Reading a home blood pressure monitor
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Getting an accurate reading on a home blood pressure monitor requires a certain amount of effort.
First, you need an accurate device. Resources such as Consumer Reports’s blood pressure monitor ratings and the American Medical Association’s Validated Device Listing can help.
Once you have your monitor, here’s what you need to know to make sure your readings are accurate.
What the readings mean
Home blood pressure monitors display three key metrics.
SYSTOLIC BLOOD PRESSURE
What it is: When your heart beats, it forces a wave of blood through your aorta and into the rest of your body’s arteries. Systolic blood pressure represents the maximum pressure your blood exerts on the walls of your arteries as a result of a heartbeat.
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What’s normal: Less than 120 mmHg is considered normal. 120 to 129 mmHg is considered elevated, 130 to 139 is designated as stage 1 hypertension, and 140 and higher is stage 2 hypertension.
DIASTOLIC BLOOD PRESSURE
What it is: In between beats, your heart rests and your arteries relax. Diastolic pressure represents the lowest amount of pressure your blood exerts on the walls of your arteries between heartbeats.
What’s normal: Less than 80 mmHg is considered normal. 80 to 89 mmHg is designated as stage 1 hypertension and 90 and higher is stage 2.
What it is: Your pulse or heart rate indicates the number of times your heart beats per minute.
What’s normal: Normal is generally considered to be 60 to 100 beats per minute, although athletes or people who exercise regularly may have a resting heart rate below that range.
Which measurement is most important
It’s most useful to track systolic blood pressure, and systolic pressure is the basis for most guidelines, says Willie Lawrence, chairman of the oversight committee of the American Heart Association’s National Hypertension Control Initiative and medical director of the Center for Better Health and Cardiovascular Wellness in Benton Harbor, Mich.
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Increases in systolic pressure are more consistently associated with increases in disease risk when compared with diastolic blood pressure, according to the latest guidelines on blood pressure targets.
Still, elevated diastolic pressure is also a risk factor for disease. If you have, for example, “normal” systolic pressure but “stage 1” diastolic hypertension, you would be diagnosed with stage 1 hypertension, according to current guidelines.
As for your pulse reading, there’s no hard-and-fast ideal number for your heart rate. It’s considered an indicator of how efficiently your heart can pump blood through your body, so a lower heart rate while at rest is generally an indicator of better physical fitness. But Lawrence says there’s no definitive target for it the way there is for blood pressure. Still, when you track it over time, changes in your normal heart rate could help indicate a heart condition, according to the American Heart Association.
How to get an accurate reading
At-home blood pressure monitoring can give an important picture of your cardiovascular disease risk. But using the proper technique to get an accurate reading is crucial, Lawrence says. “Otherwise the blood pressures you get at home, they don’t mean anything,” he says.
Procedures to follow include:
- Don’t smoke, consume caffeine or exercise for at least 30 minutes before you measure.
- Use the bathroom before you measure. Wear a short-sleeved shirt — you should not measure your blood pressure over your clothes.
- Sit with your back straight and supported in a chair, with your feet flat on the floor. Your arm should be supported on a flat surface such as a table or solid chair arm, with your upper arm at heart level.
- Sit without talking (or texting) for five minutes before a measurement.
- Measure at the same times twice every day; take two or three readings at a time, a minute apart.
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