Diastolic is the lower of the two numbers. It measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart is resting between heart beats

Low blood pressure

High blood pressure

Blood pressure readings are expressed in millimeters of mercury. This unit is abbreviated as mm Hg

Multimorbidity is commonly understood to be the coexistence of multiple health conditions in an individual. A related term, comorbidity, describes the burden of illness co-existing with a particular disease of interest. Multimorbidity is a growing global public health challenge as populations age and the prevalence of long-term conditions rises.

Polypharmacy is most commonly defined as the use of five or more medications daily by an individual. However, the definition of polypharmacy is still debated and can vary from two to 11 concurrent medications. Some studies also generally define polypharmacy as the use of multiple concurrent medications or simultaneous long term use of different drugs by the same individual.

Essential hypertension (also called primary hypertension, or idiopathic hypertension) is the form of hypertension that by definition has no identifiable secondary cause. It is the most common type affecting 85% of those with high blood pressure. The remaining 15% is accounted for by various causes of secondary hypertension. Primary hypertension tends to be familial and is likely to be the consequence of an interaction between environmental and genetic factors. Prevalence of essential hypertension increases with age, and individuals with relatively high blood pressure at younger ages are at increased risk for the subsequent development of hypertension. Hypertension can increase the risk of cerebral, cardiac, and renal events.

Protective factors are conditions or attributes (skills, strengths, resources, supports or coping strategies) in individuals, families, communities or the larger society that help people deal more effectively with stressful events and mitigate or eliminate risk in families and communities.
In the field of Preventive Medicine and Health Psychology, Protective Factors refer to any factor that decreases the chances of a negative health outcome occurring. Conversely, a Risk factor will increase the chances of a negative health outcome occurring. Just as statistical correlations and regressions can examine how a range of independent variables impact a dependent variable, we can examine how many Protective and Risk factors contribute to the likelihood of an illness occurring.

A factor that is associated with an increased risk of developing a disease. For example, being obese can increase the risk of developing certain cancers. Risk factors can be genetic, environmental (such as where you live or pollution levels), medical, related to lifestyle (drinking, smoking etc). Having a risk factor does not mean that you will definitely develop a disease, it just means that people who have that factor are more likely to develop disease than people without the risk factor.

Secondary hypertension (or, less commonly, inessential hypertension) is a type of hypertension which by definition is caused by an identifiable underlying primary cause. It is much less common than the other type, called essential hypertension, affecting only 5-10% of hypertensive patients. It has many different causes including endocrine diseases, kidney diseases, and tumors. It also can be a side effect of many medications.

Blood pressure is recorded with two numbers – systolic and diastolic. Systolic is the higher of the two numbers. It measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart beats (when the heart muscle contracts).