What do you mean by a narrow pulse pressure exactly?
I think it means the difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure as described below
Yes, that is what it means- I was wondering what numbers you were referring to though?
I am not aware that it is supposed to relate to any symptoms, although it can be a silent sign of specific conditions.
I was wondering if anybody has had narrow pulse pressure or found anything that helps with it?
I had this for a while together with orthostatic intolerance.
Do you have orthostatic intolerance? Have you tried treating it?
Do you have small fiber neuropathy?
I'd like to promote pulse pressure and shock index as measures to be thought about. On bad days in the months that I measured lots of things, I would have low pulse pressure and high shock index.
From the Discussion, on pulse pressure:
Abnormally narrowed pulse pressures occur in several diseases including heart failure (decreased pump effectiveness), blood loss, (decreased blood volume), aortic stenosis (reduced stroke volume), and cardiac tamponade (decreased filling time) and are due to decreases in systolic pressures while diastolic pressures remain stable (Homan et al., 2022). In contrast, we found that the narrow PP in PASC and < 4 year ME/CFS cohorts was due to a rise in DBP with relatively stable SBP. The mechanistic basis for the elevated DBP and narrowing pulse pressure during the orthostatic challenge is not clear for PASC but we hypothesize it may be a physiologically adaptive mechanism designed to mitigate the physiological stress of hemodynamic challenge. Research on ME/CFS patients indicates hemodynamic changes during orthostatic or exercise challenge results in reduced ventricular filling caused by the peripheral circulatory changes rather than primary cardiopulmonary perturbation (Lee et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2022).
There have been two reports of abnormally narrowed PP due to increased DBP in PASC and ME/CFS patients (van Campen and Visser, 2022; Vernon et al., 2022)
I tracked this [reaction time measure] as part of symptom monitoring for about a month, measuring it in the morning, missing some days, maybe 5 years ago.
For example, my best score was 307. On that day, my morning resting heart rate was 65, my morning shock index (0.7), pulse pressure (36) and POTS standing test (19) were all normal. Morning resting BP was 110 over 68;standing BP increased to 120 over 84. I did a grocery shop that day. The next day was an average day.
My worst score was 459. On that day, my morning resting heart rate was 64, my morning shock index was very abnormal - 1.08. Pulse pressure was very abnormal - 23. The POTS standing test was positive for POTS (41). Morning resting BP was lowish (102 over 63) and it got worse upon standing for 10 minutes (97 over 74). I think all those measures add up to the heart and brain not getting enough blood when I was upright. But - I didn't record it as a PEM day. I did a bit of gardening. The next day was a bad PEM day though.
My second worst score was 431. Morning resting heart rate was 63, morning shock index 0.9 (a bit high), pulse pressure normal (32), POTS positive (35). Morning resting BP was lowish 104/63; standing BP was 106/74. It wasn't a bad day. The next day was an average day.
I haven't monitored things for a while - full on measuring and symptom recording takes quite a bit of effort and is rather joy-sapping. So, I can't say anything specifically about pulse pressure. With symptoms in general, no, apart from, as you say, managing activity to try not to cause PEM.did you find anything that helped with pulse pressure apart from the general things like pacing and time?