Measuring the blood pressure

There are many people who wish to measure their blood pressure on their own, these people should know the basic know how of measuring blood pressure. The first step is to make ourselves comfortable with the blood pressure measuring equipment. The placing of sphygmomanometer should be comfortable so that you can place the stethoscope around the neck area. So it becomes easier for you to handle the equipment and measure the blood pressure.

Sphygmomanometer has an inflatable cuff that needs to be wrapped around the person’s arm whose blood pressure has to be measured. It should be filled properly so that it doesn’t get to much fluffed because then it wont be ale to measure properly. The stethoscope needs to placed in ears and wrapped around the neck to get a better grip of it. Check the pulse beat of the artery and note the pulse at regular intervals. The artery would be at the arm so just keep the diaphragm of stethoscope over your arm; this would allow you to measure the beat correctly. Placing the diaphragm of the stethoscope under the cuffs would let you get one hand free now it depends on you that which one you want.

When all the measuring equipments are placed then turn the palm of your left hand upwards, now place the fingers at the right hand and then check your body pulse.

The next thing requires practice; there would be an inflated bulb that needs to be blown to get the inflatation done. There might be a screw that needs to be tightened so that the air do not escapes out. The repeated bulb squeezing will let the bulb get filled with air. The pressure needs to be pumped upto 90mm so that the pulse in the wrist can also be felt. When the pumping can be felt then check your pulse again. There are chances that at times you might feel that your wrist is getting over pumped and might also burst then release the valve slowly. It might be a bit slow in start but the speed would gradually increase with practice. You just have to stop for a while after you release the wrist and after a while you can start again whenever you feel comfortable.

There is a reason why the pulse needs to be checked constantly. The reason is if the pulse goes missing then this might mean that the cuff has a pressure more than your systolic blood pressure. The blood pressure and the pulse vary from person to person so there is a different style of measuring the blood pressure. There are people with high blood pressure and even there are a few with extreme systolic blood pressure so there are differences while measuring the blood pressure. The pressure in the cuff should be maintained according to what you feel your blood pressure is for this the pulse rate is checked. After a while it can be done without checking the pulse rate when you get an idea of what exactly your pulse rate and pressure is.

You can see by example that if the pulse rate disappears at 1590mm of Hg then If you fill 20mm more pressure and then release it slowly with the help of the screw then the fall of mercury can be accurate and you can have a look at it without checking the pulse rate. The pressure from the bulb can be filled in according to two division per pulse rate in any person, so if normal pulse arte is 75 that makes the pressure automatically upto 150mm of Hg. So addition 2 mm can be added everytime whenever you wish to check the appropriate high blood pressure in your body. The tossing up of the mercury column everytime can be a bit painful and even uncomfortable but there is a note of precaution that needs to be followed. If you wish to make the process more comfortable then the reading of the blood pressure might not be accurate. So do not make the adjustments comfortable for getting the reading.

While you deflate the cuffs around the arms do hear the sound in the stethoscope, there might be occasional clicking sounds from the cuffs. These sounds would be tapping sound that might be heard after every 10mm drop of Hg. When this sound starts then, this measure is the level of systolic blood pressure.

Jot down the reading thus obtained. For further reading keep dropping down the pressure from the inflated ball, at a very slow rate. Your comfort level with the inflated cuff would increase when the cuff becomes more and more comfortable then the sound would be decreasing soon and after a while it would disappear the reading at which the sound completely fades is the reading where the accurate diastolic pressure of blood is noted. Jot down the measure there this is the diastolic blood pressure of the person. This is the accurate reading of the blood pressure I the body. The things that always needed to be kept in mind are the level of pressure that has to be filled with proper care and the comfort level that would definitely decrease and one should not try and increase it if he has to get the best blood pressure level. Jotting the blood pressure readings are also very important as you might not remember the exact readings.

After noting down and measuring the blood pressure from the device, always be sure to turn the knob of the valve counter clockwise. This would release the pressure you filled there would be a bit uncomforting situation but would treat itself soon when you would get used to it.