I have a list of things that I wish most of my patients had at home, and I would imagine most doctors feel the same way. So I'm going to share that list with you and see if there are gaps in this or someplace where you could kind of fill in and make sure that you have a full compliment of these things at home. Now, this is more about assessment or diagnostics. This is not for treatment. That's a different discussion. But if you were to call me after hours or on the weekend and say, Hey, I've got this situation, I'm not sure what to do, being able to get some information from these few things would likely help me make a decision. So let's run through the list real quick. This is not in any particular order. The first three or four of these could probably all arguably be in the most important spot, but the first thing I put on the list was a blood pressure cuff.

(00:52)
Being able to know if you're dealing with either a high blood pressure or low blood pressure situation, if you end up feeling faint or have no energy, you just can't get out of bed or you have a splitting headache or something like that. Is your blood pressure high? Is it low? Is it the same on both sides? Those are things that I think are important when you're trying to figure out the nature of what's going on. So being able to have a blood pressure covet home is important. Anybody who takes blood pressure medication on a regular basis, I would definitely say they should have a blood pressure Covet home, even if you don't do this every day, you should go through short bursts of time a week or two at a time where you take your blood pressure every day or maybe even twice a day and just get a general sense of where it is.

(01:40)
There are going to be some highs and lows that you throw out, but get a general sense of what that middle looks like, what that average looks like, and then periodically do that throughout the year. If you're making changes like losing weight or eating better or getting rid of inflammation or exercising or whatever, and you notice each time you do that, that blood pressure is two or three points lower on average, or two or three points lower or two or three points lower. You may have a reason to go back to your prescribing doctor and ask for a reduction in the dose of medication, but if you're not gathering that data, you won't know that that's the case. A single reading in my office or their office isn't going to give you that kind of data. So having a blood pressure cuff at home I think is great.

(02:23)
I normally recommend the ones that go on the upper arm. The wrist ones can be accurate. You've just got to be very careful about where your wrist is when you're taking that blood pressure. So for most patients, I think it's easier for them to use the one that goes on the upper arm. Alright, next would be a pulse oximeter. Now, most of us became familiar with these during covid where you put it on your finger and it tells you what your oxygen saturation is. So of the total amount of oxygen your blood is capable of carrying, how saturated is it, and somewhere north of 95% is what you're looking for. If you are having a respiratory issue or you're feeling out of breath during exercise or something, you may want to know, your initial reaction is, oh my gosh, this could be my heart. But what if you put a pulse oximeter on, you realize that you're not getting oxygen into your blood at those times.

(03:22)
Maybe it's more of a lung issue than a heart issue, and you could also check your blood pressure at that time. So anyway, it can be a helpful, excuse me, determinant, when you're trying to figure out what the next step is or why you're having the particular issue you're having, it's one more chunk of data that you can present to your doctor when you're explaining what's going on. So take it when you're feeling normal, take it when you're not feeling normal, see if it has any impact or any correlation with how you feel. The next one would be a thermometer. Now we have lots of thermometers. Now I grew up with the one under the tongue or the other one, the old glass mercury thermometers. You had to shake them down and they work, they're fine. But I don't know if you can even find those anymore.

(04:05)
So now we either have electric thermometers that go under your tongue, which is fine. Keep your mouth closed, breathe through your nose, take your temperature. Or we have the ones that you touch to your forehead and scan over that temporal artery or the ones that you put in your ear and you take the temperature of the tympanic membrane. Those are very accurate for a core temperature, but the problem is our ear canals are not straight, right? They kind of angle up, and a lot of times you end up taking the temperature of the ear canal and not the tympanic membrane, right? You've got to lift that ear up and back in order to get a clear shot at the tympanic membrane. So that's, or the eardrum. So that's a tricky one for some people. The ones that scan down over that temporal artery are probably the best of the bunch as far as ease of use and a relevant temperature.

(04:54)
The ones where you're aiming it at the forehead from several inches away, I mean, it gives you something. I prefer the ones that actually make contact. I think they're a better quality, more relevant temperature. So being able to know how high your fever's getting, is it undulating up and down? Is it just climbing and not stopping? If I take something, does it come down, does it not? Having that ability I think is pretty important when you're calling your doctor, especially if you have kids to see how they're doing. Your doctor's going to want that information. So I think that's kind of a no-brainer to have it at home. Another one is a glucometer where you poke your finger and get a reading of what your blood sugar levels are. Now, go back to one of the earlier examples where you're feeling faint. No energy. Is it blood pressure?

(05:42)
Is it blood sugar or is it lack of oxygen? Right? It could be any of those three. Take your blood pressure, put the pulse oximeter on, get your blood sugar. See what it looks like. Right now you've got enough data that likely you'll know the answer, but you can present that data to your doctor and it'll be easier for your doctor to figure out what's going on or at least know what meaningful step to take next. But it's very simple to do. The only catch with the glucometer is the little strips that you put in it. Those do expire, and so every year or two, you're going to have to pitch those and buy a new set of strips. They're not expensive, but if you forget to do that, then when you need it, you're going to go to use it and it's going to tell you, I can't do this.

(06:27)
My strips have expired. Right? So you do periodically have to keep up with that. With the others, it's just batteries basically that you have to keep up with. If you had to swap those out on a moment's notice, it's not that difficult. But if you don't have unexpired glucose strips, you can't just create those, right? You would have to go to the store and buy those, and that could be an issue. So if you have a glucometer at home, just make sure that you put a little note in a calendar on your phone or a little reminder or something that every year just order a new pack of strips and then you're always up to date. Last one, and this is a little bit different than the others. This is not like, oh my gosh, do I go to the hospital? But this is on my list, and it's a scale at home that gives you your body composition.

(07:18)
Now I'm talking about one of the better ones where not only does it have electro receptors for your feet to sit on, but you have something you hold in your hands as well, and it does some calculations. You put in your height. Some of them want your age and your gender, but at least your height. And then it obviously gets your weight, does some calculations. And with bioelectrical impedance, it's able to tell you your percentage of body mass, your pounds of lean on, your percentage of body fat, your pounds of lean mass, your overall pounds, and it calculates your BMI. But that's not really a useful number anyway, but what I want my patients to be able to be aware of is, as I lose or gain or stay stable, what's my muscle mass doing? Like if my weight is staying the same but my muscle mass is going up, I'm losing fat.

(08:11)
If my weight is going up a little bit and my muscle mass matches that, I'm gaining muscle. If I drop a bunch of weight, let's say I dropped six or seven pounds in a week or so because I'm fasting, but I dropped five pounds of lean mass, I'm losing muscle, not really fat. So you can get way more information from that than you can from a scale that just gives you your weight. Weight is, I won't say it's a meaningless number, but it is definitely an incomplete and generally irrelevant number because weight from what? Are you losing fat? Are you losing lean mass? Did you lose a bunch of inflammatory water? We have people do cleanses that'll lose 10 pounds. In the first days, they didn't burn 10 pounds of fat in five days. They dumped a bunch of water, not as inflamed. So I think a body composition scale is something everybody should have at home, and it can actually help you not be so anxious or reactive to the numbers you see on the scale when the numbers are not just pounds, but they actually give you information that's meaningful.

(09:21)
I remember years ago I was doing a cleanse and I got done with it. I had a machine at the office that would do that, but I didn't have a scale at home and I looked better, felt better close, fit better, all of that. But I had only lost two pounds. I'm thinking, how can that be? Well, when I got to the office and ran the machine that gave me body composition, I had lost, I think it was like eight pounds worth of fat and put on six pounds worth of muscle. So my net loss was only two pounds. But when you drop eight pounds of fat, add six pounds of muscle, you look dramatically different. So a body composition scale would've given me much more information to go by, and it would've made more sense that with that perception of change, the simple number on the scale didn't match, but there was a reason for that.

(10:11)
So anyway, that's my list of five items that I think every patient should have at home. Blood pressure cuff, pulse, oximeter, thermometer, glucose meter, and a body composition scale. So go out and get those. They're easily available all over the place. Like I said, just be careful with the glucometer that you get. One that's simple enough for you to use and you get one where you know where to get the extra strips and you see when your expiration date is. Put a little note in your phone about a month ahead of time to get a new set of strips. It's probably something you're not going to use all the time, but when you go to use it, you're going to want it to work. Alright. Some of these things you may also store without the batteries. If you're not using them all the time, you don't want to go to use it, and the batteries have gotten all funky in there, so maybe store them without the batteries, pop the batteries in when you need to use them and see how you do. Alright. If you have any questions, leave me a note below. I'll see you on the next one.