Drinking alcohol during Tet holiday, how to know alcohol concentration is 0?

Associate Professor Lam Vinh Nien, Head of the Department of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City advises:

During Tet, people often drink beer and wine. They don't drink too much, but drinking many times also increases the alcohol concentration in the body.

Moderate drinking is defined as 1 unit of alcohol for women and 2 units of alcohol for men. 1 unit of alcohol is equivalent to 355ml of beer (4-5%); 148ml of wine (15%); 44ml of spirits (40%). A healthy adult's liver will excrete 1 unit of alcohol every hour. After that, the body needs 2-3 hours for the alcohol in the blood to return to 0.

If you drink in moderation, do the math. If you drink more than 3 units of alcohol per day or more than 7 units of alcohol per week for women and men over 65, 4 units of alcohol per day or more than 14 units of alcohol per week for men under 65 is too much.

According to regulations, driving with alcohol in your breath will be subject to an administrative fine of up to 40 million VND.

How to know if the body still has alcohol concentration or not depends on each person. For example, it depends on the weight of the drinker, the speed of drinking, the time of drinking and the alcohol concentration in the beer and wine, there is no specific number.

Some cases of endogenous alcohol do not originate from alcohol but form spontaneously in the body. It can be the process of carbohydrate fermentation in the intestine due to the influence of microflora.

However, endogenous alcohol in the blood is usually at a very low concentration, even below the detection threshold of the device, and can change according to medical conditions, so you do not need to worry too much about this issue.

To be safe, men should not drink more than 2 units of alcohol per day, women no more than 1 unit of alcohol per day and no more than 5 days a week. You should not drive until you are confident that your alcohol level is no longer high.

To reduce the harmful effects of alcohol, you should drink plenty of water. Alcohol dehydrates the body, so after drinking alcohol, you should drink plenty of water to compensate for the loss.

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to provide water-soluble vitamins, which are easily lost during dehydration due to alcohol and are also necessary for the body to metabolize alcohol. Eat protein-rich foods such as eggs, beans, meat, and fish to support the body's alcohol metabolism. You should avoid processed foods.

Heavy drinking leads to risks such as cancer (breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, liver cancer, etc.); pancreatitis; sudden death if there is concomitant cardiovascular disease, myocardial damage (alcoholic cardiomyopathy) leading to heart failure, stroke; high blood pressure; liver disease; serious accidents and accidental death.