Alcohol and blood pressure

Alcohol has a significant effect on high blood pressure, so it's important people pay more attention on the association of alcohol and blood pressure and its effect on their health.

People who drink excess amounts of alcohol often show signs of having higher blood pressure then non-excessive drinkers. This becomes significant, especially in cases where people are regular drinkers. If the alcohol intake is kept fairly limited i.e. occasional drinking then the blood pressure level is not so prone to lean towards dangerously high levels.

For example, a person may have an alcoholic beverage, such as twelve ounces of beer or five ounces of wine, each of which is considered a single drink per day, Therefore males may take one or two drinks and be within safe levels. But a female may take only one drink in comparison to this as females do not have the same level of tolerance towards alcohol as males. When, the intake of alcohol is increased over this safe level by both sexes, there is an impact on the elasticity of the blood vessels and this in turn can increase their blood pressure reading towards medically dangerous levels.

Alcohol and blood pressure changes due to drinking habits are causes for concern by physicians who deal with these types of hypertension patients, as other problems they need to take into account are people drinking alcohol in excess may develop weight increase problems due to the increase in calories.

If the blood pressure is raised because of weight problems, then yet further medication may have to be administered to control the high blood pressure. This can be difficult to prescribe as the alcohol in the person's body can have an adverse effect on the medication being prescribed for them.

Considering the strong association between alcohol and raised blood pressure, it's obvious that drinking less alcohol is much more preferable to drinking excessively large amounts. Therefore people with cardiac disorders such as myocarditis, severe hypertension or congestive cardiac failure should avoid alcohol based beverages if at all possible. If they cannot avoid alcohol completely, they should keep their drinking down to a very low level.

Though calcium and magnesium in the body can become decreased due to the intake of alcohol, supplementing them may cause their own indirect problems such as increases in blood pressure. Therefore any patient with an alcohol dependence problem should have all their medications very thoroughly and carefully prescribed and monitored by their physician taking their alcohol dependence into account.

Anyone with a drinking problem is prone to increased blood pressure and one of the problems of trying to correct the blood pressure with medication is the effect alcohol has on the prescription. It can very often enhance its potency thus causing further medical problems.

Any patient who has an alcohol problem and raised blood pressure should be advised and encouraged to reduce their drinking as much as possible. Guidelines and limits should be given for drinking by their physician and these should be adhered to as much as possible by the patient.