Alcohol: Does it affect blood pressure?

Answer Section

Drinking too much alcohol can raise pressure on the walls of blood vessels to unhealthy levels. Having more than three drinks in one sitting raises blood pressure for a short time. Binge drinking over and over can cause long-term rises in blood pressure.

To understand how much alcohol is too much, it may be helpful to know what excessive drinking means.

• Binge drinking means four or more drinks within two hours for women and five or more drinks within two hours for men.
• Average drinking is up to one drink a day for women, two for men.
• Heavy alcohol use means more than three drinks a day for women, four for men.

Heavy alcohol users who cut back to average drinking can lower their top number in a blood pressure reading by about 5.5 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) and their bottom number by about 4 mm Hg.

If you have high blood pressure, do not drink alcohol or don't drink much alcohol. For healthy adults, that means up to one drink a day for women and up to two drinks a day for men.

A drink is:

• 12 ounces (355 milliliters) of beer.
• 5 ounces (148 milliliters) of wine.
• 1.5 ounces (44 milliliters) of 80-proof distilled spirits.

Remember that alcohol has calories and may cause weight gain. Weight gain will raise your chance of getting high blood pressure. Alcohol may change how certain blood pressure medicines work. It may affect the level of the medicine in the body or cause more side effects.