Peter Attia· MD
serly is to do a 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitor to really get a sense of what what is the average blood pressure you're seeing over a 24-hour period because there is a difference when you're sleeping your blood pressure should be low right that's physiology y when you're out and about and doing things it's going to be higher so what is the you know sort of and they can quantify all the spikes and it's actually a really nice tool that I'll use in people especially in people who have some degree of what's you know commonly termed white code hypertension which is kind of what I mean why could hypertension is real life right why could hypertension is living in the real world um so so how how does a how does an ambulatory BP cuff work um it's it's presumably a cuff that sits on the arm and then it straps to a device like a halter would I actually it's funny I don't think I've ever seen a device uh I've ordered a bunch uh it's a cuff so it's really old school right it's not like this is new technology where they can measure blood pressure without doing the old singam monometer so it's a cuff it's I think got a self encl I would imagine it's got some you know Hardware attached to it that tells it to inflate and measure blood pressure just as you would with a one that you have in your office and it does that once a minute or whatever it is over the course of 24 hours so it's constantly inflating deflating over the course of of a day patients who have mine who've warned them say that after a while you get used to it and just you can ignore it it seems to me like it would be really annoying to have this thing like inflating and deflating all the time but that's what it is what it does though is it buys it buys you sort of a a a distraction from real life it buys you sort of when you're not thinking about things when you're clearly not stressed or you shouldn't be stressed I you when you're sleeping um what is your blood pressure and we know that blood pressure that hypertension during sleep is abnormal it's the it should really be a time when your blood pressure is the lowest so it's just a to another tool that we have to kind of get at that question