Blood pressure

[Smithy]

How often do you check your blood pressure?

My family suffer with high blood pressure mine can be up and down at times.. I check my blood pressure once a week.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I just finished doing a study about fitness tracker watches, and part of that study was to take my blood pressure, twice in the morning, and twice at night, 1 minute apart.
They sent me an Omron blood pressure cuff to use for the study.
The study requirement for taking blood pressure properly was pretty interesting.

First, I had to sit quietly for 5 minutes after putting the BP cuff on, feet on the floor and sitting upright in a chair with my arm resting on a desk or table. After 5 minutes, I took the first reading, then waited another minute (the device counted down the time so it was exact).
Before I took the BP reading, nothing with caffeine for an hour, no exercising.

Even so, my blood pressure varied from one day to another. Some mornings it was as low as 110/65, and other mornings as high as 150/80, and anywhere in between. Usually, it was lower in the evenings, but that is probably because our blood sugar and blood pressure start to rise first thing in the mornings, maybe.

Anyway, it helps to be consistent when you take the readings, so you know it is not because of something you just did or something you ate or drank.

 

[Smithy]

I didn't know the fitness watches track your blood pressure? If they do maybe I need to invest in one.
I got told by my doctor to take my blood pressure readings 3 times straight after one another to see if it goes up or down.

I always write my blood pressures down on a piece of paper to keep track.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I didn't know the fitness watches track your blood pressure? If they do maybe I need to invest in one.
I got told by my doctor to take my blood pressure readings 3 times straight after one another to see if it goes up or down.

I always write my blood pressures down on a piece of paper to keep track.

The watches do not track blood pressure yet, at least not the Apple Watch. However, I think that is what they were working towards with this study. For a month, they had me wear two watches, one on each wrist, and after two weeks, swap wrists with each watch. So the watches tracked whatever they were tracking, and gave results for both wrists, plus the BP readings twice each day, morning and evening. They also had me do a blood test, which seemed to be the basic labs that we regularly had done, and I do not know how that figured into the study, but it did.

Apple went through a similar process when they were getting ready to set up other features, like being able to do an EKG with the watch, so I imagine this will eventually work into the smart watches being able to measure BP and let us know if the reading is high or low.

You can get a BP cuff that will sync with your smart phone through the app. I have one that works with iHealth app and goes on my wrist, which is easier than putting it on your upper arm. The app saves all the readings, and you can actually use it for more then one person if you set up separate profiles, so it would work for your mom, too, Smithy.

 

[Don Alaska]

Almost never.