Arterial stiffness
A young artery is elastic: it swells with each beat and gives the energy back. A stiff one does not, so the pressure wave returns early and the heart meets its own echo. This is not the number on the cuff. Central pressure and pulse wave velocity are regarded as better predictors than the peripheral reading — they describe what the vessel is actually like rather than what it happens to measure at the arm. The honest limit: this is a smaller evidence base than the pressure lane itself. It rests chiefly on one double-blind trial where aged garlic moved central pressure, pulse pressure and stiffness together, and on a diabetes trial where taurine moved pulse wave velocity. Good signals, not a settled literature.
In depth
Arterial stiffness — pulse wave velocity, central pressure and pulse pressure.
What drives it
Reduces sugar damage increases it.
Advanced glycation end-products cross-link long-lived arterial collagen and elastin, stiffening the wall and raising pulse-wave velocity. PMID 39857721
Tissue remodeling reduces it.
Type-I collagen deposition in the arterial media raises the collagen-to-elastin ratio and therefore wall stiffness. PMID 39112507
What it drives
It increases Blood pressure.
The principal cause of increased systolic and pulse BP is increased stiffness of the elastic arteries as a result of degeneration and hyperplasia of the arterial wall. PMC6271566
Blends that modulate it
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Blends that reach it upstream
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See it on the map
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