Home blood pressure monitoring is a healthy practice

It is very important to take your blood pressure cuff to your healthcare provider’s office to have it calibrated with their system. Your healthcare provider can then check the accuracy of your machine as well as your technique. Photo courtesy of the American Heart Association.

High Blood Pressure (HBP) or hypertension is a very common disease. We see more of it as people age and as people are less able to manage their weight. One of the best ways to take care of hypertension is to make sure you are taking your medication daily, decrease the salt in your diet, eliminate consuming processed foods, incorporate an exercise program into your lifestyle, add stress-reducing methods into your life and make sure you are getting enough sleep nightly. Taking good care of yourself is indeed a lifestyle.

One of the most important ways to take care of your blood pressure is to monitor it at home. Actually, it is more important that your blood pressure be well controlled at home rather than at an office visit.

So, how do we accomplish this? There are several blood pressure monitoring devices that are available to help you keep an eye on your pressure. A regular blood pressure cuff is a great tool. A reading with a blood pressure cuff should be taken after the person has been seated for 5 minutes. This time gives the body an opportunity to settle down prior to measuring the pressure.

With an electronic or battery-powered blood pressure machine, the key here is to make sure the machine is working properly. Make sure it is one that has been certified as being accurate. Next, it is very important to use the correct cuff size. If the cuff size is too small, the blood pressure machine may generate inaccurate data. And if this data is used to make decisions about medications, one could certainly be overtreating or undertreating a condition. Neither of which is good.

Operator error is the next issue to examine. For example, does the person taking the blood pressure know how to position the blood pressure cuff? Do they understand how important it is to sit before taking a blood pressure.

It is also very important to take your blood pressure cuff to your healthcare provider’s office to have it calibrated with their system. Your healthcare provider can then check the accuracy of your machine as well as your technique.

Today, there are several wearable devices such as rings, watches and others that people can use to monitor their blood pressure. However, there is a big caveat here. All these devices operate on their own algorithms, which generate blood pressure numbers and yet there is no universally applied manner to make sure the numbers generated by all these machines are accurate and comparable. There have been issues with making sure these devices are calibrated.

Taking good care of yourself and your blood pressure is extremely important. Consider these facts as you strive to be the healthiest that you can be.