The Right Way to Check Your Blood Pressure at Home | A Doctor Explains

Thank you. Good advice. Nurses in Drs office need to watch this. They take BP when we just ran down the hallway to a chair in Drs office. We're not even sitting in right position. Arm is lower than my heart, feet not flat on floor. If I question it, response? "no it doesn't matter!"

Your cuff should be back toward your shoulder about an inch from where you have it and it needs to be rotated so that the tube is pointing toward your palm, as per instructions on the BP machine. The tube is serving the purpose of air pump as well as stethoscope. So the place where the tube leaves the cuff needs to be over your Brachial artery. I suspect that having the tube straighter is also helpful.

In Ireland if you get a high blood pressure reading when you visit the Doctor, they give you a monitor which you have to wear for a day and night and then you return it the next morning for them to assess it and make a judgement on how they should treat you.

Thank-You for being calm and friendly. Makes a difference. I know I get scared that I'm going to get bad news. One time I was told I had cancer and the tests hadn't even come back yet. It was a very hard time in my life. No one should be told they have cancer unless they have the tests to prove it.

My nurse took my BP with a thin sweater on & was 146/81 then 126/81…. I ended up purchasing my own monitor because I am pregnant & this monitor will be a life saver 🙏 Never had BP issues

I found when visiting the docs is to breath in slowly thro your nose for 4 seconds and exhale that air out of your mouth for 8 seconds Works for me every time !! It’s calming

One thing that's always puzzled me, is, we take all these extra steps at home (sitting, calm, wait 5 minutes, arm supported on table, etc), but yet when I'm at a doctors office, they do none of these things-- in fact I've often had them take my blood pressure immediately after getting off the weight scale, and usually while they're also taking my temperature and putting the oxygen sensor on my index finger. I used to think I had "white coat syndrome" but maybe it's because they're rushing to do everything at once? Thoughts?

Thank you, Doctor, for showing your higher blood pressure readings while making this video. It demonstrates what happens to many of us when we are in the doctor's office.

I picked up one of those Omron monitors - very similar to the one you're using. My FNP told me during my last checkup that my BP was low, and I had an irregular heartbeat. I've seen a Cardiologist and showed him the readings I've kept track of since getting that monitor. He said the readings all looked good even with the occasional irregularity. He did say if I felt any symptoms as you described to get to the nearest ER. So far, so good (I'm 74).

Chronic high BP entire adult life, I'm 66 male.Ate a strict vegan diet for over 5 years, never lowered my BP one notch.I am not a doctor guy so never pursued a medical solution.I got a reading of 180/90 at the firehouse which prompted me to find a solution.Had been several years since I ate vegan.Several months ago I started a carnivore diet, 6 weeks into it i had a near normal BP reading,130/78.Now almost a year of eating meat,fish,eggs,butter and lots of salt I get consistent normal BP readings.I have a machine and take my BP often.

After moving to a new house, I lost track of my BP monitor and started feeling symptoms similar to my time before being prescribed a BP drug. I found it yesterday and my BP was 170/75 and that had me worried, but this AM it was 137/74, then I urinated and it was 119/70. My symptoms seem less urgent now, but still worthy of a conversation with my physician. (I've never been sitting in a chair when they take my BP in a doctor's office.)

Thank you so much for this video. I am a nurse in a heart failure clinic. When we get new patients who are newly diagnosed with heart failure, we give them a kit that includes a BP monitor. I always teach them how to use the monitor and have them teach back. This is a great reference tool for them if they forget how to use the monitor.

This is great advice! As an anxious person I have found that reading some text while checking my blood pressure is also a good distraction. Otherwise, I tend to think too much, which does not help my blood pressure readings!

I am an former cardiac ICU RN and know how important it is to take your blood pressure properly. You did a good job and gave a lot of helpful hints but the major thing you forgot was the size of the blood pressure cuff and the placement of the blood pressure cuff. I would put a new video out so people will place the blood pressure cuff on properly. People will get an inaccurate blood pressure if you don’t have the proper size especially when there are a lot of obese people in the nation. Cardiologists would have a fit if a nurse put on the wrong size cuff and had the wrong placement because they know you will get an inaccurate blood pressure.

I joked with my doctor that there should be a YouTube video about using my blood pressure cuff at home. It's great that a doctor is doing this video. Thanks 🇨🇦👏

I was hoping you would cover more of the correct placement of the cuff on the arm. Where is the artery? How do I align the cuff properly? Where should the tube be? The instructions that came with my blood pressure monitor were vague.

Thank you Doctor for demonstrating the importance of being in a calm relaxing environment and relaxing for 5 minutes with the cuff on before measuring blood pressure. And for saying that, it is important to repeat that a minute later. I have confirmed white coat syndrome diagnosed by a cardiologist. It is like a subconscious anxiety. My blood pressure show up higher at the doctors office. And it is almost always higher the first time I measure it at home. It is so important to measure blood pressure when it is at its lowest natural rate and not being spiked by events, environment, or white coat syndrome. Thank you for emphasizing this and modeling it.

Thank you so much for explaining it the way you did. Recently I had an incident of dehydration; working as a cna an 8 hr shift and drinking no water the whole shift due to a busy night. I'm healthy and hydrated morning and usually all day otherwise. It's a second shift job that this incident occured on. I woke up the next day ;dry mouth, a little fog headed. It has happened to me before, but this would be the first time taking my blood pressure ever, when I was dehydrated. It was pretty high and I was scared. I didn't know if it was from being dehydrated or what?! Needless to say , I took my bp so many times for the next 5 days, with no good explanation on how to actually correctly and calmly to get a accurate reading. It's better 5 days later, but watching your video made so much sense and made me even more at ease. Thank you for posting and for everything you do for many humans! You're a good man ❤❤🙏🙏🙏

This is an important video, as to the accuracy of any home meter. I had a BP meter "left over" from my late mother, and I started using it. It read a little high, but not alarming. I went for a dental appointment one day and they came up numbers like 190/128 and they would not proceed bec that reading was too high, indeed, alarming, thermonuclear, you should go to the emerg room right now. I made a Dr. appointment to check BP issues. For the next few doc appointments, I took my home meter and compared reading with those at the doc's office. My home meter was crazy high, upper number would read about 40 points high. I don't have much choice but to throw it out.

Three weeks ago a medical assistant took my blood pressure and then said to me, "Do you typically suffer from low blood pressure?" I replied that as a rule my BP tends to run a little high. "Oh." she replied and then began to continue her exam. Sensing something amiss I said, "What was my blood pressure?" She replied “55/45” Since I was still fully conscious and since my normal BP is around 130/70 I suspected a faulty reading. Later after my actual doctor completed her exam I asked her to check my BP. It was 135/70. In any other field then medicine that kind of a screwup might get a person fired. It's one thing to screwup up, quite another to just ignore a totally atypical reading and sail blithely on. If I'd been on blood pressure meds this erroneously low reading might have resulted in a completely inappropriate change in meds. Why is this kind of medical incompetence so routinely tolerated?