Health knowledge made personal
On average it takes about one hour for your body to process one unit of alcohol. This varies depending on your body size, sex and the amount of food in your digestive system. If your liver isn't functioning normally, the process takes longer. One unit of alcohol is roughly equivalent to half a pint of beer, a 25ml shot of spirits, or two-thirds of a small (125ml) glass of wine. This means that one pint takes your body about two hours to break down, and a large glass of wine (250ml) about three hours - longer if the ABV (alcohol by volume) content is higher than average. So if you have seven pints during a night out, it could take as long as 17 or 18 hours to leave your system.
It's very important to think about how long it takes your body to process alcohol before doing activities such as driving or operating machinery. Even if you feel fine the day after drinking, you could still be over the limit.
To avoid putting your health at risk, women shouldn't drink more than 14 units a week, and men shouldn't drink more than 21. Nor should you 'use up' all your units in one go - women shouldn't drink more than 2-3 units a day, and men should limit themselves to 3-4.
The Health Team explains it beautifully. Additionally, because alcohol dissolves in water, it travels quickly through the bloodstream to body tissues high in water content and "sits" there while it waits for the liver to process the alcohol. One of those areas is the brain, which is also highly vascularized. This "sitting" in the brain while it waits to be processed by the liver is why alcohol causes a person to behave in ways they normally would not -- such as driving while impaired, having unprotected or unwanted sex, getting into a fight. It actually interrupts normal brain functioning, and given our brains control everything we think, feel, say and do, it's easier to understand why drinking too much can cause these inappropriate or abnormal behaviors.
To help those in America understand the recommended moderate drinking limits:
- for women, it is no more than 7 standard drinks in a week, with no more than 3 of those 7 in a day
- for men, it is no more than 14 standard drinks in a week, with no more than 4 of those 14 in a day.
The idea of the per day limits is to help people avoid binge drinking, which is defined as 4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more for men. At binge drinking levels, a person's liver is unable to process the alcohol in a manner that allows brain function to keep up -- this is what causes a person to behave in ways they would never imagine if they hadn't consumed so much.
A standard drink in America is 5 ounces of table wine, 12 ounces of regular beer, 1.5 ounces of 80-proof alcohol and 3.3 ounces of champagne. It's important to understand that many drinks poured at bars, restaurants and parties or served in cans or bottles contain far more than one standard drink. A 24-ounce Four Loko, for example, contains 5 standard drinks (as compared to a 24-ounce regular beer, which contains 2).
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