(Reuters Health) – Think you need to go to the doctor’s office to check your blood pressure? Think again: The best way to predict your risk of stroke or heart attack due to high blood pressure is through systematic monitoring at home rather than periodic checks in the doctor’s office, new research suggests.
“With home blood pressure monitoring you get a greater number of measurements and there is no white-coat effect,” lead author Dr. Teemu Niiranen told Reuters Health, speaking of the tendency for anxiety to drive up blood pressure. “At home the patient is more relaxed and this seems to provide blood pressure values that reflect the patient’s true blood pressure better.”
Writing in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension, Niiranen and colleagues at Finland’s National Institute of Health and Welfare concluded that home-measured blood pressure is a better predictor of heart disease-related problems than office-measured blood pressure.
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease, and nearly one in three Americans have high blood pressure, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In 2006 it contributed to the deaths of 326,000 Americans.
The researchers used data on more than 2,000 Finns, 45 to 74 years old, gathered between 2000 and 2001. Participants agreed to be interviewed, undergo medical exams and monitor their blood pressure at home on well-calibrated monitoring devices.
At follow-up nearly 7 years later, 162 participants reported at least 1 non-fatal heart disease-related event such as a heart attack, stroke, or hospitalization due to heart failure. Among the 2,081 participants, 37 heart disease-related deaths were reported.
After analyzing the data, the Niiranen group concluded that the best predictor of heart attacks, strokes, and related deaths was home blood pressure monitoring.
(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)
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In some cases,such as mind,it is better to not get in a hapit of checking your blood pressure at home. When I checked it at home and it was to high I would worry because of what the doctors told me about HBP causing stroke. We believe the worry caused it to go higher and caused me to check it more often. My doctor advised me to stop checking it at home.
I take my blood pressure once a week and keep a record for my primary care doctor. The reason for this is that I have white-coat syndrome and it always goes up in her office. I use the Resperate every day and I’m happy to report that my blood pressure is usually 118/68. I’m a senior citizen, take lots of vitamins, work out at the gym five days a week and take no medication. I’m still working and plan on keeping it that way! If it wasn’t for the Resperate device, I would probably have been on medication for the past two years. I am so luck to have found out about Resperate.
My blood pressure is always high at the doctor’s office. I take it at home twice per day, every day. It stays within normal range at home. Your doctor’s demeanor can make a big difference on your readings at his office. Having been chewed on for HBP by my doctor, he has forever ruined me from having normal readings in a medical office setting. If only doctors knew half as much as they think they do!
i was hoping when i got my resperate machine that it will help lower my bp.. i’ve use the machine daily for 1 month and doing 15 therapeutic every session but no improvement yet… any suggestions..
I measure my blood pressure fairly regularly and notice that the reading is very sensitive to the temperature outside. In the winter it tends to be high, but falls as it gets warmer and warmer. I have to reduce my dose of blood pressure medicines accordingly. I may skip a few days, but if I notice a change in the outdoor thermometer, I take a reading to see if I need to make a corresponding adjustment in the dose of the meds. I live in Italy where it gets very hot in the summer and I drop my calcium channel blocker altogether, but since the ace inhibitor has a curative effect n the heart, I leave it in place regardless of the pressure. The same with the beta blocker, which I take for rhythm problems.