Blood Pressure 101
Blood pressure is the measurement of force your blood exerts against the walls of your arteries. Normal blood pressure effectively and harmlessly pushes the blood from your heart to your body's organs and muscles so they can receive the oxygen and nutrients they need.
Blood pressure rises and falls throughout the day. When blood pressure stays elevated over time, however, it is called high blood pressure or hypertension.
According to the most recent estimates, up to 65 million Americans have hypertension, or high blood pressure, and nearly half are women, according to the American Heart Association.
High blood pressure is a serious condition and is responsible for 50,000 American deaths in 2002 and is listed as a primary or contributing factor in 261,000 deaths.
Hypertension can occur in both children and adults, but it is more common in adults, particularly African Americans, overweight people, people who drink heavily (defined as more than two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women), elderly and middle-aged people and women who are taking oral contraceptives. Additionally, people with diabetes, kidney disease or gout have a higher risk of hypertension.
More men than women have hypertension, until women reach menopause, when their risk becomes greater than men's. About half of the 65 million Americans with high blood pressure are women. About 20 % of white women and 30% to 40% of African-American women have high blood pressure, and the prevalence rises to 80% in women over age 70.
Causes of Hypertension
Although there are several risk factors for hypertension, family history is the primary one. If you have two immediate family members who developed high blood pressure before age 60, you have two times the risk, and your risk increases with each additional immediate family member who has high blood pressure.
African Americans and Hispanic Americans are more likely to develop high blood pressure than Caucasians. Studies find that having "Type A" qualities--being very driven, a perfectionist who doesn't cope well with stress, know how to relax and is quick-tempered, increases the risk of hypertension in men and may also increase the risk for women.
Other risk factors for hypertension include:
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Increasing age
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Salt sensitivity
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Obesity
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Heavy alcohol consumption, defined as more than two drinks a day for men and more than one drink a day for women.
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Use of oral contraceptives
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An inactive lifestyle
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Regular smoking or use of smokeless-tobacco, like snuff or chewing tobacco
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High uric acid levels (anything over 7 mg/ml of blood)
Unfortunately, there is no proven method of preventing preeclampsia or pregnancy-induced hypertension and no tests to diagnose or predict these conditions. The only way to insure a safe pregnancy is with regular visits to your health care professional for checks of the level of protein in your urine and your blood pressure.
You should also should do everything you can on your own to prevent pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, including regular physical activity and limiting salt intake.
Symptoms
Your health care professional should check your blood pressure at least once every two years, and more often if it's high. A high blood pressure diagnosis is usually based on at least the average of two or more readings per visit, taken at two different visits after an initial screening.
The only way to properly check your blood pressure is to measure it with a device called a sphygmomanometer, commonly called a blood pressure cuff. This is a quick and painless test in which a rubber cuff is wrapped around your upper arm and inflated. As the cuff inflates, it compresses a large artery, stopping the blood's flow through that artery. When your health care professional releases the air in the cuff, he or she can listen with a stethoscope for the blood to start flowing through your artery again. Your health care professional can watch the sphygmomanometer gauge to determine systolic pressure--the pressure when the first sound of pulsing blood is heard--and the diastolic pressure, the pressure when the last sound of pulsing blood is heard.
Click here for a tool to track your blood pressure.
