Occasional drinking is enough to increase blood pressure in both men and women.
Alcohol consumption is linked to elevated risk of cardiovascular disease. However, many believed—and may still believe—that this only applied to heavy drinkers. New research within the last few years has challenged that mindset, but the precise impact of low-to-moderate alcohol consumption on heart health remains unclear. A new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, now shows that even low levels of drinking are linked to increased blood pressure (BP), and that alcohol cessation can reverse this effect.1
The relationship between alcohol and cardiovascular health is lengthy and complex, dating back over thousands of years. For a time, moderated consumption of certain types of alcohol—red wine in particular—was even thought to be beneficial for heart health.2 However, further investigations failed to establish a direct relationship, instead attributing these observations as products of selection biases.3 Research within the last decade points towards detrimental outcomes even for low-levels of alcohol consumption, prompting the World Health Organization to issue a press release in 2023 titled “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.”4
That said, the precise health impacts of occasional consumption—defined as an average of one or two drinks per day—remained unclear. Takahiro Suzuki, a physician at St. Luke’s International Hospital, sought to remedy that. “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,” explained Suzuki in a statement. “We focused on understudied groups, particularly women, light-to-moderate drinkers, and consumers of different beverage types, to better understand how even low levels of alcohol consumption influence BP management, a critical public health issue.”
Suzuki and his team analyzed data from 58,943 adults gathered at 359,717 annual health check-ups between 2012–2024. They focused specifically on two types of people: habitual drinkers who stopped drinking and non-drinkers who started drinking occasionally. The researchers tracked changes in systolic and diastolic BP over the course of a year, developing a statistical model to account for differences in demographics, medical history, and lifestyle.
Both systolic and diastolic BPs decreased in individuals who stopped drinking and increased in those who started drinking. Based on their model, Suzuki and his colleagues calculated that each individual drink corresponded with a change of roughly 1 mmHg. That is, one fewer drink per day was associated with a 1 mmHg decrease in BP, while one additional drink per day was associated with a 1 mmHg increase. The team found no differences between beer, wine, and spirit drinkers, indicating that alcohol consumption quantity—rather than the composition of the beverage—drove these blood pressure changes. They also found no sex-related differences.
This study challenges assumptions that low levels of alcohol consumption do not significantly affect blood pressure. “In the past, scientists thought that small amounts of alcohol might be okay, but our results suggest that no alcohol is actually best. This means that stopping drinking, even at low levels, could bring real heart health benefits for both women and men,” said Suzuki. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine who was not associated with this study, goes further. “These findings suggest that alcohol cessation, even from low levels, could prevent or treat hypertension,” Krumholz said in a statement.
