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Measuring blood pressure is a painless procedure and everyone has the experience of it at least once in his life time. Measuring blood pressure can render useful information on the physical condition of the heart and the blood vessels. Blood pressure measurement includes measuring systolic, the maximum pressure and diastolic, the lowest pressure.

The systolic pressure can be defined as the maximum pressure in an artery at a specific physical condition when the heart is functioning and pumping out the blood through the body. The diastolic pressure refers to the lowest pressure in an artery when the heart is at rest. Both the measurement are equally important as far as measuring blood pressure is concerned. If any of the reading is abnormal, then, it indicates hypertension or high blood pressure.

For measuring blood pressure, you need to get relaxed first. It is always advised that you should lie on an examination couch before the blood pressure check up. Let us take a look at the various steps of measuring blood pressure: An inflated cuff is wrapped around the upper arm with Velcro. The cuff has got a tube and it extends to the rubber bulb. The second tube of the cuff is connected with the reservoir of mercury at the bottom of the vertical glass column of the blood pressure measuring machine. The mercury column will show the pressure that the cuff is experiencing. The pressure of the cuff is traveling to the mercury through the rubber tubes and the mercury is placed in a sealed system.

As the air is blown into the cuff , the pressure increases and the cuff gets tightened on the upper arm. The pulse is monitored by the doctor through stethoscope on your arm when the air is slowly going out of the cuff. The systolic measure is equivalent to that measurement which the mercury shows when the doctor first hears the pulse and the diastolic pressure is the one when the doctors is unable to hear any pulse beats. The blood pressure is usually measured in terms of millimeters of mercury.

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