More evidence is emerging that highlights a common but critical mistake people make when tracking their blood pressure.
The mistake even causes patients and their doctors to miss a key indicator for stroke risk. Because it’s not the high blood pressure that is the biggest problem.
One of the most common mistakes in managing high blood pressure is to only take it once per day, or to only have it taken at the doctor’s office. The problem with this is that these infrequent readings don’t give a clear picture of what is happening with your blood pressure throughout the day.
So, what you miss is the fluctuation from your lowest reading to your highest. Blood pressure can fluctuate some during the waking hours, but not drastically. However, for people who have a difficult time with hypertension, such as those who experience frequent spikes in blood pressure, damage is being done that can and does lead to stroke.
Emerging science is showing that people who experience drastic highs and lows chronically, and can’t seem to hover around one steady reading, are the most at risk of a stroke.
A lot of times this happens when a person is under high stress, exerting oneself, or in pain, who already has problems with high blood pressure. This contributes to the spikes. But valleys and hypotension can occur right after taking the maintenance medication. It might not be so low as to cause fainting (syncope) but that frequently occurs, especially in seniors. It is the swing from very low to very high that causes the problems.
So we come back to the original problem- if periodic readings during the day are not taken to get the full picture of how your blood pressure is fluctuating, you could be missing critical data that would be important for you and your doctor to consider when creating your treatment plan.
The good news is that our simple blood pressure exercises don’t just lower overall blood pressure, they’ve also been proven to balance the fluctuation of blood pressure throughout the day. Learn more about our easy blood pressure exercises here…
High BP can be interfered with by medication/drugs, exercise etc. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) cannot be interfered with like that. Since western medicine does not know how to vary a person’s HRV they remain completely silent about it. HRV is the most critical reading that indicates your path down to a heart attack, stroke etc.
I have taken a HRV reading before and after an EFT/TFT (tapping) sequence at a cardiologist’s clinic. The cardiologist thought I was silly to throw away $85 for nothing. But when he saw the 38% improvement on my HRV reading AFTER the tapping his jaw literally dropped, gobsmacked! I believe that fella learned something that day that medical school did not teach him.
HRV readings have little value unless the person reading them has personal knowledge and consequent measurements of the individual. This is rarely the case nowadays. In Canada, most of these meaningless measurements reflect little more than intemperate outrage at having to wait 3-4 hours for an appointment made several months earlier.
My advice(USA)at least: Check at the machine in your pharmacy or purchase a good one.