Alcohol: Does it affect blood pressure?

If you how does alcohol affect your blood pressure heavily and are unable to stop, you may benefit from a dedicated treatment program. These programs often involve a detox period, behavioral therapy, and counseling for long-term sobriety. Our free email newsletter offers guidance from top addiction specialists, inspiring sobriety stories, and practical recovery tips to help you or a loved one keep coming back and staying sober. Some affected areas include the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system , vasopressin and cortisol levels, and blood calcium levels.

Despite this finding, women should try not to engage in binge drinking. Second, lack of representation of the female population was notable in the included studies. Only four studies included almost equal numbers of male and female participants (Buckman 2015; Foppa 2002; Maufrais 2017; Zeichner 1985). Moreover, none of the studies reported male and female data separately.

Apostolidou 2015 published data only

Alcohol is the cause of high blood pressure inabout 16% of adultsin the United States. This increases the risk of strokes, heart attacks and other dangerous health conditions. While blood pressure medicine can help to reduce blood pressure, combining blood pressure medicine with alcohol creates its own set of risks and is generally not recommended. If someone has high blood pressure, they should avoid drinking alcohol as much as possible.

• Binge drinking is defined as four or more drinks within two hours for women and five or more drinks within two hours for men.
• Karatzi 2005 mentioned the method of blinding of participants, but it is not clear whether involved personnel were blinded as well.
• Quitting alcohol will typically help lower blood pressure by a significant amount, often withindays or weeksof stopping drinking.
• Although some of those effects can occur without alcohol consumption, avoiding alcohol helps decrease the risks.
• Also, studies have found³ that heavy drinkers are twice as likely as non-drinkers to develop any type of hypertension.

Individuals who drink alcohol in excess can help improve their overall health by stopping drinking. Moderate drinking means men consuming two drinks or fewer per day and women consuming one drink or fewer per day. Binge drinking means men consuming five or more drinks in about 2 hours and women consuming four or more drinks in about 2 hours. Alcohol prevents the body’s baroreceptors from detecting a need to stretch the blood vessels and increase their diameter, causing an increase in blood pressure. When blood pressure decreases, these receptors help minimize how much the blood vessels stretch to increase blood pressure. Similarly, when blood pressure increases, these receptors increase the stretching of the blood vessel walls in order to decrease blood pressure.

High Blood Pressure from Alcohol Consumption

For most https://ecosoberhouse.com/ with hypertension, there are no obvious signs or symptoms. This is why hypertension can go undetected for years if people do not have their blood pressure checked. Blood pressure is the force exerted by your blood flowing on the walls of your arteries—tubular structures that carry blood to different parts of your body. This means that your blood pressure is determined by both the amount of blood your heart pumps through your body’s arteries as well as the amount of resistance to this blood flow. That is why alcohol detox and alcohol withdrawal treatment is administered by medical professionals.

Over time, the force and friction of this pressure can damage the tissues inside of your arteries, causing problems like LDL cholesterol or “bad” cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is known as “bad” cholesterol because it refers to the collection of plaque in your arteries, which can create tiny tears along the artery walls. The more plaque builds up, the narrower the insides of the arteries become, making it more difficult for blood to get through, thus increasing blood pressure. This can ultimately lead to conditions like arrhythmia , heart attack, and stroke.

Authors’ conclusions

We link primary sources — including studies, scientific references, and statistics — within each article and also list them in the resources section at the bottom of our articles. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy. Alcohol increases the risk of several other short- and long-term health issues.