If you have problems with high blood pressure, as I do, you’d probably like to have one of the spiffy high-tech monitors like the Omron HEM-790IT Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor with Advanced Omron Health Management Software
This doohickey runs off four AA batteries and gets an accurate blood pressure reading in less than a minute. This particular model comes with a USB cable and software that will keep track of the readings over time. This is the top-of-the-line model and cost about $75 on Amazon.
I found this particularly useful because I’ve lost a lot of weight over the past year and I suspected (correctly) that my blood-pressure medication was excessive for my current weight, and my blood pressure was actually lower than desirable. My doctor is a great guy (Dr. Shawn Foley at Philomath Family Medicine), and he more or less turned me loose to tune my medication so I’m within his guidelines.
Another thing I found out was that I was a little intimidated by the process of having my blood pressure taken, and this tension made my blood pressure rise! So my medication had been tuned to deal with an anomalously high blood pressure. Taking reading a zillion times with this automated machine got me used to it, so now I get a truer reading.
Having the machine lying around allows you to check things like, “I wonder if this decongestant really is spiking my blood pressure like the warning says it might?”
The machine is a snap to use. Put on the velcro cuff, press the START button, and relax.