There is a type of high blood pressure reading that doctors cannot detect that almost doubles your risk of heart attack, heart failure, aortic stiffness, and kidney failure.

You will have to take responsibility for detecting this condition yourself by conducting some tests at home.

Good news is, this test is painless and easy to do.

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has just cast doubt on the reliability of the decades-old blood pressure test the doctors always perform when you visit their offices.

Some patients become anxious when subjected to medical procedures and accordingly show a higher blood pressure reading. Other patients can relax in the doctor’s office because they are away from work stress, family stress, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, and whatever else normally spikes their blood pressure. For that reason, they again show a normal reading when a doctor tests them. The former group’s condition is called white coat hypertension and the latter’s masked hypertension.

While the two groups appeared to suffer from conditions that are exact opposites, they have one important thing in common: their blood pressure sometimes spikes. Different things stress them, but when they are stressed, their blood pressure is much higher than normal.

The new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, examined the medical details of more than 3,000 Texans. They were tracked for nine years to record information related to heart attack, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, heart bypass surgery, angina, and cardiac catheterization procedures and the health of other organs too.

They found that both white coat syndrome and masked hypertension groups had a much larger risk of heart attack then people whose blood pressure remained constant. In fact, when the two groups were calculated together, their risk was almost twice as high as that of people whose readings remained consistent.

The health problems did not even end with heart problems. They were also more likely to have stiff aortas and kidney damage, both potentially fatal.

White coat hypertension has been associated with greater cardiovascular risk before, but it seems as if the medical community underestimates the importance of masked hypertension.

In this study, 3.3 percent of participants were diagnosed with white coat hypertension, while 17.8 percent had masked hypertension. This means that almost one in five people who get normal blood pressure readings from the doctor while in the office still have a massive risk of heart attack and heart failure.

In response to their findings, the researchers suggested that more people should learn to do blood pressure tests at home, as the ones performed in clinics do not tell the whole story and as they do not want your annual medical checkup to give you a false sense of security.

Home blood pressure tests are reasonably easy to perform. Blood pressure measures are available at many supermarkets and pharmacies.

To get an accurate picture of your blood pressure, you should measure it three times a day, always around the same time. Do this for at least a week. Then take the average blood pressure reading from all the numbers.

If your blood pressure is too high, it’s fortunately easy to lower it using nothing but the 3 easy blood pressure exercises found here…?