I had my annual medical the other day and my Blood Pressure (usually denoted by
the letters BP) was reported as being marginally high at 145/75. The computer
wondered if this was “Hypertension” and the standard response is to check again
in two weeks.
Now that’s not a bad plan, but if your doctor tells you that
you have hypertension on just one reading - don’t believe him (or her).
So how do you find out if your BP is too high? Quite simply
by repeated measurements. Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one
elevated reading does not necessarily mean Hypertension. In my own case, I had
been rushing prior to the annual medical testing, and the repeat measurement one
week later was 134/76.
You see, Blood Pressure is a dynamic situation. Lying down
you can have one BP. Get almost run over by a baht bus and you have another much
higher BP. Blood pressure tends to be higher in the morning and lower at night.
Stress, smoking, eating, exercise, cold, pain, noise, medications, and even
talking can affect it. The single elevated reading does not immediately mean you
have high blood pressure. In fact, the average of several repeated measurements
throughout the day would be a more accurate picture of what is going on than a
single reading, but quite frankly, you do not have to go to that extreme.
As part of the routine in most good hospitals and clinics is
the measurement of your blood pressure. You should get this done at least twice
a year. Rising or elevated readings do mean you should get medical advice.
So why is BP important? Because if you don’t you don’t have
BP you are definitely dead! However, if your BP is too high, it can mean you
could be claiming early on your life insurance policy - or your relatives will,
on your behalf.
High BP is otherwise known as the “silent killer” as there
are very few symptoms of the increase in blood pressure, until a vessel bursts
somewhere, generally catastrophically! The good thing is you are dead within
minutes, so you won’t linger.
Blood Pressure is needed to keep all the organs of the body
supplied with oxygen. This is done by the red blood cells which carry the
oxygen, with the pump to drive the system being the heart. The tubes from the
heart heading outbound are the arteries, and those returning the blood to the
heart are the veins.
This heart-arteries-veins-heart system is a “closed” circuit.
In other words, no leaks, otherwise you would be continually losing the
life-preserving blood, but to make it go around, there has to be a pumping
pressure (just like the oil pump in your car).
The heart squeezes the blood inside itself and pumps it out
into the arteries. This squeezing pressure is called the Systolic, and is the
upper number quoted when we measure your blood pressure.
After the squeeze, the heart relaxes to allow the blood to
fill the chamber, ready for the next squeeze. The pressure does not return to
zero, because there has to be some pressure to refill the chamber. This resting
or ambient pressure is the lower number quoted and is called the Diastolic. BP
is then typically quoted as 120/70, being 120 (systolic) / 70 (diastolic). The
actual pressure number is measured in a millimeters of mercury scale.
So what is your correct BP? The following table shows the
categories of BP measurements.
Optimal: less than 120/80
Normal: less than 130/80
High-normal: 130–139/85–89
High blood pressure (hypertension):
Stage 1: 140–159/90–99
Stage 2: 160–179/100–109
Stage 3: 180 or higher/110 or higher
The problem with running at high pressure is that the heart
is having to work harder, and therefore may be subject to heart failure. The
arteries are also subjected to higher pressures than they were designed to cope
with and can burst, making the risk of stroke so much higher. Other organs don’t
like working at the high pressures either, and kidneys, in particular, can go
into failure mode.
No, if you really have hypertension, get it treated - but
remember to have repeated measurements done.
