Perhaps the biggest problem with high blood pressure today is that it is so widespread and so frequently talked about that a lot of people do not afford it the respect it deserves. The simple fact is high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a killer and needs to be treated as such.
A lot of doctors and scientists have spent considerable time, money and effort attempting to identify just what the true definition of hypertension is.
Over the years there have been many human population studies performed on this topic which have given the doctors and scientists a wide range of blood pressure values. Unfortunately however the results are often skewed and differ from one country to the next and even from district to district within a specific country. Thus, it has been agreed that the true definition of hypertension can only be arrived at as a result of continuous observation and experiment.
Normal blood pressure is recognized today much like normal body weight in the sense that the defining level is that which is associated with the greatest chance of life expectancy. In other words, this is the pressure at which the heart and other important parts of the body such as the circulatory system are able to operate under optimum conditions without the risk of heart disease and associated conditions.
Naturally there are a number of other factors that have to be taken into account when defining hypertension and some of these have to be excluded. For instance, If a healthy person gets their systolic (or pumping) blood pressure will rise by possibly as much as fifty percent as their blood flow increases in response to emotional excitement or any form of energetic exercise. However it will not remain high for long and once the level of excitement has gone down your blood pressure also falls back to normal.
As well as a systolic (pumping) pressure you also have a diastolic (resting) pressure which is the more important of the two and is a very good guide in determining whether or not a high reading is a false positive. The reason why the diastolic pressure is important is because it points to the state of a person’s arteries and a high reading might mean that the arteries are narrowed and not allowing the free flow of blood as they should be.
It is very important to understand that hypertension is not a disease in itself but is a key criterion by which doctors can predict other conditions.
Finally, it is also necessary to realize that hypertension cannot be cured although it can be very well controlled.
TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information on many different aspects of blood pressure including natural remedies for high blood pressure and finding the best automatic blood pressure monitors
