So yesterday I met with SDXB to borrow his digital blood-pressure monitor. Among other things. We met at Infamous Overpriced Gourmet Grocery Store over coffee and then went for a hike in the mountain preserve maintained by the City of Glendale. When we got to the park, he handed over the machine.
Interesting little device. It operates on batteries. You strap a cuff thing around your arm, attaching it with Velcro, and then push a couple of buttons. It blows up the cuff until you feel like your arm is gonna go numb and then beeps a while as it measures your systolic and diastolic blood pressure, throwing in your pulse rate as a lagniappe.
So by way of showing me how to use it, he lashed me up in the thing and punched the appropriate buttons. Resulting figures: about 140 over 80, borderline hypertension. That was what appeared at the doctor’s office, occasioning this expedition. I knew SDXB had a monitor, since he’s been gulping blood pressure meds for years. Instead of ponying up $100 or so for my own, I thought I’d borrow his, at least until we know whether I have to be on the damn pills, too.
Okay. Now he wants me to demonstrate that I’ve learned how it works. I reapply the cuff and punch the buttons.
Lo! Two minutes after the 141/80 reading, I’m down to 124/78.
Well, that can’t be right, we figure. So we try it again: 120/77.
What? We guess the last two figures are more or less accurate, since I was nervous about the gadget (I just hate this stuff!), and because some a**hole cut me off as we were driving from coffee to the park, swerved into the park ahead of me, and grabbed the parking place SDXB had passed up for me to take. The park was crowded, and I don’t like fighting for parking. And a**holes in any environment, on the road or elsewhere, tend to send me through the roof. Presumably those factors combined to create the higher figure, after which I must have calmed down.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
But… Yesterday after I got home, out of curiosity I tried using it again. The first reading was an astronomical 158/130! That’s higher than any doctor’s gadget has ever registered, despite the fact that I hate few things more than I hate being in a doctor’s office.
Error? So I tried it again. Two minutes later, we’re down to 139/84, a drop in systolic presssure of 19 points between 11:13 and 11:15 a.m.
Interesting. What happens if you run the doodad a third time? Magically, you get a new reading of 129/70, a ten-point drop in one minute.
I tried this experiment twice more during the day, since the docs had asked me to check my blood pressure at different hours. Same thing happened: I got readings that ranged from 120/75 to 148/86 in a matter of minutes.
Either something very strange is going on with my body or this contraption has an accuracy problem.
I surf the Net and discover that, for optimal accuracy, digital monitors need to have fresh batteries. SDXB had said the batteries could run down over theperiod the doctors want me to indulge in this exercise. So, when I got up at 4:00 this morning, I changed out the batteries.
This resulted in sort of normal figures. Sort of. The high was a pleasing (but not very credible) 122/78. But a second test, two minutes later, came up with 106/70, barely higher than the average corpse’s. And, if we buy this at all, a 16-point drop in exactly one minute. Another 60 seconds later, it was back up to an almost healthy 113/69.
{sigh} I don’t know what to make of all this. If anything. It may be that I need to buy a new machine—SDXB’s is several years old. Really, I don’t want to spend $70 on something that’s totally unnecessary. But on the other hand, I don’t want to be stuck on medications that are totally unnecessary for the rest of my life, either. Or not get the meds if they are necessary.
It’s possible that Medicare covers blood pressure monitors. I’ll have to ask today or tomorrow. But then I’ll still have the hassle and expense of having to schlep it to a doctor’s office and get it calibrated—and who knows what they’ll charge for that privilege? Like I have nothing else to do and nothing else to spend my money on!
🙄
Image:
Steven Fruitsmaak, Automatic Brachial Sphygmomanometer Showing Grade 2 Arterial Hypertension. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Have you been testing on the same arm repeatedly? It takes the arm a bit of time to return to normal after having one of those cuffs blown up around it. If you are unsure of the result on one arm and want to retest, do so on the other arm and you’ll likely have more consistent readings.
@ Angela: That’s interesting to know! It makes sense…and it would explain the seeming inconsistency.
I think I’ve confirmed another tentative discovery, too: You get a lot more “normal” reading if you sit at the table with the cuff wrapped around your arm, feet on the floor, legs uncrossed, in silence, and simply relax (read a magazine) for five minutes before touching the “on” button. Just tried that for the second time (it’s 1:00 p.m. — did it earlier at the 4:00 a.m. experiment), and the result is 120/75…apparently pretty normal. The morning effort was pretty close to normal, too: 122/78.
Question is, who sits around in a zen state all the time? Seems like it would be more realistic to get readings while you’re doing things you normally do in life. If tossing a load of laundry in the washer or feeding the dog or just walking around the house shoots your BP up to 158/130, then that probably should be taken as the actual figure. Yet all the instructions I’ve seen on the Web urge monitor users to sit still and be very quiet for three to five minutes before using one of the things.
As a former medical assistant who took thousands of blood pressure, you are correct with sittihg quietly for five minutes and having your arm on the table.
Also, sometimes blood pressure does shoot up at the doctor’s office. We called it “white coat syndrome.”
@ E. Murphy: Good to have one’s suspicions confirmed by a pro!
A year or two ago, too, I read a report that said research had shown that when you sit on an examining table with your feet dangling in the air to have your BP measured, that will drive up the figures. At the Mayo, their machine is attached to the wall, so you have no place else to sit BUT on the table, and of course your feet don’t reach the floor or even the step. My osteopath friend Jan would have her staff seat patients in an ordinary chair; when they would take my BP it was usually a lot closer to normal than any results that required me to sit on an examining table.
So, what we’re suggesting, I gather, is that “normal” readings apply only when the person is at rest? Is it then normal for BP to rise to startling levels when you’re moving around through your ordinary daily activities?
My mom has severe white coat hypertension. The thing that worries me is she is so scared of having her blood pressure taken that she can’t even do the self measurement one so I always wonder how do we know it’s REALLY white coat hypertension if she never takes a reading at all? Because as we all know, there is no way to tell by how we “feel” if our blood pressure is high or low, although it sure seems like it’s high when we get cut off while driving, trying to park, etc. I had a friend whose husband had high blood pressure and he didn’t know or didn’t care but at fifty he ended up having to do dialysis once they figured out how bad off he was, and he died at age fifty. I’m reading a book called Lights Out that explains the metabolic processes that occur to make our blood pressure go up. The book urges us to sleep 9 hours in total darkness (even those horrid VCR buttons, lighted clock faces create too much light – think sleeping in a cave darkness) and to avoid eating fruit/carbs during the winter. Very interesting book, hypothesizes that we’re sick and overweight due to the invention of the light bulb which causes our bodies to think it’s summer year round, plus the availability of carbs/fruit year round. We put on weight, our bodies think we’re preparing for the oncoming winter and hibernation. Anyway, you might take a look at it. I know you don’t sleep well and were upset with weight gain.
@ Mrs. Accountability: According to SDXB, who had hypertension for a LONG time before he finally got around to having it treated (he was afraid of a certain well-known side effect the meds are said to have on men…), it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking elevated BP readings are the result of white coat syndrome. He definitely does have white coat syndrome. But he also does have high blood pressure.
I apparently also have WCS to the extent that the creepy blood pressure machine makes me tense enough to drive up the reading. However, after a day or so of discovery time, I’ve found that putting the annoying cuff on about five minutes before turning on the annoying machine and then just sitting there quietly, reading a book or magazine that distracts my attention for that long, seems to overcome that effect.
Don’t know that I’d go so far as to blame the end of the world as we know it on the light bulb. But there’s no question that blacking out the windows does help with insomnia. This works best in the winter, when it’s dark outdoor longer. In AZ, there’s not much you could do, short of sleeping on the floor of a closet with the door shut, to keep some light from seeping into your bedroom. I find that even the predawn light will cause me to wake up–that’s why I’m ordinarily up and raring to go by 4:30 every summer morning. The solution: go to bed earlier. And (LOL!) don’t sit in front of the computer tapping away into the night.
Do as I say, not as I do… 😉
You are suppose to take your blood pressure in both arms. Then, if there is a difference, use the arm that has the higher reading. You are then suppose to take and record your blood pressure readings 2-3 times a day for how ever long the doctors require(the times also). Sometimes they say to average 2-3 readings, but at least to begin I think recording separate readings with the time could tell you more.
Sometimes my husband’ BP will be higher than usual and just a minute later it will drop to 100/60(he is on BP rxs). So ther is a lot of variation in BP levels. I don’t know how the doctors decide who to treat when it goes up & down. The ones I know who got drugs had readings that were always too high.
I have high BP during pregnancy, but I got a manual monitor for less than $20. Yeah, you have to pump it up but I think that’s worth saving $50.