Understanding Blood Pressure

When doctors talk about blood pressure, what they mean is the pressure within the large blood vessels as your heart forces blood to circulate around your body. On the whole, the lower your blood pressure, the healthier you are in the long term (except in some very rare conditions in which excessively low blood pressure is part of a disease). If you are over the age of 30 and can t remember when you last had your blood pressure checked, you could be one of the seven to ten million people in this country who has high blood pressure. Doctors usually use the term hypertension to describe this condition which may cause no symptoms at all for very many years, but could eventually lead to serious complications, including heart disease and strokes.