My mother has hypertension and has been on BP meds for years. The last few months she has had several "episondes" where she will be winding down for the night and she will have a BP spike. Twice she has been hospitalized and they have ran a battery or tests and come up with nothing. Her heart is in good shape, but I am afraid that if this pattern continues she will end up having a stroke. The latest episode landed her in the hospital for 3 days and the doctor ended up checking her for adrenal cancer. He finally came back and said that it was linked to her anxiety, so he tripled her medication and added Paxil. She couldn't stand the BP so high and the Paxil made her worse, so she is no longer on Paxil and he lowered her from 360mg to 120mg. I don't buy that it is her anxiety because if it were she would have these episodeds at any time of the day. What would cause her BP to spike at night?





Nighttime blood pressure spikes may be related to a nighttime cortisol spike. A supplement containing phosphytidyl serine usually helps lower this. My favorite is Seriphos.... it contains 1000mg of PS. Or there is one called "cortisol manager" that has less PS and some other ingredients. If you want to know if cortisol is spiking at night, call a company called Diagnos-Techs in Washington state 800-878-3787 and find a doctor near you who will do an Adrenal Stress Index test....this won't be an M.D., probably an N.D. or D.C. Magnesium helps as well but can cause diarrhea easily...most absorbable supplement: "Calm" by Natural Vitality. And increasing potassium helps greatly... baked potatoes, coconut water, vegetable juices.