By Brad Beckstrom
180/90
That was my blood pressure reading. My doctor came in to check it again. She came up with something higher. She said “You’re not going anywhere. We need you to lie down while we bring in a EKG machine.”
I had gotten some friendly warnings about my blood pressure before, but I was the proper weight (range) for my age and believed I was living a healthy lifestyle. But this blood pressure reading was off the charts for me, well, for anyone.
Trouble
I was in the process of being unceremoniously bought out of a company I’d co-founded 10 years earlier. The stress of been building up for over a year and was showing up in all the usual places, poor sleep, weight gain, high blood pressure. At that point, I was lifting weights 2 to 3 times a week but I’d given up running years earlier due to some knee issues. I enjoyed mountain biking but rarely found the time to do it.
If you’ve ever lived through a major lawsuit or been forced out of something that you spent over a decade building, whether it be a marriage, a company, a career, or something that feels like all three, then you begin to discover a whole new level of stress. It’s different than work-related stress when you’re part of a team dealing with a difficult situation. In my case, it was personal and it was prolonged – 3 ½ years by the time it was all over.
Personal and Prolonged
It was the personal and the prolonged part that really impacted my health. The blood pressure warnings were in the early stages. I needed to do something immediately. In addition, who was going to provide life insurance for a guy with blood pressure like that? In what my former business partner later called a “strategic move,” all of my insurance had been canceled.
I needed a solution very quickly. It was a chilly fall day and I needed to just get outside and breathe. I walked down to the bike trail and just kept going. I only walked 2 miles but it was the most important walk I’d ever take. [Read more…] about The Trail That Saved My Life.