Sudden drop in blood pressure

Have you had your parathyroid checked?  A tumour which may be very, very small and benign could cause extra Parathyroid hormone to be released which in turn affects calcium levels in your blood which affects your blood pressure.

What acutally happens when there is a sudden drop in blood pressure? What are the symtoms? I take a blood pressure pill every day, should I take one when there is a drop?

Hi,

Don't know if it's the same cause, but my mom had a similar situation.  A doctor in the emergency room (after a fall) finally figured it out. 

When you stand up, there is a tendency for blood pressure to drop. In healthy people their nerves send a signal to the brain to tighten the veins and keep the blood pressure stable.  My mom had nerve damage to those nerves (probably from diabetes) so when she stood, her blood pressure would just drop and the body did not compensate.  The doctor was easily able to diagnose this by taking both sitting and standing blood pressure, rather than sitting only as is usually done.  There is no way to repair the nerve damage, but they taught her to take her standing and sitting blood pressure and gave her a pill to take if the difference was too great. She also typically has high blood pressure and is on medicine for that, which means everything is a balancing act.  However it was so helpful for us to know exactly what was going on, and the self monitoring and pills do help.  Anyway, long story short, have your doctor check the difference between sitting and standing blood pressure to rule out nerve damage.

Good luck!

I have recently had this same problem.  I went through a lot of testing and the doctors were not sure what was going on.  Then, they sent me to a cardiologist that was more familiar with these symptoms.  In most people, when their blood pressure drops suddenly, a signal is sent to your brain to constrict your blood vessels and raise your heart beat.  In my case, the nerve in my heart reads the signal wrong, and instead of speeding up my heart rate, it slows it down.  The combination of a low blood pressure and a low heart rate do not allow blood to flow to your head, and that's when you pass out.  He was able to diagnose me with the tilt table test.  They use this test to try and make your blood pressure drop suddenly, if it does, they can see how your heart rate reacts to the sudden drop of blood pressure and make the diagnosis.  My cardiologist put me on a beta blocker for one year.  The beta blocker keeps the signal from reaching your heart, so you don't have a sudden decrease in heart rate when your blood pressure drops.  He said that during the one year on the beta blockers, the heart has a chance to "re-wire" itself and that studies have shown a very high success rate with this treatment.