Blood pressure questions

145 is not borderline high.  It is high, and if it is persistently that high, you're hypertensive.  Lifestyle inventions like exercise, stress reduction, and dietary changes offer some chances to lower it without medications, but generally those work rather poorly if you're already somewhat conscious of them.  

The truth is that any systolic BP over 115 can and should be worked on.  Each rise in 10 over 115 doubles your risk of heart disease in the future.  So 125/75 is NOT ideal.  Should you be on meds for it?  The official recommendations are no, and I'd agree with that, but it gives you an idea of why 145 is definitely not borderline anything.

Get the things you can under control, but don't be terribly surprised if you end up on meds.  It's not the end of the world, and you could avoid a host of health problems in the future by getting it under control now.

The only suggestion that I have is that dining hall food tends to have a TON of sodium in it almost no matter what you get.

I realize in basic training that you have very little say over what you eat and very little time to eat it but just me more aware of the choices maybe.  You may be eating something that you don't even realize has salt in it.

Plain rice is usually a staple that doesn't have a lot of salt.  Anything with any kind of sauce is going to be full of salt.  If the fruits veggies aren't fresh they probably have a lot of salt.  Heck, almost anything from the hot line has a lot of salt...

Thanks for pointing this out, Derek.  It is a statement like this that I always believed in when my systolic BP was in the upper 130's and lower 140's and I did not "want to be on meds" - advance that 6 years and I was taking a combination of 6 BP meds - that's right, I said 6 -, on dialysis, and hoping to all that I found holy that I would get a kidney transplant before I died.  High BP is a precursor to many health problems and it slowly takes it's toll.  It is much like diabetes - and often related - in that you don't see the damage that it is doing on a day to day basis.  Then, all of the sudden - you are in the docs office and s/he is telling you that you are in big time trouble.  The difference between changing habits now in a small manner and arresting the problem before it goes further and changes your entire lifestyle (imagine a diet with very little potassium or phosphorous and very little fluids vs. not adding salt to your food) is gigantic.  Those of us with of a family history of high BP thanks to our genes, have an even harder battle to fight. 

Please, do what you can to lower your blood pressure naturally.  If you have to go on a dose of meds, take them religiously.  Please do not let it advance any farther before you take action.  I have been there, it is not fun, I wish to spare you that ordeal.

Be well, my friend.