Blood Pressure

I heard two old ladies talking in the supermarket queue the other day. "Our Fred's got blood pressure" said First Old Lady (as they used to be cast on TV.) "It'll be all that weight he carries around" said Second Old Lady, "he wants to be careful he doesn't get sugar, like Bob." "And salt" I added mentally, admiring these ladies' grasp of some very important health facts. Here are some more.


Blood Pressure

Your blood pressure is the amount of force your blood exerts against the walls of your blood vessels as it circulates to all parts of your body carrying a supply of oxygen along with the useable bits of what we eat. Doctor's write down 2 figures when measuring blood pressure (written like a fraction), in that the pressure constantly rises and falls as your heart beats then rests. Technically I suppose we should say, "blood pressures". It is worth remembering that even during the short gaps between heartbeats the lower of these 2 pressures is at work in your hard working arteries, in other words there is constant pressure.

The ideal pressures needed to keep us functioning, fall within quite a narrow range. They are fairly high, mostly because we learned the convenient trick of walking upright a while ago and extra pressure is needed in this position to keep our brains going. Normal blood pressure is enough to lift a column of mercury about 6 inches up a glass tube and sometimes it becomes dangerously more. (The traditional way to measure blood pressure is with glass tubes of mercury, that's why many doctors use a strange tall thermometer like device to measure it).

Too little blood pressure makes us fall over and can be dangerous in other ways, but it is quite an unusual feature of not being well. Some substances and medical conditions can make us dizzy, as can standing up suddenly if the circulation is not in tip top condition. This can be dangerous enough, falls are a very common cause of injury but imagine what can happen if you constantly put more pressure through the system than it was designed to cope with. There are plenty of men who risk their lives in this way. Eventually there is a good chance that something will break. Sometimes one of the blood vessels around the heart, or up near the brain will leak, or a bulge will form which can break without warning. The results are sometimes very dramatic and can be life threatening.

What makes the blood pressure rise?


Can it be avoided without loads of pills?... The commonest cause of high blood pressure is a build up of fatty residue inside the arteries, forcing blood through the narrow gap. This fat, sometimes called cholesterol, can also break free and travel in the blood stream until it comes to a place where it will wedge itself and block the circulation. This is often what has happened when we talk about someone having a stroke or heart attack. These two very different conditions, leaking blood vessels and blocked blood vessels, cause very similar effects, that's why it is never a good idea to assume that someone else's stroke or illness is the same as yours, the treatments are so different that you could say they're opposites. In one case doctors need to stop the blood flowing and in the other they need to get it flowing again. The arteries also become less elastic, often because of smoking, making them prone to tearing instead of stretching as the blood passes through.

There are things that you can do to improve your chances. See the page links to the right for more details. If you want your blood pressure checked go and ask at your doctors surgery, they will either do it for you or tell you where to go. (I mean to a clinic!)