Your vitals are the basic measurements that show whether your body is working properly. When a doctor or nurse checks your vitals, they measure things like your heart rate (how fast your heart beats), your temperature, your breathing rate, and your blood pressure. These measurements are called vital signs because they reveal essential information about your health.

Your vitals are the body's fundamental operations: the pumping of your heart, the flow of your blood, the rhythm of your breathing. If something goes wrong with these core functions, doctors need to know immediately.

In emergency situations, paramedics check a person's vitals first to understand how serious the problem is. A stable set of vitals means the body's basic systems are functioning. Unstable vitals signal that something needs urgent attention.

Outside of medicine, people sometimes use vitals more loosely to mean essential information or key statistics about anything important. A pilot might check the vitals of an airplane's engines before takeoff, or a teacher might review the vitals of her students' test performance.