Heavily drinking can decrease baroreceptor sensitivity making them less responsive to changes in blood pressure. This would cause water retention and increased blood volume, ultimately increasing blood pressure. This leads to increased urine production, which can lead to a temporary decrease in blood volume and possibly a reduction in blood pressure. Many different systems are involved with how alcohol causes an increase in blood pressure. Alcohol causes an immediate slight reduction in blood pressure, then increases for several hours afterward.

Some observations suggest a transient increase while smoking a cigarette and that smoking increases blood pressure for more than 15 min . Although this result was similar to those from some past studies, we consider the accuracy and reliability of the present study to be a considerable improvement due to the larger sample size, the longer observation period of 8 years, and the statistical method used, compared to those in past studies. AOR of the onset of hypertension for tobacco consumption compared with nonsmokers. Figure 2 shows in graph form that there was a positive dose–response relationship between the onset of hypertension and smoking.

Binge drinking is characterized by consuming four or more drinks in two hours for women and five or more drinks in an hour for men. Factors such as age, genetics, and overall health also play a crucial role in determining risk levels. Heavy or binge drinking poses significant risks, particularly for these vulnerable groups. One significant concern is hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure. Even just one bout of drinking too much may weaken your body’s germ-fighting power for up to 24 hours.

Chronic heavy drinking—more than three drinks a day for women and more than four drinks a day for men—can lead to sustained high blood pressure. Consuming large amounts of alcohol in a single sitting—defined as binge drinking—can lead to temporary spikes in blood pressure. Genetic predispositions can influence how much alcohol affects blood pressure, with some individuals being more genetically inclined to develop hypertension. Binge drinking, defined as consuming four or more drinks in two hours for women and five or more drinks in the same period for men, can cause sudden spikes in blood pressure. High blood pressure is a critical risk factor for numerous serious health conditions. This guide explores how alcohol interacts with blood pressure and offers insights into managing and mitigating risks.

To provide you with the most relevant and helpful information, we may combine your email and website data with other information we have about you. We use the data you provide to deliver you the content you requested. Sign up for free and stay up to date on research advancements, health tips, current health topics, and expertise on managing health.

To our knowledge, there are no studies specifically designed to assess the relevance of alcohol consumption to hypertensive renal disease. It is well known that high blood pressure causes damage to the kidney and alcohol might add some detrimental effects to renal function in hypertension. Alcohol consumption was comparable in patients with and without left ventricular hypertrophy, whereas patients with diastolic dysfunction had significantly increased daily alcohol intake. Patients were grouped according to different levels of daily alcohol consumption, and blood pressure levels did not differ significantly among the groups. It is well established, in fact, that an increase in uric acid could be secondary to alcohol ingestion 64,65, and previous studies reported a significant and independent association of uric acid levels with hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy .

Moderate‐certainty evidence shows that acute consumption of medium to high doses of alcohol decreases blood pressure within the first six hours and for up to 12 hours after alcohol consumption. The magnitude and direction of the effects of alcohol on blood pressure depend on the time after alcohol consumption. Participants in those studies consumed alcohol regularly during the study period, whereas in our systematic review, we included only studies in which participants consumed alcohol for a short period. These differences in alcohol consumption duration and in outcome measurement times probably contributed to the wide variation in blood pressure in these studies and affected overall results of the meta‐analysis.

• After resting for 5 min, participants’ blood pressure was measured on the right arm three times at 1-min intervals.
• Because of its high prevalence in the general population, arterial hypertension is considered the leading risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality worldwide .
• All of the participants provided information about their typical drinking habits, based on how many grams of alcohol them consumed in a typical week.
• Several RCTs have reported the magnitude of effect of alcohol on blood pressure, but because those trials are small, their findings are not sufficient to justify a strong conclusion.
• However, they excluded studies for which the duration of BP observation was less than 24 hours and articles published in non‐English languages.
• The number of groups for alcohol consumption and smoking were determined to clarify the dose–response relationships for these variables.

Excluded at baseline were those who did not receive subsequent-year screening (1339 men), those who had already been diagnosed with hypertension (1491 men), and those with any missing data in the year of entry (559 men). At annual workers-health screenings in a manufacturing company, this prospective cohort study of Japanese male workers was performed over an 8-year period from 2002 to 2010. On the other hand, the relationship between smoking and hypertension was not found to be significant 13,14. This cohort study was performed over an 8-year period using the results of the annual workers-health screening. The amount of alcohol required to affect blood pressure can vary from person to person.

• So it’s always worth drinking less or quitting.
• Of the 32 included RCTs involving 767 participants, 26 trials used a cross‐over design and six used a parallel‐group design.
• During the study, both endothelin and PAI-1 levels progressively decreased in hypertensive heavy drinkers who stopped alcohol intake but remained elevated in patients who maintained alcohol consumption.
• In this study, the inverse association between alcohol intake and Lp(a) levels was independent of major confounders that included age, sex, smoking, LDL-cholesterol, fibrinogen, and glomerular filtration rate.
• Heavy alcohol use can cause deficiencies in specific components of the blood, including anemia (low red blood cell levels), leukopenia (low white blood cell levels), thrombocytopenia (low platelet levels), and macrocytosis (enlarged red blood cells).
• This leads to increased urine production, which can lead to a temporary decrease in blood volume and possibly a reduction in blood pressure.

Additionally, in a Mendelian randomization study that was conducted according to a variant of alcohol dehydrogenase, the protective effect of moderate alcohol intake was not observed when patients were randomized per genetic variant . Nonetheless, epidemiological evidence has emerged in support of the hypothesis of an inverse correlation between moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages and major cardiovascular events . US Nutrition Guidelines state that avoidance of alcoholic drinks is the best choice for health and, for people who are alcohol consumers, that daily intake should be limited to one drink or less for women or two drinks or less for men .

Mammen 2018 published data only

Blood pressure refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of your arteries as the heart pumps it around the body. If you’re a heavy drinker, your body may rebel at first if you cut off all alcohol. Over time, heavy drinking can cloud your perception of distances and volumes, or slow and impair your motor skills. Ease up on drinking so you may better ward off illnesses. Over time, large amounts of alcohol blunt your immune system and your body’s ability to repair itself.

Thus, we classified this study as having uncertain risk of bias. We classified the remaining four studies as having low risk of bias. Only 14 out of 34 studies reported the mean body weight of participants. Stott 1991 included relatively old participants (mean age 81, range 70 to 96 years) compared to the other studies.

Possible Blood Pressure SpikeFollowing heavy consumption, individuals might notice an uptick in heart rate and BP. For people already grappling with high blood pressure or cardiovascular challenges, knowing where alcohol fits into their lifestyle can be critical to maintaining stability and preventing complications. Yet beneath its social charm lies a well-documented effect on cardiovascular health, particularly on blood pressure. The alcohol wine contains is probably not beneficial, and you shouldn’t begin drinking to improve your health. Some people believe drinking alcohol in moderation, particularly red wine, is beneficial for your blood pressure. Heavy drinking can lead to chronic, persistent elevations in blood pressure, while binge drinking can lead to unhealthy extremes.

Methodological differences between studies might have affected measurement of the reported outcomes. This is unfortunate, as we have reason to believe that the effects of alcohol on BP might be greater in women. As a result, we were not able to quantify the magnitude of the effects of alcohol on men and women separately. Second, lack of representation of the female population was notable in the included studies. 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.

Puddey 1987 published data only

On average, drinkers consume 32.8 grams of pure alcohol per day, and beer (34.3%) is the most consumed alcoholic beverage (WHO 2018). Proper management of hypertension can lead to reduction in cardiovascular complications and how to identify liberty caps mortality (Kostis 1997; SHEP 1991; Staessen 1999). A population‐based study showed that the incidence of hypertension is higher in African descendants (36%) than in Caucasians (21%) (Willey 2014). In 2015, approximately 10.7 million deaths around the world were estimated to be attributable to hypertension‐related health complications (GBD 2015).

In these studies, alcohol, smoking, and hypertension are all factors similarly affecting the outcome of cardiovascular diseases. However, a transient increase in blood pressure while smoking cigarettes, as well as findings supportive of a causal association of smoking burden with a higher resting heart rate, were noted, despite how no direct relationship between smoking and hypertension has been documented 13,14. In these studies, a dose–response relationship between alcohol consumption and hypertension was specifically noted.

Similar findings with evidence of an inverse relationship between alcohol intake coping skills for addiction triggers and recovery and lipoprotein(a) concentrations was reported in 10,154 middle-aged patients . In both the Dutch and Greek studies, multivariable adjustments for possible confounders that included body weight, physical exercise, smoking, and type of diet were completed. The risk of type 2 diabetes was evaluated in linkage with the amount of alcohol ingested, reporting a U-shaped relationship, with a 53% lower risk of diabetes in patients consuming 1 glass of wine per day than abstainers.

Quality of the evidence

Similarly, the synergistic effects of alcohol and smoking are considered to play a major role in other various cancers as well. In this way, considering that alcohol and smoking are combined and that the sympathetic nervous system is frequently, repeatedly stimulated in such a way as to promote the onset of hypertension, we thought—from a combined perspective—that alcohol and smoking are likely to work synergistically to promote the onset of hypertension. Based on the above points, both alcohol and smoking share a common mechanism for the onset of hypertension as a single factor in that they both stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. Nicotine in tobacco smoke is said to play a major role in the mechanism of transient increase in blood pressure, and nicotine stimulates the adrenal glands to releases catecholamines and stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, thereby causing constriction of peripheral blood vessels, increase in blood pressure, and increase in heart rate . Furthermore, a meta-analysis from a total of 12 cohort studies showed that a linear dose–response (a relative risk of 1.57 at 50 g ethanol/day, and 2.41 at 100 g ethanol/day) was seen for men .

Stott 1991 published data only

Despite methodological limitations, due to the design of studies included in this analysis, the study reported a stronger association between alcohol consumption and incident hypertension in Asian subjects compared to Western subjects . In addition to the effects on BP, excess alcohol intake might contribute to cardiac and renal hypertensive organ damage, although some studies suggest possible benefits of moderate alcohol consumption on additional cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes and lipoprotein(a). Short-term studies showed a biphasic BP response after ingestion of high doses of alcohol, and sustained alcohol consumption above 30 g/day, significantly, and dose-dependently, increased the risk for hypertension. Other studies showed that not only the daily consumption of alcohol but also the habit of drinking alcohol more than 5 days/week increased the risk of the onset of hypertension . This prospective cohort study in male workers at a manufacturing company investigated the synergistic health effects of alcohol consumption and smoking on the onset of hypertension.

Both review authors (ST and CT) rated the certainty of evidence independently by examining risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency, imprecision, and publication bias. Because all of our outcomes of interest provided continuous data, we used the inverse variance approach and a fixed‐effect model to combine effect sizes across studies. If the dose of a study was not reported in the article and the study author did not respond to our request, we excluded that study. If studies reported more than one placebo group, we combined them into a single group when appropriate, using the formulae for combining groups reported in Chapter 7 of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins 2011). Most of the studies included in the review benzo belly had a cross‐over design.

Tremors, sweating, agitation, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia, and hypertension begin in alcohol abusers 6 to 24 h after the last alcohol intake . Alternatively, chronic reduction/interruption of alcohol intake could be part of the lifestyle changes that are recommended for the achievement of better blood pressure control in hypertensive patients. It was concluded that reduction of lipoprotein(a) levels, by regular consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol, might turn beneficial for organ protection in patients with hypertension.