Blood Pressure

I watched a forensic pathology show which featured the tragic story of a man in his late 30's who had developed schizophrenia after 2 severe head injuries in his youth. He ended up in a halfway house. While there he died in his sleep. The medical examiner found that untreated high blood pressure had contributed to atherosclerosis, which in turn contributed to thickening of his heart, which in turn contributed to fluid on his lungs. That scared me into finding my blood pressure cuff. My blood pressure has been high normal to borderline high for a couple of years. Today it was 157/85 while resting. That ain't too good. My brother had to start taking blood pressure meds when he was 35. He is not overweight. I am overweight, but I'm not sure how much is the weight and how much is heredity. I could definitely stand to lose a pound or 50.
I'm going to monitor my blood pressure daily for the next week and make an appointment with the doctor. My current doctor is pretty conservative about prescribing medications so if he thinks I should try a blood pressure med, I will. My mother, unfortunately, has had a terrible time with side effects from blood pressure meds. I tend to be pretty intolerant of most meds as a rule, so it could be a challenge.
I used to take Inderal for hand tremors but then discovered that the tremors only happened around the time of my period, so I stopped. The only side effect was that it made me tired, but I'm tired all the time anyway. I'll take it again if I have to. It's better than developing atherosclerosis, which also happened to my father, who had untreated high blood pressure and ended up having a hemorrhagic stroke 4 years ago. I've been having more heart palpitations recently and it's kinda worrying me.