Which Blood Pressure Reading Should I Go By?

Which blood pressure reading should one go by, the reading taken when your arm is rested on a table at level with your heart, or when your arm is at your side? When I go to my doctor's office the nurses always take it with my arm at my side, and that is usually the only reading they'll do. Occasionally my doctor will do a second reading with her stethoscope and the reading is always much lower. I've been cutting my 5mg Amplodipine pill in twos for the past week, and taking half doses just to see if my body can do some of the work on its own. I guess it's failing. Taking full doses I was averaging a stable 110ish/72-77 or sometimes lower like 98/65. Now with half dose I seem to start in the morning with 110ish/72ish and go up to 118ish/77-89 by evening and stay there until I go to bed. Here's the thing though, these numbers are often taken with my arm at my side. If I rest it at heart level the readings can be significantly lower, and sometimes the same. What should I go by? I really want to be able to stay on a lesser dose and hopefully off completely one day. It was discovered at the beginning of Feburary that my blood pressure was elevated 135/92. Once I found out I obsessed! Then it began jumping all over the place spiking as high as 178/113 then crashing down. I became so nervous about it, in complete denial, checking it on my home monitor every 10 mins. Three days before my hbp was discovered I had been abusing saline laxatives for a few years, and decided to quite. Then a couple weeks prior to that I had stopped drinking green tea and starbuck's energy drinks. Everyone thinks my blood pressure got screwed up from the laxatives and energy drinks. At first my doctor said the same thing, but after giving me two weeks to bring my bp down there was no change so attributed it heredity and started me on pills. I guess I'm so freaked out that this really is genetic and I'm going to have to live with this, stay on meds forever. My mother and sister are both on bp pills. My grandmother had it too. The difference is they were overweight, I'm about 5'6" at 132lbs. but I did have awful lifestyle behaviors. I've been drinking lots of water and trying to eat healthier, but these pills give me such horrible constipation, and I'm already constipated extremely from stopping yrs of laxative abuse. My ankles are swelled, and I comb out a ton of hair from these meds. Does this sound like hbp from heredity or what I've done to myself? Will my bp ever return to normal? If so, how long would it take? I can think of nothing else but my bp right now, meanwhile I'm also trying to deal with the eating disorder thing. Far too much stress on me Sorry to keep posting.

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