Blood pressure is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and is the pressure of the circulating blood being exerted upon the arterial walls of the blood vessels. Blood pressure is determined by ones cardiac output, blood volume, and peripheral resistance. Blood pressure is expressed by a systolic pressure and diastolic pressure and is measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg). Systolic pressure is the maximum pressure during ventricular contraction of the left ventricle while diastolic pressure is the minimum pressure used when the left ventricle relaxes. The differences between systolic pressure and diastolic pressure is called pulse pressure. Normal blood pressure ranges for an adult falls between 90/60 mmHg - 120/80 mmHg. …show more content…
By proceeding further into the website, the instructions provided on the left scroll bar were read and put into use to complete the lab. By clicking on the “Gender” scroll bar, a “Male” and “Female” category appeared. By clicking on the “Age Range” scroll bar, various age ranges appeared beginning with 11-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54. To summarize, 100 people in total were used for this blood pressure experience. ten of each gender in each age age category. After selecting a “gender” and an “age range”, the “measure blood pressure” button on the top right was clicked in order to measure all ten of the patient’s blood pressure by using a sphygmomanometer. For example, the first “Gender” I selected was males with the “Age Range” of 11-17. By clicking “measure blood pressure”, the blood pressures of all ten males ages 11-17 appeared. The number superior on the machine, the higher number, is the patients systolic pressure; while the inferior number, the lower number, is the patient’s diastolic pressure. This step was repeated until all genders and all ages of all 100 patients blood pressure were calculated. The averages were calculated by adding the total of all ten patients of each category systolic or diastolic pressure, and then dividing that total amount by ten because there were ten patients in each group. Data was …show more content…
However, between the age groups 11-17 and 18-24, there was not a significant change in blood pressure. As the age group increased the blood pressure average stayed constant and fell between normal range. Females age group 18-24 surprisingly had a lower systolic and diastolic pressure than the youngest age group 11-17 of 116/75. For females, and increase in age group 18-24 to 25-34 rarely changed and the blood pressure average went from 116/75 to 116/76. Above all, my hypothesis was mostly proven correct and systolic and diastolic pressures did increase with age. In addition, the different factors did correlate with the increased blood pressure. People who smoked, drank alcohol, and did not exercise were more at risk of hypertension than those who did not. High salt diet leads to high blood pressure because it leads to vasoconstriction of the body, leading to blood pressure increase. High blood pressure makes the left ventricle of your heart work overtime leading to many cardiovascular complications. A source of error that could be found in this experiment is not doing multiple trials. A future experiment that could be done to improve this experiment is to allow more trials before finding averages; or to do the same experiment with different factors. For example, if I were to repeat this experiment I would like to test how