My longtime interest in blood pressure became focused when I was bitten by an unseen insect two years ago while gardening. The bite turned into a Lyme-disease-appearing target the next day, so I went to the emergency room for professional analysis. My blood pressure had shot up to 180/?, and I wasn’t feeling well. The older nurse asked all the right questions and did the Lyme test, and it appeared I didn’t have Lyme disease, but my blood was retested a month later and still was negative. However, the bite still looked ugly, and now it is two years later, and it is only now fully cleared up. Because of that event, I purchased an Omron blood pressure monitor, have taken my blood pressure frequently, and have a monthly average since then. It turned out my July 2019 was 122/61, which gives a pulse pressure (PP) (122 – 61) = 61. Those figures are okay but a little high, so I decided to lower them with home remedies, rather than prescription drugs, like eating garlic, fish oil-krill oil, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar in water. These measures seem to have been the cause of my BP dropping to a very consistent monthly average of 112/58 and a PP= 54.


Because of those interests, it was easy for me to choose blood pressure as the measure of health; as part of my series of posts on the human search for measuring Ben Franklin’s idea of happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy. That worked out well for wealth by using the FICO scores as the measurable proxy for wealth. And, it worked out okay by using the contracted form of human maturity, which I created decades ago. So, my soon-to-be-published probe into happiness is looking okay, and I thought the post on health would be satisfied using blood pressure as the measurable proxy.


That required learning how to read electrocardiogram chart waves which turns out to be a strange quest because there seems to be an infinity of variations with definable causes. In addition to that study, there are ongoing controversies over how to interpret blood pressure to maximize the health and longevity of the varieties of human bodily forms. My goal was, and still is, to summarize the whole thing into a five-point definable scale rather than have an amorphous jumble of opinions. I have drawn a potentially useful diagram, but it has been incredibly complicated by the varieties of confusing sources defining the same material with different numbers. For example, defining a normal blood pressure doesn’t point to anything definitive, only general statements and widely changing official definitions of normal. For example, a couple of decades ago, normal systolic pressure was 100 plus the subject’s age; thus, a 20-year-old was 100 + 20 = 120, and an 80-year-old was 100 + 80 = 180. Then a decade ago, normal systolic was redefined as below 140. Then a few years ago, systolic was changed to below 120 but with no lower systolic defined, even though below 90 gives problems, and below 50 is a coma and if sustained, death.


And then, a problem arose as massive data came in, and it discovered that outcomes got worse when people were going below 140/80. So with my age of 86, a blood pressure of 112/58, and a PP= 54, I got worried. Perhaps my stats should be aligned with the new ideal. Well, I dug deeper and discovered that the critical element was the pulse pressure. My pulse pressure was low, meaning that I don’t have hardening of the arteries, which causes high PP, which has been creating those distortions on the curves seen below.

There is an analysis of health statistics in a recent Atlantic that throws light on alternate measures of health.