Alcohol and High Blood Pressure: Effects and More, Explained

As a result, people who are intoxicated tend not to eat as healthily as they would if they weren’t under the influence. You can reduce hypertension by reducing your alcohol intake and following the treatment plan that your doctor recommends. According to a 2020 literature review, clinicians are not completely sure why alcohol raises blood pressure. However, even people who do not drink regularly have a risk of experiencing negative effects from alcohol.

• We did not see any significant change in blood pressure or heart rate after that, but the evidence was limited.
• Alcohol may make you fall asleep quickly, but you won’t stay that way for long, and even one night of bad sleep may result in a spike in blood pressure that night and the following day, according to a 2019 study in Psychosomatic Medicine.

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• However, in a recently conducted Mendelian randomization study, Vu and colleagues (2016) reported that low-to-moderate alcohol consumption reduced triglyceride and LDL-c and increased HDL-c, in particular the HDL2-c subfraction.
• It is important to note that there is no causal link to suggest that drinking, even moderately, contributes to better heart health.
• But it may be worthwhile learning about what counts as binge drinking and whether or not you may be drinking too much and don’t even know it.
• In some cases, moderate to high levels of alcohol may cause blood pressure to rise.
• Your doctor will often advise you when it’s safe to start drinking alcohol again, from a medical perspective.

Dehydration may cause your blood pressure to rise or fall, and alcohol tends to lead to dehydration, says Evan Appelbaum, MD, a cardiologist at Men’s Health Boston, a Harvard-affiliated multi-specialty practice. In this time of information overabundance, much of which is inaccurate, unhelpful, or even difficult to understand, Northwell Health is on a mission to make a difference as an honest, trusted, and caring partner. The site connects with consumers to provide them with personalized content that reduces their stress, makes them laugh, and ultimately feel more confident and capable on their healthcare journey. By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve likely become intimately familiar with the ways that alcohol affects your mood, your judgment, your sense of balance, and your ability to sleep. But you may not have given much thought to the ways that alcohol may affect your heart and your circulatory system. There’s not currently a recommended amount of alcohol for people with hypertension since this can vary from person to person.

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“Excessive alcohol consumption can cause nerve damage and irreversible forms of dementia,” Dr. Sengupta warns. If you drink every day, or almost every day, you might notice that you catch colds, flu or other illnesses more frequently than people who don’t drink. That’s because alcohol can weaken your immune system, slow healing and make your body more susceptible to infection. But there’s plenty of research to back up the notion that alcohol does lead to weight gain in general. Steatotic liver disease develops in about 90% of people who drink more than 1.5 to 2 ounces of alcohol per day. “Some people think of the effects of alcohol as only something to be worried about if you’re living with alcohol use disorder, which was formerly called alcoholism,” Dr. Sengupta says.

Characteristics of studies

Dr. Sengupta shares some of the not-so-obvious effects that alcohol has on your body. Alcohol also causes damage to the liver over time, especially if you drink too much. Those who drink regularly and consume more than the lower risk guidelines are likely to be advised to cut down or stop drinking completely. If you drink regularly, you might feel like https://ecosoberhouse.com/ alcohol doesn’t affect you as much, but this usually means you’ve developed a tolerance to some of the effects. To understand how much alcohol is too much, it may be helpful to know the definitions of excessive drinking. However, people who are dependent on alcohol or have been misusing alcohol for a long period of time may have difficulty quitting.

How much alcohol is safe to drink?

• But prolonged alcohol abuse can lead to chronic (long-term) pancreatitis, which can be severe.
• The recommended limits outlined in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are two drinks per day for males and one drink per day for females.
• Interestingly, the researchers found a nonlinear effect of alcohol consumption on HDL2-c levels.
• Most investigators also define the amount of alcohol that constitutes a “standard” drink as 12 to 15 g (with only slight variation).
• This supports the findings from other studies that the alcohol-induced changes in HDL-c do not fully account for the lower risk of CHD in moderate alcohol drinkers (Mukamal 2012).

Most of the included studies did not report the standard error (SE)/standard deviation (SD) of the mean difference (MD) for the outcomes of interest. As described in our protocol, when we were unable to obtain the required SE/SD from study authors or by calculation from the reported P value or 95% CI, we imputed data according to the pre‐specified imputation hierarchy. We most often used the reported endpoint SE/SD value to impute the SE/SD of MD.

While some people develop a tolerance to alcohol over time, this isn’t true for everyone — and this ability doesn’t last forever, Dr. Cho notes. It’s also important to know that the ways in which alcohol affects your heart will vary from person to person, depending can alcohol lower blood pressure on your age and other conditions you may have. ST extracted data, checked data entry, conducted data analysis, interpreted study results, and drafted the final review. A dose of 14 grams of pure alcohol/ethanol or less was defined as a low dose of alcohol.

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Other researchers have used genetic approaches (i.e., transgenic animals) to prevent ethanol-induced oxidative stress. One approach included overexpression of proteins such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which stimulates growth and cell proliferation and has antiapoptotic effects (see Zhang et al. 2014). In contrast to control mice, the IGF-1−expressing animals exhibited no evidence of changes in expression of antioxidant enzymes (i.e., superoxide dismutase-1) or any decreases in contractile function after 16 weeks of ethanol consumption. The findings suggest a protective effect of overexpression of IGF-1 in the transgenic animals (Zhang et al. 2014).

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If you regularly consume enough alcohol to increase your blood-alcohol concentration to an impaired level, you may be drinking more heavily than is recommended. The habit may contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, or other complications over time. Some studies have shown an association between moderate alcohol intake and a lower risk of dying from heart disease. The newest evidence suggests benefits for heart health of drinking alcohol are less and apply to a smaller group ofthe population than previously thought.

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Acute alcohol consumption mimics the pattern of social drinking, and evidence indicates that even one glass of an alcoholic drink can increase heart rate. The magnitude of the effects of alcohol on blood pressure and heart rate varies, based possibly on genetic factors and on the amount of alcohol consumed. We classified seven studies as having high risk of bias (Agewall 2000; Bau 2011; Dumont 2010; Fazio 2004; Karatzi 2013; Maufrais 2017; Van De Borne 1997). Agewall 2000 measured blood pressure upon arrival of participants and did not measure blood pressure after the intervention.

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• It is important to note that the dose of alcohol was comparatively higher (≥ ۶۰ g or ≥ ۱ g/kg) in nine studies (Bau 2005; Buckman 2015; Hering 2011; Narkiewicz 2000; Rosito 1999; Rossinen 1997; Stott 1987; Van De Borne 1997; Zeichner 1985).
• Pathophysiologic schema for the development of alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM).
• The molecular mechanisms through which alcohol raises blood pressure are unclear.
• After 13 hours, high doses of alcohol increased SBP by 3.7 mmHg compared to placebo.
• High blood pressure due to alcohol use can be reversible by reducing your intake and following your treatment plan.

Although eligible studies included East Asian, Latino, and Caucasian populations, they lacked African, South Asian, and Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander representation. Most of the hypertensive participants in the included studies were Japanese, so it is unclear if the difference in blood pressure between alcohol and placebo groups was due to the presence of genetic variants or the presence of hypertension. Large RCTs including both hypertensive and normotensive participants with various ethnic backgrounds are required to understand the effects of alcohol on blood pressure and heart rate based on ethnicity  and the presence of hypertension. More RCTs are needed to study the effects of low‐dose alcohol to better delineate the dose‐response effects of alcohol on BP and heart rate. RCTs with measurements more than 24 hours after alcohol consumption are needed to see how long the effect of high‐dose acute alcohol consumption lasts.