In 1905, a Russian physician, Korotkoff, discovered that if a pressure cuff was applied to the upper arm, the blqod pressure could be measured by listening to the sounds with a stethoscope over the artery in the fold of the elbow. With each heart beat, the blood pressure rises to a peak. This is the systolic pressure. Between heart beats, the pressure falls to a lower level. This is the diastolic pressure. By pumping up the cuff so that no blood flows through the artery and then releasing the air slowly, the blood flows in squirts and ‘thumps’ loudly on the artery wall which the doctor can hear through his stethoscope. This is the systolic pressure. As the cuff empties, the character of the thumps changes; the sounds become soft and then disappear. The disappearance of the sound identifies the diastolic pressure. Your blood pressure varies throughout the у and responds to all kinds of stress or emotion, when it tends to se. During sleep it is at its lowest. The temporary rises are normal d natural, but the doctor or nurse tries to take a resting pressure. If your resting pressure is normal, you have no further worries, t if it is raised the doctor usually takes the blood pressure again ter a two-week interval (and preferably after a further two weeks) efore he diagnoses that you have high blood pressure, as it is known that transient rises in blood pressure can occur. If you have a raised blood pressure at both or at all three of these examinations, you have hypertension.
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