ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT: BLOOD PRESSURE

Measuring blood pressure is important, because high blood pressure is a silent killer -- meaning there are generally no symptoms of it, and it is a major cause of premature death worldwide

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It's a health metric that's constantly spoken about, measured at every visit to a doctor's office and, in India, increasingly a cause of concern, but how much do you really know about blood pressure? What exactly does it measure? What do the numbers indicate? And why is it so important to keep these numbers in check?

What is blood pressure?

Blood pressure is a measurement of the force of the blood against the walls of blood vessels (arteries). Your heart functions like a pump: sending blood to all the other parts of the body, supplying oxygen and nutrients to all your cells, and carrying away the waste. Your heart beats about 1,00,000 times a day and pumps about 5 litres of blood around your body. The blood is carried through a network of vessels known as arteries and veins. Arteries carry oygenated blood from your heart to the rest of your body, while veins carry deoxygenated blood from various parts of the body back to the heart. When your heart beats, it pumps blood into the arteries -- it is the measurement of this pressure inside the arteries that is your blood pressure.

WHO releases its first-ever report on global impact of high BP, states approximately four in every five not treated adequately

How is it measured?

Blood pressure is measures in millimetres of mercury, or mm HG. There are two numbers on the reading. The first number, systolic, represents the pressure in the blood vessels, when the heart beats (contracts). The second number, diastolic, is the pressure in the vessels, when the heart is at rest, between beats. A normal blood pressure reading is considered to be 120/80 mm HG. Anything above these values is considered unhealthy. According to the Standard Treatment Guidelines for hypertension brought out by the Union Health Ministry in 2016, hypertension, or high blood pressure, should be diagnosed when the blood pressure is persistently above a systolic of 140 mm and/or diastolic of 90 mm.