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Blood pressure is a measure of how forcefully your blood is pressing against your artery walls with each heartbeat. Blood pressure is gauged by two numbers such as 120//80 which is spoken as one twenty over eighty. The first number is called systolic pressure and the second number if diastolic pressure. The systolic pressure is the one in the arteries when they are filled with blood and your heart is beating and the diastolic pressure is the one when your heart is resting between beats.

In the UK it is considered that your blood pressure is fairly normal if your top reading is between 110-140 and bottom reading is 70-90, although 120/80 is about the most average you can get and apparently this is the roughly the range to aim for.

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE

In general if you have high blood pressure you should be aware of it already and your physician should have given you advice on how to lower your pressure or have prescribed you with medication to aid you in the process.

High blood pressure is also known as "hypertension" and should be taken seriously. If hypertension is not monitored and reduced you increase your risk of having strokes, heart failure, heart attacks and is currently the most common cause of chronic renal failure.
High blood pressure also reduced your life expectancy. If you or anyone you know has hypertension please take it seriously and do take your doctor's advice on lowering your pressure.

There are certain things which you should avoid if you have hypertension such as excessive salt, try to cut down as much as you possibly can on your salt intake. Liquorice is also bad for people with high blood pressure. There are some factors which can increase the risk of getting high blood pressure such as:
* being overweight
* smoking
* being diabetic (type 1 or 2)
* not doing physical exercise
* drinking too much alcohol
* excessive salt intake
* excessive stress

If you cut down on the things that you know are bad for you (nowadays we mostly know what's bad for us), and try to do more exercise, we can decrease our chances of getting hypertension. From what I understand if you don't control your blood pressure to a sensible level you might not even realise you have it until it's too late and you have a heart attack or stroke and some of the symptoms of hypertension that could indicate a problem include: sudden sleepiness, confusion or severe headaches. You could even end up in a coma from hypertension!

From what I understand if you are from an Afro Caribbean or South

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