Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. This is the place we get to tackle the questions that matter the most to you.

And today, you're going to hear a great question from a loyal listener. But first, we wanted to start with some health news that affects millions of people out there.

Kira is back with us. Please T us up.

Hey, Sanjay. Okay, so our office was buzzing about these new

recommendations on how to control blood pressure. And so I'm curious, what's different than before?

And what do we need to know now? Yeah, so I've been thinking about this a lot. I've gotten a ton of

questions about the blood pressure guidelines.

So let's start with this, just a little bit of context. First of all, this is the first time the guidelines have been updated since 2017. Really important.

And if you look at the United States as a whole, close to half, right around half the people have

hypertension. Okay, so I want you to have this context. These recommendations typically come

from a collection of health organizations, such as the American Heart Association, the American

College of Cardiology. These groups meet, and occasionally they will release an update if they agree that there's enough new evidence that demands it.

So again, this is the first update since 2017, and they thought it was important enough to publish this report.

I'm going to tell you what it says right after the break.

So one of the big things about these new blood pressure guidelines that a lot of people

paid attention to is that they essentially recommend abstinence from alcohol.

Okay, so this is a prize, I think, for a lot of people, because the conventional wisdom has

been a drink a day or two drinks a day if you're a guy is okay.

This is much clearer.

And to be fair, there's been a lot of back and forth on alcohol for a long time, even going back to the 1800s.

But more recently, you see increasing evidence about the association of alcohol with all sorts of things, heart disease, dementia, even.

And in addition to that, there seemed to be this real trend toward not drinking in general, a sober, curious movement.

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