You can bring this record with you to the office when you see your doctor.Ī lot of lives are needlessly lost because many people do not realize how important prevention is. I recommend that patients measure their own blood pressure at home with a blood pressure monitor and record the findings. If these patients are not treated, the consequence will be strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and blindness. Persons with these blood pressures would be considered to have high blood pressure (=hypertension) and should be treated. For practical purposes we simply will note that both of these blood pressures are abnormally elevated. A blood pressure of 170/80 would be called “ systolic hypertension“, a blood pressure of 120/90 is called “ diastolic hypertension“. It is now generally accepted that the systolic pressure should not exceed 120 and the diastolic pressure should not exceed 80 (Ref.1). Now we are treating this with antihypertensive medication, even if it is only “isolated systolic hypertension” (meaning that the diastolic pressure is normal). The rigidity of the arterial walls from arteriosclerosis was responsible for the observation of the higher blood pressure in older patients. It turned out that the observed elevated blood pressure in many older individuals was due to the arteriosclerosis. Right here I want to clear up a misconception: For many years the generally accepted medical opinion was that older people would “normally” have a higher blood pressure than younger people. “80” stands for 80 mm mercury and denotes the diastolic pressure. With this reading “120” means 120 mm of a mercury column in the older blood pressure measuring devices, and it denotes the systolic pressure. A normal reading for an adult, for instance, would be 120/80 (read: ” one hundred twenty over eighty” ). This reading tells the doctor what the pressure is at the bottom of the wave. When the heart muscle relaxes between two beats the elasticity of the aorta maintains a certain pressure, called the diastolic blood pressure. At the time of a heart contraction, at the top of the wave, the systolic blood pressure is measured. When the heart contracts, the blood gets pushed forward into the aorta and into all of the arteries. It is a disease, which leads to accelerated hardening of the arteries due to increased pressure in the arterial system. High blood pressure (called “hypertension”) is a silent killer.
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