My Experiment
I've never agreed with the media and maybe medical assumption that growing older means you have to be on a drug to take care of everything. The only drug I take is a combo to control high blood pressure. The better thing to do would be to eliminate the cause of the problem so with my doctor's approval I weaned myself off the drug, first cutting down, then stopping. That was three weeks ago.
I started walking or biking everyday for 20 mintues and could see that exercise drops BP by 20 or so points for a short period of time. But without weight loss any little stress caused my BP to head upwards to 180/110. It seems to be a vicious circle that higher BP causes higher BP :). This week I could never find a time when my readings were comfortably low. So i put my experiment on hiatus today and went back on the medication with a goal to loose 20 pounds, then try again.
I now know that it won't kill me to stop the meds, but it's probably not healthy. I'm also convinced that a combo of weight loss, more exercise and deep breathing can help me over come this. So onward to weight loss...smaller portions is my motto! George Burns, who lived to be 100, said, "If I knew I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."