Medicine: How's Your Blood Pressure?

If your doctor tells you that you have a blood pressure of 130, he means that you're all right on that score. (Normal adult blood pressure: 110 to 150.) He also means that the pressure in your arteries will drive up a column of mercury 130 millimetres high, or a column of water about five feet ten inches high. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, causes headaches, dizziness, insomnia, leads eventually to hardened arteries and overburdened hearts. Hypertension kills more people a year—some 375,000 in the U. S. —than cancer. Specialists call patients with high blood pressure "hypertensives." Dr. Irvine H. Page...

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