Health Care

By Amy Nutt

Your blood alcohol content, or blood alcohol level which it is sometimes referred, is the actual percentage of concentration of alcohol in your bloodstream. The legal limit can vary by state, and country, but for nearly everywhere in the United States and Canada, the legal limit for your blood alcohol content is .08, which means that less than one tenth of one percent of your blood is concentrated with alcohol when you are considered legally intoxicated.

Despite the popular misconception, there is no real definitive way for you to determine what your own blood alcohol content (BAC) is unless you've got access to a breathalyzer. There are so many factors that have bearing on your BAC that trying to calculate the number own your own is really nothing more than a guessing game.

Things like: your own tolerance built up over the time that you've been drinking alcohol, what types of drinks you are consuming on a given night, what kind of food you ate before you began drinking and what type of food (if any) you are munching on while you are drinking, your gender and your percentage of body fat are all things that can weigh pretty heavily on what your actual BAC is on a given night. Believe it or not, other things can factor into the equation as well - if you have been or are currently suffering from an illness (even something like the common cold), your level of fatigue and your level of hydration can all also have a bearing on your BAC.

So there's no magic spread sheet that you can download from the internet, and no magic mathematical equation that your friend's room mate came up with that will tell you with one hundred percent accuracy what you BAC is, because it can change for any number of reasons on any given night. Even if you drank five beers last night and a breathalyzer gave a reading of .10, that's no guarantee that if you drink five beers tonight that the reading will be exactly the same.

If you're tired or hungry, thirsty or stuffy or if you are drinking a different type of alcohol (even if you're drinking less of it than your regular drink of choice) than you normally consume you may be effected entirely differently than you may be expecting and that result can be reflected in your BAC.

There are also plenty of myths that go around about someone's ability to manipulate their BAC and level of intoxication by participating in some extraordinarily easy activities, but in reality the only thing that can lower your BAC is time. Things like: drinking lots of coffee, performing vigorous physical activity or jumping into an ice cold shower will have no effect what so ever on your BAC - stopping your consumption of alcohol and letting an adequate amount of time pass is all you can do to bring your BAC back to a normal level.

It takes an average person about one hour to metabolize the amount of alcohol contained in one standard alcoholic beverage (one 12 oz beer, one glass of wine or one shot.) So if you knock back a six pack of your favorite brew while watching the ball game at your buddies house, you better be prepared to spend the night or call a cab to get home unless your planning on waiting until the wee hours of the morning for your body to be able to metabolize all that alcohol so your BAC can drop back down to well below the legal limit before you get on the road.

It doesn't matter if you feel fine, or even if you just had a cup of java and ran around the block - you may still be over the legal limit - one way to approximate the calculation of the level of alcohol in your blood is using a BAC calculator. However, the safest thing to do when you are drinking is to stay where you are, or have someone who hasn't been drinking at all drive you home.

Offering roadside assistance, car insurance, petro points rewards and travel getaways. Visit us to learn more about our discount packages.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amy_Nutt