What good does a blood pressure reading do if you are sitting down with a perfect 120/80 but once you start doing activity’s it rises 10-20 values. Considering that we are active most of the day would the higher values be bad for our body?
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As others have mentioned, the answer has to do with the difficulty in accurately measuring. But difficulty alone is not the full answer, as it also had to do with something called baseline values. In order to even establish what a normal blood pressure is, we have to test a LOT of people (like tens of thousands). Now, to get a value for the healthy range we’d have to make sure everyone is exerting themselves equally as hard, say 70% of max performance. How do you ensure that everyone is at exactly 70%? It’s far, far, FAR, easier to simply tell everyone to stay at rest and measure this value to establish the baseline value. A number on its own with no context is meaningless, and you get the most context with a resting BP.
Bonus: 120/80 is actually the MAX BP that is considered healthy, not a target value. Ideally you’d be a bit under this, maybe 110/70.
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