Day 253 - 21 May 96 - Page 31


     
     1        about which you should take some sort of action.
     2
     3   Q.   Again, we see that not by very much perhaps, I do not know
     4        what the significance of the units is, but the French
     5        exceed us in both the middle pink and the dark pink, do
     6        they not?
     7        A.  Yes.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let me catch up a moment, please, Mr.
    10        Rampton.
    11
    12   MR. RAMPTON:  I am sorry, my Lord.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What are the figures at figure 2.22?
    15        A.  They are millimetres of mercury which is the
    16        traditional way of measuring blood pressure.
    17
    18   Q.   Yes, but those must be diastolic unless I have just got my
    19        terms all the way round.  The systolic blood pressure is
    20        when the heart is pumping?
    21        A.  Yes.
    22
    23   Q.   And the diastolic is when it is not pumping?
    24        A.  Yes.  It is the return if you like. The major one is
    25        the exertion that the heart has to make in order to push
    26        blood around the circulation, and that is the systolic
    27        measurement, so the higher that is, the harder the work the
    28        heart has to do to push blood through the circulation and
    29        if blood vessels are obstructed.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I understand now.  The pale blue is between
    32        140 and white is less than 140, I am just catching up.  The
    33        figures along the bottom are not actually levels of
    34        mercury.  They are percentages, are they not?
    35        A.  Percentage of the total, yes.
    36
    37   Q.   Yes, that is right.  I understand now.  I was thrown.  The
    38        irony is that if a healthy young man might expect his blood
    39        pressure to be something like 120 over 80, the figures
    40        along the bottom could be diastolic figures and would fall
    41        into place quite nicely, that is what completely threw me,
    42        but I see now.  I understand.  Thank you.
    43
    44   MR. RAMPTON:  Then?
    45        A.  Could I just make one point about these figures for
    46        blood pressure; this is to put them into perspective.  One
    47        is looking at values here 140, 150 for a substantial part
    48        of the population; what we were looking at yesterday was
    49        the possible effects of diet modification and the proposal
    50        that if we could reduce our salt intake to 6 grammes a day 
    51        it is calculated that this might reduce systolic blood 
    52        pressure on average by 2 or 3 milligrams.  Now, in relation 
    53        to 140 and 150, that is really not very much, and a much
    54        more effective way of treating hypertension of, course, is
    55        the use of drugs which have a much more dramatic effect
    56        than the avoidance of salt.  I do not mean by that that
    57        I think people should try and reduce the salt intake, but
    58        the idea that if we make such modifications in our diet we
    59        are going to see dramatic changes in blood pressure as a
    60        result of falling salt is just not the case.  It really is

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