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Replies to "I am interested in your balance comment. I had a pacemaker implanted in 2016 due to..."
Hi, @willired. With my stroke several years ago, I developed balance problems, but my medical team could not determine what brain functions were causing them. We reviewed whether the cause was muscular, visual, neural, or stress or some combination, but came to no precise conclusion. Instead, we decided to concentrate on physical conditioning and therapy to teach my body to walk again and respond to stimuli in the normal fashion from before my stroke. We also explored whether my hypertension, combined with the side effects of several drugs treating that, might be at fault. Since it might be what's still causing some balance issues, our focus has been on resolving that. We've made some progress in that, but surgery last year to remove most of my colon led to 40 pounds of muscle and fat loss, so my focus now has been to rebuild muscles. To some extent I've improved, as my balance is improving gradually, but at age 89, the rate of improvement may be too little to appreciate. My AFIB is asymptomatic so that's not a problem, and my BP stays up in the 140-150 range and heart rate is strong in the low 50s, protecting me against circulatory deficiencies that could affect my balance. My BP medications are more likely than reduced BP to cause me to get a little fuzzy. Hope you can get something useful out of my experience. Martin