Musings Of An Idiot

If I do achieve normal blood pressure through weight loss, that would be a major triumph. Nevertheless, I may cross that happy finish line as a gibbering idiot rather than the promising young man I used to be:

A twenty- or thirtysomething adult with blood pressure that's even a little high is risking damage to the structural integrity of his brain that may be evident by the age of 40, says a new study. The early appearance of hypertension's toll on the brain suggests that physicians should act sooner and more aggressively to control the upward creep of blood pressure in their younger patients, say the authors of the latest research, published online in the Lancet on Thursday.

...This meant that the brain integrity of a 40-year-old with hypertension, for instance, was roughly equivalent to that of a person 7.2 years older whose systolic blood pressure reading was in the normal range. A 40-year-old with prehypertension had a brain that looked more like that of a 43-year-old.

...While "optimal" blood pressure control is rarely sought or achieved in younger patients, they wrote, it ought to be.