Our blood pressure is always altering and it is very rare for a person to have a blood pressure reading which is constant. Almost everything we do will have an affect on our blood pressure which will move up and down as we go about our normal day to day business. Simple things such as walking the dog, watching television, drinking, walking, standing up, eating, mowing the lawn, sleeping, talking and just about anything else you can think of can alter your blood pressure level.

While changes in blood pressure are nothing more than a simple fact of life it can nevertheless create problems for your doctor who needs to use blood pressure to monitor your general health. The challenge is thus to try to establish a blood pressure level which can be considered as a normal average and then define limits below and above this figure which can also be considered as representing the normal range of blood pressure fluctuation. The starting for doing this is to look at the pressure in the body's arteries as the heart is pumping blood around the body.

blood moves a mix of nutrients and oxygen to every part of the body through a network of blood vessels starting with the main aorta carrying blood from the heart and ending in a multitude of extremely small capillaries.

The first thing which must be considered therefore is precisely how much pressure is needed in the aorta as the blood leaves the heart for it to reach its destination in far flung corners of the body.

Next, the second thing which must be considered is how much pressure is needed in the capillaries for nutrients and oxygen to be transferred into the tissues of the body.

Long and careful research over many years shows that the ideal arterial pressure to deliver blood to every part the body and to facilitate the transfer of nutrients and oxygen into the tissues of the body is 120 mm Hg. This figure represents the normal arterial pressure when the heart pumps blood around the body and is generally known as your systolic pressure.

As with most things in life however a pressure slightly below or above this figure is not going to make a great deal of difference and your body will continue to function well enough. However, if your blood pressure falls too far or climbs too high then you are going to start to run into trouble.

So exactly what are the lower and upper limits within which the average person should be able to continue to operate normally?

Here things become a little bit fuzzy and the answer varies from one individual to the next. However generally speaking the upper limit for blood pressure in most people is about 140 mg Hg and the lower limit is approximately 90 mg Hg.

Perhaps the most important point at which to start however is to establish the figure which is right for you and which takes into account such things as your age and general health together with your lifestyle. Once you have agreed this figure with your physician it is then merely a matter of monitoring you blood pressure.

TheBloodPressureCenter.com provides advice on all aspects of blood pressure from the cause of high blood pressure to selecting an Omron blood pressure monitor

Autor: Donald Saunders

This article is free for republishing