I do that now.......................
This is a heads up for people who do not measure their blood pressure at home.
The estimates are 25% to 33% of people measure high blood pressure in a doctor’s office and at home it is normal. There are enough people who do not measure at home at all that it is suspected that those numbers are low.
There is no better blood pressure treatment than to discover you are one of these people with what is called White coat hypertension. If so it is highly likely that no treatment is warranted. You do not spend your life in the doctor’s office. You spend the vast majority of it outside the doctor’s office and therefore the vast majority of your hours are spent with normal blood pressure and no treatment to achieve that.
Elderly with low cholesterol might very well be suspected of having this. The hardening of the arteries much spoken of requires a raw material to have that hardening take place. Cholesterol is the material and if yours is low or normal with no treatment it would be difficult to have hardening of the arteries, which is a primary mechanism in the elderly for hypertension.
Docs are very much aware of this and that’s why I single measurement of high blood pressure does not immediately trigger treatment. They will want to follow it for a while. But chances are they do so in the clinic where you are elevated.
There has been some research on this that suggests it is not an issue of nervousness or fear of doctors or things of that sort. Current speculation is there was an experience as a child that was negative and a doctor’s office and it hard wires the brain to react to that environment during your formative years. You can sit down and relax for a long time. You can tell yourself to relax and stop being afraid. But it has nothing to do with any of that. The brain triggers hypertension because it grew up that way in that environment.
Anyway, heads up. Get yourself a blood pressure monitor. They’re cheap. There is a website that will list all of the blood pressure monitors available to the public and whether they have been certified as accurate. Validatebp.org from the AMA