White Coat Hypertension

Took mom back to Ipoh for her follow-up sessions with the orthopaedic specialist and the geriatrician. Glad and relieved that mom's blood pressure has returned to normal, meaning that I can now discard the mecidine prescribed by the geriatrician for reducing blood pressure.

On the subject of blood pressure, have you ever heard of the "white coat hypertension"? Well, we all know that hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure. Whereas 'white coat' refers to a doctor's white coat, and therefore signifies a clinical or medical environment.

In simple terms, white coat hypertension means that having a high reading only when your blood pressure is measured away from your normal home environment, usually in a clinic or a hospital.


The white coat effect is caused by anxiety you feel while in a clinical or medical envinronment and raised your blood pressure when your body stimulates your fright response. Many people may think that they are relaxed when, in fact, they are not. It can affect anyone, young or old, male or female and some people find that anxiety can raise their blood pressure by as much as 30mmHg on the systolic (top) number.

Sad to say, I happen to belong to this group of people. Essentially, my blood pressure readings taken at home are often lower than those taken at a doctor's clinic. I recall that on one particular occasion, it shot up to 140/95mmHg, and I was wrongly diagnosed as having high blood pressure and nearly receiving unnecessary treatment.

Now that I know I have this white coat effect on me, I keep telling myself to relax everytime my blood pressure reading is taken by a doctor. But, the more I reminded myself to relax, the more tense I eventually became. I sometimes wonder if the doctor happens to be a handsome, good looking and soft spoken guy, may be the reading would turn out to be otherwise...