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Blood pressure.........is mine abnormal?

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newbie | 20:42 Tue 10th Mar 2009 | Body & Soul
17 Answers
According to my home monitor my blood pressure reads 137/175. Is this right or should I be concerned and what exactly do the numbers mean? Thanks
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Are you using a wrist monitor or a cuff monitor for the arm.
137 for the top reading is good, are you sure the bottom reading is 175 as this seems way too high, it should be somewhere around 80/90. I would suggest that you get a proper check done at your GP clinic. You didn't say what age range you are in.
The second number has to be lower than the first.

175/137 is high if you are young and resting. It very much depends upon your age and what you have been doing.
137/175 was the reading given by the questioner.
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Silly me - sorry got the numbers the wrong way round. I have just done it again and the reading is 171/97. I am resting and in my fifties. Thanks for the answers thus far.
Sorry, I tried to guess what mistake newbie had made, and I guessed reversing the numbers. These machines increase the pressure until the pulse stops then decrease it from this point until the pulse is detected again, so the second number is always lower than the first.

Newbie, perhaps you have read "beats per minute" instead of one of the pressures. Please repeat the readings. It would help to know some things about you, but perhaps this is not the correct forum to give your age, sex, level of fitness, and smoking, drinking, and drug habits.
Why do you have a monitor at home newbie , have you been diagnosed as having a high blood pressure , and under the doctor for it ? x
I have no medical experience, but I'd suggest repeating the measurements for the next couple of days. If they stay about the same, or higher, call at your local GP/clinic for a check-up.
newbie - you didn't say which type of monitor you are using. The wrist monitors are not particularly reliable. Even if you are using the arm cuff type you should sit quietly for at least 5/10 minutes before taking the blood pressure, and also not talk while the procedure is completed. Try it again following these instructions and if the reading is still the same. then the advice would be to get yourself checked properly at the GP clinic.
your readings are classed as moderate stage 2 high blood pressure. if you continue to have a few more readings like this you should be having treatment to reduce it. at your age you're aiming to have a blood pressure of no higher than 130 over 85, and even that is probably too high. the lower anyone can get their blood pressure, within the normal range, the better.
Schutzengel, sei doch so bisschen erzengelhafter! Don't be believning 137/175 just coz it was the reading given by the questioner!
I didn't imply that I believed the reading the questioner gave, I merely stated thre obvious thing to do if she was so unsure. Which was to get checked properly.
Well Schutzi, as rev well knew, it was an impossible reading!

BigM, newbie succumbed to the hard sell of some mail order co, or supermarket like Lidl. I mention Lidl because I stock up on theirs myself when they have them. I do this not because I am easily frightened, although as we have seen on here before, such self-monitoring gizmos do breed neurosis, but because I can go to 260/150 and am on massive multiple medication, which never stops my brain pumping itself right back up to where it wants to be, as may have become apparent from my postings on here before now, and because if you are too compliant and just take what the medics prescribe you get overmedicated and fall about. My cardiologist therefore is all for patients like me whom he can trust to administer their own meds taking their own BP and titrating their doses accordingly. He says systemic hypertension and diabetes are very similar conditions, and have to be medicated accordingly, and so did his predecessor before him.

It is genetic, of course, and how do you think I feel about having inflicted it on my darling son, who was diagnosed with severe hypertension at 21, and advised to monitor himself? I gave him one of my monitors, but he doesn�t want to know.

BTW Schutzi, in case you have shares in Lidl, I am not putting them down: their sphygmos appear to be accurate enough for a bit, but are hard cases of built-in expendability.
Mallam - I haven't got shares in Lidl. :-)
I'm very pleased that your cardiologist knows he can trust you to look after yourself and your medication properly. It must be a worry for you with your son also being diagnosed at such a young age. I wish you both well, and send you my sincere good wishes.
Many thanx for your kind thoughts, Schutzi. I missed them earlier because this site is a shambles. Is it not?

I would be mortified if you thought my last communication with you was a nit-picking one about whether self-monitors or their self-monitors are to be believed. Please let me know this thread is not dead (and the site being literally a shambles, threads do rather stay dead) and that you have seen my expressions of gratitude.

BTW, I don't accept that wrist monitors are particularly unreliable, but they are indeed prob more sensitive to the circumstances you warn against. Certainly a diastolic of 137mm Hg was prob a blip!
With a systolic of 175, that is!
Mallam, thanks for your comments. I'm sorry that it has been necessary for you to have to learn so much detail of this problem, but it has enabled you to be in a position where you can help and advise other people. Do take good care of yourself, and I hope you manage to get through to your son the importance of acknowledging that he also has a problem that he really should do something about. I know it's very difficult to get young people to be sensible, as at their age they think they are invincible. Hope all goes well. Schutzi.
You really are a Schutzengel!

'Fraid it has been necessary for me to have to learn a whole lot more detail of a whole lot of other problems, but yes, it has enabled me to be in a position where I can help and advise other people, and I have already been trying to do that on all sorts of threads here, but we really are up against the site software, tho you don't echo to that point.

Not that Im trying to compete with you!

But if I can't get through to my own son...

Many thanx, anyway. No doubt we shall meet again on threads like this.

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