INFOGRAPHIC: See our quick guide to causes, and treatments, for low diastolic blood pressure.

(Ahmed remains an adjunct faculty member at UAB.) But your coronary arteries are different they are surrounding the aortic valve, so they get blood only when the aortic valve closes - and that happens in diastole.”ĭiastolic pressure has been getting more attention lately, however, thanks in part to an influential paper in Hypertension, written in 2011 by Guichard and Ali Ahmed, M.D., then a professor of medicine in UAB’s Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Care and now the associate chief of staff for Health and Aging at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “The majority of your arteries feed your organs during systole. “Systolic blood pressure is the focus, and diastolic pressure is almost completely ignored.” That is a mistake, he argues.

“Physicians are busy people, and like it or not they often focus on a single number,” Guichard said. Systolic pressure attracts the lion’s share of attention from physicians and patients, says UAB cardiologist Jason Guichard, M.D., Ph.D.

Diastolic pressure, the force exerted when the heart is at rest, is on the bottom - in more ways than one. Systolic pressure, the force exerted on blood vessels when the heart beats, is the upper number.