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 that was creeping into the range you don't want it in. And 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 there is on how long and how well your heart keeps going. So rather than file it under "deal with it later," I decided to actually 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 is the big one, which is part of why I've leaned into Hyrox and regular cardio — a fitter heart tends to be a lower-pressure heart. On food, I'm watching salt, which is the obvious lever, and leaning into potassium-rich stuff to balance it out (my banana berry smoothie does some quiet work here). Then the rest of the usual suspects: keeping an eye on weight, going easier on alcohol and caffeine, protecting my sleep, and trying to actually manage stress rather than just absorb it. None of it is exciting. All of it adds up.

How I stay on top of it: Hilo

Here's the part the geek in me loves. 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 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 actually 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.

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 actually seeing it every day has been the single biggest shift. You can't manage what you can't measure, and now I can measure it.