Is it OK to drink beer if you have high blood pressure?

Hypertension is a disease that middle-aged and elderly people often encounter. Generally, it is related to drinking. If you drink lightly every day, it can help lower your blood pressure, but if you drink too much, it will cause your blood pressure to rise. Therefore, patients with hypertension cannot drink beer.

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 consistently associated with risk, and chronic drinkers had greater effects 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. Controlled studies have shown that reducing alcohol consumption is associated with a 4-8 mmHg drop in systolic blood pressure and a slightly lower 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 developing 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 it exceeded 46g, the risk increased by 73%.