How's Your Blood Pressure?

High blood pressure runs in my family... but only on my father's side. It was the cause of the deaths of the males in their mid-sixties. My grandfather, his father, his father's father and so on all died around age 65. My father firmly believed he would succumb to this "curse" also. He didn't, his doctor found the spiking blood pressure in his fifties (it was fine before that) and treated it and he lived to be 84.

My father was a teetotaler... only drank a cocktail on two occasions a year: New Year's Eve and my parents' wedding anniversary. So I don't think this article applies to him. I no longer drink alcohol so it means little to me but my friends imbibe, some heavily. I know I did not flush when drinking so maybe he didn't either.