For most people taking a blood pressure reading is something that a doctor does. If you are older you may remember seeing a seat and cuff in a CVS or Walgreeens, it was a fun toy as a kid while waiting in line.
These days taking a reading is easy to do at home. You don’t need to have a stethoscope or any real understanding of what blood pressure is. Many simple cuffs pump themselves up and display the reading on a simple screen so you can mark it down. Even easier are connected blood pressure cuffs that automatically update your reading to you phone or can share directly with a doctor.
Similar to most of the other tracked metrics we can track, individual readings are only moderately important. Drink a coffee, go on a run, and suddenly see a snake? Yeah you’re blood pressure is likely to be much higher than if you wake up casually and take it before even sitting up. Less severe actions, climbing stairs, crossing you legs while taking a reading, even holding a conversation while monitoring can all make a difference.
This is why it’s important to take readings in a similar environment and monitor the trend over the longer term. If you are looking to lower your blood pressure, eating better, getting some cardio, sleeping well, and otherwise reducing stress can hopefully lead to a trend that looks like the below picture. This is a summary of 8 months of readings, taken weekly, while making lifestyle changes to help.
Does Apple Watch Record Blood Pressure?
In short, No, the Apple Watch does not have a built in blood pressure tracking.
These days you can now rely on more than just your doctor to keep track of critical details like blood pressure. The Apple Health Kit and Google Health both offer options for logging stats like BP, with input for Systolic and Diastolic. So it would be nice if it did, but that would require (with current technology) a large inflatable cuff on the inside of the strap.
Not only that the charts that they can put together make old school doctors look like medieval blood letters. Connected blood pressure trackers, like the Withings Blood Pressure Cuff, can be automatically synced with these systems to offer as often as daily updates.
Unfortunately, wrist wearables like the Apple Watch do not yet have a way to measure and record blood pressure. There are a handful of wrist worn devices that claim to measure blood pressure, but still the American Heart Association recommends other methods like bicep cuffs rather than wrist based devices. Apple Health Kit does allow for tracking of Blood pressure but it must be manually logged and taken from one of these other devices.
With Telemedicine also on the rise, the ability to take a blood pressure reading at home is becoming more important and available though. We have written before about subscription concierge doctors, like Forward, which allow you to monitor things like weight and blood pressure and connect to your doctor remotely to discuss changes. For those that find themselves with elevated BP readings simply due to the stress of being at a doctor, this type of development can be great.