic actually explains something with my BP that I have been asking my cardiologist about for 2 years and he has no explanation. I was orthostatic until I got on hydrocortisone. (there is evidence that ICP can suppress hypothalamic function and this may be why; if you get dizzy when you stand up, check your lying and standing blood pressures after 3 minutes in each position and take the numbers to your doc to check. I found this only happened at home) but still, especially when I don't feel good (ICP?), even if I am not orthostatic, when I stand up my BP will go to something crazy like 100/80; so a really narrow pulse pressure. you should have at least a 30 point difference between the two numbers. so the systolic might drop slightly but the diastolic always comes up to narrow the gap. now this makes sense; my body is trying to maintain MAP to perfuse my brain in the presence of ICP, as this is harder when I stand up. brilliant! !

Deb

PS: I'm sorry for all the medical jargon but in some ways I think it is best to teach you all these relationships and the physiology behind what we experience. it makes such a huge difference for me to be able to see the cause and effect as I go about my day, with how I breathe, etc. I think it really helps me understand my condition and how to find solutions, and so I hope it will help you all too.

:shock: :shock: :shock:

One of my biggest symptoms has been in the past, and again now, the inability to think deeply.
I wish I could have followed the above conversation. :doh

hi Wylee;
I'm sorry. maybe you should get a sleep study? if your dad has sleep apnea, you have at least a 50% chance of also having it.
I hope things go OK with your shunt.
Deb

Hey Deb,

I'm so glad that you found this info helpful to you! I have done a lot of digging with the High BP and urging doctors to consider it. This has been helpful and I'm glad I can pass it along to benefit someone else

Linda, I'm w/ you :doh

I totally appreciate the info, but I have tried several times now and it just doesn't stick..lol. As far as blood pressure, mine tends to be low (90ish over 60ish is the average) when my pressure is high or low..completely bottoms out after LP. It's weird, but when my IIH seems to be stable and I'm not having symptoms my pressure goes up.