How To Monitor Your Blood Pressure At Home?

To check your Blood Pressure at home, you have to buy a blood pressure monitor. You will see several types of blood pressure monitors at pharmacies and online medical stores. The price range of all those monitors will vary from $50 to $100. But, you don’t have to think that higher price range blood pressure monitors will have better quality. Almost all the types will serve the same purpose, so it is better to go with the lowest price range monitors. People will have health insurance policies mostly, and they can check whether buying this monitor will cover this cost too.

Features To Consider While Buying Blood Pressure Monitor:

Check whether you are getting the monitor that will go around your upper arm but, don’t consider wrist or finger monitors due to inaccuracy.

It is always to go for buying an automatic monitor to use it easily and check whether it meets standards for your age and health conditions.

Check for the display showing the numbers visible to you and check whether the cuff fits your arm properly.

See Your Doctor:

Soon after buying the monitor, book appointment with your doctor and take your monitor along with you to the hospital. Here your nurse will check whether it is properly calibrated and will teach you how to use it properly to get the reading.

Determine When To Take Your Blood Pressure:

Doctors will recommend you to take two to three reading in the morning and same at night too. Some will recommend you to take a few times a week. Don’t try to take the BP continuously to check any variations are there.

Take Your Blood Pressure:

Here will see how to take blood pressure at home:

When you are taking blood pressure, you should avoid consuming caffeine, alcohol and tobacco at least before 30 minutes. Also, avoid workouts before 30 minutes.

You have to sit comfortably in your chair and rest your arm over the table lying close to you or over some flat surface.

Now you can wrap the cuff of the monitor around your upper arm tightly. If you have a manual monitor, then you have to press the bulb which will inflate your cuff, and you will feel like tightened over the cuff area. With an automatic BP monitor, have to press the button.

Note down the top and bottom readings by seeing the display properly. This will give you both systolic pressure (top reading) and diastolic pressure (bottom number) as well. Like this, you have to note down when your blood pressure at home to keep up a tab over the record.

Use The Readings:

With the help of blood pressure readings, you will come to know whether you are normal or not. If the BP lies in the range of 120–139 systolic or 80–89 diastolic, then it means you are suffering with pre-hypertension. If the BP is more than 140 systolic pressure or more than 90 diastolic, then this condition is hypertension. Based on the reading, you have to take proper treatment from your doctor.