Which Factors Affect Blood Pressure Readings?

There a number of factors that will temporarily affect blood pressure. Most are short-lived and will affect your blood pressure temporarily and then blood pressure will return to resting blood pressure.

Short-lived factors that may cause changes in blood pressure, both raising and lowering, include:

• Asleep or awake – usually lower when sleeping
• Body position - lying down, sitting or standing
• Emotional state - such as stress and anger or being relaxed
• Activity level - from not moving to extreme exertion
• Temperature – blood pressure will tend to go up when you are cold
• White coat hypertension – blood pressure increases in a medical setting
• Sleep apnea - pauses in breathing while sleeping raise blood pressure
• Smoking – increases blood pressure
• Caffeine – increases blood pressure
• Alcohol – increases blood pressure

Of the above list, sleep apnea, smoking, alcoholism and chronic stress are the major factors that can, over extended periods of time, cause resting blood pressure to slowly increase due to the impact they have on the body.