TIP – 05 for control high blood pressure

Alcohol can be both good and bad for your health. In small amounts of Alcohol, it can potentially lower your blood pressure by 2 to 4 mm Hg. But that protective effect is lost if you drink too much alcohol - generally more than one drink a day for women and more than two a day for men. Also, if you don't normally drink alcohol, you shouldn't start drinking as a way to lower your blood pressure. There's more potential harm than benefit to drinking alcohol.


If you drink more than moderate amounts of it, alcohol can actually raise blood pressure by several points. It can also reduce the effectiveness of high blood pressure medications.

1.       Track your drinking patterns. Along with your food diary, keep an alcohol diary to track your true drinking patterns. One drink equals 12 ounces (355 milliliters, or ml) of beer, 5 ounces of wine (148 ml) or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor (45 ml). If you're drinking more than the suggested amounts, cut back.

2. Consider tapering off. If you're a heavy drinker, suddenly eliminating all alcohol can actually trigger severe high blood pressure for several days. So when you stop drinking, do it with the supervision of your doctor or taper off slowly, over one to two weeks.

Don't binge. Binge drinking - having four or more drinks in a row - can cause large and sudden increases in blood pressure, in addition to other health problems.