How many cups of hibiscus tea a day do you need to bring down your BP and how long should it take?
Is 140/85 quoted from EASA definite ? If it is there could be a very nice Seneca lll coming up for sale :-(
160/95 is the cut off above which you can’t be issued with your medical certificate without further workup and lower readings.
The new EASA guidance requires further investigations/review if the BP is above 140/85
It sounds sensible to me that someone with a BP over 140 ought to be looking at the problem. I have been on drugs to control blood pressure for many years but I have never had my resting BP up to 160.
Maybe Flying Dutch would explain what is supposed to happen if he has someone with BP above 140/85.
I used to suffer from “White-coat hyper-barism” (i.e. worrying about the BP reading raises your BP) at my pilot medical.
Now, I do quite a bit of running and jogging, and noticed some time back that my BP is significantly lower for some time after exercise.
So I tried going for a 20 minute jog about an hour before the medical, and it works.
I should point out that I routinely exercise – it may not work if you don’t…
Incidentally, everybody I know who is treated for high BP wore a monitor for 24 hours, which showed a high average BP.
Perhaps this is the “further investigation”?
If I staggered into the medical after a 20 minute jog I would be grounded on the spot.
That criteria would have stopped me from flying twenty years ago.
EASA continue their relentless campaign to regulate themselves out of business….
It would also stop you flying in the United States – the limit there is 155/95.
I mistakenly quoted the wrong part of FD’s post, and had meant to indicate that the new limit of 140/85 would have grounded me many years ago.
Presumably the US don’t propose anything that drastic!?
Here in the UK, you will have problems with your aviation medical if the lower figure is above, from memory, 95. I am sure there is a CAA doc somewhere…
Not an AME so I can’t comment on that, other than to say that it would be reasonable to run some tests to make sure it wasn’t the consequence of some other like hypothyroidism. However if the obvious tests came back clear, the patient said ‘my blood pressure has always been that low’ and wasn’t passing out on a regular basis we wouldn’t do anything further outside of an aeromedical or other specialist setting.
Lung cancer was linked statistically to the growth of smoking i.e. it was almost unknown before cigarettes were available so the explanation that it occurred more frequently in people with addictive personalities wouldn’t cut it. Of course it could be linked to some other factor e.g. carcinogenic lighter fluid but at some point Occam’s razor should intervene.
Sorry if I was a bit literal minded. It does occasionally happen when I’m not concentrating.
It might be of interest to some, perhaps ….
Australian Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998
Part 67—Medical
Subpart 67.C—Medical certificates
Criteria for medical standard 1, 2 and 3 require that
“Systolic and diastolic blood pressures are within limits specified by CASA from time to time in the Designated Aviation Medical Examiner’s Handbook (even if approved drugs are used to maintain the blood pressure within those limits)”.
Further, the relevant part of DAME Handbook specifies that
“Item 1.10 of table 67.150, Item 2.10 of table 67.155 2.10, and Item 3.10 of table 67.160 specify that the systolic and diastolic blood pressures are within limits specified by CASA from time to time in the Designated Aviation Medical Examiner’s Handbook (even if approved drugs are used to maintain the blood pressure within those limits).
The limits acceptable are as follows:
Systolic BP: 150 mm of Hg
Diastolic BP: 95 mm of Hg
Note1: These values are higher than best practice for medical management, and have been chosen to allow for variation in and between management regimes.
Note 2: Higher BP recordings may increase the Cardiovascular risk Index (CRI)".
Please note that the elevated blood pressure is only one of several factors that might contribute to one’s CRI (as per the model accepted by the Authority).
160/95 is the cut off above which you can’t be issued with your medical certificate without further workup and lower readings.
The new EASA guidance requires further investigations/review if the BP is above 140/85
However these numbers can be based upon home monitor readings too can’t they?
For some reason whenever I see a doc, my BP goes up to 160/95 
So what I do these days is record the BP for a month before hand using a Microlife BP monitor which I then plug into my PC and generate some nice graphs. Last visit to the AME my BP was the usual 160/95 and the AME was scratching his chin, so I pulled out my readings which showed an average based on 3 readings per day for a month of 125/70 and he was happy with that.
How did he satisfy himself that the readings were in fact your own?
