Blood pressure: Does it have a daily pattern? (2024)

FAQs

Blood pressure: Does it have a daily pattern? ›

Blood pressure has a daily pattern. Usually, blood pressure starts to rise a few hours before a person wakes up. It continues to rise during the day, peaking in midday. Blood pressure typically drops in the late afternoon and evening.

Ambulatory healthy adults exhibit a 24-hour rhythm in blood pressure (BP), with levels being highest during the daytime and lowest at nighttime.

Blood pressure is the pressure of blood on the walls of your arteries as your heart pumps blood around your body. Blood pressure does not stay the same all the time. It changes to meet your body's needs and it is normal for your blood pressure to go up and down throughout the day.

People age 18 and older with optimal blood pressure and no heart disease risk factors should have a blood pressure test at least once every 2 to 5 years. People age 40 and older — or younger with an increased risk of high blood pressure — should have a blood pressure test every year.

For most people, a normal range of their systolic (upper) number will be around 120-130 mmHg during restful periods and up to 140-160 when active or stressed. The diastolic (lower) number should generally stay between 80-90 mmHg while at rest and rise up to 95-100 during activities or stressful moments.

But too much monitoring could cause anxiety in some patients, which could elevate their blood pressure. After they have the process down, both Lu and Ebinger recommend testing once daily at the same time each day.

Usually, blood pressure starts to rise a few hours before a person wakes up. It continues to rise during the day, peaking in midday. Blood pressure typically drops in the late afternoon and evening. Blood pressure is usually lower at night while sleeping.

How often should you check? At first, take your blood pressure twice a day for a week. The best times are early in the morning (before you have taken any blood pressure medications) and again in the evening. After you've done this for a week, once or twice a month—or whatever your doctor recommends—is fine.

The international BP guidelines for the use of home BP [12–14] have stated that when a series of readings is taken, a minimum of two readings should be taken at intervals of at least 1 min, and the average of those readings should be used to represent the patient's blood pressure.

"The gold standard for home monitoring is to take 28 separate measurements, which you can then average to get a representative reading," says Dr. Juraschek. That means taking your blood pressure four times a day — twice in the morning and twice in the evening — for seven days in a row.

Is it normal to have different blood pressure readings throughout the day? ›

Most healthy individuals have variations in their blood pressure — from minute to minute and hour to hour. These fluctuations generally happen within a normal range. But when blood pressure regularly spikes higher than normal, it's a sign that something isn't right.

Your blood pressure should be 120/80 mm/Hg or lower; hypertension is defined as any reading of 140/90 or higher. “It's normal, of course, for a person's blood pressure to rise and fall from minute to minute with changes in posture, exercise, stress, or sleep,” says Mercado.

Normal pressure is 120/80 or lower. Your blood pressure is considered high (stage 1) if it reads 130 to 139 mmHg/80 to 89 mmHg. Stage 2 high blood pressure is 140/90 or higher. If you get a blood pressure reading of 180/120 or higher more than once, seek medical treatment right away.

Proper timing: Blood pressure is often highest early in the morning – 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. – so choose another time to take it. Be consistent: Take your blood pressure at the same time of day. Discuss with your health care provider how often you should measure your blood pressure.

Most healthy individuals have variations in their blood pressure — from minute to minute and hour to hour. These fluctuations generally happen within a normal range. But when blood pressure regularly spikes higher than normal, it's a sign that something isn't right.

Thus, our systolic blood pressure ranges from 90 to 140 mmHg, diastolic blood pressure ranges from 60 to 90 mmHg, which is considered normal. Normally, blood pressure will tend to be higher in the morning and lower in the evening.

If an initial blood pressure reading obtained by an MA is elevated and a physician then obtains a follow-up reading, that second reading may be lower because the alerting reaction has subsided, or it may be higher because of doctor-related white-coat effect.