What is high blood pressure
Blood pressure is the pressure of the blood in your arteries – the tubes that take the blood away from your heart to the rest of your body. You need a certain amount of pressure to keep the blood flowing. High blood pressure develops if the walls of the larger arteries lose their natural elasticity and become rigid, and the smaller blood vessels become narrower (constrict). Your heart is a pump that beats by contracting and then relaxing. The pressure of blood flowing through the arteries varies at different times in the heartbeat cycle.
• the highest pressure, known as systolic pressure, is the pressure when the beat or contraction of your heart forces blood round your body
• the lowest pressure, diastolic pressure, is the pressure between heartbeats when the heart is resting.
Blood pressure is measured in millimetres of mercury (shortened to ‘mmHg’). A blood-pressure reading gives two numbers. The first number is the systolic pressure and the second is the diastolic pressure.
Your target is to have a blood pressure below 140/85mmHg (140 systolic and 85 diastolic). If you have diabetes, kidney disease, or disease of the heart and circulation, your target is below 130/80mmHg. There is no fixed dividing line between normal blood pressure and slightly raised blood pressure. However, the British Hypertension Society suggests that the ideal blood pressure is 120/80mmHg, normal is less than 130/80mmHg, and ‘high-normal’ is 130/80 to 139/89mmHg.
A sample blood pressure measurement
Systolic pressure – the pressure when the beat or contraction of the heart forces the blood around the body. Diastolic pressure – the lowest pressure,which occurs between heartbeats when the heart is resting.
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