Is high blood pressure always bad?

High blood pressure can sometimes have a protective effect. Up to 75 million adults in the United States have high blood pressure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

What's high blood pressure? The answer is difficult, for experts still debate the level of normal blood pressure.

Various organizations currently provide different guidelines on high blood pressure.

For example, the National Institute of Hearts, Tribes, and Blood explains that in adults, hypertension is a sustainable “Styrolic reading of 140m Hg or higher”. However, the American Heart Association (AHA) suggests that hypertension occurs when a person has a systolic blood pressure of 130 mm Hg or higher. Meanwhile, the CDC considers people with systolic blood pressure of 120-139 mm Hg as the only “at risk of” hypertension.

In general, doctors recommend their patients especially older adults to keep blood pressure monitoring and to keep it under control to ensure that he does not reach the threshold of hypertension, which many health - care professionals consider to be a risk factor for heart disease.

Now, however, a study conducted by scholars in Charité The Universityätzmediz Berlin in Germany suggests that some older people may not face other health problems if they have high blood pressure. In fact, researchers note, that some 80-year-old people may benefit from high blood pressure, the Kosovas Press broadcasts.

The new research whose findings were published in the European Heart magazine observed a group of 1,628 women and men at an average age of 81. They were all 70 or older when they joined in 2009, and they were all attending anti-hypertension treatments.

Researchers collected data on the health state of participants through the Berlin Initiative Study, a Charité research project. They surveyed participants every two years and measured their blood pressure.

After six years, researchers conducted a statistical analysis to find out how blood pressure could affect a person's mortality risk. They also looked at potentially confused factors, such as sex, lifestyle, body mass index (BMI) and how many anti-blood pressure drugs each person had taken.

They found that people 80-year-olds and older who had low blood pressure -- 140/90m Hg or less -- had a death risk of 40 percent higher than those with blood pressure exceeding those thresholds.

Even people who already had a stroke or heart presented a similar link between blood pressure levels and the risk of mortality.

The team also points out that people with lower blood pressure than 140/90m Hg had a 61 per cent higher death risk than those with high pressure, despite their anti-hypertension regime.