Aaron White

Determining how a low dose of alcohol impacts your life is compli... by Aaron White

Determining how a low dose of alcohol impacts your life is complicated work.

Having food in your stomach while drinking can reduce your peak blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) by roughly a third.

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Studies tell us at least half of young people who drink experience a blackout before they graduate college, what's really concerning is that, in a two-week period, about one in 10 college students who drink say there are parts of a night they don't remember.

There is sort of a recipe if you want to black out, you basically drink in a way that gets alcohol into your brain fast and so that could be by doing shots, chugging beer, but also by skipping meals. So avoiding blackouts involves doing the opposite. Have food in your stomach, pace yourself, limit the amount you drink.

So you could be talking to somebody and having a conversation with them about something that happened the day before or a month ago or a year ago and everything seems fine.

Alcohol increases insulin levels and lowers blood glucose, so combining alcohol with anti-diabetic drugs that regulate glucose levels could cause an undesirable drop in blood sugar. And, over time, it could contribute to insulin insensitivity, our findings highlight a major gap in the literature.

Mixing alcohol and other sedatives, like sleeping pills, narcotic pain medications or muscle relaxers, can compound these problems and potentially cause injuries and death.