Physicians have been able to measure their patients’ blood pressure for more than a century, have known about the dangers of hypertension for decades, and have recognized two very important facts: both elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure are each risk factors for heart disease and stroke. In the past, it was clearly inappropriate for physicians to focus solely on systolic readings and for treatment to focus solely on lowering systolic blood pressure. Studies have confirmed that controlling systolic blood pressure is as important as controlling diastolic blood pressure in reducing risk factors for cardiovascular disease. There is no such thing as a “normal” or “safe” blood pressure, and the risk of cardiovascular disease is positively correlated with blood pressure readings. In other words, within a certain range, in the absence of other serious illnesses, you are at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease if your blood pressure is in the lower range, while the higher your blood pressure, the greater your risk. In order to facilitate clinical diagnosis and guide the treatment of hypertensive patients, the Chinese hypertension guidelines recommend criteria for the diagnosis and staging of hypertension, as shown in the table below. It should be noted that if the systolic and diastolic blood pressure are not in the same period, the stage of hypertension should be the period where the high blood pressure reading is located, e.g., 160/92 mmHg should be stage II, 180/120 mmHg should be stage IV, and simple systolic hypertension of 170/85 mmHg should be diagnosed as systolic hypertension stage II.