Blood-pressure measurements include both systolic pressure, taken while the heart is pumping, and diastolic pressure, taken while the heart is at rest.

Often an asymptomatic condition, hypertension, or high blood pressure, nonetheless has a significant impact. Most people who have hypertension have healthy arteries. (Exceptions include individuals who have congenital blockages in the aorta called coarctations, obstructions in their renal [kidney] arteries, or benign tumors in their adrenal glands resulting in an overproduction of adrenaline.) So for most people, hypertension refers simply to an increase in either systolic or diastolic pressure, or in both pressures.