Nurse will provide education to patient and family regarding strategies to recognize and mitigate hypotensive episodes and symptoms in order to promote safety and independence. These include: avoiding alcohol, which causes vasodilation; encouraging coffee, which causes vasoconstriction and increases urine output; eating frequent, small, low-carbohydrate meals, in order to avoid blood shunting to GI tract during digestion; calf muscle pump exercises before rising, to encourage systemic circulation and mitigate symptoms of postural hypotension; and resting with head and neck elevated at night, which serves to both minimize hypotensive symptoms upon rising and prevent sudden dead through nocturnal epiglottal asphyxiation.
