Blood Pressure Monitors

Choosing the Best Blood Pressure Monitors

If your body has a habit of losing its handle on its blood pressure, you certainly do need to take action. Let your blood pressure dip below what it should be, and you aren't ever going to be as energetic and as alert as you would otherwise be.

Let it go over the right number and you're putting yourself on the fast track to an early grave. Check any store you choose out for the best blood pressure monitors they carry, and you’re bound to come away overwhelmed by the kind of choice available.

Certainly, you've read about how the best blood pressure monitors are the ones that go on your upper arm; you know that the wrist-type ones or the finger-type ones aren't accurate enough. But even if you are clear about the kind of device you need to choose, it can hardly be easy to tell one model or brand apart from another.

Lots of people find blood pressure monitors quite mystifying. They've seen how doctors in their clinics use a mercury gravity sphygmomanometer – inflating the cuff and then deflating it while listening to something with a stethoscope. How exactly does that work? It's simple enough – they inflate your cuff high enough that the tightness cuts the blood flow off in your arm altogether.

Once they see this happening, they begin deflating the cuff and listen in with a stethoscope to hear the sound of blood flowing again. That's the point where they determine that pressure in the cuff is equal to the pressure your blood flow exerts. And that's your blood pressure readout. While these machines can be pretty accurate, they are not designed for self-use.

The electronic versions that you get at every store these days vary widely in price from around the $30 level to the $150 level.

As you head up in price, you get features like memory to remember previous numbers by, features that measure an irregular heartbeat and display warnings about them, and ones that compensate for them, an ability to measure blood pressure during inflation rather than deflation, and so on.

Some of the top-of-the-line models have inflation controls built in so that you only get as much inflation is you personally need – not some standard amount that would go for everyone. This way, you don't have to put up with painful over inflation if you don't have very high blood pressure.

The A&D Medical Life Source Quick Response UA-787EJ happens to be one of the best blood pressure monitors out there today. At $55, it comes with all kinds of thoughtful features built in that every monitor should have – it works off an AC adapter (and not just batteries like other models), you get a hard shell cuff that's easy to wear that you don't have to wrap around an arm, and you get irregular heartbeat sensitivity. A&D, for patients who may have vision problems, has a model that even gives you voice announcements. To see it click here.

Perhaps the most intriguing new development in new blood pressure monitors is the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor that plugs into an iPad or an iPhone. It does have a little motor to inflate and deflate the cuff. But the processing part, the iPhone takes care of. It isn't very cheap and though at $100.

You can see a selection of other blood pressure monitors by clicking here.