Systolic Blood Pressure - Blood Pressure

What Is Systolic Blood Pressure?

In order to under stand what is systolic blood pressure and its other component the diastolic blood pressure one should understand the way the heart operates. The heart is like a reciprocating pump; a pump that would work like the shaft of steam engine, moving forward and backward. But this has a chamber that would contract and expand. When it expands, it sucks blood into it through a non return valve. When it contract, it expels the sucked blood through the other side again through a non return valve. You might be wondering where is systolic blood pressure in this. You will need to have some more patience while reading.

Now there two pressures on the arteries that need to be measured. One is the normal pressure and that is the one when the heart is not compressing but when the heart is relaxing. At this stage the heart is really sucking the blood into its chambers but not pushing the blood through the arteries. At this time there is a pressure and this pressure is called the diastolic blood pressure. When the hurt chamber contracts, it expels the blood through the arteries and they experience an increased pressure on their walls. This pressure is called the systolic blood pressure. Obviously systolic blood pressure should be higher than the diastolic blood pressure. How much higher and what should be systolic blood pressure is the next question?

To move the blood around in the body, there is a pressure that is required. This is the pressure when there is minimum resistance in the path of the blood. Under this condition, the systolic blood pressure is minimal and the work load on the heart is also nominal. But with the increasing age, the blood vessels get blocked by salt or could have the arterial valves hardening and such other issues which could have lesser tendency to take blood pressure. The blood flow when it is hindered, the heart tries to push it through the obstacles. This causes an increase in the blood flow. The same is the case when there is more energy required in the muscles of the body. The heart tries to push more oxygen to the body muscles by circulating the blood faster. This would in effect raise the blood pressure. But it would result in faster flow of blood thereby cleansing the blood vessels to a great degree.

All these would increase the systolic blood pressure of the body. But then there will also be an increase in the diastolic blood pressure to. But when the increase goes beyond certain limits your heart cannot withstand as well as your arteries cannot also withstand. This could result in the greater damage to your body. If the systolic blood pressure rises, it only means that the circulation is not proper and the heart is trying to achieve the circulation by increasing the pressure itself. Of course, the heart is over exerted and could result in damage to the heart.

Blood Pressure