How To Read Blood Pressure

If you want to know how to read blood pressure, you will first need a monitor or a machine to measure your blood pressure. This monitor will give you at least two numbers and maybe three. The third one will be the pulse and is a bit of additional information. If you want to learn how to read blood pressure, it is the other two numbers that are important: the systolic and diastolic pressures. Please see the rest of our article below to learn more details on how to read blood pressure on this site.

How To Read Blood Pressure

Before we discuss how to read blood pressure, it is a good idea to establish what blood pressure is. Your blood pressure is the force or pressure that is exerted on the body's arteries as blood flows through them.

Each time the heart beats or contracts, it produces pressure in the arteries. This blood pressure is what moves blood through the body, supplying oxygen and nutrients to every organ.

When the heart contracts, it sends blood out into the body. This pressure is called the systolic pressure. The opposite is the pressure created in the arteries when the heart expands or drawing blood back into itself. This pressure is called diastolic. These two pressures are given as systolic/diastolic.

'Normal' is regarded as 120/80.

However, 'normal' is not such an easy term to define. The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends that 120/80 be taken as 'normal' for guideline purposes only.

Only a doctor can determine what your blood pressure ought to be because it can be affected by so many factors. Some of these factors are:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Restlessness
• Lack of Sleep
• Physical Exercise
• Constipation
• Stress
• Rear
• Anger
• Anxiety
• Food and Drink Consumption
• Physical Conditions
• Age
• Time of the Day

It is absolutely impossible to know whether you have high blood pressure without measuring by machine. You cannot guess or feel it. No one can, no matter what they say. Luckily blood pressure monitors are cheap enough these days.

There are a few things you should do before you take your blood pressure reading.

• Sit quietly for ten minutes to allow your body to return to its normal, resting state.
• If you have just consumed tea, coffee, cola or herbal tea - in fact anything that might contain caffeine, wait 45 minutes.
• Take your blood pressure in a comfortable environment - not hot, not cold, not noisy, not stuffy.

While you are taking the blood pressure reading:

• Sit quietly, do not move or talk.
• Measure the same arm at the same time of the day every time
• If you need to repeat a reading, wait ten minutes between each
• Sit with you legs uncrossed and your feet flat on the floor.
• Attach the cuff to bear skin

When you are learning how to how to read blood pressure, it is easy to be worried by the variations in the readings, but the trick is to take readings at the same time of the day under similar conditions so that you can make worthwhile comparisons.

Blood pressure constantly changes throughout the day, so do not be worried by the occasional high or low reading when you are learning how to read blood pressure.