Citation

Cameron IEC, Hammond AS. Proc. Int. Counc. Alcohol Drugs Traffic Safety Conf. 1981; 1981: 1099-1110.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, The author(s) and the Council, Publisher International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The object of this study was to examine some of the widely held beliefs as to the effect of various factors on the absorption of alcohol into the blood. In a series of six experiments, twelve subjects were given measured amounts of alcohol, each subject ingesting the same quantity in each experiment, but with other conditions varied. The blood alcohol concentrations were determined by breath analysis with occasional concomitant analyses of freshly secreted urine. The factors examined were: (I) Effect of a fatty meal before drinking. (II) Effect of a non-fatty meal before drinking. (III) Effect of varying the concentration of the beverage. (IV) Effect of exercise immediately after drinking. It was found that the ingestion of food before drinking caused a consistent lowering of the peak blood alcohol concentration, which was very pronounced in the case of fatty food. Varying the concentration of the beverage produced no consistent pattern of variation in the peak blood alcohol concentration. Exercise immediately after drinking resulted in a slowing of the absorption rate, a lower peak concentration, and an apparent slowing of the elimination rate. Full analysis of the raw data is not complete, but will be discussed in detail in the final paper. (Author/TRRL)