Does drinking alcohol cause high blood pressure

Hypertension is relatively common in life. Many people have high blood pressure due to certain reasons. Most patients know the cause, but some patients do not know why they have high blood pressure. In fact, the most common causes of high blood pressure are obesity, long-term consumption of salty foods, etc. People with high blood pressure are generally very careful about drinking. So, can drinking alcohol cause high blood pressure?

If a patient with hypertension goes to the hospital for treatment, the doctor will definitely warn him not to drink alcohol in daily life. Why? In fact, everyone knows that drinking alcohol can lead to high blood pressure. Therefore, for patients with hypertension, drinking alcohol will naturally aggravate the condition of hypertension. So let’s take a look at the effects of drinking alcohol on high blood pressure. I hope patients can pay more attention.

Observational studies have shown that excessive alcohol consumption is associated with increased blood pressure and a higher prevalence of hypertension. Men who drank more than three to five drinks a day and women who drank two to three drinks a day were particularly at risk, while those who drank less than that did not increase their risk.

Observational studies also show a J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and blood pressure. Light drinkers (1-2 drinks a day) had lower blood pressure than abstainers, while those who drank 3 or more drinks a day had a small but significant increase in blood pressure compared with nondrinkers. The type of alcohol was not consistent with risk, and long-term drinkers had a greater impact on blood pressure than new drinkers. One study reported that men who reduced their drinking for more than 20 years had lower increases in blood pressure with age than those who did not reduce their drinking. Several short-term studies suggest that reducing alcohol consumption may be beneficial in the treatment of hypertension. Control studies have shown that reducing alcohol consumption is associated with a 4-8 mmHg drop in systolic blood pressure and a slight drop in diastolic blood pressure. The blood pressure of people with normal blood pressure can also decrease as they reduce alcohol consumption.

A prospective study of 10 groups of people in China also showed that the amount of alcohol consumed at baseline was significantly positively correlated with the incidence of hypertension. For every 100-gram increase in daily liquor consumption, the relative risk of hypertension increased by 19% to 26%. A 1998 Japanese study on middle-aged men showed that if the amount of alcohol consumed per day was less than 46g, the risk of blood pressure rising above the critical level increased by 35%; if the amount of alcohol consumed per day was more than 46g, the risk increased by 73%. Therefore, drinking can directly cause the occurrence of high blood pressure.