How Can We Define High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)?

Perhaps the biggest problem with high blood pressure today is that it is so widespread and talked about so often that far too many people do not appear to treat it with the respect that it deserves. The fact is that high blood pressure, or hypertension (to give it its medical name), is a killer and should be treated as such.

Many hundreds of researchers and doctors have spent considerable time and money attempting to identify precisely what the true definition of hypertension is.

There have been many studies performed on this subject which have given the doctors, scientist and researchers a wide range of blood pressure values to work with. The results however are usually skewed and differ from country to country and even from one district to the next within a specific country. Therefore, it has been concluded that the true definition of high blood pressure can only be arrived at as a result of constant observation and experimentation.

Normal blood pressure is recognized in a similar way to normal body weight in the sense that the defining level is that which is seen as providing the greatest predicted life expectancy. This is the pressure at which the heart together with other important elements of the body such as the circulatory system can function under optimum conditions without running the risk of heart disease and other associated conditions.

There are a number of other considerations that have to be taken into account when defining hypertension and some need to be excluded. For example, If a healthy individual becomes then their systolic (or pumping) blood pressure will rise by perhaps as much as fifty percent as their blood flow increases in response to emotional excitement or energetic exercise. However it does not stay high for long and as soon as the level of excitement subsides your blood pressure also returns to its normal level.

As well as your 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. Diastolic pressure is important because it points to the state of an individual's arteries and if you have a high reading it might mean that your arteries are constricted and not allowing the free flow of blood.

It is very important to know that hypertension is not in itself a disease but is a key criterion by which doctors can diagnose other conditions.

Lastly, it is also necessary to realize that hypertension cannot be cured as such but it can be controlled very effectively.

TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides information on many different aspects of blood pressure including what causes high blood pressure and locating the best home blood pressure monitors