Blood Pressure - can someone please explain what the measurements mean?

[georgiemum]

In very basic language. When people tell me their scores I just nod politely - I haven't a clue what they mean!

top number is systolic. bottom number dastolic. is the measurement of the pressure of blood flow through your system. depends on the resistance of your blod vessels and how well your heart is pumping.
'norma' is 120 over 70 ish. some people potter along happily much lower. highblood pressure can damage small vessels. if you have other illnesses like diabetes or heart disease or kidney disease you should aim to have your blood pressure as low as possible. fit people have lower. age, sex, heat, stress, time of day can all affect higness or lowness.
basically low is good but too low and you might start fainting all over the place.

I'll give it a try...

It measures systolic and diastolic pressure, namely the pressure in the arteries at the beginning and the end of a heart-contraction. Obviously, you want this to be on a relatively even keel (although it does vary, even in a healthy person), and you don't want your heart to be pumping too hard or too low, IYSWIM.

HTH (and am prepared to be corrected, as am not medic!)

diastolic

X-post!

Why are there 2 numbers?

One for systolic pressure (pressure at beginning of heartbeat); one for diastolic pressure (the pressure at the end of the heartbeat). HPs want to measure the full contraction of the heart in order to assess its health.

Ohhhh. I think I actually understand it now.

Where were you when I was sitting my Biology o-grade???

Hi, the lower figure, the diastolic pressure is the resting pressure in your system of arteries, children are lowest and adults are highest but generally speaking the lower the better. Because the heart beats every second or so it squeezes a chunk of blood out and this causes a peak pressure, the systolic, in the system before falling back to the resting diastolic pressure. This systolic pressure goes up and down like a yoyo, it's designed to do so, if you are angry or exercising or standing on your head or if the Blood Pressure is taken badly or with the wrong sized cuff it will be up to 200-300+. So, ignore anyone who try to impress you with how high their blood pressure was or is, an isolated reading is pretty meaningless, especially the higher systolic one.
Oddly enough the heart does not affect the blood pressure much but is itself affected by high blood pressure as it has considerable extra work to do forcing the blood through the narrower arteries which are causing the high blood pressure. So the heart strains a bit, sometimes dramatically by having a heart attack or more slowly by becoming less efficient, commonly called heart failure.