Your heart will beat about 100,000 times today. That’s 100,000 times your high blood pressure could be damaging the blood vessels leading to your eyes, heart, brain and kidneys – today and every day. In time, that untreated high blood pressure may result in eye and kidney damage, stroke, heart attack, heart failure and other serious health problems.

National guidelines were recently issued for the prevention and management of high blood pressure. The report is titled The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure, or "JNC 7" for short.

The report states that a normal blood pressure reading for most adults is less than 120/80 mm Hg.
National guidelines say that for individuals aged 40 to 70 years, as blood pressure numbers rise above normal range, so does your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. For example, beginning at 115/75 mm Hg, every 20 point increase in your systolic (top) number or 10 point increase in your diastolic (bottom) number doubles your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

Readings at or above 140/90 mm Hg for most adults and at or above 130/80 mm Hg for people with diabetes and chronic kidney disease mean that blood pressure is too high.
Patients with those numbers should make healthy lifestyle changes and possibly receive prescription medication.

		About half of those people who have a first heart attack, and two-thirds of those who have a stroke, have blood pressure higher than 160/95 mm Hg.

People with a systolic blood pressure of 120-139 mm Hg or a diastolic blood pressure of 80-89 mm Hg are also at risk.
According to the JNC 7 guidelines, people with a blood pressure reading in this range are considered to be "pre-hypertensive," and they require healthy changes to their lifestyle in order to prevent the development of cardiovascular (heart or blood vessel) disease, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

Adopting a healthier lifestyle is critical for hypertensive and pre-hypertensive patients.
The guidelines also recommend weight reduction, dietary changes (such as reducing salt in your diet), increasing physical activity, decreasing alcohol intake and stopping smoking.