HYPERTENSION

High blood pressure is often called the silent killer, since nearly one-third of people that suffer from it have no idea that they have it.

Hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure. With each beat of the heart, blood is pumped through the arteries, creating a measurable pressure within the blood vessels.

At the beginning of the heartbeat, when the ventricles contract to push the blood through the circulatory system, the highest pressure is exerted on the arteries. This is called the systolic pressure. As the ventricles of the heart are filled with blood at the end of the heartbeat, the blood pressure falls to its lowest level, the diastolic pressure.