High Blood Pressure: The Unknown Danger to One's Health; 29% Americans Suffer from it

A condition that nearly 29% of Americans have is high blood pressure or hypertension which causes a bulk of the economy's budget goes to treat year per year as per the report of Newburyport news.

High blood pressure has been known as a silent and dangerous killer as it is undetected until the symptoms have surfaced.  In 2013 alone, hypertension has killed around 360,000 Americans and that is around a thousand people each day which is terrifying.

Normal blood flow when the heart pumps blood travels to the different parts of the body through arteries, blood vessels and arterioles.  Blood pressure is then measured as the degree of the force made on the arterial wall when blood normally flows through them.

In studying blood pressure, measurement is done by getting the systolic and diastolic pressure.  Systolic or the top figure measures the maximum pressure on an arterial wall during heart contraction to pump more blood.  Diastolic on the other hand is a measure of the degree of pressure that the blood makes on an arterial wall between regular heartbeats when blood refills the heart.

The normal blood pressure should be 120/80 at rest.  When the measurement gets higher then this is known as hypertension.  Based on statistics, when blood pressure is above 140/90 then chances of cardiovascular illnesses occur and significantly increase.

In order to check if your blood pressure is normal, regular check-ups should be done and incidence of increased pressure should be noted to your physician to monitor the irregularities.

Since increased blood pressure is a factor that is considered a health risk, it is advisable that everyone should undergo routine check-ups.  Another factor that affects high blood pressure is age so it should be well monitored in order to prevent sudden increase in pressure that may result to illnesses.