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| For greater accuracy, measure blood pressure while in a seated position with your arm at the same level as your heart, after you have been at rest for five minutes or more. Baselines vary considerably from one individual to the next. |
| In a blood pressure study, holding the arm parallel to the body, left, resulted in higher readings than when the arm was held at heart level. The bottom line: Position of the arm makes a difference that may impact treatment or medication decisions. |
I think I need to curtail my coffee to one cup a day 
| Fiber,calcium,potassium are good to supplment. Potassium rich foods include :fish,bananas,potatos,tomatos,peaches,and orange juice |
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Originally posted by Mr. Nobody 1) If your arm is big, have the nurse use an obese or leg cuff. Failure to do this has resulted in readings of 20 points higher than usual for me. 2) Investigate "White Coat Hypertension" and if you have it, buy your own cuff and do BP at home at different times of day. 3) Lose weight: 4) Investigate natural diuretics 5) DO NOT go on BP meds, because of one unfavorable reading, do self monitoring as described above. I have been faced with this challenge since my 16th birthday. The above advise resulted in 120/80 readings at my house on a continuous basis. I go so far as to bring my cuff to the doctor's office when they check it (kind of like security blanket, lol) |
| Here is what is interesting and everyone should be aware of (it was mentioned earlier). I never had hypertension. The BP reading was way off because they used a regular size cuff on me and I have 19 1/2 arms. When I got in the ER my BP was 61/49. This is not good. There were some complications to the endoscopic surgery so I had to stay in the hospital for five days while they were monitoring my Hemoglobin counts. During this time they checked my vitals constantly and my BP was normal the entire time. My doctors couldn't believe that the doctor I saw initially prescribed BP meds to me after one reading. |
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Originally posted by Mudge I dont know honestly, Google is your friend I need to find a BP setup that has a cuff which fits, the store stuff only fits to my forearm and I'm not that big. I can't seem to find the obesity stuff locally. |
