Wrist Blood Pressure Monitors - Better Than The Alternatives?
All of us are familiar with the blood pressure test performed in a doctor's office. We sit down, and a cuff is strapped around our upper arm before it inflates and our blood pressure is read.
Blood pressure is important for anyone to check, since high blood pressure (also called hypertension) is a precursor to many health problems. For people who already have hypertension, monitoring blood pressure regularly and often is an absolute must to make sure that future problems are avoided or detected in advance.
For this reason, many people with hypertension prefer to get a device to monitor their blood pressure at home. But what are the options? What devices are available to monitor blood pressure, and what are the advantages of each?
First, there is the standard upper arm cuff. This is ideal, since it is the most accurate; however, many people find the cuff to be uncomfortable. In some cases, a person's arm might actually be too big for the cuff, or the discomfort of the inflating cuff might be too much for the person using it.
Additionally, sometimes people have difficulty reading the manual monitors. One has to know what to look for on the pressure gauge to be able to correctly read blood pressure levels.
The second type of blood pressure monitor is a digital monitor. There are typically three types of digital blood pressure monitors: wrist blood pressure monitors, arm blood pressure monitors, and finger blood pressure monitors.
Wrist monitors are generally said to be more accurate than finger monitors, though it's recommended by doctors that the person holds their arm at heart level when using a wrist monitor.
The digital monitors work primarily like the manual blood pressure monitors do, in that a cuff is inflated that measures pressure. The digital monitors, however, inflate & deflate automatically in most cases, and they provide a digital readout with the blood pressure.
The most accurate type of digital monitor is the arm monitor. With that being said, the manual blood pressure monitor is consistently the most accurate; digital blood pressure monitors simply provide a great alternative.
