Dr. Steve Kopecky

And they're extremely accurate unless you have a lot of irregular heartbeats, like you've got atrial fibrillation or a lot of premature ventricular heartbeats from the bottom chamber of the heart.

Otherwise, it's very, very accurate.

And so I tell people to get those and make sure it's an upper arm cuff.

And we tell them how to check it, you know, sit down with your feet on the floor, put the cuff here on your upper arm, put it on your desk or on the table and sit there for a couple minutes first.

And then check it about four times a week at different times, only once early or late in the day, because early and late is when it's at its lowest.

I tell people check it sometimes, you know, after something incredibly stressful, like if you're crazy enough to watch the evening news.

I mean, some of my patients have to take nitroglycerin to watch the evening news.

But check it, you know, when it's stressful.

And if you are working outside your home, take it to work with you.

Most people go to work and their blood pressure goes up.

Now, I'm not a marriage counselor, but some people come home and their blood pressure goes up.

So I don't know what that means exactly, but it's good to know.

And now that you can accurately measure it, you need to know what it is because it's very treatable and it's very important to treat.

And if you don't know what it is, you're really shooting in the dark.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The you know, the this one I talked about is a good one to do because you can control it.

You can turn it on and off and get it going.

If you have people there that know how to use the old stethoscope, you know, with it listens to the noises in the arm, then they could do that.

It can be difficult at health fairs because it's noisy.