Alterations to our diet and lifestyle today mean that an increasing number of people suffer from high blood pressure and it is crucial for us to start monitoring our blood pressure on a regular basis. Luckily this no longer means having to head for the doctors office and the wide range of easy to use and relatively inexpensive monitors available today means that we can monitor our blood pressure in comfort at home. But, whilst measuring our pressure may be easy enough, interpreting the numbers is quite another matter.

Blood pressure will differ from one individual to the next and also varies with things like what we eat and the time of day. For this reason we are not able to say that normal blood pressure is a given reading and that if you find yourself more than so many points below or above these you need to see your doctor. What we are able to do however is to define a number of bands which correspond to varying degrees of high and low blood pressure around a set of baseline readings which apply to the vast majority of the population and this is just what blood pressure charts do.

A traditional blood chart is a graphic representation of a wide range of blood pressure readings below and above the norm together with advice on what the bands tell you about your blood pressure.

For example, if you were to take a blood pressure reading and come up with a systolic reading of 135 and a diastolic reading of 88, this quite possibly will not mean very much to you, apart from the fact that it seems a bit high. However, if you draw a line on a blood pressure chart between the higher reading on the left of the chart and the lower diastolic reading on the right of the chart you will discover that this line falls inside a band which is slightly above normal and, although it is nearing the borderline for high blood pressure, it is still within an acceptable range.

Equally, if you recorded a reading of 144 over 94 this would be seen as a mild case of hypertension. But, the chart would also indicate that this reading in isolation is not a matter for worry and may simply be the result of recording your blood pressure early in the morning when your pressure is often slightly raised or of taking a reading after you have eaten something which is salty.

Blood pressure charts of this nature are extremely helpful in giving you a clear snapshot of your pressure at a given moment but possibly a more useful picture would be given by a daily blood pressure chart which is drawn up over a reasonable period of time.

A lot of modern blood pressure monitors can store your readings and they can either be printed out and plotted by hand on graph paper or can be used together with one of the many readily available software packages to draw a full-color picture of your blood pressure over the past few weeks or months.

Whatever method you select there is no question that having a graphic representation of your blood pressure over time can certainly make monitoring your health a lot easier.