if your blood pressure is high every time you go to the doctor, but you aren't feeling hypertension effects at home, ask them to try the manual cuff and see if it reads lower! this advice brought to you by the fact that i got a new home blood pressure doodad that goes on my wrist instead of my bicep, and doesn't squeeze nearly as hard, and it consistently reads the bottom number as like 30 points lower than the super squeezy cuff does. i don't know if it's a difference in how it reads or detects my vein, or if it's my own reaction to the painful bicep cuff raising my actual bp when i use that one. i just know the device is skewing the data. this seems pretty big so i figured i should pass it along. edit: actually, this morning the new cuff pinched my wrist because i had it at a slightly wrong angle, and it read high. so apparently it's pain raising my bp. which implies that if getting your bp checked hurts, you're maybe going to be reading high.
Sounds like the doctor's office cuff is too small for you. If too small a band is used you get readings of high blood pressure without it being present. Also: The white coat effect doesn't help. It's well established that your blood pressure is raised at doctor's appointments, which is why the cut off for high blood pressure is different between home and the doctor.
Anecdata: a lot of doctor's offices in the US now have 2 sizes of cuffs - I've consistently had to ask them to please use the plus size cuff in the first place so we don't have to do the "your BP is too high" dance. It's not actually too high, you're just using a tool that's literally not calibrated for my body. Its worth asking - since I started making a point of it, that step has gone a lot quicker in all my appointments!
i did not know that! i'll have to ask. i don't quite have the proverbial 'arms like tree trunks' but i'm far from twiggy, and not as squishy as i look. they might be assuming there isn't muscle under the fat and it'll all just squodge out of the way. when actually i am more like sumo fat and there's quite a bit of substance beneath the squish.
Doesn't matter either way. They need to use the correct size and that is based on the circumference on your arm whether it's all squish or all muscle or something in between.
see what you need to do is have hypotension like me and then raising your blood pressure will be a good thing
Another tip to tell if your cuff is too small around the bicep: do you see little red dots after the cuff is off on the super squeezy one? Those are blood vessels breaking. You need the next size up. Also if its doable, sit as straight as you can with both feet planted on the ground when you do a check with a wrist cuff, it helps get a more accurate reading according to a nurse i have
