Ohm’s Law of Electricity applied to fluid flow
V = IR
Blood Pressure = (Cardiac Output) x (the Resistance to blood flow)
and
Cardiac Output = (Heart Rate) x (Stroke Volume, the amount of blood pumped with each heart beat)
Heart Rate (HR) falls with aging due to deterioration of the heart’s natural pacemaker. Blood Pressure (BP) is initially maintained by increasing Stroke Volume (SV). If SV can’t increase to compensate, BP is dependent on increasing Resistance (R), also known as peripheral resistance, the pathophysiologic hallmark of hypertensive disease.
The aging heart loses the ability to increase SV. Couple this with a falling HR, and R must increase. Increasing R creates a viscous cycle. The higher the R, the harder the heart must work to push blood against it. This leads to more thickening and stiffening of the heart muscle that eventually reduces SV further, and the heart fails. Based upon Dr. Michael Burnam’s theory and clinical data from more than two hundred patients, we believe that a falling HR is the missing link in the treatment of both drug resistant hypertension and the commonest form of heart failure.
Blood pressure is dynamic, not static. It can change from minute to minute due to exercise, emotion, temperature, eating, and even the time of day. Increasing the pacemaker’s resting heart rate is not enough. The answer is PressurePace™, the world’s first dynamic closed loop system that regulates a pacemaker in response to real-time blood pressure measurements.
