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White Coat Hypertension
November 27, 2009 |
You eat well. You work out regularly. You don’t smoke. You lead an active lifestyle.
So why is it that when you visit the doctor, your blood pressure doesn’t show for
it?
“Yes, there’s actually white coat syndrome,” says Dr. Aldith Lewis, an internal
medicine physician with Lee Memorial Health System. She says she sees white coat
hypertension often. “That’s when patients come into the doctor’s office and their
blood pressure is elevated only in the doctor’s office but its normal outside the
doctor’s office,” she explains. Seeing the doctor’s white coat makes some people
feel anxious.
Sometimes, there’s the opposite affect. “There’s also a term called ‘mask hypertension’
where the blood pressure is normal in the doctor’s office but elevated outside the
doctor’s office.”
Taking multiple blood pressure readings can help the physician determine if it’s
just a situational problem of if there’s a deeper underlying physical problem. "If
that persists, we can give them a blood pressure monitor to check at home, also
ambulatory blood pressure monitor as an option. It checks your blood pressure during
your awake times and sleep times and correlate it with what you are getting in the
doctor’s office,” adds Dr. Lewis.
Avoiding caffeine and exercise 30 minutes before visiting the doctor can also help
stabilize blood pressure readings.
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