What good does a blood pressure reading do if you are sitting down with a perfect 120/80 but once you start doing activity’s it rises 10-20 values. Considering that we are active most of the day would the higher values be bad for our body?
In: 5
It’s a lot harder to read blood pressure during activity, since the cuff needs to remain in long enough to read both systolic and diastolic pressure. Plus, the normal value is calculated on the assumption that the person is at rest. If it was normally read during exercise, the expected values would be based on that instead.
Readings while active depend substantially on *how* active you are. You get much better consistency by measuring with minimal activity because that’s easy to quantify.
As others have mentioned, the answer has to do with the difficulty in accurately measuring. But difficulty alone is not the full answer, as it also had to do with something called baseline values. In order to even establish what a normal blood pressure is, we have to test a LOT of people (like tens of thousands). Now, to get a value for the healthy range we’d have to make sure everyone is exerting themselves equally as hard, say 70% of max performance. How do you ensure that everyone is at exactly 70%? It’s far, far, FAR, easier to simply tell everyone to stay at rest and measure this value to establish the baseline value. A number on its own with no context is meaningless, and you get the most context with a resting BP.
Bonus: 120/80 is actually the MAX BP that is considered healthy, not a target value. Ideally you’d be a bit under this, maybe 110/70.
Think of it like a car, if your car is parked while on and the RPMs are high that’s not good, but when you’re driving they’re expected to be higher than not moving.
Same thing with people, if you are currently active and your blood pressure is towards the height of the upper ranges, let’s say 180/110 , that’s not out of the ordinary. If you are still and inactive and have that same reading, you have high blood pressure and may have a risk of a problem or could be diagnosed with a condition.
I’m sure there are other reasons, but it is difficult to get a reading with a lot of movement.