If your blood pressure regularly reads below 90/60 mmHg and you’re feeling the effects, there are several proven ways to bring it up. Some work within seconds during a dizzy spell, while others are daily habits that raise your baseline over weeks. The right approach depends on whether you’re dealing with occasional lightheadedness or chronic low blood pressure that disrupts your life.
A drop of just 20 mmHg in the top number can be enough to make you dizzy or faint. So if your systolic pressure falls from, say, 110 to 90, that’s not a trivial change, even though 90 might sound like a “normal” number.
Quick Fixes During a Dizzy Spell
When you feel lightheaded from a sudden blood pressure drop, physical counter-pressure maneuvers can raise your pressure within seconds. These work by squeezing blood from your large muscles back toward your heart and brain. The American Heart Association recommends several specific techniques:
- Leg crossing with muscle tensing: Cross your legs and tighten your leg, abdominal, and buttock muscles simultaneously. You can do this lying down or standing.
- Squatting: Lower yourself into a full squat while tensing your lower body and abdomen. Stay there until symptoms pass, then stand slowly.
- Arm tensing: Grip your opposing hands with interlocked fingers and pull your arms in opposite directions as hard as you can.
- Isometric handgrip: Clench your fist at maximum force, with or without something in your hand.
These aren’t long-term solutions, but they can prevent a faint in the moment. If you’re prone to dizziness when standing up, learning one or two of these maneuvers and using them habitually makes a real difference.
Drink More Water, Consistently
Fluids directly increase your blood volume, which is one of the simplest levers for raising blood pressure. Dehydration is one of the most common and most overlooked causes of low readings. There’s no single magic number for daily intake, but actively increasing your water consumption throughout the day, rather than drinking large amounts at once, helps maintain steadier pressure.
Alcohol works in the opposite direction. It’s dehydrating and lowers blood pressure even in moderate amounts. If you’re already running low, cutting back on alcohol can have a noticeable effect.
Increase Your Salt Intake
This is the opposite of the advice most people hear, but for people with low blood pressure, extra sodium helps the body retain fluid and expand blood volume. Medical guidelines for people with orthostatic disorders (blood pressure that drops when standing) recommend significantly more salt than the general population consumes.
The American Society of Hypertension suggests 2,400 to 4,000 mg of sodium per day for people with orthostatic hypotension. The Canadian Cardiovascular Society recommends about 4,000 mg daily. For people with conditions like POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), some guidelines go as high as 4,000 to 4,800 mg per day. For context, the standard recommendation for healthy adults is under 2,300 mg.
One study found that people who fainted from standing and added roughly 2,400 mg of supplemental sodium per day saw meaningful improvements in their ability to tolerate being upright after just two months. A practical way to do this is adding 1,000 to 2,000 mg of sodium to your diet at each meal, through saltier foods, broth, or electrolyte drinks. If you have heart or kidney problems, increasing salt without medical guidance can cause serious harm, so this is specifically for people whose primary issue is low pressure.
Adjust How You Eat
Blood pressure naturally dips after meals as your body redirects blood flow to your digestive system. For some people, this postprandial drop is steep enough to cause dizziness, fatigue, or fainting 30 to 90 minutes after eating. Two changes help prevent this.
First, eat smaller meals more frequently. Six small meals spread across the day cause less blood flow diversion than three large ones. Second, reduce the carbohydrate load of each meal. High-carb meals trigger a larger digestive response and a bigger pressure drop. Combining these two strategies, eating smaller, lower-carb meals throughout the day, is one of the most effective dietary approaches for keeping blood pressure stable.
Wear Compression Garments
Compression clothing prevents blood from pooling in your legs when you’re upright, which is one of the main mechanisms behind orthostatic drops. The key detail most people miss: knee-high compression socks don’t work very well for blood pressure. Full-length compression tights are far more effective because they cover the large veins in your thighs and abdomen where most pooling occurs.
Compression garments come in classes based on pressure. Class 1 provides 18 to 21 mmHg of compression, Class 2 provides 23 to 32 mmHg, and Class 3 provides 34 to 46 mmHg. Most people with low blood pressure need Class 2, though starting with Class 1 makes sense if you’ve never worn them before. They take some getting used to, and putting them on before you get out of bed in the morning is the most effective timing.
Elevate the Head of Your Bed
Sleeping with your head slightly elevated, rather than flat, can reduce the severity of morning blood pressure drops. The idea is that a gentle tilt overnight trains your body to retain more fluid and adjust its blood pressure regulation. One documented approach involved raising the head of the bed by about 15 inches (roughly 11 degrees of tilt), achieved gradually over two months in small increments.
There’s no established “best” angle yet, and researchers have noted that well-designed trials are still needed to pin that down. But the practical approach is straightforward: use bed risers or a wedge under the head of your mattress. Pillows alone don’t achieve the same effect because they bend your neck rather than tilting your whole body.
Medications That Raise Blood Pressure
When lifestyle changes aren’t enough, doctors can prescribe medications that raise blood pressure through different mechanisms. The most commonly prescribed one works by tightening blood vessels, particularly veins, so blood doesn’t pool in your lower body. This directly increases the resistance in your arteries and raises your pressure. Treatment typically starts at a low dose taken three times a day and gets gradually increased on a weekly basis until symptoms improve.
Another medication works by helping your kidneys retain more sodium and water, expanding your total blood volume. Both types of medication require monitoring because the goal is to raise standing blood pressure without pushing it too high when you’re lying down.
Why Your Blood Pressure Might Be Low
Low blood pressure isn’t always a standalone problem. It can be a symptom of something else: dehydration, blood loss, an underactive thyroid, adrenal insufficiency, heart valve problems, or neurological conditions that affect the nerves controlling blood vessel tone. Certain medications, particularly those for high blood pressure, depression, and prostate enlargement, are common culprits.
If your blood pressure is consistently low and causing symptoms like dizziness, blurred vision, nausea, or fatigue, identifying the underlying cause determines which combination of the strategies above will actually work. Someone whose low pressure comes from dehydration needs a completely different approach than someone whose autonomic nervous system isn’t regulating blood vessels properly. Getting a proper evaluation is the difference between treating the symptom and solving the problem.