Dr. Steve Kopecky

You need to be closer down to 120.

The other group is the people have had a stroke.

There are certain strokes that the neurologist actually wants your blood pressure to be a little bit higher.

It's okay to be a little bit higher and that you've got to talk with your, you know, your doctor about.

kind of thing so just from a practical perspective can you just talk about that a little bit more yeah that's a great question thank you barry the um you know that's the great thing about these newer cuffs is they will record them and average them and so a couple of things one is you know some people uh will come in with their blood pressure measurements and i'll say you know have you done four a week they say oh doctor i do four in the morning and four in the afternoon and uh

Yeah, that's a little too many.

And that's you don't need that many.

The second thing is we would like the majority of the readings to be below 130 on the top and 80 on the bottom or 120 on the top and 80 on the bottom.

The majority of and it's going to go up.

It's like pulse or, you know, that your pulse goes up at times when you're doing things, walking up the stairs or something.

The so that's OK.

But we want to see the average because we want to see what your brain and your heart and your kidneys are seeing.

Because they get affected by too high of a blood pressure.

So it's, you know, check it at different times and just make sure the average is staying under control.

Yeah, also a great question.

You know, your risk of heart attack is highest between about 4 and 6 a.m.

And blood pressure can be higher than two.

You know, the risk of stroke isn't quite as well correlated.

But clearly, it does go up early in the morning.

So the one-a-day pills will say take it whenever you remember it the best.