Average Blood Pressure

You may have heard that the average blood pressure reading for an adult is 120/80 but blood pressure fluctuates a lot over the course of a day. To determine your own average blood pressure reading, especially if it’s vital to your health to know it at all times, it�s bettter to take it periodically throughout the day and act accordingly.

The measure of blood pressure is actually a measure of the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries as the blood flows through them and daily activities, stress levels, and time of day can all alter blood pressure readings. This fluctuation is why it’s important to take several readings to determine your own personal average blood pressure reading over the course of a day when monitoring it closely is important.

The numbers represented in a blood pressure reading are systolic pressure and diastolic pressure, with systolic being the first, or top, number and diastolic being the other number. When an average blood pressure reading is 120/80, the 120 represents systolic arterial pressure, the moment the pressure is the strongest, and the 80 represents diastolic arterial pressure, or the moment the pressure is the weakest.

An average blood pressure reading can be determined to be 120/80 but, as mentioned, it changes over the course of the day. Exercise and stress both make the heart beat faster, generating more pressure and a higher blood pressure reading.

Some medications affect a person’s average blood pressure, too. Some of them reduce arterial pressure while others increase it. Some of them work the way they do deliberately, which is why they are prescribed in the first place, but others affect blood pressure as a side effect and not a direct effect.

Knowing one’s own average blood pressure reading is especially important if diagnosed with hypertension, excessively high blood pressure, or diagnosed with hyoptension, which is abnormally low.

Having hypertension increases the risk of having a stroke or heart attack so maintaining healthy pressure and staying aware of your own average blood pressure reading throughout the day can be a matter of life and death.

Hypotension is also a life-threatening situation but it’s not considered a chronic disease. Instead, it’s a symptom of a more dire situation, such as shock, injury, loss of blood, or massive infection.