(Note that this is based off of someone capable of developing a heart problem in his late thirties so hopefully none of this will apply.)
Before I started running for fun, running up to a doctor’s office would absolutely spike my blood pressure. That was a combination of anxiety (which is/was an issue), cardiovascular health and basic physical reactions to exertion. Since I started running for fun, that relationship has completely changed. I don’t get the anxiety based blood pressure changes because I find running really fun and rewarding.
When I lift weights, my blood pressure will read a little higher for at least 24 hours after. The heavier I lift, the more my blood pressure will lift. I see a similar relationship with volume, but it’s not as linear as weight. So if I have to do fifty total reps to failure my blood pressure will be higher, but not as high as if I had done ten total reps to failure.
Food and alcohol have tremendous impacts. Cannabis has an impact but nowhere near the impact of either food or alcohol. Armed only with blood pressure data, I could make a good case for fast food and beer to be illegal. My case wouldn’t be as strong for cannabis. Caffeine is really fucking weird - it increases blood pressure up to the point of addiction. Then, not feeding the addiction will spike my blood pressure even more.
And I haven’t even begun to talk about how heavily my brain is involved. I dealt with undiagnosed ADHD through developing some very obsessive habits. As a consequence, I can quite literally obsess my way back to blood pressure medication.
Judging by how much personal data I have on my blood pressure, I’m sure you’re very surprised that I tend to be obsessive. :)
So anecdotally, you are 100% correct. But I can add some more anecdotes to hopefully ease your mind. When I got out of the hospital, I had to promise my cardiologist three perfect readings a day; meaning that I would religiously check my blood pressure at the same three times each day. Needless to say, I checked it way more than that. But there is an awareness that different levels of need require different levels of scrutiny.
The only part I still wonder is if my cardiologist knew that giving an obsessive person metrics would lead me into running. This may have just been a way to get me back into shape.
Then you have never looked for it. This is pretty basic stuff taught in the very first year of the medical school.
>when stressed rushing to a doctor’s office visit
Even has a name: white coat hypertension.
>I suspect blood pressures varies wildly through the day, and this variation depends on a person’s physiology.
Yes it absolutely does. Just like your heart rate varies throughout the day, your BP keeps changing as well. That's why we like to measure it over 24 hours before any diagnosis.
To get you going here is a 2009 article on labile hypertension. It discuss the topic but does not provide any quantitative information on population distribution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8673041/
Edit: here’s a link to a more recent reference:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/251055/blood-pressure-variab...
Apparently, contrary to your assertion that an individual’s blood pressure variability is part of established 1st years med student’s knowledge, labile hypertension seems to be an active area of research.