Your blood pressure rises and falls naturally throughout the day, but the higher your blood pressure, the harder your heart must work. It’s an important because oxygen and nutrients could not be pushed around the circulatory system to nourish tissues and organs without blood pressure. What is Blood Pressure and Why is it Important?īlood pressure is the force created by the amount of blood your heart pumps and the resistance to blood flow in your arteries. Overall the change in these guidelines are designed to help people address the potentially deadly condition much earlier and change the way they think about their blood pressure and health. So how much do you know? Let’s start with blood pressure 101 and walk you through the basics to help you better understand what blood pressure is and why it is so important to our health. This change sparked a lot of attention in the news since it was the first time in 14 years that high blood pressure was redefined – the last update prior was 2003.
The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) issued new guidelines for evaluating blood pressure in adults in 2017, lowering what was once considered to be the normal blood pressure range.
