Nick: 'I only discovered I had high blood pressure through a friend's joke'

I wasn't overweight, didn't smoke, exercised, ate well and didn't drink excessively so when I started getting bad headaches and wasn't sleeping well, I didn't immediately go to the doctor's.

Taking blood pressure However, I did work very long hours in a stressful job with an unreasonable and demanding boss. It was because of this that my mate gave me a blood pressure monitor as a present — it was a joke about my job. I tried it and got a reading of 175/110. My friend said he thought it was high.

Luckily, this was enough to persuade me to go to the GP. He said he doubted my blood pressure really was that high because I wasn't old or unhealthy enough and doubted it was causing my headaches but he put me down for a cholesterol test and to see the practice nurse. My blood pressure was high and remained so whenever I measured it and my blood cholesterol was high too.

Heart attack risk

The doctor said that my blood pressure and cholesterol levels gave me a one in 5 risk of a heart attack in the next 10 years. My father had a fatal heart attack when he was 64 so I took this seriously. He also said that the hours I was working was enough to make anyone ill and I needed to find ways of reducing them.

He recommended drugs for the blood pressure but I was worried about the side-effects. In the end I took them and immediately felt much better. There weren't many side effects, I felt a bit spaced out but that passed and the statins I took for cholesterol made by legs ache so I took a lower dose. I went for regular blood tests for about three months and by the end of it my blood pressure and cholesterol was normal. Best of all, my boss moved on and in the end I got another job.

I think the high blood pressure had probably been affecting me for some time. Although it is partly lifestyle (stress) related, it and my high cholesterol are also down to genetics. If I hadn't been aware of the problem I'd probably have know nothing about it until I dropped down dead like my Dad.