(HealthDayNews) -- You may not have noticed, but chances are your blood pressure rises when strange people take your blood pressure.
It's called "the white coat effect," and usually it stops after you've relaxed for a few minutes, or when the same person takes your pressure several times. You become comfortable. You become familiar with them. You're relaxed.
Which is why this report is surprising: According to the American Journal of Hypertension, when people use home blood pressure monitors, 78 percent of the people who get the white-coat effect at clinics also show a blood-pressure elevation at home.
