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Monitoring Your Blood Pressure And Plotting The Results on A Blood Pressure Chart

Changes to our lifestyle and diet today mean that an increasing number of people suffer from high blood pressure and it is vital for us to monitor our blood pressure regularly. Happily this no longer means that we have to head for the doctors surgery and the wide range of easy to use and reasonably inexpensive monitors on sale today allows us to monitor our blood pressure in the comfort of our own homes. But, while measuring our own pressure may be easy enough, understanding the resulting numbers is not always quite so easy.

Blood pressure will differ from person to person and also varies with things like the time of day and what we eat. Consequently we are not able to say that normal blood pressure is a given set of numbers and that if you find yourself more than so many points either below or above these you need to see your doctor. However, what we are able to do is to come up with a series of bands which denote various degrees of low and high blood pressure around a pair of baseline readings which apply to the majority of the population and that is exactly what blood pressure charts do.

A typical blood chart is a graphic representation of a range of blood pressure readings below and above the norm including advice on what each band tells you about your blood pressure.

For instance, if you take a blood pressure reading and come up with a systolic reading of 136 and a diastolic reading of 88, this probably will not mean very much to you, apart from the fact that it might seem a little bit high. But, if you draw a line on a blood pressure chart joining the higher reading on the left of the chart and the low reading on the right of the chart you will find that this line lies in a band which is a little above normal and that, although it is close to the borderline for high blood pressure, it is nevertheless still within an acceptable range.

Similarly, if you recorded a reading of 157 over 97 this would be seen as a mild case of hypertension. Nevertheless, the chart would also indicate that this reading on its own is not a matter for worry and may merely be the result of measuring your blood pressure first thing in the morning when your pressure is often slightly elevated or of taking a reading after you have eaten something which is salty.

Blood pressure charts of this type are extremely useful for providing you with a snapshot of your pressure at any given moment in time but perhaps a better chart would be a daily blood pressure chart which is plotted over a reasonable period of time.

A lot of modern blood pressure monitors are able to store your readings and these may either be printed out and hand plotted on graph paper or may be used in conjunction with one of several widely available software packages to produce a colorful history of your blood pressure over the past few days.

Whatever method you choose there is little question that having a pictorial representation of your blood pressure over time can make monitoring your health a lot easier.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information on home blood pressure monitors and on using a blood pressure chart

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