Alcohol continued

Sorry to disappoint but the body absorbs approximately 90% of all the ingested alcohol regardless of how slowly or quickly it’s drunk. However on average, depending on gender, weight, genetics we can only metabolise approximately 8g/hour ie 1unit/hour, nothing to be done to speed this up except be a chronic alcoholic! The other 10% is excreted unaltered (got rid of) via the skin, lungs, saliva, sweat, urine. So if you decide to down 6 pints (2 units/pint) in an evening, this would take12hrs to clear, and the reason why quite a few fail the morning-after breath test. The road-side breath analyser is not sufficiently accurate on it’s own to determine absolute alcohol levels, hence the reason for a trip to the ‘cop-shop’ for a blood test to determine accurate blood alcohol concentration.

Going back even further to my undergraduate days, one of the only Physiology Seminars that we all remained attentive in, imparted the following useful advice.

1) Drink purer alcohol eg gin, vodka, white rum to reduce the hangovers

2) Drink loads of water before going to bed.

I think this website will answer most of your other questions hangovers, the q&a's