Here is my understanding of things about outpatient blood pressure management.
Your arteries mainly care about what the area under the curve is.
If your blood pressure is high only during brief episodes of time (ie, at doctors' visits, at the dentist) but are NOT high other times, that's not typically worth treating with medication.
If your blood pressure is high most of the time, that needs to be reduced.
Lifestyle changes, in all but the extreme cases, can reduce systolic BP by 5-7 points or so, diastolic slightly less. If you drink programmer quantities of caffeine, elimination of that alone can reduce blood pressure quite a bit more than that. =) Many other factors influence blood pressure, and most of what causes hypertension is not understood by current science. If you're really overweight, reduction of that can make some difference. Some people are salt-sensitive with regard to hypertension, and some are not, but salt reduction is given by many as blanket advice for hypetension (though it's of dubious value in some cases).
If you're diabetic, your blood pressure should average <130 over <80. If not diabetic, <140 over <80 (that's less than all those values, not equal to any of them or greater).
Consider getting a home monitor (ie, an Omron brand, or else look up on Consumer Reports or the like about brands) for your blood pressure and collecting data before you see your doctor. Collect daily readings at varying times of the day, and write them down with times. Get an automated cuff that reads at your arm level, not, I repeat, not your wrist or finger. Bring that automated cuff with you to the doctor's office, and have its reading double-checked against his nurse's (or his, or her) reading. Make sure your cuff isn't too tight; doublecheck the fit per its instructions. If the cuff is too tight (if your arm is too big for it) your readings will be read as too high. If you have a friend who can reliably take a blood pressure (was trained how to do it and is experienced in it), that is preferable to a machine.
Collect a few weeks of data and then bring those things to your doc. It will be a much more useful visit that way, and your doc will be impressed with how you went to the big ol' internet and came to his office with common sense and good information, instead of lunacy and herbs.
