Interesting: I’m 51, I smoke and often drink more than the government’s silly recommended limits. On January 1st after Christmas excesses my blood pressure was at 144/90 which, if you check the graph below, you’ll see is getting dodgy. As is our custom we knocked drinking on the head throughout January and after that just found ourselves disinclined to drink as much as we had been before (the hangovers just get worse and worse).

About mid-February a brief exchange with someone we know, who bought a Wii after hearing us singing its praises, reminded us about that device, which we hadn’t used since coming back from Crete. At Caroline’s instigation we started using it again, dancing to various songs for half an hour a day. This half hour, every time, has resulted in me with my shirt off while a drip sweat. At about this point, probably because of January’s abstinence, my BP was 136/87. Ten days later it was down to 131/75. Now, a month after we started in on this, it is at 124/79.

Of course BP readings can change all the time and you need to take a lot more readings than I have been taking and average out, but there’s definitely been a downward trend. It’ll be great if it continues on down until both diastolic and systolic are both in the green area. Perhaps to get there I need to shed the extra stone I’m carrying…