The Importance of Regular Blood Pressure Checking
The Importance of Regular Blood Pressure Checking
High blood pressure is known as “silent killer”. A difficulty with high pressure lies in a fact that it can easily go unnoticed. There are no symptoms that could warn us that something happens in our blood vessels. According to statistics, almost a third of adult people do not know that their blood pressure is highly elevated. Thus, many people with high pressure are completely unaware of it, until they get frequent headaches or chest pain. Unfortunately, the appearance of these health issues often indicates that the pressure has already damaged arteries, heart, or some other part of the body. If the high pressure lasts for too long, it can lead to kidney failure, heart attack, blindness, erectile dysfunction, and even, death. To avoid the worst-case scenario, medical experts recommend regular check-up of blood pressure. For young people, they recommend once in two years and for adults two to three times a year. According to them, the risk of high pressure increases with aging and more frequent check-up is needed if a person has one or more additional risks like sedentary lifestyle, a lot of stress, poor diet, smoking, obesity, and drinking alcohol. To understand how to measure blood pressure properly, the article “Checking Your Blood Pressure” gives us useful tips.
The Importance of Regular Blood Pressure Checking
Before taking your blood pressure:
• Find a quiet place. (You will need to listen for your heartbeat.)
• Roll up the sleeve on your left arm or remove any tight-sleeved clothing, if needed. (It’s best to take blood pressure from the left arm, if possible.)
• Rest in a chair next to a table for five to 10 minutes. (Your left arm should rest comfortably at heart level.)
• Sit up straight with your back against the chair, legs uncrossed.
• Rest your forearm on the table with the palm of your hand facing up.
If you purchase a manual or digital blood pressure monitor, follow the instruction booklet carefully.
To learn how to monitor blood pressure properly is very important because many people can get false results when checking their blood pressure in a doctor’s office. This phenomenon is known as the “white-coat” hypertension. False results can also appear during a day, for our blood pressure varies under the influence of our emotions, diet, weather conditions, etc. Therefore, medical experts suggest regular monitoring, which includes writing a blood pressure diary. The pressure should be measured every day and in the predetermined time. The best measurements are one hour after waking up. In this way, we will provide our physician with additional data and help her/him to diagnose high pressure on time, or discard it as fake, because of ‘white-coat’ syndrome.