I find the squeeze on my arm so painful it can give an artificially high reading, especially with a machine rather than if a nurse does it. This is partly my soft arms, but might also be related to hypersensitiviy. As it came up in Dawn's thread about health care access and she said it hurts her too, we were wondering if it might be an autistic problem. Although my special dentist sees a lot of autistic people and I seem to be the only one with this problem - they usually use a machine and the team had to have special training to give me sedation! Such a great service.
The other half of the problem is of course the stressful environment which can give artificially high readings, and we do tend to suffer from anxiety.
Anyone else have problems having their blood pressure taken?
