What causes blood pressure?
With each beat, your heart pumps blood to your arteries and creates two kinds of force—or pressure—in your arteries.
- The first kind of force happens when blood is pumped into your arteries and through your circulatory system.
- The second force happens when your arteries resist the blood flow. In a healthy person, the arteries are elastic and they stretch a bit when blood is pumped through them. How much they stretch depends on how much force the blood exerts.
Under normal conditions, your heart beats between 60 and 80 times a minute and your blood pressure changes frequently, increasing with each heartbeat and decreasing when the heart rests between beats.