After my drowning late last summer I recovered very quickly. I pushed myself to get back the weight I lost (20 lbs.) while laid up in the hospital, and my strength back. By sometime during the holiday season I felt I was fully recovered. At a checkup with my GP during the late winter months he asked what was up with my blood pressure. It had risen to the 160s over the low 90s. He said he wasn't going to tolerate that and then asked if I was still exercising. I replied that I didn't resume after my recovery from my accident. My "exercising" consisted of jumping rope in the style that fighters do in training, jumping twice for each revolution of the rope (jumping the rope 100 times means you jump 200 times). He told me to get back to work with the rope and see him again in one month to see if I had to go on blood pressure meds. I started back in earnest the next day. I could only jump about 20 times when I started back. But, each day it increased and I would push myself to do as many as I could. Before too long I was doing as many as 150, twice a day (that's 300 jumps for each, or a total of 600 jumps that day). Monitoring my b p at home I found that it was dropping fairly rapidly. My lung capacity increased drastically which made me feel better all over. When I went back to see the dr. after one month of jumping rope the nurse checked my b p and wrote it down on the chart. When my doc came in to see me he looked at it and said that he had never seen anyone who hated to take meds any more than me. My b p was down to 132 over 83. He grinned and said for me to keep it up, and he would see me in 6 months.
Cardio exercise is amazing in what it can do for a person, even at my age of 69. Jumping rope gets you to that heart pounding pace quicker than anything I know of. Looks like I'm stuck with doing it from here on out, or go on meds. Some days I have to really make myself do it, but it's far better than the meds.
