Blood alcohol levels are not something you should just guesstimate. But how can you know what your blood alcohol level is without toting around a breathalyzer? Knowing your percentage can mean the difference between driving safely home with just a warning, and spending the night (and thousands of dollars) in the slammer or worse. There are a lot of surprising differences when it comes to the ways that women handle their booze.
Drunkorexia isn’t worth it. Most alcohol is absorbed in the stomach and the first part of your intestine. If you’ve just eaten a big meal at The Cheesecake Factory as opposed to nibbling on a carrot, it’s inevitably going to take longer for alcohol to reach your system. Technically, this may mean a lower blood alcohol content level at the end of the night, so eat up ladies! More to love = more alcohol absorption. Your blood alcohol level is determined by the proportion of alcohol in your blood compared with your total body mass (and total body water composition). In general, the higher your body mass, the more you will be able to drink before your levels reach the legal limit for driving. Men are generally bigger than women, so a small woman may only need one drink to be over the limit, for example, but a larger woman has a tad more wiggle room than a smaller one. Get to the gym! While some one who weighs more than their skinny counterpart generally absorbs their alcohol slower, some one who weighs the same and is more muscular will absorb their alcohol even slower. (As if you needed another reason to go to the gym!) Female livers beat male livers. Women, for the most part, weigh less than men and naturally have a higher percentage of body fat. This means higher blood alcohol levels for women than for men, drink for drink. However, women do have one thing in their favor – their livers are better at breaking down alcohol, and so they actually get rid of alcohol about 10% faster than men. This doesn’t really outweigh the other factors, but it may help women sober up more quickly. Slow and steady wins the race. Ultimately your blood alcohol level is determined by how much you drink and how quickly you drink it. Your liver is only able to process alcohol at a constant rate (about one average drink per hour), so if you overwhelm it by trying to catch up to your buddies and slam successive tequila shots in a short period of time, your blood alcohol levels will skyrocket. If you’re a habitual drinker your liver may be a little more efficient, but ultimately this results in alcoholic liver damage, so that obviously isn’t something that’s advocated.
It’s important to note that drinking and driving is never encouraged and you even if you don’t feel like you’re wasted, your blood alcohol level may say otherwise. “It doesn’t matter whether you feel intoxicated,” says San Diego criminal attorney David Shapiro. “What matters is whether your blood alcohol concentration is above the usual legal limit of 0.08 grams of alcohol for each 100 milliliters of blood.” If you’re not sure whether you are over the legal limit to drive, the best thing to do is err on the side of caution and stay out of the driver’s seat.