Understanding Blood Pressure Readings
Blood pressure measures the force of your blood in your blood vessels. If the pressure is too high it can cause damage to your arteries and cause numerous health complications. Therefore, it is important to keep track and manage your blood pressure.
How to Read Your Blood Pressure
Blood pressure readings consist of two numbers:
- Systolic blood pressure: The first number in the reading indicates how much pressure is in the blood when the heart contracts (during a heartbeat).
- Diastolic blood pressure: This is the second number in a blood pressure reading that indicates the pressure of your blood when the heart relaxes (between heartbeats).
These two numbers represent the average pressure of your blood and are compared against the healthy numbers to see if the pressure is elevated.
If you aren’t sure which number is which, an easy trick to remember is that the diastolic is always lower than the systolic number.
What is Normal Blood Pressure?
Depending on how much higher your blood pressure is to 120/80 it will indicate the severity of high blood pressure.
- Normal: These are the levels that indicate a healthy blood pressure.
- Elevated: These levels indicate that you are more likely to develop high blood pressure unless changes are made to your lifestyle to prevent this.
- Hypertension Stage 1: At this stage, you are at a higher risk of developing conditions such as heart disease. Your doctor may choose to prescribe blood pressure medications to help manage your blood pressure or recommend lifestyle changes.
- Hypertension Stage 2: This stage presents high risk of chronic health problems and lasting damage to your arteries. Your doctor may recommend a combination of medication and lifestyle changes to combat HBP.
- Hypertensive Crisis: This stage requires immediate medical intervention, as leaving it untreated could be fatal.
Managing Your Blood Pressure
Lifestyle Changes
Here are a number of lifestyle changes you can make to help lower your blood pressure:
- Reducing alcohol consumption
- Regular physical activity
- Healthy diet
- Quit tobacco consumption
- Managing stress
Medications
If you are struggling to manage your blood pressure or are at risk of health complications, your doctor may prescribe you medication to help you manage it. There are five different types of medication:
Marley Drug offers medications from all five categories for an affordable wholesale price. Check our Wholesale Price List for your medications. If you have any questions about medications or Marley Drug, call us at 800-810-7790 and speak to our pharmacy team today.