What Is The Difference Between Systolic And Diastolic Blood Pressure?

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When thinking about blood pressure it’s important to understand that it is your circulatory system that we’re talking about.

I know it always helps me to have pictures so let’s take a look at a couple to understand the body a bit more.

As you probably know, the heart is our life pump and it pumps out blood that passes through all of the arteries and arterials in the body. As you can see in the pictures above, it shows all the arteries (red), veins (blue) and so forth. We need blood to pump through our body to keep us alive.

Once the heart pumps out the blood there is an exchange of materials with the cells of the body and in the lungs there is an exchange of oxygenated blood for deoxygenated blood.

Measuring Blood Pressure
When we see a blood pressure measurement it will look something like this 120/80 and the doctor or person taking your blood pressure will say “Your blood pressure is 120 over 80”.

Systolic Blood Pressure
The top number (120) represents systolic blood pressure and measures the force of the blood in the arteries when the heart beats/contracts.

Diastolic Blood Pressure
The bottom number (80) represents diastolic blood pressure and measures the force of the blood in between beats, or the resting pressure of your circulatory system.

Here’s a picture of the heart that shows the different heart chambers and how systolic is when the heart pumps and pushes blood out, and the diastolic is when it’s resting and filling up.