Cliff, personally I think some of these type of changes are profit motivated, some of it for health reasons. Amazing how many "healthy" people there are that all of a sudden have hypertension or diabetes at one stage or another. I think some people do need some medications but it's amazing how so many physicians jump on board and you go from taking one med a day to 6 or 8 yet nothing has changed in a person's health but a change in numbers or wording. I think each person needs to be treated as one person not a one size fits all approach.

Another aspect of this that I have recently come across is that there are an increasing number of researchers and doctors who think that lowering blood pressure below 120 systolic is not optimum and may result in more complications and shorter life for those of us who are elderly (i.e. over 70). I am continuing to look into this for myself, as I will turn 74 next week - Don't know exactly how this applies to heart failure and the desire to have less of a load on the heart, but am continuing to investigate, as my systolic is habitually in the 110-117 range on my current med regimen. Apparently, there is a "J-shaped" curve for mortality, using systolic blood pressure as a measure - too low is not optimal, nor is too high. Again, I have not run across an analysis from the heart failure point of view, but will continue to research that aspect.

To Jim's point above, once you know that your home blood pressure machine is accurate, there are a lot fewer variables at home and those readings are more typical for most of us of our average blood pressure. As for office blood pressure readings, it is rare in my experience to have it taken avoiding all 10 of the usual blood pressure errors (you can Google to find out what these are), so I consider any office reading "with a grain of salt" compared to the home measures. After all, if they over-medicate you, it is their "bad"; you have to live with the results 24/7.

Steve955, I agree wholeheartedly. Often long wait times to be called in to the exam room by way of the scales and height check, long wait times before seeing a person who asks questions you've already answered multiple times at that very practice.Maybe you need to urinate which should be done before a BP reading, I have never been asked if I could or needed to. Then comes the nicotine, alcohol, diet lecture because government pays extra for that every appointment. Why would your blood pressure be elevated? Not to mention trying to find a need for more tests,more visits and lab work to generate revenue and prescriptions to share the revenue with the drug companies. Am I too cynical? 😎

You may be correct. Thanks for the birthday wishes! Along the lines of your comment, wasn't going to tell this, but think it may be germane to the conversation:
After I was in the hospital, I was experiencing financial hardship, so arranged to borrow a blood pressure machine from my provider. After I was again able to obtain employment, I bought another blood pressure machine and compared it with the one I had from the provider, intending to return the provider machine.

Well, I ran into an issue: The blood pressure machine I had just purchased registered substantially higher than the provider machine. Since the new one was an off-brand, I decided to purchase a name brand (and probably return the off-brand). Well, the name brand was also higher - not as much higher but high enough that I had a lot of questions. Therefore, with quite a bit of explaining and difficulty, I arranged to have the provider machine tested versus the actual one in the doctors' offices to be sure I had not been acting on lower numbers than I should have been. Doing this turned out to be a real hassle (and the medical establishment wants us to use home readings(??) - not too much hypocrisy there (?!)).

At any rate, with much difficulty and waiting for my apparently unusual request on the date of my appointment, I was able to get the nurses to test their machine versus my machine from the provider. Turns out they were within a couple of points of each other, so I was satisfied. In the end, the provider did not want the loaner back, so I am using it to test my blood pressure, as it corresponds with the in-office ones. (Never did return the other two blood pressure machines that I bought because I was beyond the return window, but found out what I needed to know) - Bottom line, I do think that the ones being sold are registering high to gain more profits for the makers and the drug companies. Would be nice if there would be a requirement that all blood pressure monitors registered within a few points of mercury of each other, but I am of the opinion that this is a dream... Guess I will just continue to insist that whatever blood pressure monitor I am using for HF purposes corresponds to the in-office one.