If you have high blood pressure, it’s important to understand the relationship between coffee and blood pressure. Specifically, the caffeine in coffee impacts your blood pressure negatively. Depending on how much coffee you drink, your blood pressure could be higher from it.
Some people who drink coffee aren’t particularly sensitive to caffeine and it doesn’t affect their blood pressure levels. For others, more than moderate caffeine consumption can cause problems with blood pressure.
Most health providers agree that you shouldn’t have more than 200 mg of caffeine each day. That’s about two cups of coffee or 3 caffeinated sodas. If you have much more than that you can have some negative effects from caffeine.
Coffee and blood pressure can be linked so much that even one cup of coffee causes problems for some individuals. If you want to find out if you have sensitivity to caffeine, there?s a simple way to find out.
Start out by taking your blood pressure when you haven’t had any caffeine for several hours. This will be a baseline to use for comparison. Then drink a cup of coffee or soda (whichever you would typically drink).
After about 30 minutes, take your blood pressure again. Then take it again at an hour. If you notice an increase of at least five or ten mmHg, you probably do have sensitivity to caffeine. Imagine drinking that all day and you can see why it can cause it to stay high.
When you’re?re performing this at home experiment, do make sure that there aren’t other factors that could cause it to go up ? for example physical activity. Try to stay relaxed for the entire hour so you can eliminate any other possibilities for the problem.
If you do see that caffeine causes your blood pressure to go up, then it’s best to taper down or even eliminate it from your diet. You probably don’t want to stop all at once if you’re very dependent on caffeine or it could cause you to get withdrawal headaches.
Start by eliminating one soda or cup of coffee at a time. Some alternatives to caffeinated drinks include herbal tea, decaffeinated coffee or tea, and caffeine free sodas. Of course water is always a good substitute and will help you to stay hydrated.
Caffeine can cause your heart rate to increase. In turn this can cause the pressure in your blood vessels to increase. High blood pressure is serious when it comes to the health of your heart and shouldn’t be ignored. In your case, if coffee and blood pressure are related it’s best to eliminate it from your diet.
