13 Factors That Can Affect Your Blood Pressure Reading
Is your blood pressure reading suddenly way too high or too low? Other factors, aside from your health condition, may be affecting it. What you may not realize is that your blood pressure is always changing every minute as it responds to your activity, body position, mood, meals, etc. These simple things can cause fluctuations in your blood pressure between 5 to 40mmHg.
Getting the most accurate blood pressure reading is important to have a clearer picture of your health. It helps you control your blood pressure and prevent risks of serious diseases like heart disease and stroke.
To help you ensure that you're getting the right results, we've listed the 13 factors that may influence your blood pressure tests.
1. Your previous meal
Had a huge dinner the night before your consultation? The salty meals that you ate may lead to an elevated reading. To ensure that you're getting the right results, be mindful of what you eat the day before the test. Opt for a healthy and balanced diet with a lot of fruits, veggies, and whole grains.
If you're doing a blood pressure reading at home, do it in the morning before your breakfast. The digestion of food may also lower your blood pressure. If you must eat first, wait for at least 30 minutes before taking the measurement.
2. Fluid intake
The amount of fluids you intake can also affect your blood pressure readings. If you are dehydrated, it can cause your blood pressure to go lower. Learn more about drinking water here to keep yourself healthy.
3. Alcohol and tobacco
Smoking can automatically elevate your blood pressure because it causes spasms of the arteries, while alcohol consumption can raise your blood pressure levels. To get an accurate reading, do not smoke or drink alcohol at least 30 minutes before you take the measurement.
4. Exercise
Exercise is good for your health. However, immediately taking a blood pressure test after working out can give you an elevated reading. After exercising, relax for 30 minutes first before taking your measurement to get proper results.
5. Traveling
Your commute to the doctor can also influence your blood pressure reading. If you got stressed because you were stuck in heavy traffic on your way to your consultation, your blood pressure can be higher. So before taking the measurement, relax for 10 to 30 minutes to bring your blood pressure to a more normal level.
6. Clothing
Remember to place the cuff on your bare skin when having your blood pressure measured. Putting the cuff over clothing can affect your systolic blood pressure from 10 to 50 mmHg.
7. Nervousness
Anxiety can cause a huge increase in your blood pressure. So, don't think about stressful things while taking the exam. There is also something called white coat syndrome, wherein the patient gets a higher blood pressure reading when the test is done in a doctor's office. You may ask your doctor about it before taking the measurement.
8. Not resting
It's important to relax for a bit before having your blood pressure reading. Rest quietly in a comfortable chair for at least five minutes before taking a reading. This ensures that your previous activity will not affect your systolic blood pressure measurement.
9. Full Bladder
Having a full bladder can also give you an elevated reading. Before you take the measurement, make sure to empty it. A full bladder can increase your systolic blood pressure measurement by 10 to 15 mmHg.
10. Talking
Don't worry about small talks with your nurse or doctor while taking your blood pressure reading. Studies have shown that your systolic blood pressure may increase by 10 to 15 mmHg if you're talking during the test.
11. The way you sit
Your sitting position can affect your blood pressure as well. You must sit on a comfortable chair with your back supported and your feet lying flat on the ground. Do not cross your legs, and make sure your arms are supported as well. Getting your measurement while standing or when your feet are dangling can cause an elevated reading.
12. Your arm position
When taking the test, your arms should be totally relaxed. Your blood pressure cuff must be level with your heart, and your arm must be positioned on an armrest or counter. If your arm is too low or too high, your blood pressure reading may not be accurate.
13. The blood pressure cuff
You must also use the right blood pressure cuff when taking a reading. Using a smaller one can raise your blood pressure by 10 to 40 mmHg. Make sure that you are comfortable with the cuff you're using to ensure accurate measurement.
DISCOVER HOW YOU CAN STABILIZE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE, LOWER BAD CHOLESTEROL WHILE MAINTAINING GOOD CHOLESTEROL AND BALANCING YOUR BLOOD-SUGAR LEVELS.
Hello. This is Dr. Ben, Chief Medical Advisor here at Healthy Habits Products, pointing out something important that you may not realize about the toxins in your body.
Most people believe that having a healthy heart is either a matter of good genetics ("he’s just lucky") or a strict diet ("I just have to give up salt").
The truth is, genetics and food choices are NOT the root cause of your struggle to rid your body of the risk of heart disease and a potential heart attack or stroke, no matter how hard you try. Your high blood pressure, bad cholesterol and high blood sugar have little to do with bad genes or ANY of the most common things believed to cause heart disease.
Your struggle to protect and even heal your heart comes down to 3 little-known factors that your doctor might not even know about!
Shocking, right?
In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you how a weird herb has been shown to STOP these 3 little-known problems dead in their tracks so your blood pressure stabilizes, your cholesterol and blood-sugar levels improve and you get the heart-health results you want while no longer worrying about heart attack or stroke.
But before I do, however, it’s extremely important to understand the three critical things that must take place to STOP the potential of heart disease, including the possibility of a heart attack or stroke:
#1 - You Must Balance Your Blood-Sugar Levels.
Sugar is necessary for survival. Blood sugar (or, blood glucose) refers to sugar that’s introduced into the bloodstream to supply needed energy to all the cells in the body. Our bodies are made to regulate those levels, making sure they’re neither too high nor too low.
Unfortunately, sugar is made from the food we eat. Our digestive system breaks down carbs from food and sends them straight to our bloodstream as glucose, a simple sugar that converts to energy. However, glucose can only enter the cells via insulin.
Unbalanced insulin levels result in either type 1 diabetes (also known as insulin sensitivity, or too low levels) or type 2 diabetes (too high levels).
This means, the higher your insulin levels, the higher your chance of diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM), a disease that literally damages the structure and function of your heart.
Insulin doesn’t care whether your blood sugar is at a healthy level. Its only concern is that you do not starve and have the ability to produce energy for your body to burn.
The big, ugly problem: Unless you do something to “short-circuit” this biological need to feed your cells, you’ll neverhave the heart health you want and deserve.
It begins with maintaining your insulin levels, because modern living—along with diets full of refined sugars and other challenges—have made it so most of us are nearly insulin-unbalanced all the time. This not only makes eating right nearly impossible, it also makes choosing when and how often to eat MUCH harder.
Think about the last time you were ravenously hungry? You began to feel weak and dizzy, right? You began to feel yourself shutting down—and that’s exactly what insulin issues can do.
#2 You Must Lower Your Bad Cholesterol While Maintaining Your Good Cholesterol.
Whether you’ve heard of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) or “good” cholesterol (HDL), I assure you. They’re having a MASSIVE effect on the health of your blood.
LDL cholesterol is considered bad because it creates plaque, a thick, hard deposit that can clog arteries, making them less flexible. (This is known as atherosclerosis.) Eventually, a clot can form, blocking a narrowed artery, often resulting in heart attack or stroke. Another condition called peripheral artery disease can develop when plaque buildup and narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs (usually the legs). Either scenario often results in death or life-altering consequences.
HDL cholesterol is considered good because it aids in removing LDL cholesterol from the arteries. Scientists believe HDL acts as a scavenger, carrying LDL cholesterol away from the arteries and safely back to the liver, where it’s broken down and passed from the body.
A healthy level of HDL cholesterol will protect against heart attack and stroke, while low levels of HDL cholesterol have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease.
#3 You Must Stabilize Your Blood Pressure.
Without properly balanced cholesterol and blood-sugar levels, your heart valves become restricted with plaque buildup, and that leads to a damaged and unhealthy heart. All this combined begins to affect other parts of your body and internal organs because they are starved of needed oxygen and blood that is pumped to them by your heart. After years of unhealthy eating, unbalanced cholesterol and blood-sugar levels all over the place, your overall heart health begins to deteriorate. In worse cases, not protecting your heart health can lead to major damage resulting in the need for heart surgery or a heart transplant. In the worst case, deteriorated hearth health can lead to death.
And it gets worse with each passing year, not only making it harder to avoid heart disease but actually causing you to GET A HEART ATTACK OR STROKE—no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
The result?
Your stress levels increase. The number you see on the blood-pressure monitor goes up and perhaps worst of all, you begin to live your life in complete fear and feel like your heart is a bomb waiting to go off.
This vicious cycle not only accelerates with each passing year, it begins to compromise other parts of your health. Your sleep quality drops. Your stress begins to affect those around you. You stay away from strenuous activities including all exercise, and those things accelerate the cycle yet again.
Each time, the cycle speeds up, which is why heart disease is often so accelerated later in life.
This is pretty disheartening for anyone looking to maintain healthy blood levels and transform their heart health.
But what if there was a way that you could STOP these three factors?
What if you could balance your blood sugar, lower your bad cholesterol, maintain good cholesterol, naturally control your blood pressure and get rid of the fear of a heart attack or stroke?
If you could do that, you could essentially turn your heart into a well-run machine, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Can you just imagine how much more safe you’d feel if these 3 hidden dangers of heart disease were no longer standing in the way of a healthy heart?
Well, there is a way to fix these dangers, get your blood pressure under control, maintain healthy cholesterol levels and balance your blood-sugar levels.
The solution not only works on a deeper cellular level but also in your overall well-being. So the results are rapidly felt, deep and long-term.
Interested?
Great—because this is only just the beginning!
The solution you’re about to discover only takes one minute or less to implement. So there’s absolutely NO REASON why you have to be a victim of heart disease that so many needlessly suffer through.
Introducing our 100% all-natural proprietary blend called StrictionBP. This unique but extremely effective supplement has been scientifically created to safely protect your heart from damage.
StrictionBP uses a “magical” little extract called Ceylon Cinnamon from an amazing herb that grows selectively in Sri Lanka.
Randomized-controlled research published on type 2 diabetes demonstrated the significant effect Ceylon Cinnamon can have regarding blood-sugar levels.
These results were pooled together with results from a recent study and published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
The results demonstrated significant reduction of bad cholesterol and increase of good cholesterol, as well as an increase in quality of blood-sugar levels after only two weeks.
These results were not accomplished by every brand of the supplement, but rather only quality-sourced Ceylon Cinnamon.
After 4 weeks of supplementing with 120 mg of quality-sourced Ceylon Cinnamon per day, test subjects (543 patients) saw significantly reduced levels of fasting plasma glucose (blood sugar) from -40.52 to -8.67, and an increase of good cholesterol (HDL) from 1.09 to 2.24 while decreasing the bad cholesterol (LDL) from 17.21 to -1.63.
After 18 weeks, the randomized control trial continued to find statistically significant decreases in levels of blood sugar and corrected cholesterol.
The effects of Ceylon Cinnamon extract work 5 different ways:
First, a compound in the extract called cinnamaldehyde provides most of the health benefits of this amazing spice. It comes from the oily part of the cinnamon bark.
Second, it’s loaded with antioxidants such as polyphenols that protect the body from damage caused by free radicals. In a recent study of 26 different spices, cinnamon won by a landslide—even beating out “superfoods” like oregano and garlic!
Third, it provides anti-inflammatory protection by helping your body repair tissue damage and help fight infections, thereby lowering your risk of disease (including heart disease).
Fourth, it’s beneficial to blood markers and helps your good cholesterol remain stable while lowering your bad cholesterol—all things that can greatly reduce the possibility of heart disease and death.
Lastly, since insulin is one of the key hormones that must remain regulated to be healthy, Ceylon Cinnamon helps insulin do its job of transporting blood sugar from the bloodstream straight to the cells.
Now, think about these effects in light of the 3 factors we just discussed.
By naturally balancing your blood sugar, cholesterol levels and blood pressure, you’re unlikely to ever develop conditions like insulin resistance, diabetes and heart disease.
You optimize your heart health, protect it from heart disease and you can lose the fear of a catastrophic heart attack or stroke!
The net result?
Your heart health is achieved at the fastest possible rate.
Now, what if you could get all of these proven heart-health benefits in the form of an easy-to-take daily capsule that protects your heart without you having to change your diet, spend hours at a gym or giving up any of your favorite activities?
Essentially, it’d be the easiest, most practical and convenient way to fight those 3 causes of heart disease that I talked about earlier.
Now, you could learn about these powerful ingredients and then try to independently source the individual ingredients. The problem is, after you’ve found all the products and sources, purchased minimum quantities of each (which is often a large amount), paid shipping on each, and sorted through a huge stage of studies on the most effective dose of each one needed to help balance your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and blood sugar, you’ll literally have spent weeks or months of time, and hundreds (if not thousands!) of dollars—and you’ll have waited all that time to even begin to make progress.
The good news…
Healthy Habits Products has already done ALL the hard work and heavy lifting for you.
These critical ingredients, along with some additional compounds that further enhance their overall effectiveness, have been combined into one proven, all-natural, scientifically researched, easy-to-take supplement called StrictionBP, and it’s by far one of the most exciting, unique formulas I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on.
Just take it once each morning and again each night. You just let this incredible supplement work its magic!
As the research overviewed has shown, this nutrient already has a rapid and noticeable effect on your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugar. Yet when you combine them all, the results are truly unsurpassed.
StrictionBP is the ONLY way to get this clinically proven ingredient to help STOP the deadly accumulation of plaque and balance your blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure, and win the war against heart disease once and for all.
Deciding to take StrictionBP is a simple decision because we want you to not just take our word on its effectiveness but take it for a test drive!
We are offering a special 3-Bottle Discount (while supplies last).
In addition, we are offering you a No-Risk 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. You must SEE RESULTS—or return it for a refund. No hassles. No questions asked.
That’s how you know StrictionBP will deliver everything it promises and more.
With no risk and a proven track record of creating better heart health, is there any reason not to give this a try?
Once you have it in your hands, and once you experience the rare power of this wonder supplement to fight back against heart disease and give you the peace of mind you’ve always wanted, you'll be thankful you tried this. After all, this is so much easier and more affordable and less invasive than other solutions—especially expensive blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs, which often come with harmful side effects and make you feel ill and miserable.
You’ll also receive a powerful FREE eBook—3 Ways to Naturally Lower Your Blood Pressure—which will walk you through the biggest problem with traditional heart health approaches (including so much of what you learned here today).
This is normally a $29.95 value, but you get the eBook for FREE when you try out StrictionBP today!
To finally see and experience how unbelievably easy it can be to balance your blood sugar and cholesterol, and protect your heart, choose the appropriate savings with the link below…
…and then, of course, be sure to write down your blood-pressure reading today, because you’ll absolutely want to document your dramatic before-and-after results.
==> Order StrictionBP today and get 3 Ways to Naturally Lower Your Blood Pressure—FREE
Dedicated to helping you achieve Healthy Habits®!
Dr. Ben
Chief Medical Advisor Healthy Habits Products Inc.
7. Akilen, R., Tsiami, A., et al.; “Glycated haemoglobin and blood pressure-lowering effect of cinnamon in multi-ethnic Type 2 diabetic patients in the UK: a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial”; Diabetic Medicine; 2010: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20854384
8. Allen, R., Schwartzman, E., et al.; “Cinnamon use in type 2 diabetes: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis”; The Annals of Family Medicine; 2013: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24019277
10. No authors listed; “Antioxidant capacity of 26 spice extracts and characterization of their phenolic constituents”; Journal of Agricultural http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16190627
12. Azimi, P., Ghiasvand, R., et al.; “Effects of Cinnamon, Cardamom, Saffron, and Ginger Consumption on Markers of Glycemic Control, Lipid Profile, Oxidative Stress, and Inflammation in Type 2 Diabetes Patients”; The Review of Diabetic Studies; 2014: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177486