If you measure your own blood pressure, pay attention to your arm position, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Incorrect arm position when your blood pressure is being measured may result in a mistakenly high reading, a study by Tammy Brady, a cardiovascular health promotion expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown. Brady says since home blood pressure measurements are critical to making the diagnosis of high blood pressure, people need to have their arm supported and at about heart height there, too.

Brady: One of the main hopes I have for this paper is that healthcare providers will be more attuned to the importance of arm position and patients too, because these steps are not just important in a healthcare setting, it's important for home measurements. And so my hope is that it'll raise awareness and people will be more intentional about blood pressure measurements since there was such a degree of overestimation with improper arm position. If they're going to focus on one thing I hope that they focus on that.   :28

Brady notes that making sure your home device is calibrated is also a good idea. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.