Fitbit type blood pressure reader - waste of time?

54and56

Hi all,

Looking for a steer on whether this fitness tracker which includes a blood pressure reader would be a waste of time?

I've had hypertension for 20 years and regularly take my blood pressure using an Omron arm cuff style monitor but the fitness tracker can be set to take a blood pressure reading on the hour every hour and I wouldn't even notice it. It uses some sort of skin scanning technology to beam a green laser type light from the underneath of the device (the part touching the skin on the back of the wrist) towards the skin and in doing so produces both a beats per minute reading for heart rate and a systolic and diastolic blood pressure reading.

Does anyone know if readings taken in this manner are in any way accurate? They do seem to vary according to activity i.e. night time readings are typically the lowest but they don't necessarily correlate to the readings I get from the cuff monitor. They can vary quite a bit even though they are taken at the same time but having said that there can be quite a variance between cuff monitor readings taken one aster another.

I'm a bit confused dot com so would appreciate some input from anyone with a technical/medical background and an understanding of these devices.

I did search online already but there's very little info on the blood pressure capability of these new fitness trackers.

Cheers.

Arbie

Stay away. Very unlikely to be reliable.