High blood pressure is the abnormally high force of contraction of the heart muscle and it’s really contracting super hard, and/or it’s an abnormally high resistance of the blood flow in the arteries that are being fed the blood from the heart.

So blood pressure is a combination of two numbers; like 130/80. The first number – say the 130 – is a measure of the force of the contraction of the heart muscle itself, measured in mm. of mercury. That’s known as the systolic pressure. The second number – the lower number, let’s say the 80; 130/80 – is the amount of resistance of the blood flow itself in the arteries. That’s known as the diastolic pressure.

So where does that resistance come from? There is a muscular coat around the blood vessels of the body called the arterial system, and when it tightens it creates more resistance to the blood flow and so the diastolic pressure then goes up.

Normal blood pressure is a reading at or below 120/80. Blood pressure between 120/80 up to 139/89 is known as prehypertension. It’s not totally unsafe, but you’re creeping into a range where there is an increase in risk that some vascular condition might develop. So you want to keep it under 120/80.

A blood pressure above 140/90 is known as hypertension. That could be an elevation of either the systolic number or the diastolic number. In either case, an elevated reading of one or the other, or both, increases your risks for heart attack, heart failure, kidney disease, hardening of your arteries which could lead to a rupture of those blood vessels, eye disease that can lead to blindness, kidney damage and stroke; hemorrhaging into the brain.

It’s critical to know what your blood pressure reading is. The good news is most cases of high blood pressure can actually be managed through dietary and lifestyle intervention. This is important to know because ea lot of doctors just prescribe drugs right out of the gate, but the World Health Association shows that in about 75 percent of cases, diet and lifestyle management should be applied first.

You need to know what are the dietary and lifestyle approaches to lowering blood pressure, because sometimes doctors forget to talk about that.

If your blood pressure is high, I’d strongly recommend that you download my Lowering Blood Pressure Naturally program that’s available here, and act very aggressively on the interventions you see. These are the actual dietary and lifestyle modifications that have been proven in clinical studies to lower blood pressure in humans; it’s not just based on theory, and it helps most people. It’s important to know how to do that, even if you’re on medications, these should be the concurrent lifestyle strategies that you put in to play.