Every so often, medical conventional wisdom changes just a bit, often because some new study gets published that seems to have been well done. That seems to be happening currently with respect to ‘optimal’ human blood pressure.
Blood Pressure Measurement
For quite a few years, medical conventional wisdom held that ‘perfect’ blood pressure for a healthy human being was 120/80. The units here are millimeters of mercury, abbreviated as mm/Hg, since traditional blood-pressure-measuring instruments — ‘manometers’ — used columns of mercury in vertical glass tubes. Nowadays, manometers are frequently mechanical devices based on pressure sensors, but the units that are used for what they measure are still mm/Hg. Mercury is a relatively dense heavy metal, but it is a liquid at normal room temperatures.
Blood-pressure readings such as 120/80 are always expressed as SSS/DDD, where SSS is systolic blood pressure and DDD is diastolic blood pressure. A patient’s systolic blood pressure is the blood pressure within his or her circulatory system during one of his or her heart’s pumping beats, and the patient’s diastolic blood pressure is the blood pressure in his or her circulatory system while that same heart is resting in between beats. Anecdotally, systolic blood pressure can bounce around quite a bit, whereas diastolic blood pressure can often be fairly stable.
Systolic blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) study
High blood pressure can lead to many unpleasant health consequences, including heart problems, strokes, kidney disease, and cognitive impairment. A consistent systolic-blood-pressure reading of 140 or more used to be considered as implying the need for some action to reduce one’s blood pressure; but, below 140, Not To Worry. This perspective is now changing, as a recent large-scale careful experimental study has shown that unpleasant health consequences are noticeably less likely for folks who keep their systolic-blood-pressure readings substantially lower than 140. This ‘SPRINT’ study, for ‘Systolic blood PRessure INtervention Trial,’ was carried out by the United States National Institutes of Health.
The SPRINT study tracked 9000 volunteers, in 100 different United States locations. The volunteers, all with too-high blood pressure and at least 50 years old, were divided into two groups differing in their systolic-blood-pressure targets; one group was to try to hold their systolic blood pressures below 140, and the other group was to try to hold their systolic blood pressures below 120. The study results soon became so different between these two groups of volunteers that the study was halted about a year before its planned wrapup date, in order to apply the potentially lifesaving information already learned to the entire group of volunteers.
Unsurprisingly, the volunteers in the 120 group did a lot better than those in the 140 group; the NIH study managers concluded that the lower systolic-blood-pressure target had been clearly shown to be a lifesaver. Lowering that target to 120 reduced the incidence of congestive heart failures, heart attacks, and strokes by almost one-third, and the incidence of deaths by almost one-quarter.
Before new-revised systolic-blood-pressure-target guidelines reach local doctors, various medical-bureaucratic wheels have to grind, for a few more months. But, in the meantime, folks can on their own try to hold their systolic blood pressures to below 120, rather than just to below 140. They are likely to be helped in this endeavor by CLE Holistic Health Alistrol, a natural organic herbal liquid remedy available as precisely-measured 500-milligram gelcaps. The herbs used in Alistrol have been used in Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese traditional medicine for centuries, or even for millenia. Like other CLE health products, Alistrol is made from extracts of herbs that have been raised on CLE’s own land, and have been harvested and processed according to CLE’s proprietary technology, making for fine product-quality control. If your blood pressure needs some lowering, why don’t you give CLE Alistrol a try, and see if it helps you?
Here’s a link to the news story that was the source of the information in this blog: