He went with BB because he has concerns about my heart, which he wants controlled. The other group of hypertension meds work on the pipes, not the pump. I have a call with him next week to see if I can switch to a pipe med instead, but I don’t think he’ll go for it.
BBs make you slow & fat…not exactly what I’m after.
possible to see another specialist? Stay mentally strong, ask questions, push for options.
I’m in good company…? 
If he can score a TTWC with a ticking timebomb of a ticker, I should be able to bag a National AG TT!
This has very quickly devolved into a worst case scenario (athletically speaking).
I thought the beta blocker was bad for performance (which it is) but then find out statins effectively cause muscle damage and/or stop muscle regeneration. Awesome.
Heart can’t work, muscles can’t work…yeah… Good times.
I think the writing’s on the wall for this bike dude. 
Fortuna Eruditis Favet
Never say never
I especially enjoyed this passage from one pub:
Additionally, heavy alcohol use, crack cocaine use, increased exercise, and a diet rich in grapefruit juice may predispose patients to muscle breakdown.
Good to know I’m in the same boat as an alcoholic crackhead. 
FML.
#ignoranceisbliss
Sorry to hear about your troubles. Doctors have a way of taking you on roller-coaster rides, and surprisingly frequently its the journey that ends up being harmful. It’s cliche to say advocate for yourself, but seriously, you have to. Ask to know WHY for every medication and test, and HOW the various results with affect your treatment path. To be honest, I’m getting the impression you’re funding your PCPs education on a topic that has no treatment, but I’m a little jaded. Fingers crossed for you…
Now for some practical info: I’ve had chronic hypertension for a long time. It doesn’t respond well to medication. I tried beta blockers for a while and the most noticeable affect is a significant reduction in heart rate. Both resting (several bpm), and active (like 40bpm). It also took about 10 minutes for my HR to pick-up when I started workouts, possibly limiting how hard I could go out of the gate. On the bright side, it does apparently increase stroke-volume, so actually your cardiac output might actually be unchanged.
As for statins, I find the science of “lowering cholesterol” dubious. As you highlight there are actually significant side effects, and they’ve been pretty well papered over for a long time. But if you’re going to take them, definitely take coq10. And not the cheap ubiquinol form, you want the ubiquinone form sold under the brand Qunol (they have a patent or something, so anyone selling a bottle is paying them anyway; costco has a reasonably priced bottle).
I think you should meet with a cardiologist and get a second opinion. Preferably a sports specialist. Also make sure to stress that if at all possible you don’t want to be on meds that would mess up cycling. Any doctor worth his her salt will want you to continue to be active.
My doc is getting in touch w/ a cardiologist and I’m on the hunt for a sports specialist (at the very least a practitioner who is willing to try alternatives — my doc doesn’t even like physiotherapists!).
I totally understand 100% his logic behind the meds — control the heart, control the cholesterol until we can figure out what’s what. The meds do their singular jobs very well…but…the doc isn’t even considering the implications of all the side effects. There’s zero compromise, and I get that and sometimes that’s necessary, his #1 job is to keep people alive. I’ll still be talking with him to see if there’s a better way. 
Thanks to all for your input & concern!
(Also a little diddy I just read:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884475/ )
Except for target shooting 
Eesh. Be careful as I said in the other post hope it gets to a good place. So many instances of dire health predictions turning out not to be true. As someone said, Kale! Nothing processed, light on the meat. Tons of fruits and vegetables. Fingers crossed it turns around
This is exactly what I DON’T want to happen!!
Undeniably crappy.
He was out of competition for ~7 months, maybe out of training for 4-5 months.
Annoying that Sky don’t give any details about the matter, either the anomaly or the treatment.
Then again, they do have a history of dodgy details…
Glad he’s back & healthy.
The general take away: it depends. 
Thanks for posting this question as I’m in a similar but less intense situation. I’ve been riding for 5+ years and tracking my blood pressure for 2 years. When I visit the doc he says that everything is fine. When I take my weekly home test it says that I’m in stage 1 for HBP. When I ask the internet it says that I need to examine the results in context since my active lifestyle, weight, and age make me low risk for HBP. When I ask riders on the road they tell me that their blood pressure dropped “as soon as they stopped racing” and now they’re fine.
It’s a scary place to be at times.
Scary only because we have very little clue to what’s going on inside our own body, and even if we do, there are so many things over which we have no control. As well, the interconnectivity of all our internal systems and mechanisms is both astounding and confounding (e.g. the reason BP dropped to normal is most likely because heart structure (and hormone levels) also returned to normal).
I haven’t taken my BP in months, but when I did (non-racing) it was always low/‘athlete normal’. I took it twice a day for a month re Dr’s orders, then dropped down to a few times a week whilst on the trainer, then once a month while doing a MAF test…but I’ve been doing so much outside riding lately that BP recording has taken a back seat, basically in the trunk now. Maybe tomorrow. 
In other heart related news…seems as though the Lion King and I have something in common*:
*(a crappy ticker and fabulous hair, but not ~200 pro wins…in case you were confused…)
I am on an ACE inhibitor and a month ago my doc agreed to double the dose because it hadn’t helped. Increasing the dose doesn’t seem to have had any effect, so I suppose something different is in order. BP alone isn’t that great of an indicator of a problem. The thing that got me scared about my BP was that it was increasing.
Interesting you bring this up because last time I was at the doctor’s office for just a primary care check up, they commented on some unusually low blood pressure with https://heartmateii.com/blood-pressure-support-worth-buying-or-fake/ . Low for me, I mean. Usually I’m around 110/65 or 70. At my last visit in June I was 94/60 and they showed some concern. My heart rate is also pretty low, although not too low. It’s usually around 58 to 62 where as my husbands is like, always at 80 or 90!
