Often misinterpreted as a disease, blood pressure plays a vital role in the functioning of human body. However, blood pressure can change rapidly and vary by multiple causes such as stress, physical exercise or certain foods, which may eventually cause serious health issues.
Therefore, it is important to know how to measure blood pressure on a regular basis. Doctors often insist on systematic measuring of blood pressure, but rarely teach the patients how to do it. Which is a big mistake, as measuring blood pressure requires some training and incorrect technique can provide false results.
How to interpret blood pressure values?Being knowledgeable about how to take blood pressure at home, provides you valuable information about the state of the circulatory system, in addition to giving clues about kidney diseases and other disorders. It is important to measure it frequently since hypertension does not cause symptoms.
Currently, there are tensiometers that allow electronic measurement of blood pressure at home easily and conveniently. They give the values in digits, and although they are less accurate than the traditional model, they are very practical because they take the two readings quickly and do so autonomously.
Blood pressure is expressed with two numbers separated by a bar: for example, 140/90 mmHg (millimeters of mercury).
Maximum or systolic tension: it is the first reading, in our example 140. This measures the maximum pressure with which the blood circulates inside the arteries and corresponds to the moment when the heart is contracting and expels blood under pressure.
Minimum or diastolic tension: it is the second reading, in our case 90, corresponds to the minimum pressure that the blood exerts on the wall of the arteries in the intervals between heartbeat and heartbeat. Corresponds to the moment when the heart relaxes.