Blood Pressure And Sleep

[Nikki]

The past week or so, I find myself waking up very very dizzy. I'm always dizzy to some extent, but this feels more like a spinny type feeling..and see spots and dots in my vision like crazy if I wake up during the night. It's almost as if I'm close to passing out..but I'm alseep. I took my blood pressure laying how I normally do at night, and it was 85/57..I'm just curious if anyone knows what a 'normal' blood pressure should be while sleeping? If mine is that low while I'm just laying there, I wonder how low it goes when I'm actually asleep..and am thinking that could be part of my problem.

[rach73]

Hi Nikki,

Ive just googled blood pressure and sleep. From what I can see it is normal to have a 10-20% drop in blood pressure whilst you are asleep, (from your normal daytime BP).

However like you I can wake in the night feeling extremely dizzy and my eyes rolling in my head, drenched in sweat. On these occasions when I have been with enough to take my BP it's been around 76/40. Quite often also I will wake up with this and have the urge immediately to go to the bathroom, which is really fun when you are walking like a drunkard!

I hope this helps

Rach

[Guest tearose]

Great question.

My bp drops terribly during sleep and proceeds hundreds of bursts of arousals and causes non restorative sleep. It is not a hyper state that brings on low bp it is the low bp that brings on the hyper state to keep our heart beating during sleep.

My worst waking bp has been as low as 60/40.

[MamaTrain]

I suffer from this too! If I get up in the middle of the night my hear will be racing like crazy too trying to get the blood pumping. It really is annoying since I have to go to the bathroom like 2 times a night! I have checked my morning BP and it does seem very low to me.

KC

[potsgirl]

I also have this, along with a very slow respiration rate. I was just in the ER, and the alarm kept going off because my RR was below 10. Normal is 12 up to about 25. I was still awake, so I know it's really low when I sleep!

[Nikki]

Okay, thanks for the replies. I'm guessing mine probably drops really low..but I don't know, for some reason I have a feeling mine goes super low and then shoots up because when I wake up feeling horrible I'll wake up and it will be like 130/97 or so..but it IS super low before bed..I don't know if something in me triggers it to shoot up when it goes too low or what..This is all so confusing lol.

[Guest tearose]

Even while we are sleeping our body is trying to maintain all systems.

I don't know how to put this, I am not up on the proper sleep jargon, here is what was explained to me...in my simple language my understanding is that in some of us, while the blood is pooling and/or bp dropping our ANS senses this and intentionally sends norepinepherine out to speed up things to get the blood circulating to vital organs and the brain again.

[ramakentesh]

The circulatory abnormalities in POTS and OI are there at all times, they are just worsened and become more apparent orthostatic. Also since absolute blood pressure in POTS is usually normal or even elevated its not particularly helpful in determining how symptomatic you may be. If you could examine your cerebral blood flow that is where you'd see the fluctuations.

[Nikki]

Alright, thanks for all the responses. I think I'm going to bring it up with my cardiologist at my next appointment and see what he says just about it too. Thanks again!