What I'm Doing About My Blood Pressure

One of the things that pushed me to take longevity seriously was finding out my blood pressure was higher than it should be. Nothing dramatic, no scare — just a reading creeping into the range you don't want it in. The sneaky thing about blood pressure is you feel completely fine the whole time. No symptoms, no warning. It just quietly does its thing in the background for years.

That's exactly why it matters. Blood pressure sits right under the Healthy Heart pillar for me, and it's one of the biggest levers on how long and how well your heart keeps going. So rather than file it under "deal with it later," I decided to get on top of it.

The boring stuff that actually works

There's no magic here, and I'm not a doctor — this is just what I'm doing, alongside proper medical advice. Most of it is the unglamorous basics, done consistently: moving more (part of why I've leaned into Hyrox and regular cardio), watching salt, leaning into potassium-rich food to balance it out, keeping an eye on weight, going easier on alcohol and caffeine, protecting my sleep, and actually managing stress rather than just absorbing it. None of it is exciting. All of it adds up.

Building my own companion: Ovana

Here's where it got personal. Most of the blood pressure advice out there isn't written for how I actually eat. As an African, my diet is different, and a lot of the standard guidance didn't quite fit. I wanted something that could really help me — something that understood my food, my habits, and gave me more control to make changes and see what worked.

So I'm building it. It's called Ovana — a companion to keep me on track with my blood pressure and my heart. It's early, but the idea is simple: help me catch problems early and care for my heart every day, in a way that fits my life.

The thing that made this possible is AI. Building software used to mean a big team and a long runway. Now I can build the tool I wish existed — for myself first, and then for others who face the same thing. A lot of people share this exact problem and don't have anything made for them. That's what I'm working on now.

How I stay on top of it: Hilo

The problem with blood pressure is that the usual way you measure it — a cuff at the doctor's, once in a blue moon — tells you almost nothing. It's a single snapshot, often taken when you're already a bit stressed just from being there. Your blood pressure moves around all day. One reading can't show you that.

So I got a Hilo — a wearable that tracks my blood pressure through the day without a cuff, right from my wrist. Instead of one number every few months, I get a proper picture: how it trends, when it's high, what seems to move it. Being able to see it changes everything. When I can watch a bad night's sleep or a heavy salty meal nudge the numbers up, and a good week of training pull them down, the boring habits suddenly feel worth doing. The feedback loop is the whole point — and it's exactly the kind of thing I want Ovana to give people who don't have a band on their wrist.

I'm not going to pretend it's all sorted — it's a work in progress, and I'll share how it goes. But going from "I have no idea what my blood pressure is doing" to seeing it every day, with a tool built for how I actually live, has been the biggest shift.