What Most People Don’t Know About Blood Pressure

Do you know the symptoms of high blood pressure?

Challenge yourself: take a moment to list them in your head / count them on your fingers, and then scroll down to see what you got right!

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This way

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Keep going

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All the way

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Nearly there

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Drumroll please

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The answer is…

No, you don’t know the symptoms of high blood pressure 😉

But don’t worry, nobody else does, either:

❝High blood pressure usually has no warning signs or symptoms, and many people do not know they have it.

Measuring your blood pressure is the only way to know whether you have high blood pressure.❞

Source: CDC | About High Blood Pressure

And, that’s a critical thing that most people don’t know about high blood pressure—in the sense of: most people don’t know that it has no symptoms.

Which is a problem, because it means that often the first people learn about it is when they sustain some vascular injury as a result (stroke, heart attack, kidney disease, etc).

And, about that kidney disease?

• Good news: the human body can function for a fair while on a kidney that’s been reduced to a fraction of its functionality
• Bad news: that’s very bad for you and simply means you now have a second serious problem of which you’re unaware

For more on this, check out: Are your Kidneys Ok? Detect Early To Protect Kidney Health (Here’s How)

And for what to do about it: Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Far More Than Just Hydration)

Most people also don’t know what high blood pressure is

Well, they know it conceptually, but not numerically—based on a US survey that found, in answer to a multiple choice question on the topic:

• 25% believed that anything under 140/90 was fine
• 18% considered 130/90 to be the threshold
• 16% thought it was 140/80
• 13% got it right, at 130/80

Read in full: Most Americans cannot identify what counts as high blood pressure

In the same survey, by the way, only 39% knew that high blood pressure has no symptoms.

However, that 130/80 threshold for high blood pressure doesn’t mean that 129/79 is fine.

120/79, for example counts as elevated blood pressure.

Rather than take up undue space here, we’ll mention that you should aim for under 120/80, and for the rest, we’ll just quickly link to…

Blood Pressure Readings Explained (With A Colorful Chart)

More details of specifics, at:

Hypotension | Normal | Elevated | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Danger zone

And as for how to measure it yourself without getting it wrong, check out:

Wrong Arm Position = Wrong Measurement Of Blood Pressure (Here’s How To Get It Right)

How to lower it

We wrote a main feature on this before, because a lot of people focus on the wrong thing:

Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt

If you’re already taking care of those things, and want to really optimize your blood-pressure-lowering efforts, check out:

What is the best workout to lower your blood pressure? ← counterintuitively, it’s isometric exercises (i.e. exercises where you hold a position without moving, such as wall sits or abdominal planks)

And if you are perchance a postmenopausal woman, there may be an extra reason to enjoy mangos specifically:

Short-Term Cardiometabolic Response to Mango Intake in Postmenopausal Women

Enjoy!