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Simple Steps to More Effective Blood Pressure Monitoring
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Monitoring your blood pressure is an effective and easy way to evaluate your health. And you can make it even more effective with some simple changes.

 

Blood pressure monitoring is an effective way to evaluate your health. It’s simple, easy, and you can do it in the privacy of your own home. But that doesn’t mean that this strategy is perfect. By making some simple changes to your monitoring schedule, you can increase the effectiveness of this health strategy. And this will give you more accurate health information, so you can decrease your health risk. Here’s how to do it.

 

About HypertensionSecrets to More Effective Blood Pressure Monitoring

Hypertension is an extremely serious and common problem. According to the AHA, more than 103 million people in the US have high blood pressure. And most medical researchers expect these numbers to keep increasing. Hypertension is a serious health risk. It’s linked to issues like heart disease, stroke, dementia, heart failure and weak blood vessels. If you have high blood pressure, you’re also more likely to die early. The number of people who died early because of hypertension is increasing as well. Between 2005 and 2015 the death rate from high blood pressure increased by 11 percent. This is a shocking statistic and chances are it will only increase as time goes on.

 

So, if you have high blood pressure, it’s important that you adopt strategies to control it. And one way you can do that is with regular blood pressure monitoring.

 

Creating a Blood Pressure Monitoring Schedule

A recent study has proved just how essential it is to establish a regular blood pressure monitoring schedule. However, you may be confused about the best way to do this. A recent study has explored the optimum schedule for getting a ‘true’ underlying blood pressure. This means a good baseline pressure that isn’t affected by confounding factors that can raise or lower your blood pressure. If you want to avoid cardiovascular events, this is the best way to do it. The study found that you need to measure your blood pressure for 3 consecutive days to get an accurate reading. This will help to cancel out factors that could be affecting the results. And if your blood pressure is close to the treatment threshold, extend the monitoring period to 7 days to be certain.

 

Following this schedule will allow you to get a baseline measurement of your blood pressure. However, it doesn’t mean that you can stop measuring after 3 days and never try again. After this point, you should monitor your blood pressure regularly for fluctuations. You can do this according to your own schedule, results, and adherence to self-monitoring. And you would need to use the initial measurement as a baseline to evaluate any changes.

 

Gaps in the Study

This study was based on meta-analysis and it was focused on one aspect of the debate. The researchers didn’t investigate how many measurements should be made or when. However, this type of information isn’t necessary. Taking your blood pressure regularly is easy and simple. So, it isn’t a big burden for you to measure it every day or even more than once a day. As long as you take measurements the same time every day and in coordination with hypertension medications, the results will be useful.

 

The Takeaway

If you want to be healthy, monitoring your blood pressure is a good way to start. It will alert you to signs of serious problems early enough to get treatment. You will also gain more control over chronic health risk factors and diseases by adopting this strategy. However, you need to take this health measurement more than occasionally. If you adopt a regular schedule over the long-term, with multiple measurements a day, it will be more useful for diagnosis and treatment.

 

You will also identify other information relative to your health status by monitoring your blood pressure. This includes data on long-term trends, daily BP variability and circadian variations. All these health risk factors will help your doctor make the right diagnosis when necessary. And this will ensure that you get the best treatment and outcome possible.

 

 

If you’re concerned about a health risk, try using HomeLab to keep track of your condition and any preventative measures you take. And if you see signs of a significant problem, you should check with your doctor as soon as possible.

 

 

Tags:  health risk, blood pressure, blood pressure monitoring, hypertension

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