Let's Drink To Lower Blood
Pressure! The Lowdown On
Alcohol & High Blood Pressure

If you're confused about the effect of alcohol on your blood pressure you can be forgiven. For years we've been told that moderate drinking is good for our hearts. We've heard about the "French Paradox", whereby the French consume large quantities of red wine and saturated fats, yet have lower rates of heart disease than Americans and other non-Mediterranean people. Much of the "paradox" is attributed to drinking red wine. Other studies have shown that modest amounts of other types of alcohol produce similar benefits.

Now a couple of new studies from Japan are being killjoys by indicating that even modest drinking of alcohol can increase blood pressure. The researchers found a direct relation between alcohol consumption and blood pressure. In other words, as you drink your blood pressure increases, starting from the very first drink. The doctor leading one of the studies concluded: "alcohol use represents an important modifiable risk factor for hypertension".

So what are we to believe? Some might hedge their bets by saying that more research is needed but the preponderance of evidence clearly supports moderate consumption of alcohol for a healthy heart and blood pressure. A major study in Denmark showed that one or two drinks a day reduces the risk of heart attack in both men and women, particularly from middle age on. What's more, a study that's just come out of Harvard reveals that a drink or two of alcohol a day adds further benefits to even physically fit, healthy men with an already low risk of heart disease.

So until and unless additional evidence says otherwise, you can raise your glass with confidence that the glow on your cheeks is a healthy one. We should also acknowledge that responsible drinking is not just about physical health but can also contribute to a healthy social life and can help to relieve stress. These benefits can help to further improve our general health and amount to natural ways to lower blood pressure.

But at what point comes the inevitable question: how much is too much? This could be the most important question of all because the one fact that stands out most clearly in the debate over alcohol and your health is that excess is extremely damaging. We all know what over-indulgence does to our livers but it also damages our hearts by increasing blood pressure, among other things.

So how much is too much? Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple matter of "units". Did you know that this familiar measure that has shaped public health policy for 20 years has been exposed as entirely arbitrary and lacking any scientific basis? A member of the Royal College of Physicians (U.K.) that produced the recommendation in 1987 called it "a sort of intelligent guess by a committee". He went further to state that "those limits were really plucked out of the air. It's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't.  We don't really have any data whatsoever."

The original guidance recommends that men consume no more than 21 units of alcohol a week and women no more than 14. More recently we tend to hear the even more restrictive recommendation of 2 units daily for men and one for women.

There is evidence to suggest that the limits should be raised. For example, a British study concluded that men drinking 21 to 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest rate of mortality. Another found that you would have to drink a whole bottle of wine a day, or 63 units a week, to have the same risk of mortality as a teetotaller.

Of course this does not mean that anything goes. The conflicting evidence merely highlights the fact that our tolerance to alcohol varies widely depending on many factors including sex, age, race, weight, general health and fitness, time of day and whether food is consumed while drinking alcohol.

Considering all these variations, and more, it's easy to see how silly it is to prescribe units of alcohol. Especially when there's a much better way: it's called common sense. Most people know when they're drinking too much, whether or not they are prepared to admit it to themselves or others. If in doubt, there are countless common sense signs of over-indulgence running from the blatantly obvious - a hangover - to more subtle signs that include sleep problems, fatigue, mood swings, and so on. Do we really need public health policy to tell us how much we can safely drink?

Having said this, the tipping point between healthy drinking and dangerous excess is a fine one, so if you're going to err it should be on the side of caution. Excessive drinking of alcohol will increase your blood pressure and this increase can pose an even greater risk than high blood pressure, which is stabile. If you experience rising blood pressure along with a nagging bad feeling about your drinking, you'd be well-advised to re-evaluate your lifestyle and cut back.

Perhaps the Greek comic, Eubulus (expressing the words of Dionysus, the god of wine) said it best: