How High Is Too High For Blood Pressure? Cardiologist Explains

[Music] wow [Music] hi welcome to another episode of talking with docs i'm dr brad weiner and i'm dr paul zalzel and i'm mike heffernan and uh in case you haven't seen this show before talking with docs it's just our sort of episodes where we talk with docs about different topics and uh if you haven't watched before we've got a bunch of videos you can catch up on dr heffernan's a cardiologist and today he's going to talk to us about what what is blood pressure what does it mean what do those numbers mean and what's considered a normal blood pressure which is a big thing sure so um let's just start right from the top sure um a normal blood pressure is 120 over 80. so that's an optimal blood pressure and then people kind of mix the numbers up sometimes you know what's the 120 what's the 80. so if you think about it the 120 is the peak blood pressure so that you know the heart squeezes the the blood out and that's the maximum pressure that's kind of coming out of the heart with every heartbeat and going down through your blood vessels to feed all your organs and so that you know it just makes sense you want something that's not too high something's not too low and 120 is considered an optimal one okay and then what's the 80. so the 80 is this resting pressure and so that's where you know the the heart valve the aortic valve closes and you know the pressure in all the pipes you know the arteries in your body doesn't go down to zero it has to have some residual or pressure that will just continue to just have blood moving through the organ and that's the 80. otherwise you'd pass out right if you had no resting tension in your blood vessels you would just fall to the ground right so systolic is the 120 diastolic is the 180 120 over 80. and and you know a lot of times when you turn on your tap stuff flows out smoothly right it doesn't pulse out it flows out smoothly so the pressure is the same but in the heart because it's a muscle that's contracting and expanding and contracting that's where you get this waveform of a blood pressure where there's a peak and a trough right and there are obviously a host of reasons that cause your blood pressure to go up or down what is the number that people start to worry about or we have to start maybe thinking about potential treatment or modifying things sure it varies obviously yep it varies so between 120 and 130 and we described it as millimeters of mercury that's the pressure that's considered normal once you move between you know 130 and 140 we start to get concerned okay and and certainly above 140 here in canada because i know you have international international viewers it may change from you know region to region but a a value in the office above 140 over 90 is when we really start thinking about uh medications but of course before that it's always lifestyle modifications first if a patient can lower their blood pressure without having to take a pill that's great that's ideal what's the big deal with i mean like if i'm at home i want high pressure when i turn on the tap or have a shower right it's better i get the water everywhere what's the big deal with having blood pressure that's too high why is that a problem um so it's a problem because because think about you know my heart's here and the pressure is coming up and you can start thinking about the things that's going to get hit so my brain and if as it courses down it starts hitting things like your kidneys for instance and if you're constantly slamming a really high pressure against the brain against the kidneys you can imagine that you know they have to adapt they've got to respond because because they weren't made for that right and and so their arteries get contracted and bad things start to happen so the kidneys start to fail you can have a stroke as a result of too high pressure in the brain you can have a heart attack because the pressure has been too high that's been going down the coronary arteries explains why most of the flowers in my garden are dead because the way i water it i just got it out and not with a pressure washer right so you don't water your garden with a pressure washer makes sense yeah um last question which one matters more because some people are like oh my systolic's good my diastolic is bad or vice versa can you pick which one's worse or both have problems yeah they're both they're both important okay yeah so it's not another and one or the other yeah that's good when you're measuring your pressure um is there any you have any sort of tips for people who are trying to monitor their blood pressure just go to the doctor and have the doctor measure it or anything they can do yeah so so that's a great question um we love it when patients take their blood pressure at home because about 25 to 30 percent of patients that come to my office today will find that their blood pressure might be elevated but when they go home and if they actually do home readings the values are probably normal and we've probably all heard about white coat hypertension and and we don't want to treat somebody who has an office reading that's elevated but it's absolutely normal at home because they're going to feel terrible you should give blood pressure messenger in your office i could say here do you wear a white coat i i haven't worn a white coat in 20 years no i wore when i was a medical student exactly right yeah you're proud to earn it at that point and then you get it yeah on tv it's on all the all the docs on tv yeah and often guys talking on tv and women talking and sharing the white coat yeah next week we're gonna wear a white coat i'm not wearing my coat if you like this video please like it subscribe to our channel and remember you are in charge of your own health and your own blood pressure see you next time

Channel: Talking With Docs

Views: 2,337,971

Keywords: high blood pressure, blood pressure, high blood pressure symptoms, high blood pressure treatment, how to lower blood pressure, high blood pressure causes, high blood pressure control, blood pressure control, what is high blood pressure, high blood pressure numbers, control high blood pressure, high blood pressure medication, blood pressure explained, how to lower blood pressure naturally, high blood pressure cure, high blood pressure signs, high blood pressure chart

Id: WTz0nARAxpA

Length: 5min 35sec (335 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021