11 MISTAKES IN MEASURING YOUR OWN BLOOD PRESSURE

here are 11 mistakes that people do when taking their own blood pressure some of these things your doctor's office actually does so we're going to go over these because these mistakes can give you artificially wrong numbers and if you're given an artificially wrong number that's high you may be diagnosed or be concerned that you have high blood pressure when you actually don't it's because you're making a big mistake so let's just jump right into it and get into number number one number one is using the arm cuff over clothing so what tends to happen is you put this thing on like so and you don't put it on bare skin it's supposed to be on your skin if you do it over your clothing you know where your shirt is here and you put it over your clothing then what happens is it can give you an artificially higher number somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 points that is a big deal number two your arm has to be at the Heart level so if you're taking your blood pressure and your arm is dangling down the cuff let me see if I can get this organized here the cuff could be down here but your heart is up here so what you want to do is put it in a place where you can raise your arm up just a little bit rested so your elbow is supported sometimes even at doctor's offices they'll take your blood pressure with your arm dangling which can give artificial numbers number three the blood pressure cuff is too tight when you put this blood pressure cuff on what you should do is how do you know how tight it is let me show you what's too loose too loose is I can get my whole hand in the blood pressure cup when you tighten it there's a little Mark here that says artery the artery is on the inside of the arm if you make a bicep for example like this it's underneath the bicep so that Mark has to be there let's do this hold on one second there we go so the artery Mark has to be on the inside part of the arm now when you tighten it you want to tighten it so that you can get two fingers in between your skin and the blood pressure cuff three fingers is too much four fingers is too much so you want to have it preloaded so tight so that you can get a little bit of Wiggle in that part in between your skin and the blood pressure cuff if you put it too tight see now I can't get my can't really get my fingers in there then it's going to read artificially high so if you go to the doctor's office and they put it on too tight you're going to have a higher number than what is considered normal for you now number four is an important one the true definition of high blood pressure or hypertension is an abnormally high blood pressure at rest in other words you are supposed to have the exam that tests your resting blood pressure when your body is at rest you're not supposed to test your blood pressure after you've run up a flight of stairs because of course your blood pressure is going to be high after doing that you're not supposed to be testing your extremely stressed and rushed blood pressure it's supposed to be your resting blood pressure so this is a problem because what happens is you may have to go up a flight of stairs to a doctor office you may be walking in the doctor's office to the doctor's office from your car you may be sitting at the doctor's office extremely stressed out then they rush you into the room then they have you jump up on the table and start taking your blood pressure right away of course your blood pressure is going to be higher the true definition is you have to be rested so the proper way the textbook way of checking your your blood pressure is to have at least 5 to 10 minutes of relaxation prior to having your blood pressure tested this is why many times in a doctor's office they will check your blood pressure at the end of the visit or later on to allow you to rest if the office is not allowing you to do this then ask the nurse if you can have 5 to 10 minutes in the room to do some deep breathing exercises and rest for a moment because when she checks your blood pressure she's supposed to be testing your resting blood pressure not your hyper excited angry upset blood pressure number five did you realize that a full bladder can increase your blood pressure numbers so when your body has a full bladder and you have to go to the bathroom it stimulates your sympathetic nervous system kind of a fight ORF flight syndrome a little bit and the problem with that is you can get artificial numbers by just having a full bladder so make sure and empty your bladder prior to having your blood pressure tested number six your legs are crossed this is another problem that technically happens by accident when you're doing it yourself because you don't know these things you're how are you supposed to know these things unless you study this but you're if you're at a doctor's office and you're on the table and your legs are crossed that's going to artificially low increase your blood pressure and thus you get artificial numbers so make sure that your legs are on the floor supported in a relaxed position number seven having some drink that has caffeine in it such as coffee or anything in your stomach can actually increase your blood pressure a bit but coffee in particular can increase your blood pressure significantly because of the caffeine sometimes 20 30 or even 40 points now it does take about 20 minutes for the for the coffee to absorb into your body to start stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and the caffeine to start constricting the blood vessels this can last hours so if you're a person that's doing your keto coffee or you are um just having coffee in the morning and then you have a doctor's appointment an hour later you are AR officially increasing your blood pressure to significant numbers and of course your doctor is going to think that you have hypertension as a result of that and it's that's not something you can just relax away once the caffeine is in your system it's in your system so no matter how much deep breathing that you do you're not going to offset the caffeine so make sure your stomach is empty for about 2 to 3 hours before a doctor's appointment number eight the wrong arm and this drives me nuts when I go to a doctor's office and the nurse grabs this and then puts it on my right arm I'm one of those people that's just like rolling their eyes like seriously the first day of school in nursing school they have to teach you do it on the left arm there has to be some standardization of blood pressure otherwise you could take blood pressure at different times a day different uh different arms different everything if the person is taking your blood pressure and they're doing it on the right arm already they're doing it wrong now there are some cases where they might do it on the right arm maybe you've had surgery maybe you have uh a lymph node problem maybe it hurts on the left arm but you have to understand that when you do it on the right arm that makes as much sense as just taking your blood pressure on your ankle or your thigh it's not the standard way and the textbook way of taking your blood pressure I always think to myself idiots but that's just me number nine doing a wrist monitor rather than the standard cuff of the arm the standard is to do it on the arm there are cases where it hurts too much but usually that's a technical issue where there putting it on too tight in the beginning or they're pumping it up too much or it's an automatic blood pressure machine that doesn't have a feel for the human person or The Human Experience so they have to do it on the wrist so these are viable options but they do tend to run a wee bit more AC inaccurate however they do ballpark it for you so these aren't going to tell you that your blood pressure is 200 over 120 when it's actually 120 over 80 it's not that inaccurate but within you have to understand that if you check it on your wrist it's not going to be as accurate as the true method and the true way of checking your own blood pressure you tend to see these a lot in dental offices because they get paid extra for doing what's called an exam and your vitals is part of the exam so since they have dental hygienist checking your blood pressure and usually dental hygienist every dental hygienist I've ever been to always works from the right side so they can't check your blood pressure um on the left side because they can't reach over the second thing is the true way to check your blood pressure would be in a seated position waiting 5 to 10 minutes in a relaxed environment and they just don't have the time to do it so they slap these things on write down the numbers they get paid by the insurance for an exam end of story so they're really not that concerned about your blood pressure in as much as just getting the numbers down that's why I think they tend to use these things number 10 talking during blood pressure don't you hate it when the nurse run rushes you into the room they put the blood pressure cuff on the wrong arm they put it over your clothing your legs are dangling you have to go to the bathroom and the nurse is asking you questions like why are you here today and while they're checking your blood pressure you are absolutely going to get inac accurate numbers when that occurs you should not be talking during a blood pressure test again the true definition of a blood pressure test is you're checking your resting blood pressure the 11th and final mistake when checking blood pressure you can do this yourself at home and sometimes it happens at a doctor's office is you you take one take of his blood pressure blood pressure numbers High you get get medication the one take one diagnosis method does not work true high blood pressure is high at every moment it's high when you're resting it's high when you're excited it's high in the morning it's high at night it's high in the middle of the night true hypertension is high regardless but the true definition ultimately is when it's resting if you are resting and you've done everything right and it's High then yeah maybe if you're not going to change your lifestyle and you're not going to change your diet and you're going to continue to smoke cigarettes maybe the best solution would be medication for that type of individual but ultimately if the doctor only takes one blood pressure test and then suddenly wants to put you on medication that is a big mistake you should be taking averages you should also be taking it over time at different times of the day so the doctor can actually see what your true blood pressure is throughout the day whether you're rested at home rested at the doctor's office because of the white coat syndrome and maybe in the middle of the day after a meal you want to see what your blood pressure numbers do throughout the day that's the true way to diagnose hypertension so learning how to use a blood pressure cuff yourself is a value but you want to get the true numbers if you found this video helpful give me a thumbs up subscribe to the channel also right here at the right side of the video at the end of the video I'm going to tell you how to naturally lower your blood pressure now I have to warn you it is a long video but you should take notes on it because I give you everything that you need to know to naturally lower your blood pressure it speaks nothing about medications if you want medications take medications but if you want to lower it naturally look at that video it'll pop up here on the screen in just a moment also we do zoom and phone consultations if you want to contact me the information is down below um there is a fee for consultations I'm a practicing uh chiropractor doctor of Chiropractic in Southern California I've been in practice for 28 years so we help people naturally lower their blood pressure lastly I do have a patreon if you'd like to contribute to help uh support the channel and I hope this video was very helpful so go ahead and watch this video it's a great one I put a lot of effort into it and try to give you the best information that you could possibly do to lower your own blood pressure

Channel: Adam J. Story, DC

Views: 2,588,572

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Id: n01wAPHDeGA

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024