Mitchell S.V. Elkind, M.D., is American Heart Association president-elect, Chair of the Advisory Committee of the American Stroke Association — a division of the American Heart Association and professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University in New York.  
copyright American Heart Association 

"When you tell people that lowering their blood pressure is going to reduce their chance of having a stroke or a heart attack, by 25 percent which is what spring showed, that sounds good, but you know what does that number mean, in real terms, you know. What was my risk before, and what will this actually do for me? And this latest analysis suggests that for a man who is 50 years old, that lowering blood pressure to that target, could extend your lifespan by 3 years, on average. For older people it was a bit less, so, for a 65 year old it would be perhaps just over a year, and for those who are in their 80's it might me for 10 months or so. Obviously the longer one lives, the older you get, the less they benefit is, because there's an ultimate limit to how long any of us can live of course. But understanding that benefit of blood pressure reduction in terms of length of life, is I think, a helpful way, perhaps for many people to conceive of this benefit."