Any Drinking Can Cause Blood Pressure To Increase, Study Says

THURSDAY, Oct. 23, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Any boozing can cause your blood pressure to go up, a new study shows.

Even slight increases in alcohol consumption are associated with higher blood pressure, researchers reported Oct. 22 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Stopping drinking, or even cutting back, might lead to reductions in blood pressure that would lower a person’s risk of stroke or heart disease, researchers said.

The results challenge long-standing assumptions that a drink here or there won’t meaningfully affect a person’s blood pressure, experts said.

“Our study shows that when it comes to BP, the less you drink, the better. The more alcohol you drink, the higher your BP goes,” said lead researcher Dr. Takahiro Suzuki, a cardiologist at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo.

“In the past, scientists thought that small amounts of alcohol might be okay, but our results suggest that no alcohol is actually best,” Suzuki said in a news release. “This means that stopping drinking, even at low levels, could bring real heart health benefits for both women and men.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 360,000 annual check-ups at St. Luke’s between 2012 to 2024. As part of their check-up, patients reported their alcohol intake.

Researchers divided the roughly 59,000 patients into two groups: those who were drinkers at the time of their first check-up, and those who didn’t drink at first.

That way, the team could review the effects of stopping drinking among those who did imbibe, and starting drinking among those who once abstained.

“Our study set out to determine whether stopping alcohol use is associated with improvement in BP levels among habitual drinkers and whether starting alcohol use affects BP among non-habitual drinkers,” Suzuki said.

Results showed that blood pressure declined as drinkers cut back.

Women who stopped having one to two drinks per day saw a decrease of nearly 0.8 mmHG in their systolic BP and 1.1 mmHG diastolic. Systolic, the top number in a blood pressure reading, is the pressure in blood vessels during a heartbeat, and diastolic is the pressure between heartbeats.

Men who stopped drinking experienced a reduction of 1 mmHG systolic and 1.6 diastolic, researchers said.

Conversely, people who started drinking showed higher blood pressure, with similar trends across sexes.

Increases in blood pressure did not vary based on the type of alcohol, be it beer, wine or hard liquor, researchers found. Instead, the quantity of alcohol consumed was what mattered.

“These findings suggest that alcohol cessation, even from low levels, could prevent or treat hypertension,” Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a news release.

“This is especially important as treatment targets for BP have been lowered,” added Krumholz, who was not involved in the study.

More information

The Mayo Clinic has more on alcohol and blood pressure.

SOURCE: American College of Cardiology, news release, Oct. 22, 2025

What This Means For You

People can lower their blood pressure by cutting back or quitting drinking.