To understand high blood pressure, or hypertension, it’s important to know how the heart works.
When you’re healthy, your heart pumps blood throughout your body, delivering nutrients and vitamins to your organs. This helps them to stay healthy and do their jobs.
Inside each of your blood vessels, the heart’s pumping action puts pressure on the blood to push it. This moves blood through your blood vessels.
Blood pressure measures how hard your blood is pushing against these blood vessel walls.