Measuring Your Blood Pressure at Home

Have you ever heard of white coat syndrome?

White coat syndrome occurs when you are waiting in the doctor’s office waiting for the nurse or doctor to come in to take your vital signs, including your blood pressure. Because stress can affect your blood pressure, it can seem elevated in the doctor’s office. You then have someone else take your blood pressure later at home or at a pharmacy and low and behold your blood pressure has dropped back down.

Doctor’s are quite familiar with this phenomenon and even with the best intentions of making you feel comfortable in the office, you still feel nervous. Who wouldn’t with all of those needles sitting around? Ouch!

Monitoring your blood pressure at home...

So your doctor may suggest you take your blood pressure at home. He may do this to determine if you have high blood pressure or to help monitor your blood pressure to determine if you are taking the correct medication or if a particular lifestyle change has a positive effect on your blood pressure.

Your doctor or nurse may send a blood pressure monitor for you to borrow for the short term. You will probably need to buy one of your own. They come in different sizes and price ranges. Most of the upper arm models are relatively accurate. Be sure to buy the right sized cuff for your arm.

You can use monitors very easily at home. Many times the doctor will ask you to take two readings, one in the morning and one at night. Your blood pressure fluctuates over the day and can change according to what you are doing, eating or the amount of stress you are experiencing.

What's involved?

There are two crucial things to remember when monitoring you blood pressure at home, make sure you do it at the same time everyday and make sure you write it down.

By doing your readings the same time everyday accomplishes two things. First it gives consistent readings for the doctor to be able to monitor and the doctor can see when your blood pressure may rise or fall and be able to adjust medications accordingly. The other reason is that you will get into a routine that will help you to remember to take readings every day.

When you record your readings, make sure you write down the date, the reading and the time of day you took the reading. This information will be very important to your doctor. The reading consists of two numbers. The top or systolic number is the arterial pressure the heart exerts when it is contracting. The bottom number or systolic, is a measure of arterial pressure when your heart is at rest.

Taking your blood pressure at home is easy. It can also give you a sense of control over your blood pressure as you are the on monitoring it. You don’t have to wait three to six months to get it checked at the doctor’s office. You also don’t have to worry about White Coat syndrome at home, unless your spouse is a doctor too.

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