Your Heart and Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is perhaps the most important symptom of possible heart health problems. It's also a pretty good indicator of your overall health, and your prospects for becoming seriously ill someday.

So it's no accident that the first thing that happens when you visit your doctor is a blood pressure reading.

A blood pressure reading is a measurement of the force exerted on your blood vessel walls as blood passes through.

When your blood pressure is high (a condition known as hypertension to medical professionals), it means your heart has to beat harder or more forcefully than normal to pump blood through your veins and arteries efficiently.

It's important to know if you have high blood pressure for many reasons, but here are two of the most important.

First, if your heart is working harder to supply blood and oxygen to your tissues and organs, it may wear out sooner. Your heart may also develop other problems involving its muscle and valves.

Second, it could mean that your blood vessels are becoming narrow or blocked and blood is having a harder time getting through. Obstructed or narrowed blood vessels can lead to a large variety of health threats, including heart attack, stroke, and organ failure. Coronary artery disease involves blockages or narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart itself.

Low blood pressure can also be a problem. When you have low blood pressure, or hypotension, it means that your heart isn't pumping hard enough. This also causes your organs and tissues to become deficient in oxygen and nutrients they need to function. They'll begin to degrade.

When one organ starts to degrade, it can trigger a ripple effect that results in problems with other organs in the system. This can happen with both high blood pressure and low blood pressure.

Medical science has yet to determine exactly what causes blood pressure abnormalities. But there are clearly a number of risk factors connected to high blood pressure. These are mainly related to lifestyle, and they include:

• A history of high blood pressure among other members of your family.
• Overuse or outright abuse of alcohol.
• A sedentary lifestyle that involves little or no exercise.
• Being overweight.

Poor nutritional habits also play a big role involving your heart and blood pressure. Eating too many foods that have little or no nutritional value or contain a lot of cholesterol puts you at higher risk for heart disease.

Cholesterol is a fatty substance you get that's produced by your liver. But it also comes from food you eat (mainly animal fats). Cholesterol sticks to the walls of your arteries, making it more difficult for blood to flow through. High blood cholesterol levels are a major cause of high blood pressure.

What is a heart-healthy blood pressure reading?

To understand if your blood pressure is in the normal range, you need to know how it's measured. Doctors use two numbers, expressed by placing one over the other.

The "systolic" reading is the first or "top" number. It measures the pressure exerted by the heart at maximum force during a "beat."

Your "diastolic" reading is the second or "bottom" number. It measures the force between beats, when the heart is "at rest."

A healthy adult could expect a reading between 90/60 and 120/80. "Normal" varies from person to person, but generally speaking, a systolic reading of 140 or above is considered to be high. A reading at this level means your heart is working harder than it should, and that there may be a problem of some kind hindering your circulation.

Talk to your doctor about this, and be sure to have your blood pressure checked regularly. Blood pressure tends to rise as we grow older, and sometimes we have to make a more concerted effort to keep it in a heart-healthy range. Your doctor can also recommend certain medications that help lower your high blood pressure.