Every time your heart beats, it pushes blood out to your entire body. The blood moves through blood vessels called arteries. The term blood pressure refers to how hard the blood is pressing against the walls of your arteries.
When your heart contracts, blood is forced out of the heart, and the pressure increases. When your heart relaxes, the pressure decreases.
A blood pressure monitor allows you to see the pressure at both points. The higher number is called the systolic pressure, and the lower number is the diastolic pressure. For example, a normal blood pressure is "115 over 70":
High blood pressure, or "hypertension," often has no obvious cause, although many factors can contribute. When you have high blood pressure, your blood vessels are too narrow or they have too much blood circulating in them. High blood pressure puts a strain on blood vessels throughout your body and increases the workload on the heart. The result is that one or both of those numbers is higher than it should be.
To continue to the next step of the high blood pressure guide, click "next" below.
Review Date: June 3, 2003
Reviewed By: Jacqueline A. Hart, M.D., Department of Internal Medicine,
Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Harvard University and Senior Medical Editor,
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