Monitoring Your Blood Pressure And Using A Blood Pressure Chart

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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Changes to our diet and lifestyle today mean that more and more people suffer from hypertension and it is crucial that we all get into the habit of monitoring our blood pressure on a regular basis. Luckily this no longer means having to head for the doctors surgery and the large range of simple to use and relatively inexpensive monitors on sale nowadays means that we can record our blood pressure in the comfort of our own homes. But, although measuring our own pressure may be easy, interpreting the figures is not always so easy.

Blood pressure will vary from person to person and also fluctuates with such things as what we eat and the time of day. Because of this we cannot simply say that normal blood pressure is a fixed set of numbers and that if you find yourself more than a given number of above or below these then you should see your doctor. What we can do however is to draw up a number of bands which signify various degrees of high and low blood pressure in relation to a pair of baseline readings which apply to the majority of people and that is precisely what a blood pressure chart does.

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

For instance, if you take your blood pressure and come up with a high systolic figure of 137 and a lower diastolic figure of 88, it is quite likely that this will not mean very much to you, apart from the fact that it may seem a little high. However, if you draw a line on a blood pressure chart between the higher reading on the left of the chart and the lower diastolic reading on the right of the chart you will find that the line falls 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.

Equally, if you recorded a reading of 151 over 94 then this would be seen as a mild case of hypertension. Nevertheless, the chart would also show that this reading on its own should not be a matter for alarm and might merely result from measuring your blood pressure early in the morning when your pressure is often slightly high or of taking a reading shortly after eating something with a high fat content or which is salty.

Charts of this nature are very helpful in providing you with a snapshot of the state of your pressure at a given moment in time but perhaps a better picture would be given by a daily blood pressure chart which is filled in over a reasonable period of time.

The majority of modern blood pressure monitors are able to store your readings and these may then either be printed out and simply plotted by hand on graph paper or may be used in conjunction with one of the many widely available software programs to plot a full-color picture of your blood pressure over the past few days.

Whatever method you choose there is no question that having a visual representation of your blood pressure readings over time can make monitoring your health very much easier.