Blood Pressure Measurement With 7 Steps and 3 Tips
Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
by Paula Law
Measuring blood pressure at home is to avoid the " white-coat " hypertension phenomenon : blood pressure reading is higher in your doctors office than at home due to anxiety. However, there will be no professionals to monitor the process on how you make the " self-arrange " measurement and obtain the readings when you take it at home. So, please be reminded to do the following steps in order to obtain the accurate reading that really makes it meaningful to have it recorded at home.
- Avoid smoking (and absolutely no alcohol and drugs), exercising (including domestic work) and eating for at least 30 minutes before taking a measurement.
- Remove tight clothing from your upper left arm.
- Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor.
- Put the cuff on your left arm approximately 1.5cm above the elbow.
- Place your arm on a table in the way that the cuff is positioned at the same level as your heart.
- Ensure the deflated cuff needs to be tight but allowing insertion of 2 fingers between it and your skin.
- Rest comfortably in a relaxed environment for at least 10 minutes prior to taking your measurement.
- When the blood pressure taken in a doctors clinic is lower than that taken at home we call it masked hypertension. After you have taken few consecutive readings, you would see a trend from higher to lower blood pressure as you would be conscious of lower your own pressure.
- When you use the automatic machine to measure your blood pressure, you are reminded to notice the blood pressure cuff deflates your systolic pressure which is the first pulse that the unit detects. The cuff pressure deflates 5-10mm between each heart beat. It will depend on the timing of your pulse; your pressure reading will fluctuate approximately 5-10mm systolic & diastolic. When your pressure is taken manually the operator can regulate the rate of deflation of the cuff so as to reduce the measurement error.
- We know air pollution raises blood pressure; in fact noise pollution will also affect your blood pressure. So please ensure you are not in a noisy environment to take your measurement.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)I've never had a doctor ask me anything at all about my current state when taking my blood pressure, and nor have they ever mentioned these interesting points you make! Thanks.
Paula, Nice information on blood pressure. Thank you.
Hi Paula. Welcome to Searchwarp. Very useful information -- thanks for writing this. ~~Nenita
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