Q. What do you mean by Hypertension?

Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. It is the most common public health problem and often referred to as a silent killer. If untreated, it can lead to a major health set back and cause many complications. In this section, we will know more about this disease condition.

We all have experienced our heart beat on several occasions. We can hear it more sharply with a stethoscope. The sound you hear is lup dup'. The first sound lup, you ‘may recall reading in the Applied Physiology Course (MFN-OOl), is the systolic sound, which occurs when the heart contracts and pushes out the blood into the various parts of the body. This denotes the higher range of pressure called systolic blood pressure (SBP) which is measured as millimetres of mercury (mm Hg). The sound dup is the relaxation period of the heart when the blood enters the heart chambers. This is the diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and denotes the lower blood pressure.