If your blood pressure runs low, you can raise it through a combination of dietary changes, physical techniques, and lifestyle adjustments. The most effective immediate strategies are increasing your salt and fluid intake, wearing compression garments, and using specific body movements that push blood back toward your heart. For persistent low blood pressure, medications are also available.
Increase Your Salt Intake
Salt is the single most direct dietary lever for raising blood pressure. It works by pulling more water into your bloodstream, which increases blood volume and pushes pressure higher. For people with chronically low blood pressure or conditions like orthostatic hypotension (where blood pressure drops when you stand up), medical guidelines recommend significantly more salt than the general population typically consumes.
The American Society of Hypertension suggests 6,000 to 10,000 mg of salt per day (roughly 2,400 to 4,000 mg of sodium) for people with orthostatic hypotension, while other expert groups recommend up to 10,000 to 12,000 mg of salt daily. For context, the average American consumes about 3,400 mg of sodium per day, so these targets often mean adding 1,000 to 2,000 mg of sodium to your diet at each meal. Practical ways to do this include salting your food more liberally, eating broth-based soups, snacking on salted nuts or olives, and adding pickled foods to meals. Salt tablets are another option if you struggle to get enough through food alone.
Drink More Fluids
Dehydration is one of the most common and most fixable causes of low blood pressure. When your blood volume drops, there simply isn’t enough fluid in your vessels to maintain adequate pressure. Healthy adults generally need about 11.5 to 15.5 cups (2.7 to 3.7 liters) of total fluid per day from all sources, but if your blood pressure runs low, aiming for the higher end of that range is a good starting point.
Water is the obvious choice, but drinks with electrolytes can be especially helpful because the sodium helps your body retain the fluid rather than just passing it through your kidneys. Spreading your intake throughout the day matters more than drinking a large amount at once. Drinking a glass or two of water about 15 minutes before standing up in the morning can also help prevent the lightheadedness that comes with positional blood pressure drops.
Use Physical Counter-Maneuvers
When you feel your blood pressure dropping, whether from standing too long, getting up too quickly, or feeling faint, specific muscle-tensing movements can raise it within seconds. These work by squeezing blood out of your legs and abdomen and back toward your heart and brain. The American Heart Association recommends several techniques:
- Leg crossing with muscle tensing: Cross your legs and simultaneously tighten your leg, abdominal, and buttock muscles. You can do this while standing or lying down.
- Squatting: Lower yourself into a squat, tensing your lower body and abdominal muscles. Stay there until symptoms pass, then stand slowly.
- Arm tensing: Grip your hands together, interlocking your fingers, and pull your arms in opposite directions with maximum force.
- Fist clenching: Squeeze your fist as hard as you can, with or without something in your hand.
These maneuvers are especially useful in situations where you can’t sit or lie down right away. They won’t fix chronic low blood pressure, but they’re an effective in-the-moment tool to prevent fainting.
Wear Compression Garments
Compression stockings gently squeeze your lower legs, preventing blood from pooling in your veins and nudging it back into circulation. According to Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Luke Laffin, they tend to raise blood pressure by about 5 to 10 mmHg. That’s a modest bump, but for someone whose blood pressure is borderline low, it can be the difference between feeling fine and feeling dizzy.
Abdominal binders work on the same principle, compressing a larger area of your body where blood tends to pool. Wearing both together provides the strongest effect. Put them on before you get out of bed in the morning, since that’s when blood pressure tends to be lowest.
Eat Smaller, More Frequent Meals
Large meals can cause a significant blood pressure drop, a condition called postprandial hypotension. Here’s why: after you eat, your body redirects blood flow to your digestive system. Normally, your heart rate speeds up and blood vessels elsewhere in your body tighten to compensate. But in some people, especially older adults or those already prone to low blood pressure, that compensation falls short, and pressure drops noticeably after eating.
Eating six smaller meals instead of three large ones reduces the amount of blood your digestive system demands at any one time. Avoiding large amounts of refined carbohydrates in a single sitting also helps, since carb-heavy meals tend to cause the most dramatic post-meal drops. Drinking water before or during meals can partially offset the effect as well.
Try Caffeine Strategically
Caffeine can raise blood pressure by about 5 to 10 points, particularly if you don’t drink it regularly. The effect typically kicks in within 30 minutes and can last up to two hours. A cup of coffee or tea before a meal or before a period where you’ll be standing for a long time can help prevent symptoms.
The catch is that regular caffeine drinkers develop tolerance, so the blood pressure effect weakens over time. If you already drink several cups a day, adding more is unlikely to help much. For people who rarely consume caffeine, though, a single cup of coffee before getting out of bed or before a long morning on your feet can provide a noticeable boost.
Check for Nutritional Deficiencies
Vitamin B12 and folate deficiencies can contribute to low blood pressure indirectly by causing anemia. When you’re deficient in these nutrients, your body produces red blood cells that are too large and don’t function properly, reducing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen efficiently. This can lower blood pressure and cause fatigue, weakness, and dizziness that overlaps with other symptoms of hypotension. A simple blood test can identify whether a deficiency is contributing to your low readings, and supplementation or dietary changes can correct it relatively quickly.
Medications for Persistent Low Blood Pressure
When lifestyle changes aren’t enough, two medications are commonly prescribed. One works by tightening blood vessels directly, raising pressure through constriction. It’s typically taken three times a day and can be gradually increased until symptoms improve. The other is a synthetic hormone that helps your kidneys retain sodium, which increases blood volume over time. It also makes your blood vessels more responsive to the signals that tell them to tighten. It’s usually taken once daily.
Both require careful dose adjustments because the goal is to raise your standing blood pressure without pushing it too high when you’re lying down. Your doctor will typically start with the lowest effective dose and increase gradually based on your response. These medications work best alongside the dietary and lifestyle changes described above, not as a replacement for them.
Limit Alcohol
Alcohol’s relationship with blood pressure is complicated, but for people with low blood pressure, the short-term effects are the bigger concern. Alcohol causes blood vessels to relax and widen, which can drop pressure acutely, especially within the first few hours of drinking. This compounds the effects of dehydration, since alcohol also increases urine output. If you’re prone to low blood pressure, even moderate drinking can trigger dizziness or lightheadedness, particularly if you stand up quickly afterward. Keeping alcohol intake low and drinking extra water alongside any alcoholic beverages helps minimize the effect.