Blood Pressure

Blood Pressure

Introduction

Blood pressure, by definition, describes the force that blood exerts on the walls of blood vessels as it circulates the body. Blood pressure primarily results from the pumping activities of the heart as blood is received from the veins and redistributed through the Arteries. Essentially, blood pressure is taken from the larger arteries that carry blood to different organs of the body. Such vessels usually are deep-seated within the body, and blood pressure cannot be obtained through simple measures such as checking on pulses. It requires particular techniques to increase the blood pressure through tightening the arteries and releasing the blood slowly as the blood passes. A technician will often use a sphygmomanometer that records pressure in mm/Hg and a stethoscope to listen to the rhythm of blood flow in the brachial artery. Blood pressure is taken following two methods the systolic pressure, which is when the heart is pumping and diastolic, which is the reading when the heart is at rest. Blood pressure varies from one individual to another according to age, whereby physicians expect a healthy blood pressure is not exceeding 140/90 mm/Hg (Dimopoulos, Harries & Parfitt, 2017). These readings, however, differ from one age group to the other. Various aspects influence blood pressure such as age, physical activities, social behaviors such as smoking, presence of chronic diseases, among many others. The paper focuses on investigating the impact of age and gender on the averages of blood pressure among the chosen sample.

Background

Blood pressure impacts the health of people in numerous ways, whereby an increase or a drop from the regular readings translates to health complications. The holding hypothesis explains that the risk of blood pressure-related issues seems to increase with age, and the same stems from behavioral applications such as neglect of exercise, among others. For instance, in the US, more than 70% of the population aged 65 years old and above suffer from high blood pressure (Dimopoulos, Harries & Parfitt, 2017). The same translates to an array of diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and peripheral arterial disease. Many other related conditions include metabolic syndrome, aneurysm, dementia, torn blood vessels, and memory and understanding problems, among others. To this end, the issue of blood pressure becomes critical and requires a lot of research to establish the risks to increased blood pressure as well as the means to develop lasting solutions. It is more so because these illnesses come with an increased cost of living for the patients, especially those with blood pressure-related chronic diseases. The patients also require a lot of care from those around them, which might become an inconvenience, especially in low-income populations, whereby everyone is required to work to put meals at the table. The government expenditure on the health of the patients also becomes a burden to taxpayers whose resources could be used to improve other aspects of health and life in general.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the likelihood of hypertension among different population groups. It will compare the blood pressure outcomes from different age groups to establish trends that exacerbate blood pressure among these groups.

Methods

The experiment involves a randomly selected group of people with ages ranging from 11 to 54 years. Each group was composed of ten individuals with five females and five males, which brought the whole group to 100 participants. The experiment employed the use of a stethoscope to listen to the flow of blood whereby the results were recorded for further analysis