NEWS February 18, 2026

Blood pressure variation

February 18, 2026

See the direction, before it becomes a diagnosis

Blood pressure is the force your blood puts on the walls of your arteries every time your heart beats. If that pressure stays too high for too long, it can damage those blood vessels and increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and kidney disease.¹²⁵

Blood pressure is not static. It rises and falls throughout the day as your body responds to life - rising with stress or illness, responding to poor sleep, and falling during recovery. These changes are normal. What matters most is whether your body brings blood pressure back to its usual level over time. That steady regulation protects your cardiovascular system.

Velia helps you see that regulation clearly.

Why this matters

High blood pressure is one of the leading global health risks.

It affects 1.28 billion adults worldwide, and nearly half do not know they have it.⁴
Only about 1 in 5 people have it under control.⁴
Elevated systolic blood pressure contributes to around 10.8 million deaths annually, mostly from heart disease and stroke.⁵

High blood pressure often has no early symptoms. You can feel well while damage slowly builds inside your arteries. Prevention depends on recognising sustained strain early - before it becomes harder to reverse.

Why patterns matter

What matters most is not one reading - but whether blood pressure gradually drifts upward over time. Sustained increases often develop silently and can lead to hypertension before symptoms appear.⁴⁵ Long-term studies also show that greater visit-to-visit differences in blood pressure are associated with higher risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease, even when average blood pressure is similar.¹²³ In simple terms, it is not only how high your blood pressure is. It is whether it remains stable - or slowly trends upward - over weeks and months.

When blood pressure gradually rises, the heart works harder and blood vessels lose flexibility. Over time, that accumulated strain increases cardiovascular risk.⁶ Stable regulation allows recovery. Sustained upward drift keeps the strain switched on. Seeing that upward movement early gives you time to change the outcome.

What blood pressure variation means in Velia

Velia continuously tracks how your blood pressure is trending during sleep, building a personal baseline and monitoring change over weeks and months.

During sleep, when external influences are lower, the ring detects changes in blood flow that reflect whether your blood pressure pattern is:

Staying close to your usual level
Gradually rising
Becoming more unstable

In the app, you see:

Your baseline
Nightly deviation from that baseline
Multi-week, monthly, and yearly trends showing direction

Velia shows your systolic and diastolic variation relative to your norm, not exact blood pressure values. Systolic is the pressure when your heart beats. Diastolic is the pressure when your heart relaxes between beats. Tracking both helps you understand how your cardiovascular system is adapting over time.

Velia does not diagnose hypertension or replace medical testing. It provides early visibility into direction. The variability research above is based on clinic blood pressure measurements. Velia does not replace those methods.

What this tells you, today and over time

Short term, understand today

You can see how daily life affects your physiology:

Stress
Sleep quality
Illness
Exercise
Diet

If your blood pressure is healthy, variation shows whether you return to baseline after stress. If you have hypertension, it can show whether your body is responding to lifestyle changes or medication.

Short-term value: clear feedback on how your body is adapting right now.

Long-term, protect your future health

The most important insight is the long-term pattern.

Variation that rises and returns to baseline suggests healthy regulation.
Variation that remains elevated or gradually trends upward over time may signal accumulating cardiovascular strain that deserves early attention.

High blood pressure develops gradually and often silently.⁴⁵ Long-term instability has been linked to higher risk of stroke and heart disease.¹²³

Long-term value: you are not reacting to a number, you are protecting your trajectory.

Small, consistent changes today shape your cardiovascular health years from now.

What to watch for

Temporary swings during stress or illness are expected.
Patterns that remain elevated for several weeks deserve attention.
If concerned, confirm with a validated home monitor or speak with a clinician.
Velia helps you distinguish short-term fluctuation from meaningful long-term change.

Healthy reference ranges (typical variation)

Occasional values outside these ranges are common. What matters most is sustained direction.

How to support healthy regulation

Blood pressure tends to rise with age, but daily habits strongly influence how stable it remains.

Prioritise recovery: better sleep and stress regulation reduce ongoing cardiovascular strain.⁷
Move regularly: moderate aerobic activity supports vascular health.⁸
Eat for stability: reducing sodium and increasing whole foods supports healthier blood pressure regulation.⁹¹⁰

These recommendations align with international cardiovascular guidelines.⁹¹¹ The choices you make today influence your health for years to come.

A different way to think about blood pressure

Blood pressure has traditionally been treated as a number, something measured occasionally, often after a concern arises.

Velia treats it as a direction.

Instead of reacting to a single reading, you can understand how steadily your cardiovascular system regulates itself over time. That shift, from snapshot to trajectory, changes what is possible.

When you can see the trajectory, you do not have to wait for the diagnosis.

Scientific validation

Velia’s blood pressure technology is the result of a multi-year scientific research program. In controlled clinical studies, the observed error levels fell within ranges reported for cuff-based blood pressure monitors validated under international standards.

Our validation journey includes the following milestones:

Development and initial validation (2020)

The first generation of our solution was validated using 393 hours of clinical PPG data from the MIMIC (MIT) database, demonstrating a mean absolute error below 7 mmHg for systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
This work was published in 2020 in an IEEE peer-reviewed journal:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9616476

Clinical study protocol publication (2021)

Following Swiss ethics approval and Swiss medics clearance, we published the clinical study protocol for remote blood pressure monitoring using our wearable photoplethysmographic device:
- Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring With a Wearable Photoplethysmographic Device (Senbiosys): Protocol…

Clinical validation (2022)

We conducted a clinical study in collaboration with the surgical cardiology team at the University Hospital of Fribourg. Blood pressure derived from our ring-based PPG signal was benchmarked against invasive intra-aortic catheter measurements, the gold standard for blood pressure assessment.
From the 708 epochs (records) obtained during this study, a record low mean absolute error of 2.8mmgh on DBP and 5.6mmhg on SBP were achieved. These error levels fall within ranges typically observed in validated cuff-based devices.
And the results of our study were published in 2022 Remote blood pressure monitoring with a wearable photoplethysmographic device in patients undergoin…

Additional studies

We performed an additional study, comparing the latest generation of our ring-embedded sensors with medical cuff-based blood pressure measurements, and comparable performance was demonstrated.
This work was presented at the 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS): 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EM…
The article link: Photoplethysmography Based Blood Pressure Monitoring Using the Senbiosys Ring | IEEE Conference Pub…

These findings support that directional trends observed with the Velia ring reflect meaningful physiological signals derived from clinically validated methodology.