Figure 1.

The four nocturnal dipping blood pressure patterns. The fall in blood pressure or the “dip,” is defined as the difference between daytime mean systolic pressure and nighttime mean systolic pressure, expressed as a percentage. There are four different types of blood pressure dipping categories. Blood pressure that dips between 10 and 20% is considered normal dipping (black/gray). Extreme dippers (black/red) dips over >20%. Non-dippers are considered those whose dip less than 10%; they can be characterized as either normotensive non-dippers (black/pink) or hypertensive non-dippers (aqua). Reverse dippers (black/green) are those whose nighttime blood pressure is higher than the daytime blood pressure.