Mean Arterial Pressure

Mean arterial pressure is the average pressure in your arteries over one complete heartbeat. Because the heart spends roughly twice as long relaxed as it does contracting, the average is weighted toward the lower of your two blood pressure readings rather than sitting halfway between them.

It matters because it is closer to the pressure your organs are actually supplied at. A figure above about 60 mmHg is generally taken as enough to keep the kidneys and brain perfused, and most healthy adults at rest come out somewhere between 70 and 100.

It is also a convenient way to watch a trend. Systolic and diastolic readings both bounce around from one measurement to the next, and following a single combined number over weeks is often easier to read than following two.

What it is not

It does not replace the two readings it came from. Two people with very different systolic pressures can share a mean arterial pressure, and a clinician looks at all three figures together. It is also not a diagnosis of anything on its own.

Where you see it in FitnessSyncer

Every reading that arrives from a connected monitor, or that you log in the Notebook, has its mean arterial pressure worked out automatically and charted alongside your blood pressure. You can also work one out by hand with our mean arterial pressure calculator.