High Blood Pressure Facts

Alcohol and hypertension, wow, this is a good (he says putting his pint, joking). Alcohol consumption and hypertension as a question is a real enigma.

One one had, the odd wee drink now and then (said he choose his pint again) is actually very beneficial and can act as an aid and part treatment for cardiovascular disease, but c is like everything, taken to excess, therein lies the downfall.

The relationship between alcohol and high blood pressure (hypertension) has been recognized for nearly a century and especially the link between hypertension and excessive consumption of alcohol more than the recommended dose to correct a few units ( 14 for women and 21 men) a week.

There have been several scientific studies over the past 100 years have confirmed that alcohol is one of many causes of hypertension. Originally it was suggested that alcoholism is a cause of hypertension irrespective of a range of other socioeconomic factors involved such as the economic situation, age, race, weight, serum cholesterol, and even the Smoking

If you drink too much, your blood pressure rises.

Hmmnnn. It is quite an experience sobering when you look at it like that it does not work?

Advantages and disadvantages of alcohol are not for this article and it's not for me to make value statements about the virtues of abstinence from alcohol, but the simple fact is inescapable. Alcohol is a drug. It affects how you feel and affects every system in your body.

When you know the facts and effects of alcohol, then you will be able to decide what is best for you long term.

In a nutshell the principle behind the relationship between alcohol and hypertension is the basic premise follows.

When alcohol is present in the blood stream, it covers the blood vessels and artery walls thereby increasing their tension and thus increase blood pressure. This is the basic version and there are more complex definitions and explanations in existence, but they are for medical textbooks!

As in all things in moderation seems to be the key and it comes (with the exception of common sense) largely from a 1994 report in The Journal of American Medical Association which published an editorial that suggested that if the whole population of the United States stopped drinking it believed there could be 81,000 additional deaths up one due to heart disease each year.

OK, sounds interesting, and the article continues by not checking that alcohol can be no better than drinking in moderation.

At the same time over in Europe, researchers in Denmark have put the finishing touches on a study that analyzed the drinking habits of thirteen thousand people in the period of a decade. To the amazement of everyone the study found that those who killed three to five glasses of wine a day had about half the risk of dying sober.

At this stage, joining the Harvard School of Public Health who said that their research had shown that the benefits of drinking (ie the widening of blood vessels) disappear after as little as two drinks. It seems that the consensus view is that moderation in drinking rules. Consuming one or two glasses a day helps prevent heart attacks and strokes, it seems.

The really sad thing of it all is that many medical professionals will tell you that alcohol abuse is one area of increasing fasting treatment within the health system is tod hui. Not only that, but the section's fastest growing population deemed most at risk against the effects of this abuse of alcohol are now under the age of thirty years and unfortunately an alarmingly high percentage of these patients are women.

Too bad they never told us.