All About Blood Pressure

An overview

Blood pressure levels (or in this case more accurately described as vascular pressure levels) are material indicators of overall health and fitness and by the good grace of Mother Nature, this criterion is applicable for people of all ages, making the measurement of blood pressure a valuable tool in helping maintain good health and of equal importance, the diagnosis of poor health. High and low blood pressure is normally bad; “normal blood pressure” is good but what does this actually mean?

So, what is “blood pressure”? Most of us have heard of water pressure, gas pressure, the pressure in an auto-tire - the higher the pressure, the harder the tire. Well in the most simplistic of terms, blood pressure is much the same; it’s the force created by our circulating blood on the walls of our blood vessels ¹ but unlike an auto-tire, where the air is contained and static, our blood is continuously circulating our body, being pumped around by our heart, which acts as our own personal pumping station.

Our blood starts its outbound journey at the heart, freshly oxygenated from the air that we breath. By a seemingly miraculous sequence of events, this oxygen is absorbed by our body parts and the “oxygen-poor” blood now substantially depleted of oxygen, finds its way into our veins and is returned to our heart for refreshing and re-circulating on its continuous life-giving journey. We have sourced a short video, which you will find when you reach the end of this article to help you better understand this. It runs for just over one minute and is well worth viewing.

Blood pressure is measured by determining how much force is created by one's circulating blood on the blood vessels. However, as the pressure of the circulating blood decreases gradually as it moves through the body via our arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and veins, inconsistent measurements would result if a standard way of measuring did not exist. The blood pressure which we measure generally refers to arterial pressure, i.e., the pressure in the larger arteries, arteries being the blood vessels which take blood away from the heart on its outbound part of its journey around the body.

So how do we measure blood pressure? Most of us know how to check the pressure in an auto tire; that’s right, just unscrew the cap and on goes the pressure gauge! Clearly we don’t have a “valve cap”, nor do we have a convenient pressure valve on which to stick a pressure gauge, so scientists have come up with a way of measuring our blood pressure in a comfortable, non-invasive way.

 
Classic Mercury Based Sphygmomanometer

For years, a non-invasive device called a sphygmomanometer (an instrument that provides measurement readings in accordance with the level of mercury in a column or cylindrical glass tube) has been utilized to calculate the pressure of blood flow as it circulates in the body. Many medics continue to use this classic instrument to this day.


While most modern blood pressure devices no longer contain mercury, pressure level values continue to be reported in millimeters of mercury, or mmHg. When measuring blood pressure, there are two types that are reported. Systolic arterial pressure is measured when the pressure is at its highest in the arteries of the body, and generally occurs at the beginning of the cardiac cycles. On the other hand, diastolic pressure refers to the pressure at its lowest level, and is noted between cardiac cycles or when the heart is in a momentary resting state. The average pressure throughout the cardiac cycle is reported as mean arterial pressure and the pulse pressure reflects the difference between the maximum and minimum pressures measured.

Typical Budget Digital Blood Pressure Monitor

 
Here you see a modern-day, budget digital blood pressure monitor. The are many digital monitors on the market, many of which benefit from a high degree of automation and www.bloodpressureconcern.com deals in depth with this type elsewhere on this website.

Typical values for a resting, healthy adult human are approximately 120 mmHg (16 kPa) systolic and 80 mmHg (11 kPa) diastolic (written as 120/80 mmHg, and spoken as "one twenty over eighty") with large individual variations. Arterial blood pressure is not constant and changes frequently based on many different factors and undergoes fluctuations that are both natural and to be expected. In fact, blood pressure levels can vary as frequently as one heart beat to the next. Adverse things that cause blood pressure levels to rise and fall are: stress, nutrition, drugs or alcohol and disease.

If your arterial blood pressure is too high, the condition is known as hypertension. On the other hand, if your pressure levels are too low, the condition is known as hypotension. Next to measuring a person’s body temperature, blood pressure measurements are the second most commonly basic health test performed on individuals.

Your good health should be your most prized asset but even if you are amongst the fortunate two in three people who have no blood pressure concerns, then at least regular monitoring of your blood pressure would be wise. So often, adverse blood pressure displays little or no symptoms and the first one knows is when being taken ill. It is not for nothing that high blood pressure is sometimes referred to as “the silent killer”. If on the other hand you do have some blood pressure concerns, you will be wise to take early action. Visiting us here at www.bloodpressureconcern.com has been a sensible and positive step and we hope you will find our expanding bank of information helps keep you on the right path. However, the importance of maintaining a healthy blood pressure level cannot be over-estimated.you may also need to take professional advice and discuss your blood pressure concerns with your doctor.

Here is the short video explaining briefly how you blood circulates:

¹ There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart, the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and the tissues; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back towards the heart. Wikipedia.