Hey there,
Dr. C here.
Have you ever been told your blood pressure was too high? Based on your age and ethnicity, high blood pressure may be more common than safe blood pressure.
I’m mentioning it now because it is one of the larger risk factors for COVID-19 complications.
I’d love for you not to get sick, but the odds are that most of us will this year. The more we can do to get your risk factors under control, the better you will do.
If your blood pressure has been above 130/80 on multiple occasions, you are considered to be hypertensive.
Some people seem to only have high blood pressure when checked in the doctor’s office. This is so common it even has its own name: ‘white coat hypertension.’ In the past, it was thought that as long as your blood pressure is OK at home, the level that is read during a check-up does not matter. We now know that is not true. It turns out that if yours runs high in the doctor’s office, it probably runs high many other times a day whenever you feel a little uptight.