Low blood pressure, generally a reading below 90/60 mmHg, can cause dizziness, fatigue, and fainting. The good news is that most cases respond well to simple lifestyle changes: drinking more fluids, adjusting your salt intake, eating differently, and using a few physical tricks to keep blood moving when you need it most.
Drink More Fluids Throughout the Day
Low blood volume is one of the most common reasons blood pressure drops. When you’re even mildly dehydrated, there simply isn’t enough fluid in your bloodstream to maintain adequate pressure against your vessel walls, which means your organs may not get the oxygen they need. General guidelines recommend about 125 ounces (3.7 liters) of total fluid per day for men and 91 ounces (2.7 liters) for women. That includes water from food, but most people with low blood pressure benefit from deliberately increasing how much they drink.
Spacing your water intake throughout the day works better than drinking large amounts at once. Keep a water bottle nearby and sip consistently rather than trying to catch up in the evening. If you exercise, spend time in heat, or are recovering from illness, your fluid needs go up significantly.
Increase Your Salt Intake (Carefully)
Salt helps your body retain water, which increases blood volume and raises blood pressure. For people with low blood pressure, doctors often recommend at least 6 grams of salt per day, compared to around 4 grams for someone with normal blood pressure. That’s roughly a full teaspoon of table salt spread across your meals.
You can increase salt through food choices like broth-based soups, olives, pickles, and salted nuts, or by simply adding more salt when cooking. This is one of the rare situations where the standard “eat less salt” advice gets flipped. That said, if you have kidney disease or heart failure, higher salt intake can cause problems, so it’s worth confirming with your doctor that extra sodium is appropriate for you specifically.
Change How You Eat
Large meals can pull blood toward your digestive system and away from the rest of your body, causing a noticeable blood pressure drop after eating. This is called postprandial hypotension, and it’s especially common in older adults. If you feel dizzy or lightheaded after meals, shifting to six smaller meals throughout the day instead of three large ones can make a real difference.
Carbohydrate-heavy meals tend to be the worst offenders. Foods like white bread, pasta, and sugary dishes cause a more dramatic blood flow shift to the gut. Keeping carbohydrates moderate at each meal, and pairing them with protein and fat, helps blunt the effect.
Use Physical Counter-Maneuvers
When you feel a dizzy spell coming on, a few simple body movements can quickly push blood back toward your heart and brain. The American Heart Association recommends several of these techniques:
- Leg crossing with muscle tensing: Cross your legs and squeeze your leg, abdominal, and buttock muscles simultaneously. You can do this while standing or lying down.
- Squatting: Lower yourself into a squat, which compresses the veins in your legs and forces blood upward. Tense your lower body and abdomen while squatting, and stand back up slowly once the dizziness passes.
- Arm tensing: Grip your hands together, interlocking your fingers, and pull your arms in opposite directions as hard as you can.
- Isometric handgrip: Clench your fist at maximum force for several seconds, with or without holding an object.
These maneuvers work by compressing blood vessels and activating your muscles, both of which temporarily raise blood pressure. They’re especially useful for orthostatic hypotension, the type of low blood pressure that hits when you stand up too quickly.
Wear Compression Stockings
Compression stockings work by squeezing blood out of the deep veins in your legs, preventing it from pooling there when you’re upright. For best results, the pressure should be strongest at the ankle and gradually decrease toward the thigh. This gradient pushes blood upward against gravity.
Knee-high or thigh-high medical-grade stockings are available at most pharmacies. If you find yourself getting dizzy mainly when standing for long periods, compression stockings can meaningfully reduce symptoms. Put them on first thing in the morning before getting out of bed, since that’s when blood pooling is most likely to cause problems.
Elevate the Head of Your Bed
If morning dizziness is your main issue, sleeping with the head of your bed slightly elevated can help your body adjust to upright posture overnight. A tilt of about 10 to 15 degrees, which translates to raising the head of the bed roughly 6 to 15 inches, trains your body to retain fluid and maintain pressure more effectively when you get up.
There’s no single “best” angle established by research, so a gradual approach works well. Start with a modest elevation using bed risers or a wedge pillow, and increase over a few weeks based on how you feel. Some people place blocks under the legs at the head of the bed rather than just propping pillows, which creates a more consistent tilt for the whole body.
Stand Up Slowly and Move First
One of the simplest habits that helps is just taking your time with position changes. Before getting out of bed, sit on the edge for 30 seconds and flex your ankles a few times. Before standing up from a chair, tense your leg muscles. These small delays give your cardiovascular system time to adjust and push blood upward to compensate for the position change.
Avoid standing motionless for long stretches. If you’re in a line or at an event, shift your weight, rise onto your toes, and engage your calves periodically. Moving your muscles acts like a pump that keeps blood circulating back to your heart.
Rethink Caffeine and Alcohol
Caffeine causes a short-term spike in blood pressure, mainly in people who don’t drink it regularly. If you already have a daily coffee habit, you’ve likely built up a tolerance, and caffeine won’t meaningfully raise your pressure anymore. For occasional drinkers, a cup of coffee before situations that tend to trigger symptoms (like a long morning commute) may help temporarily.
Alcohol, on the other hand, tends to lower blood pressure by relaxing blood vessels and promoting dehydration. If you’re already prone to low blood pressure, even moderate drinking can worsen symptoms noticeably. Limiting alcohol or pairing it with extra water and food helps reduce its impact.
Check Your Medications
Several common types of medications can lower blood pressure as a side effect. Blood pressure medications (obviously), but also certain antidepressants, medications for an enlarged prostate, drugs for Parkinson’s disease, and some pain medications. If your low blood pressure started around the same time as a new medication, or if your symptoms have worsened, your current prescriptions may be a contributing factor worth discussing with your prescriber. Dosage adjustments or timing changes can often help without stopping the medication entirely.
Signs That Need Emergency Attention
Most low blood pressure is manageable and not dangerous. But a sudden, severe drop can lead to shock, which is a medical emergency. Call 911 if you or someone else develops confusion (especially in older adults), cold or clammy skin, rapid shallow breathing, a weak and fast pulse, or a noticeable loss of skin color. These symptoms together suggest the body’s organs aren’t getting enough blood flow and need immediate treatment.