What is Blood pressure?

Blood pressure is how hard your blood pushes against the walls of your blood vessels when it’s moving around your body.

Imagine you have a balloon that you blow up and tie at the end. The more air you put in, the harder it pushes out against the balloon’s skin. Your heart works like a pump, it sends your blood through tubes called blood vessels, just like blowing air into a balloon.

When your heart beats, it pushes blood through these tubes. That push is what we call blood pressure. It goes up when your heart pumps and down when it rests in between beats.

Think of your blood vessels as straws. When you drink from a straw, the liquid moves because of how hard you suck, that’s like your heart working. If you suck really hard, the drink moves faster. That's similar to having high blood pressure, more push means your blood is moving faster through your body.

Sometimes your blood pressure stays too high for too long, which can make your heart and blood vessels work harder than they should. It’s like always blowing up a balloon really hard, it might pop one day!