Yesterday I tried to impress upon you why uncontrolled hypertension is important from the complication point of view. Today we will find out what exactly is B.P. and how it becomes hypertension.
All the major organs in our body like the brain,heart,lungs,kidney etc never take rest even when we are sleeping.Heart is the one machine in our body that pumps blood to different parts of our body through blood vessels called arteries.The pressure by which heart pumps blood through the arteries is called blood pressure.When the arteries get narrowed and/hardened due to deposition of cholesterol or due to aging,heart has to pump harder to supply blood to the different organs like eyes,brain,liver,kidney etc.This is called Hypertension.
The causes for hypertension can be any one of these or a combination of two or more conditions:-
Hypertension is classified as follows:
There are two components of B.P. measurement —one when the heart is contracting, called Systolic B.P. and the other when the heart is relaxing,called the Diastolic B.P. as shown below:-
In my next blog I will discuss on how to measure B.P.,the different instruments available and methods to maintain normal B.P.