Alterations to our lifestyle and diet mean that an increasing number of people are suffering from hypertension and it is very important for us to begin monitoring our blood pressure on a regular basis. Happily this no longer means that we have to drag ourselves to the doctors office and the large range of easy to use and quite inexpensive monitors on sale today allows us to measure our blood pressure in comfort at home. However, although checking our pressure may be easy enough, making sense of the resulting figures is not always so easy. Blood pressure will vary from person to person and also differs according to such things as the time of day and what we eat. As a result we cannot say that normal blood pressure is a fixed set of numbers and that should you be more than a given number of either below or above these you should see your doctor. However, what we are able to do is to define a series of bands which correspond to varying degrees of high and low blood pressure around a set of baseline readings that are representative of the majority of people and this is exactly what a blood pressure chart does. A traditional blood chart is a graphic representation of a range of blood pressure readings above and below the norm with advice on what the bands tell you about your blood pressure. For instance, if you take your blood pressure and come up with a high systolic figure of 134 and a lower diastolic figure of 86, this possibly will not mean a great deal to you, apart from the fact that it might appear a bit high. However, if you draw a line on a blood pressure chart joining the high systolic reading on the left of the chart and the low diastolic reading on the right of the chart you will find that the line lies within a band that is a little above normal and that, although it is nearing the borderline for hypertension, it is nonetheless still within an acceptable range. Equally, if you were to record a reading of 146 over 93 this would be classed as a mild case of hypertension. However, the chart would also show that this reading in isolation is not a cause for concern and may simply result from recording your blood pressure first thing in the morning when your pressure is often slightly raised or of measuring it shortly after eating something with a high fat content or which is salty. Charts of this nature are extremely helpful in providing you with a clear snapshot of the state of your pressure at a given moment in time but perhaps a better picture would be given by a daily blood pressure chart that is completed over a reasonable period of time. The majority of modern blood pressure monitors will store your readings and these may either be printed out and hand plotted on graph paper or may be used in conjunction with one of the many readily available software packages to plot a full-color picture of your blood pressure over the past few days or weeks. Whatever method you pick there is little doubt that having a visual representation of your blood pressure over time will certainly make monitoring your health a lot easier.
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