Dr. Sanjay Gupta

The idea that blood pressure is a disease.

For many people, blood pressure, I believe, is a scream.

The body is screaming out and saying, I'm unhappy.

And if we take the scream and make it a disease, then you end up treating the blood pressure but not addressing the root cause of the scream.

And in some ways, you do that patient a disservice.

What is blood pressure?

Okay, to understand blood pressure, we have to understand pressure.

And pressure is physiologically a formula which is force over area.

You exert some force over an area, and that equates to pressure.

If you increase the force, you increase the pressure provided the area remains the same.

Or if you reduce the area and the force is the same, the pressure goes up.

So blood pressure is the pressure exerted by blood on the area of our blood vessels.

So the force is dictated by the heart rate and how much blood is coming out of the heart because the heart is pumping the blood into these blood vessels.

And the area is dictated by the radius of our arterioles, our blood vessels.

So blood pressure will vary based on heart rate, how much blood is coming out of the heart, and also the surface area of our arterioles.

So it is a constantly changing dynamic variable.

It is not something which is static all the time, and this is a common misconception amongst the general public.

And blood pressure will go up physiologically depending on what you're doing.

So if you're moving, your heart rate will go up, your blood pressure will go up.

If you are stressed, your blood pressure will go up.