Blood Pressure
Blood pressure
When your heart beats, it pumps blood round your body to give it the energy and oxygen it needs. As the blood moves, it pushes against the sides of the blood vessels. The strength of this pushing is your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is too high, it puts extra strain on your arteries (and your heart) and this may lead to heart attacks and strokes. (
http://www.bpassoc.org.uk/BloodPressureandyou/Thebasics/Bloodpressure
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Blood Pressure – Understand Your Blood Pressure
Your blood pressure directly affects your health and careful measuring with the right equipment is essential for accurate readings
High Blood Pressure affects millions of people in the UK increasing the risk of stroke and heart attack. It has no symptoms. The only way for you to know if you have low, normal or high blood pressure is to have it measured using an accurate blood pressure monitor.
A recent study showed that people who measure their blood pressure at home have better control of their condition. It found that blood pressure was lower in people who had been checking their blood pressure at home.
What is measured?
The doctor measures the maximum pressure (systolic) and the lowest pressure (diastolic) made by the beating of the heart.
The systolic pressure is the maximum pressure in an artery at the moment when the heart is beating and pumping blood through the body.
The diastolic pressure is the lowest pressure in an artery in the moments between beats when the heart is resting.
Both the systolic and diastolic pressure measurements are important – if either one is raised, it means you have high blood pressure (hypertension).
How is blood pressure measured?
To take a blood pressure reading, you need to be relaxed and comfortably seated, with your arm well supported. Alternatively, you can lie on an examination couch.
A cuff that inflates is wrapped around your upper arm and kept in place with Velcro. A tube leads out of the cuff to a rubber bulb.
Another tube leads from the cuff to a reservoir of mercury at the bottom of a vertical glass column. Whatever pressure is in the cuff is shown on the mercury column. The mercury is held within a sealed system – only air travels in the rubber tubing and the cuff.
Air is then blown into the cuff and increasing pressure and tightening is felt on the upper arm.
The doctor puts a stethoscope to your arm and listens to the pulse while the air is slowly let out again.
The systolic pressure is measured when the doctor first hears the pulse.