The Value Of Blood Pressure Monitoring And Using Blood Pressure Charts

By: Donald Saunders
Submitted: 2007-11-19 22:34:21
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Alterations to our diet and lifestyle today mean that an increasing number of people are suffering from hypertension and it is vital that we all begin monitoring our blood pressure regularly. Fortunately this no longer means that we have to trek to the doctors office and the large range of simple to use and quite inexpensive monitors on offer nowadays permits us to measure our blood pressure in the comfort of our own homes. Despite this, whilst measuring our pressure may be easy, understanding the resulting figures is not always quite so easy.

Blood pressure varies from one individual to the next and also varies with things like the time of day and what we eat. For this reason we are not able to say that normal blood pressure is a given set of numbers and that should you be more than a given number of above or below these then you need to see your doctor. However, what we can do is to come up with a number of bands which denote varying degrees of high and low blood pressure in relation to a set of baseline readings which apply to the vast majority of the population and this is precisely what blood pressure charts do.

A traditional blood chart is a graphic representation of a range of blood pressure readings below and above the norm including an indication of what each band tells you about your blood pressure.

For example, if you take your blood pressure and come up with a high systolic figure of 134 and a lower diastolic figure of 86, this quite possibly will not mean a great deal to you, apart from the fact that it may appear a bit high. But, if you draw a line on a blood pressure chart between the high reading on the left of the chart and the lower diastolic reading on the right of the chart you will see that this line lies in a band which is a little above normal and that, although it is close to the borderline for hypertension, it is nevertheless still within acceptable limits.

Similarly, if you came up with a reading of 145 over 92 then this would be seen as a mild case of hypertension. Nevertheless, the chart would also indicate that this reading on its own is not a matter for alarm and could merely be the result of taking your blood pressure first thing in the morning when your pressure is often slightly elevated or of taking a reading shortly after you have eaten something salty or with a high fat content.

Blood pressure charts of this type can be very useful for giving you a clear snapshot of the state of your pressure at any given moment in time but possibly a better picture would be given by a daily blood pressure chart which is filled in over a reasonable period of time.

A lot of modern blood pressure monitors have the ability to store your readings and they may then either be printed out and hand plotted on graph paper or may be used in conjunction with one of several widely available software packages to produce a full-color picture of your blood pressure over the past few days or weeks.

Whichever method you select there is no question that having a picture of your pressure readings over time can certainly make monitoring your health considerably easier.

TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information on home blood pressure monitors and on using blood pressure charts

Article source: Expert Articles

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