Best alcohol for high blood pressure: Can it help?

To prevent various health complications, including high blood pressure, people should try to limit their alcohol consumption to one or two glasses infrequently. Completely refraining from consuming alcohol lowers the risk of some of the health risks listed above. Although some of those effects can occur without alcohol consumption, avoiding alcohol helps decrease the risks. Recent data suggest that moderate and heavy drinking contributes to high blood pressure in men and women.

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A doctor may recommend a person with hypertension not to consume energy drinks. Research from 2019 found that drinking 32 ounces (oz) of energy drink in an hour could increase blood pressure. A 2022 study found that people with severe hypertension who drank 2 or more cups of coffee per day had a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. However, further research indicates alcohol can actually cause hypertension. Your doctor will often advise you when it’s safe to start drinking alcohol again, from a medical perspective.

Alcohol diminishes the baro (presso) reflex by interacting with receptors in the brain stem, i.e. nucleus tractus solitarii and rostral ventrolateral medulla[43]. This findings and others[42,46,47] suggest the impairment of baroreceptor control and sympathetic system. A greater decrease in heart rate in ethanol treated rats compared with control rats during β-adrenoreceptor blockade with propranolol indicates that the ethanol treated rats had an increased sympathetic activity. An increase in sympathetic activity is consistent with impairment of the baroreceptors that, when activated, inhibit the sympathetic nervous system[45,47]. Changes in mitochondrial function have been reported from a number of animal studies in different species, under various alcohol consumption paradigms (ethanol in water or liquid diet), and after variable durations of chronic ethanol consumption (6 weeks to 6 months). Through the process of oxidative phosphorylation, the mitochondria generate ~90 percent of cellular ATP.

McCaul 1991 published data only

In the Miró study, alcohol drinkers also had been receiving pharmacologic treatments such as beta-adrenergic blocking agents that reduce blood pressure and also may have antioxidant effects. 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 https://ecosoberhouse.com/ 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).

Hypertension occurs when the pressure of blood against the artery walls becomes higher than normal. There is evidence that reducing alcohol intake can help lower blood pressure in those suffering from hypertension and even prevent its development. Alcohol consumption increases the amount of calcium that binds to the blood vessels.

Jain 2016 published data only

In humans, endothelial function is assessed by measuring the widening (i.e., dilation) of the brachial artery under different conditions. Some research noted that endothelial function is impaired in abstinent individuals with a long-term history of alcohol abuse or alcoholism(Di Gennaro et al. 2007, 2012; Maiorano et al. 1999). Other studies have examined the effect of a single binge-drinking episode and found impairment in brachial artery endothelial-dependent and -independent vasodilation (Bau et al. 2005; Hashimoto et al. 2001; Hijmering et al. 2007). Therefore, as in animal studies, the effects of ethanol on endothelial function in humans likely depend on the dose and duration of ethanol consumption.

• High alcohol consumption also increased heart rate from 7 to 12 hours and after 13 hours.
• Several studies reported increased sympathetic nervous system activation and discharge of sympathetic amines after alcohol consumption[43,48,49].
• Most importantly, masked hypertension, where patients are hypertensive at home but not in the doctor’s office, is as serious a health risk as sustained hypertension.
• We created a funnel plot using the mean difference (MD) from studies reporting effects of medium doses and high doses of alcohol on SBP, DBP, MAP, and HR against standard error (SE) of the MD to check for the existence of publication bias.
• High‐dose alcohol decreased SBP by 3.49 mmHg within the first six hours, and by 3.77 mmHg between 7 and 12 hours after consumption.