Blood alcohol content describes the amount of alcohol present in the blood of someone who has been drinking. The Tennessee Association of Alcohol, Drug and Other Addiction Services reports that a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent indicates that every 800 drops of blood in the body contain at least one drop of alcohol. Several factors affect blood alcohol content and your level of intoxication.
Food
The amount of food in your stomach affects how quickly alcohol enters the bloodstream. If you have an empty stomach, your blood alcohol content will increase quickly because of a lack of food to absorb the alcohol you drink. If you have food in your stomach, it keeps the alcohol there for a longer period of time. Because a great deal of alcohol absorption occurs in the small intestine, this slows down the absorption of alcoholic drinks.
Alcohol Tolerance
Two types of alcohol tolerance affect your blood alcohol content, according to the Campus Alcohol Abuse Prevention Center at Virginia Tech. Metabolic tolerance describes how quickly the liver metabolizes alcohol. The liver reacts to alcohol consumption by producing more alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol. In people who drink regularly, levels of this enzyme remain elevated, resulting in faster alcohol metabolism. As a result, chronic alcohol users have lower peak blood alcohol content than those who do not drink regularly.
Functional tolerance describes the body's sensitivity to alcohol's effects. Someone who has a high level of functional tolerance exhibits fewer signs of intoxication than someone who has very little functional tolerance. Metabolic and functional tolerance results in lower blood alcohol content.
Consumption Rate
The rate of consumption of alcoholic beverages affects your blood alcohol content. Because the body metabolizes alcohol and eliminates it fairly quickly, drinking alcohol faster than the body can eliminate it results in increased blood alcohol content. The amount of alcohol you consume also plays a role in blood alcohol content results.
Distribution Factors
Body fat percentage, body weight and body type all affect blood alcohol content. People with low body fat percentages tend to have lower blood alcohol concentrations than those who have high levels of body fat. Because women tend to have higher amounts of body fat than men, women tend to have higher blood alcohol concentrations. When two people who have similar body fat percentages consume the same amounts of alcohol, the person with the lowest body weight has a higher blood alcohol concentration than the heavier person.
Drink Strength
The strength of the alcoholic beverages you consume affects your blood alcohol concentration. The body absorbs drinks with a low alcohol concentration slowly because these drinks remain in the stomach for long periods of time. Drinks with high concentrations of alcohol irritate the gastrointestinal tract, which delays emptying alcohol from the stomach to the small intestine. The Campus Alcohol Abuse Prevention Center at Virginia Tech reports that the body quickly absorbs alcohol when drink concentrations range from 10 percent to 30 percent.
