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MIAMI, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Almost half of all men and women in the U.S. have high blood pressure, yet many don’t even know it. The best way to find out is to have it checked. But maybe the old-fashioned way of putting your arm into a blood pressure cuff at the doctor’s office is not the most accurate reading. Now, there’s a new way doctors are getting a better idea of what your blood pressure really is.

“Hypertension is a huge public health problem in the United States and worldwide, basically because it is a genetic and a social disease with us,” said Dr. Maria Delgado, a hypertension specialist at University of Miami Comprehensive Hypertension Center.

A blood pressure cuff is typically the way blood pressure is checked, but is it the best way? Dr. Delgado says that patients can be stressed when visiting a doctor it’s called “white coat syndrome.” She says she often hears, “At home, my blood pressure is 120 over 70. It’s just, when I come here, it goes very high.”

That’s why she believes this patch is the answer.

“The patch is a very interesting technology in which by light, a sensor by light goes and transmit light to the aorta,” added Dr. Delgado.

In the BioBeat skin patch, light bounces from a sensor to the heart, then back to the patch, measuring heart rate, blood oxygen, and your blood pressure without you even knowing it.

“It goes through 24-hour measurement, and you don’t have any sensation that the blood pressure is being measured,” explained Dr. Delgado.

It could be particularly good for measuring blood pressure at night. A study out of Oxford found 15 percent of people aged 40 to 75 may have undiagnosed high blood pressure that only occurs at night.

“And you and I know that you’re not going to be measuring your blood pressure at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m. So, this patch will help us understand what is happening to you while you’re sleep,” said Dr. Delgado.

The BioBeat skin patch is already available for patients to use and now researchers at UC San Diego are working on an even smaller wearable ultrasound patch that uses soundwaves to track blood pressure.

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