Blood pressure

[goulss]

Look after your health AND save money.

New campaign to help make us all healthier, by making blood pressure testing testing easier and cheaper.

Blood pressure monitor, was £44.99 now £9.99, we have just got one and it works great. New stock all sizes.

http://www.lloydspharmacy.co.uk/home-page/whats-new/lloydspharmacy_fully_automatic_blood_pressure_moni tor.htm

[Ted_Hutchinson]

I've plugged this a few times already but another reminder won't do any harm.
The information here Blood Pressure Association (http://www.bpassoc.org.uk/information/information.htm) will tell you what to do if you get readings higher than you would like.

This section It is important to record readings accurately, and to take them with you when you visit your doctor or nurse. Many people use a computer file to keep their readings and work out an average. The Excel spreadsheet below is designed to record a months worth of readings and to calculate the average reading for you. The average of your readings is displayed at the bottom of the chart and there is room for you to record details of your activities and medications. The file allows you to record readings for morning and evening each day but you may chose to take readings less often. To open the file click here. (http://www.bpassoc.org.uk/information/measuring/blood_pressure_readings_bpassoc..xls) If a dialogue box appears about macros, click the button to 'disable macros' to open the file. has a link to a super spreadsheet to write your number on and it turns them into a graph so you can easily see if the strategies you are adopting are working or not.

We've had one or two people suggesting that a monitor as cheap as this must be crap, but I've bought one and it seems fine, the readings I wrote down were within the expected range when I had them checked at hospital. (unfortunately) and are consistent from time to time over a period. They will, of course, vary through the day so you can't expect every reading to be the same. Providing you get them checked by a health professional from time to time, your home readings will, if you record them and plot them over a period, be sufficient to show that the measures you are adopting are working or not and that really is all you (as a lay person) need to know.