High Blood Pressure

Let’s read a story about hypertension or high blood pressure
 

Sunita’s mother had not been feeling well for a few days. She was feeling tired and having headache for nearly 2 weeks but she was hesitant to go to see a doctor. She thought that these are not very serious symptoms. Sunita managed to convince her and took her to the hospital to consult doctor Mahi. After waiting for their turn for half an hour they went to the doctor’s cabin. Sunita’s mother told Dr.Mahi that she was not feeling good for last few days. She was getting tired very soon. The doctor told her that she will check mother’s blood pressure.

 

Sunita saw the doctor open a box like instrument.
The lid had a scale containing some liquid substance, while inside the box was kept a                  

rubber bag with cuff and rubber pump.

The doctor kept talking to Sunita’s mother while wounding the cuff tight
around her arm. She also used a stethoscope. She asked her, 'what is your age?' she also asked about food habits and stress. she then said that the blood pressure is currently higher than normal and we need to keep checkig it regularly. 
 

“Blood pressure? What is that?” Sunita asked.

Doctor Mahi told her, “This is the pressure exerted by blood on the pipes that carry blood in
our body. Every time the heart beats, it pushes the blood with some pressure in the blood vessels. The blood pressure meter is used to measure the pressure in blood pipes. The stethoscope is used to hear the sound produced inside the body by   the heartbeats.”

All this was surprising for Sunita.

“Blood pressure or ‘BP’ of most of the people varies within a certain range during most of the day” the doctor continued. “That range is called normal. Sometimes for a person, blood pressure becomes constantly higher or lower than the normal range and this can be dangerous for our body.”

 

She prescribed some medicine and asked her to come after one week. She advised Sunita’s mother reduce salt and oil in her food and told her to get her B.P checked from time to time.

Let’s investigate how blood flow can be affected.

Heart pumps blood into the blood pipes and these pipes carry blood to different organs. Blood pressure is different in different people and also varies during a day for the same person. There are different factors that affect our blood pressure. One of the factors is blood flow i.e., amount of blood that flows in the blood pipes at a time.

What will reduce flow of blood through blood pipes? 
Make a guess and write it down in your notebook.