You have two blood pressures: the systolic that measures blood pressure when your heart contracts, and the much lower diastolic reading that measures the pressure when your heart relaxes. When your heart contracts, it pushes a huge amount of blood forward to your arteries. Your arteries are supposed to act like balloons and expand to accept the blood and prevent your blood pressure from rising too high. Having plaques in your arteries stiffens them and prevents them from expanding when your heart contracts, causing your blood pressure to rise higher than normal. The stiffer your arteries, the higher your blood pressure rises. Intense pressure on artery walls can cause damage that provides places for even more plaque to accumulate. It's a vicious circle: high blood pressure continues to cause plaque buildup, which narrows the arteries and increases blood pressure even more.
The Framingham study has shown that the systolic (heart contraction) blood pressure is far more important than the diastolic (relaxation) blood pressure in estimating your risk for a heart attack or stroke. Diastolic blood pressure is a weaker predictor of your susceptibility for a heart attack. Your risk is increased further if you have high blood cholesterol, sugar or insulin levels; an enlarged heart; or if you are overweight. Over time, high blood pressure can cause serious damage to your cardiovascular system, kidneys and other organs.
Anyone with blood pressure over 120/80 should be on the DASH Diet. Your doctor will help you decide whether you should also use medication. Journal reference
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Systolic Blood Pressure More Important than Diastolic
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2 comments:
That's kinda a very nice sharing because it's important to know this so that our heart will be always stabilize and updated about the pressures in us.
Hypertension,When to Treat?
The 18 year Framingham Blood Pressure study found increased risk of heart disease and death in people with increased blood pressure 140 to 160, and even more risk above 160.
If you examine the original data from the Framingham study, you will find computer smoothing of the data as published in the medical journals. This gives a smooth gradual line of increasing mortality as blood pressure goes up between 140 and 160. This is called the Linear Model.
However, if you examine the raw data, as S. Port did as published in Lancet 1/15/2000, you will find a non-linear threshold of increased risk above 160 systolic, and no increased mortality below 160.
For a more complete review of this controversy in Blood Pressure guidelines, see my newsletter
Blood Pressure Pills for Hypertension, When to Treat? by Jeffrey Dach MD
Jeffrey Dach MD
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