My wife has been harping on me to buy her a blood pressure cuff. Personally, I'm not sure what she plans on doing with it. I don't know anything about them.
Anyone here have experience with home blood pressure testing? Any recommendations?
Umpteen years ago, I did take a course on measuring BP. Took a couple hours, and was very informative. I'd make some calls, and see if any of the ambulance bases around you can find such a course.
You think your BP might go down a bit, if she'd stop harping on you?
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Anyone here have experience with home blood pressure testing? Any recommendations?
I like my Omron BP785 better than the others I've tried. It's easier to use and seems to get numbers closer to what the nurse at my doctor's office gets (nothing scientific here, though).
I've got an arm unit and a cheapo HD wrist unit and don't like either. The arm one is difficult to attach properly and the wrist does not agree with it. I prefer testing on the drug store machines.
They're not very expensive easy to use and accurate (or at least they produce consistent readings).
The one I got has a USB port but had no information in the package about how to use it. So far, it resists all my attempts to get data out of the unit.
I'd look for one that at least claims in the packaging that the USB port works. I good computer based BP history would be worthwhile I think.
Jes so happens I bought a brand new "Aneroid Sphygmomanometer":
This is the most accurate way to take yer own blood pressure. You can actually slow the release of air in the cuff down to the point where it's slow enough to get an extremely accurate reading, unlike automatic ones. If you are not savvy as to how blood pressure is taken/read, ask yer doctor or a nurse. It's actually rather simple and a manual cuff gives you precise accurate control.
I had an auto digital blood pressure unit, but didn't trust it. I tossed it and bought this one, which looks exactly like the one I had before, 'cept my other one didn't have a re-settable gage.
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I won't use them either. Had a patient that was getting a BP medicine, the auto had him as having a high blood pressure, which he hadn't had the whole hospitalization. Redid it manually and got a BP that was real low. If I had used the auto I would have crashed him.
Hi, I have A&D Engineering Inc.'s UA-731 which runs on four AA batteries. When I had kidney trouble I used it quite a bit. Pretty accurate. Still working after 20 years use. Drug store sells them.
Omron seems to have good units. My wife uses one and my son (who is in the medical equipment business) recommends them.
They are very accurate, but, you have to know a little about what affects the readings to get consistent and accurate readings. Simple, really, what you get after some activity is not the same as what you get after relaxing for 15 minutes. Follow the instructions, take the readings at about the same time and activity level.
You may want to experiment just to see the differences. Take a reading, go split a half cord of wood and take another readings.
Hard to split a half a cord of wood around Houston suburb. On the other hand I have a picture of a cousin of mine in Ogdensburg, NY who splits his own word at his retired age. Come to think of it with all my wisdom , what is a cord of word in terms of quantity? Obviously I'm a city boy unlike a lot of my cousins from upstate NY.
We have an Omron. It has a RTC and the ability to track two separate users. The readings matche the DOCs mercury sphygmomanometer.
Take your blood pressure? ;-)
Sure. I used one of the cheapie wrist models for a couple of years. It read a bit on the low side but worked well enough. FWIG, these don't work as well on other people so an arm cuff is preferred. Last fall I bought a Panasonic cuff like this one:
I asked the sales lady in a pharmacy dept which one had the least complaints. She said the Omron models. I bought one, the arm model, and it works good. No complaints from me. It's as automatic as you can get, checks BP, pulse rate, and arrhythmia at the push of 1 button.
One of the wrist models I had tested for arrhythmia and wouldn't read anything if it couldn't get a regular heartbeat. You wouldn't think it unusual that the cuff would fail if it couldn't get a consistent beat, unless the whole reason you were using the damned thing was because of A-Fib. :-(
"Vinny P." wrote in news:jv1bgn$pk7$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:
The arm cuff wouldn't work for me. I had to exchange it for the one for the wrist. Even tho they say the wrist cuff is not as accurate. I took it to my Dr. appointment and it matched what the doc got.
A pile stacked 4' x 4' x 8'. I can burn about 5 cords if I heat my house with mostly wood. As I got older, I found it easier to pay the oil bill and turn the thermostat to the desired temperature.
We have both wrist and cuff. My wife had A-fib (now fixed) and both would indicate if she was out of sync. Of course, the heart rate of
180 gave you a hint too.
My wrist model does not work on me.
Greg
:
That's not limited to the home units. Same thing happened to me in the dr's office with their high dollar automated machine. They had to take it manually to get a reading. And mine is not a-fib, it's PVC's
- same symptoms but from the other side of the heart. In this case PVC is Premature Ventricular Contraction, not Poly Vinyl Chloride. (Thought I'd mention that to keep it from being totally off subject for this newsgroup.) :-)
Thanks Ed. I'll ask my cousin what he does for winter. 5 cords is a lot of wood to chop.
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