Check Your Blood Pressure

Getting an Accurate Reading

How you sit changes the result, sometimes by enough to move you into a different category, so it is worth a few minutes of care before you start.

1. Sit still for five minutes first, and skip coffee, cigarettes and exercise for the half hour before that.
2. Sit with your back supported and both feet flat on the floor, without crossing your legs.
3. Rest your arm on a table so the cuff sits at the same height as your heart.
4. Take two or three readings about a minute apart, then work out the average.
5. Enter the top number first, then the bottom one.

Why Canada Lowered the Threshold in 2025

For years, a Canadian doctor would diagnose high blood pressure at 135 over 85. In May 2025, Hypertension Canada lowered that to 130 over 80, and a great many Canadians became hypertensive overnight without anything changing inside them.

That sounds arbitrary until you understand what a threshold is doing. Risk does not appear suddenly at a particular number. It rises gradually, and it starts rising from a systolic reading as low as 90. Any threshold is therefore a decision about where along that gradual rise treatment begins to help more than it costs.

One trial after another found benefit in lowering pressure for people above 130 over 80, so the committee moved the definition to match what the evidence showed. The same update dropped the separate target for the bottom number, because adults whose top number falls below 130 stay at low risk even when the bottom one runs between 70 and 90.

What the Numbers Mean

Every reading gives you two numbers, and they describe two different moments in the same heartbeat. The top number is the pressure in your arteries as the heart squeezes and pushes blood out. The bottom number is what remains a moment later, while the heart relaxes and fills again.

The gap between 130 and 140 is deliberate rather than an oversight. You meet the Canadian definition of hypertension above 130 over 80, but medication usually waits until 140 over 90, unless your cardiovascular risk is already high, in which case it starts sooner.

Words You Will Hear

Systolic. The top number, measured while the heart contracts. This is the one Canadian guidance now watches most closely.

Diastolic. The bottom number, measured between beats, when the heart is refilling.

White coat hypertension. Readings that run high in a clinic and settle down everywhere else, where the clinic itself is the cause.

Masked hypertension. The opposite pattern, and the more worrying of the two, because readings look fine in clinic while running high in ordinary life.

Home monitoring. Readings you take yourself across days or weeks, which Canadian guidance now treats as stronger evidence than a single clinic visit.

Validated device. A monitor tested against a clinical standard, which many inexpensive cuffs have never been.

Why One Reading Is Not Enough

Your blood pressure moves all day long. It rises when you talk, when you are cold, when you need the bathroom, and reliably when a nurse walks into the room. A single reading captures one moment out of thousands.

This is why Canadian guidance now asks for readings taken outside the clinic before confirming a diagnosis. Home readings and 24-hour monitors follow cardiovascular outcomes more closely than clinic readings do, and they are the only way to catch the two patterns above, since neither one shows itself during an appointment.

When to Get Help the Same Day

Most high readings are not urgent, and the right response is to retake, track, and book an appointment. A few situations are different.

• A reading of 180 over 120 or higher, still there after a few minutes of rest, needs same-day medical advice.
• Chest pain, breathlessness, weakness on one side, slurred speech, vision changes or a sudden severe headache alongside a high reading means calling 911.
• Readings that climb week after week need an appointment rather than more monitoring.
• Very low readings with dizziness or fainting are worth a call too.

Where to Get Checked Without a Doctor

Plenty of Canadians have no family doctor, and that does not have to stop you. Most pharmacies keep a blood pressure station you can use without an appointment, and the pharmacist will talk you through what the screen is showing.

Provincial health lines will help you interpret a reading as well. British Columbia staffs nurses on 8-1-1, and Ontario runs Health811 around the clock without asking for an OHIP number. If anyone has mentioned your readings, a home monitor is worth owning. Provincial plans do not cover them, though extended health benefits often do.