The medical term for high blood pressure is ‘hypertension’. As a general rule, you’re considered to be ‘hypertensive’ if your blood pressure is consistently above the ideal 120/80. Some people are genetically predisposed for having high blood pressure, but there are other factors that often contribute to it, regardless of your genes.

To help you better understand high blood pressure, it’s a good idea to know what hypertension really is. When your blood pressure is taken, what’s actually being measured is the amount of pressure your blood is exerting against the walls of your blood vessels. Of course the higher the number, the more pressure is being forced against those walls.

Think of a balloon being filled with water. As more and more water fills the balloon, it stretches to accommodate it…to a point. As it gets very full, you can easily see the balloon thinning out, and if you continue putting water into it, eventually it will stretch itself to the breaking point.

If you allow your blood pressure to get high and remain there unchecked, your vessels will suffer the same fate as the overfilled balloon. They can and will eventually burst. The location of the burst vessel determines the severity of the results. If it’s a brain vessel, you can have a stroke. If it’s a vessel that feeds blood to the heart, you can have a heart attack or suffer complete heart failure.

High blood pressure is often called the ‘silent killer’ because of this. You don’t feel any symptoms at all and you feel finethen the pressure becomes so great and it causes a life-threatening episode.

The top number of a blood pressure reading, or the systolic pressure, measures the pressure within the blood vessels with each ‘beat’ of the heart as it pumps blood out. The bottom number, or the diastolic pressure, measures the pressure within the blood vessels in between beats, when your heart is temporarily at rest.

This is the reason why doctors are more critical of the bottom number. If your diastolic pressure is over 80, and especially once it gets over 90, it means that a great amount of pressure is being exerted on your vessels even though your heart is not working, or is at rest. With high blood pressure, the spurting force of the blood as it leaves the heart the next time could be the one that proves to be too much.

So what can you do to lower your blood pressure? For starters, if you’re overweight, get serious about taking off the extra pounds. Try to alleviate, if not eliminate, causes of stress in your life. Stop smoking and exercise more.

Or try something a little easier, just as effective and even quicker, my Hypertension Program I created to help reduce your chance of heart attack or stroke by lowering your blood pressure to acceptable levels. It doesn’t involve drastic lifestyle changes or hours of sweating in a gym.

It is composed of simple exercises that you can do easily, but the result is nothing short of life-saving.