BP

BP is short for blood pressure. Blood pressure measures how hard your blood is pushing against the walls of your blood vessels. It's made up of two numbers: systolic (the higher number) and diastolic (the lower number). A healthy blood pressure is usually around 120/80 mmHg. High blood pressure is usually 140/90 mmHg or higher. Low blood pressure is usually 90/60 mmHg or lower. We measure our blood pressure with a special machine called a sphygmomanometer. The sphygmomanometer has a cuff that we put around our arm and it pumps air into the cuff to make it tighten around our arm and measure how much our blood is pushing against our blood vessels.