Health Tips and knowledge

Low Blood Pressure

pressure levels around 90 (millimeter of mercury) systolic pressure and 60  (millimeters of mercury) diastolic pressure are often considered as “low blood pressure”, but this figure is only an arbitrary one. Lower levels may be quite normal, depending on age, race, sex and For example, we know that low levels are more common in young people than in old, and in oriental than in occidental persons.
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Diastolic hypertension results from an excessive constriction or narrowing of the arterioles throughout the body. The greater the degree of arteriolar narrowing, the greater is the diastolic blood pressure elevation. Of the two types of pressure elevation, i.e., systolic and diastolic hypertension, the latter exerts the most injurious bodily effect when sustained over a long period of time. It is noteworthy that systolic blood pressure elevation usually accompanies diastolic hypertension. On the other hand, systolic hypertension occurs not infrequently in the absence of diastolic blood pressure elevation.

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Systolic hypertension may be caused either by an increase in the amount of blood pumped by the heart or by loss of of the large arterial walls. The latter is the most common cause for systolic hypertension and is most often due to arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). A mild degree of systolic hypertension, clue to arteriosclerosis, encountered not infrequently in many apparently healthy people as they grow older. At present there is no effective means to alter the cause or course of this type of blood pressure elevation. Less commonly, systolic hypertension is due to an increased output of blood by the heart included among the causes for an increase in heart output are anemia and thyroid gland overactivity, both of which are potentially correctable.

There is probably no bodily function which commands greater attention or has graver connotations, in the minds of the lay public, than does the blood pressure reading. On the other hand, there is probably no common function which is less well understood by the average layman.

Most persons recognize that a higher (systolic) blood pressure level exists, and to many, this is ‘the” blood pressure. Relatively few are aware that blood pressure varies with each heartbeat, giving rise to alower (diastolic) pressure as well, 140/90 in which 140 is the systolic and 90 the diastolic pressure.

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In coronary heart disease we see the most obvious example of the primary role of the arteries in producing the heart failure. “Coronary heart disease” is truly “coronary artery disease,” because the heart muscle itself is normal except where the circulation to it has been reduced or cut off by narrowing or blocking of branches of the coronary arteries. English physicians call this “ischemic heart disease,” which is a good term, because it describes the real damage to the heart from local reduction of blood supply to a portion of the muscular wall.

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In hypertensive heart disease the heart muscle becomes overworked because of spasm or narrowing of the arterioles or fine branches of the arterial system throughout the body, producing an increase in the resistance which prevents easy “run-off” of the blood into the organs. Thus the pressure in the arteries is raised and the heart is forced to pump out its blood against high blood pressure.

Congenital heart disease is the condition originating in the development of the infant before birth, from failure of the necessary twisting, joining, and division of two primitive arteries to take place in proper sequence, and with necessary completeness, as the heart is forming its four chambers, valves, and major inlets and outlets. For example, in one anomaly, patent ductus arteriousus, the artery which bypasses the lungs in the unborn child fails to close after birth and blood continues to flow through it. This can be cured by surgery.

The heart can tail in three major ways: by inability to pump out the blood adequately (congestive heart failure) by sending painful sensations to the chest (anginal failure) ; or by losing its normal, even heating and becoming irregular, or extremely slow or fast, or by having periods of complete stopping of the beat. The latter is called heart block and this refers to blocking of the electrical impulse which passes from atria to ventricles with each heart beat. It should not be confused with blocking of a coronary artery by a clot.