Just Because Interest Rates Are Increasing Doesn’t Mean You Should Let Your Blood Pressure Raise Too

Whether you are a person investing in stocks and shares, or have significant loans to finance, you are likely to be facing stress from the relentless interest rate increases in recent times. This can be bad news for your health too. Stress can lead to high blood pressure / hypertension, and can eventually result in hypertensive heart diseases. Regular monitoring of your blood pressure is thus always advisable, especially if you have risk factors for them. Home monitoring of blood pressure is easy with cuff-based blood pressure monitors that can be purchased readily from pharmacies in Singapore. But do you know that there are smart watches that measure blood pressure too?

The Case For Monitoring Blood Pressure With Smart Watches

Your blood pressure will fluctuate throughout the day depending on your activities. Taking blood pressure readings multiple times throughout the day might provide a better indication of your blood pressure health, compared to just once a day at home. For most people however, taking multiple readings a day with regular cuff-based blood pressure monitors may not be a feasible or convenient option. This is where having a smart watch that can measure blood pressure may be advantageous.

Caveat – Accuracy Might Not Match Cuff-Based Blood Pressure Monitors

While there are a number of products, including from well-known brands such as Samsung, that offer blood pressure measurement functions, they typically do not claim to offer the same level of accuracy and reliability of cuff-based monitors. Samsung’s solutions in fact, require monthly calibration against a cuff-based monitor. Users should thus only use smart watch blood pressure measurement solutions as a supplement to cuff-based devices, and not as a complete replacement.

Smart Watches That Measure Blood Pressure

Here are some smart watches with blood pressure measurement functions that we have found. Do you own any of them, or know of some other brands? Share your thoughts or reviews on our forums!

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and 5

Samsung Galaxy 4 and 5 series of watches are capable of measuring the user’s blood pressure when paired with a Samsung mobile phone and the Samsung Health Monitor app. Using a built-in Photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor, the watches measure your systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The watch will need to be calibrated against a cuff-based blood pressure monitor once every 28 days.

Samsung warns that measurements using the Galaxy watches should not be used for diagnostic purposes and that they are not meant to replace traditional methods of diagnosis or treatment by a qualified healthcare professional.

Other Brands Available Online

A search for “blood pressure smart watch” on Google or in Amazon will yield many other results for smart watches with blood pressure measurement functionality. As we have not tried any of these ourselves, we cannot attest to their accuracy. As caveated above, we would advise that these be used only as a supplement to a regular cuff-based monitoring device or to check-ups by medical professionals. That said, some notable ones that we found include:

Pradory P30 Smart Watch

This P30 Smart Watch from Pradory stands out from most of the rest of the offerings from brands due to a unique feature – it has built-in inflatable air bags (much like regular cuff-based devices) for measuring blood pressure. At S$201.90 on Amazon, it is not cheap compared to a number of other brands, but its air-bags feature makes it an intriguing option.

Fitvii Blood Pressure Smartwatches

Fitvii has a number of stylish yet modestly priced smart watches (styling for both genders) that can measure blood pressure “24/7”. Priced from US$60+ to about US$100, they are available direct from Fitvii’s website.

SKMEI Smart Watches

SKMEI is a large Chinese watch brand. They claim that they produce more than 1 million pieces of watches per month, and are distributed to over 160 countries. Many of their affordable smart watch offerings priced around S$100 or lower have blood pressure measurement functionality. Available to purchase from Amazon and other online ecomm platforms.