Hypertension is one of the most widely diagnosed health issues in the Western world. For those suffering from this condition, it is important to know how to take hypertension readings. A byproduct of the human body’s fight-or-flight reflex, it is designed to push more blood out to the muscles in an emergency.

Hypertension is a problem that is created when the body treats the general stresses of day to day living as a constant, low-level emergency that never quite ends. Elevated bp and hormones that trigger hypertension readings can wear out the cell walls of the arteries, and eventually lead to arterial problems in the heart, kidney failure and strokes.

However, there’s more to hypertension readings than just high hypertension readings. Measuring your hypertension readings is a key way of regulating this, and there is the issue of low blood pressure and diastolic hypertension readings.

Measuring your hypertension readings requires a hypertension readings cuff. What used to be a piece of equipment only found in the doctor’s office is now something you can buy for a reasonably inexpensively price at the local drug store. Modern hypertension readings cuffs are digital – you wrap them around your upper arm, and squeeze the bulb to inflate them; you want to inflate them to just the point where they give you reading.

Hypertension readings measures two numbers, diastolic and systolic pressure. Diastolic pressure is the pressure (in milligrammes of mercury) that your arteries experience when relaxed, systolic is the higher pressure that happens when your heart contracts and the arteries squeeze down to force the blood through your body.

The gold standard of hypertension readings is 115/75, and 120/80 is considered normal. People with lower bp than 100/60 tend to have dizziness and fainting spells, and people with the bp more than 140 for systolic pressure or 90 for diastolic pressure for extended periods of time have hypertension. At systolic pressures more than 200, the patient is in grave danger of damage to arterial walls, which most often expresses itself in the form of a stroke. Systolic bp is the technical term for when your systolic pressure exceeds your diastolic pressure by more than 100 milligrams of mercury and is typically a symptom of a patient going into shock; it is also one of the physiological side effects of a migraine; equalising bp is one of the treatments for migraines.

There are some factors that can cause bp to spike – the most common is stress. Indeed, the most common causes of abnormal responses when measuring bp is that the patient hasn’t calmed down by the time the hypertension readings cuff is inflated. Other factors include liquorice (even in candies) and sodium.

For patients with low hypertension readings, the condition isn’t life-threatening, but it is frustrating. The best way to describe a low bp effect is you go from being just fine to dizzy in a heartbeat, and then need to sit down. Most teenagers going through a spurt growth experience a bout of low bp as their body adapts. This condition is more common in boys rather than girls. They eventually grow out of it as the body learns to self-regulate the growing volume of blood vessels needed.

Now that you know how to take bp, you should consider checking your hypertension readings regularly and take corrective steps where necessary.