I’ve decided to write my first blog article about an important health concept that confuses many people: Blood Pressure. What do those numbers mean? What’s systolic? What’s diastolic? What’s a normal blood pressure reading? Why should I care? Hopefully you’ll be able to answer these questions after reading this article.
Blood pressure is the force that moves blood through your circulatory system. Normal blood pressure is necessary for life. The pressure created by our heart muscles contracting forces our blood to flow out from our heart through arteries to deliver oxygen, nutrients, hormones, immune cells, and many other chemicals to the tissues and organs within our body. The same blood pressure returns blood back to the heart through our veins and allows our blood to pick up the toxic waste products of cell metabolism, including the carbon dioxide we exhale with every breath, and the toxins we clear through our liver and kidneys. (I’ll cover more on toxins and waste at another time.)
