One of the keys to controlling high blood pressure is detecting it. But detection can be a hit-or-miss proposition. Here’s why:

The Folklore 01 Blood Pressure Readings

This is what generally happens: Your doctor unwraps the bloodpressure cuff from your arm and speaketh the words that henceforth shall be known as “your Blood-Pressure Numbers.” These Numbers he will engrave upon a chart, for they are the Truth. And thou must go forth and receive all manner of care and medications because of these Numbers.
But the folklore is all wrong. Fact is, there’s a good chance that any single blood-pressure reading you get from your physician is way off the made It’s likely, experts say, that a whole lot of people are walking around thinking (wrongly) that they have high blood pressure (and are taking medication to treat a nonexistent condition! And there are probably many people who really do have high blood pressure but believe that their blood pressure (BP) is even higher than it really is.
You can safely be wrong about many things in life, but BP is not one of them. Hypertension is definitely not in the same league as hives and hiccups; it puts you at higher risk for heart attack, stroke, kidney damage and other woes, including a shorter life. Fortunately, good medical detective work has revealed what causes so many blood-pressure readings to lie. Better still, there are ways to counteract the problem and to get BP measurements you can trust. Here’s how: The problem with any single blood-pressure reading is that it’s supposed to represent how high your BP is generally-but in fact it is only a snapshot of your BP at a fleeting moment. Blood pressure naturally fluctuates throughout the day. Plus, it can temporarily spike into the hypertension range for a bunch of reasons. (BPs higher than 140/90 are considered to be in the hypertension range.) So a single measurement is not going to give you a reliable picture. That single reading taken in a physician’s office mayor may not reflect the real you at all.

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