High Diastolic Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is usually denoted by two numbers written like a fraction one on top of the other. These numbers show the two pressure values the systolic and the diastolic. The diastolic is the lesser of the two and is written below. This value is the reading of the pressure when the heart is at rest between two successive beats. Increases in these values indicate an elevation of pressure. The normal value for diastolic pressure is 80mm Hg.

People with a diastolic reading between 80 to 89 are considered prehypertensive and should modify lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise to prevent cardiovascular disease. Until recently, a person with high diastolic pressure was considered by doctors to be at high risk for coronary heart disease, but a recent study suggests that for people over the age of 60, pulse pressure is a better predictor of the disease.

Even among children high diastolic pressure has become a public health problem. However, high diastolic pressure still is a standard for diagnosing atherosclerosis for persons below the age of 60. Until recently, physicians assumed that high diastolic pressure was more serious than systolic hypertension. But there has been a change in view that elevated systolic pressure plays more of a role in the development of left ventricular hypertrophy and stroke than high diastolic pressure.

It would therefore be safe to assume that the control of systolic blood pressure is more important than the control of diastolic pressure in hypertensive men. High diastolic pressure is said to have of little value in predicting future cardiovascular risk. Diastolic blood pressure, which remains the main criterion used by most physicians to determine drug efficacy, appears to be of little value in determining cardiovascular risk. Evaluation of risk in treated individuals should take SBP rather than DBP values into account.