Blood pressure is like a little health detective. It tells us how hard our heart is working to pump blood all around our body.
When your blood pressure is too high or too low, it can lead to health problems. That’s why it’s important to keep track of it.
How Do We Usually Check Blood Pressure?
The usual way to check blood pressure is by using a special cuff that inflates around your arm. You’ve probably seen or used one at a doctor’s office.
But these cuffs can be hard to use by yourself, and they can be quite expensive.
The Brilliant Idea
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have come up with a smart idea. They’ve invented a tiny clip that can check your blood pressure using your smartphone’s camera and flash.
The clip works with an app on your phone and only costs about 80 cents to make!
How the Clip Works
To check your blood pressure, you press on the clip with your fingertip. The app on your phone guides you on how hard and how long to press.
The clip is 3D-printed plastic and fits over your phone’s camera and flash. It works kind of like a mini camera. When you press on the clip, the phone’s flash lights up your fingertip.
This light goes through a tiny channel to the camera as a red circle. The harder you press, the bigger the red circle.
The app then checks two things from this red circle. It looks at the circle’s size to measure how much pressure your fingertip is applying.
And it checks the circle’s brightness to measure how much blood is flowing in and out of your fingertip. Then, it uses a special formula to turn this information into blood pressure readings.
Testing the Clip
The researchers tested the clip on 24 volunteers at the UC San Diego Medical Center. They found that the results were just as good as those taken with a blood pressure cuff.
Who Can Use the Clip
This clip could be really helpful for people who find it hard to visit a clinic regularly, like older adults and pregnant women.
It could also help people living in areas with not much medical help available. Because the clips are so cheap, they could be given out to anyone who needs them.
What’s Next
The team that invented the clip is now working to make it even better. They want to make it more user-friendly, especially for older adults.
They also want to test how accurate it is on different skin colors, and they want to design it so it can fit on more types of phones. They’ve even started a company to help get the clip out to as many people as possible.
So, checking your blood pressure could become as easy as pressing a clip on your phone. Isn’t that cool?
If you care about health, please read studies about diet that could help reduce high blood pressure, diabetes, and the best time to take high blood pressure drugs.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about added sugar in your diet linked to higher blood pressure, and results showing better high blood pressure treatment for people with stroke.
The study was published in Scientific Reports.
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