Without a doubt, the heart is the most important organ in our bodies. This is because if it stops pumping blood around the body and delivering oxygen to the brain and other organs, we will die very quickly.
Even though heart health is important, many of us don't pay much or any attention to it until we have to, which is often too late. And yet, keeping an eye on the heart couldn't be easier than just taking our blood pressure every day.
As with most things in life, if the heart starts to have problems, there will be warning signs that give us time to fix the problem. Often, these warning signs come in the form of blood pressure that is too high or too low.
The heart's main job is to pump freshly oxygenated blood through the main arteries and then to all parts of the body through a network of smaller blood vessels. As the heart contracts and sends blood into the arteries, the walls of the arteries are put under pressure. The pressure in the arteries drops as the heart relaxes and its chambers fill up with blood so they can pump again.
By measuring these two levels of pressure, we can find out how well the heart is pumping blood around the body and see if it is working normally or not.
Before not too long ago, you had to go to the doctor's office to have your blood pressure checked. The doctor would put a cuff on your upper arm about where your heart is. He would then put his stethoscope over the brachial artery, which runs close to the surface of the skin on the inside of your arm at the elbow, and inflate the cuff.
As the cuff is inflated, it tightens around the arm and stops blood from flowing through the brachial artery. The pressure in the cuff, which is shown by a mercury manometer attached to the cuff, is slowly released, and the point at which blood starts flowing through the artery, which the doctor hears as a "whoosing" sound through his stethoscope, is noted. This is where the pressure in the cuff is the same as the pressure in the artery when the heart is pumping blood through it. This is called the systolic pressure.
The doctor then keeps slowly lowering the pressure in the cuff and listening to the sound of the blood pumping through the artery until there is no sound at all. At this point, when the heart is at rest and getting ready to pump again, the manometer shows the pressure in the artery. The diastolic pressure is the name for this lower pressure.
Blood pressure is different for each person and can go up and down depending on a number of things, such as the time of day, how active we are, how stressed we are, how our health is in general, and whether or not we are taking certain medications.
At rest, however, the average person's systolic blood pressure will be about 120 mm Hg and their diastolic blood pressure will be about 80 mm Hg. The normal range of systolic blood pressure is 90–135 mm Hg, and the normal range of diastolic blood pressure is 50–90 mm Hg. These ranges show how much blood pressure can vary between and within people.
If your blood pressure is high or low compared to these numbers, your doctor will need to find out why.
Since most of us don't go to the doctor often and only go when we have to, it can be months or even years between blood pressure checks. We could be walking around blissfully unaware that we have a time bomb ticking away inside us.
Today, however, we can use a wide range of blood pressure monitors that are easy to use and not too expensive in our own homes. There is no reason at all not to keep an eye on our most important organ on a regular basis.
So, before something bad happens to you or someone you love, why not take a few minutes to look at the different kinds of blood pressure monitors and give yourself some peace of mind?
