alt Hacker NewsYears ago I had my blood pressure taken by a nurse; this was when they did it manually, squeezing the pressure cuff bulb by hand and listening with a stethoscope. The doctor came in later, saw the numbers and frowned, and took my pressure again. She (both were women) ended up with a reading much more within my normal range.
I asked, joking, “So are you just better than her?” “No,” my doctor replied, “She’s better. She gets more practice. I have a better stethoscope.”
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I have a much higher BP when I first go to the office than after I'm sitting in the exam room for a bit.
Usually they call me back to the hallway where they check my weight, then have me sit in a chair and check my temperature, pulse ox and BP, with maybe only a minute sitting down before they do the BP check. My BP is usually in the "hypertension" range there.
But, if they come back to the exam room after I've been sitting in that quiet room for 5 or 10 minutes and check my BP , it's almost always in the "normal" BP range (same as what I see when I check it at home).
Doctor calls it "white coat hypertension", I call it "rushed BP check in the hallway".
Or, maybe you have "white coat syndrome" [1]. This is closely related to "pretty lady syndrome".
If the nurse got a reading well outside normal range she should have repeated it to confirm, especially if it was inconsistent with your overall presentation.
The pressure cuff + stethoscope combo is called a sphygmomanometer. It's a pretty fascinating piece of technology: A heartbeat is only audible in the earpiece when the cuff is compressing between someone's systolic and diastolic pressure.
To use it, you get the cuff pressure high enough that you stop hearing a heartbeat in the earpiece. Start releasing pressure slowly. As it comes down, take note of where on the dial you start hearing the heartbeat. That's systolic pressure. Keep listening, and take note of where you stop hearing the heartbeat. That's diastolic pressure.
Using one feels kind of magic.