How long does alcohol stay in urine?
Most people love to drink alcohol. It is not only a habit but also a lifestyle in many countries. You revel in many flavours like wine, beer, etc.
“You know your body takes about 2-4 days to remove it.”
Alcohol has a short life span in our bodies. When you drink alcohol, your body starts metabolizing it at the rate of 20 ml per hour. It means your body takes 2 hours to metabolize it. BMA rate is different for every individual. It is the primary concern you how long does alcohol stay in urine.
According to the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), it is illegal to sell for teenagers. So, youngsters should avoid it. Alcohol stays in your body liquids, i.e. blood, breath, and urine. Its concentration depends on the number of drinks and many other factors. These factors include age, weight, genetics, and your overall health.
It travels from the food canal to the small intestine. It damages your kidney, liver, bladder, lungs, and skin.
Read more to learn how long does alcohol stay in urine.
Alcohol life span and its effects:
Alcohol metabolizes at a constant rate. It metabolizes quickly, but its effects are long-lasting. Blood alcohol concentration varies among people. It is defined as the amount of alcohol in the blood as compared to the amount of water in the blood.
Factors affecting by alcohol:
Alcohol has terrible effects on our body. Following are these:
Age and weightage and weight of alcohol adductors are essential factors. You are more at risk with your growing age. Older age has more destructive effects after drinking alcohol. These harmful effects are due to abnormal health issues, weight gain, smoking, loss of muscle strength, etc.
- Drinking alcohol before a meal
Before a meal, alcohol damages your food canal and stomach walls. It has a high temperature which directly destroys your tissues.
- Liver diseases
Alcohol is directly related to liver diseases. It causes your liver to stop filtering blood that leads to liver failure.
- Binge drinking
Drinking affects your brain functioning directly.
- Medications
Medications that can interact with alcohol include:
- Anti-anxiety medications
- ADHD medications
- Cold medicines
- Diabetes medications
- Allergy medicines
Doctors estimate the time for how long does alcohol stay in our body.
Overall health with comparison to how long does alcohol stay in urine
It affects a person both mentally and physically. Drinking disables your brain’s functioning. It also affects your physical health. It causes heart diseases, diabetes type 2, improper liver functioning, kidney failure, etc.
Steps to reduce the effects of alcohol:
You should follow specific steps to reduce the long-lasting effects of alcohol.
- Drink alcohol after the meal. It helps to absorb alcohol.
- Take it with water.
- Avoid drugs or caffeine.
How does our body metabolize alcohol?
Following are the steps in the process of alcohol metabolize:
- You drink alcohol.
- It enters the digestion system through the food canal.
- But there is a difference, and it does not enter totally into the digestive system. About 20% of alcohol enters your blood vessels.
- Then it delivers to the brain through blood vessels.
- The remaining 80% enters the small intestine and then leads to the bloodstream.
Two enzymes are responsible for alcohol metabolization. These enzymes break down ethyl alcohol into acetaldehyde. It is further broken into small substances. Then our body absorbs it.
An enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase is present in the stomach. It breaks down all the alcohol. But this condition is for the light and social drinkers. This enzyme converts this alcohol into fuel.
Heavy drinkers have a disadvantage. Their body uses a large amount of energy for the breakdown of alcohol.
Now, your topic of interest will start from here is how long does alcohol stay in urine:
“The final step is to answer the question of how long does alcohol stay in urine.”
Medical tests to check the presence or concentration of alcohol:
You are curious to learn how long does alcohol stay in urine. We are going to answer your query.
Medical recommends us to perform two tests for the estimation of alcohol’s life span and presence.
Following are these:
- Urine test
- Breath test
How long does alcohol stay in urine?
Urine test: It is an advanced medical test that helps us to detect alcohol and its traces by ethyl glucuronide. If you are using an average alcohol test, you can find that alcohol stays in urine for 12-48 hours. But if you are using an advanced form of urine test, you can infer that alcohol stays about 80 hours in urine.
About 1 to 2 per cent of alcohol remains in the urine after many days. It makes alcohol detectable.
- Breath test
An instrument Breathalyzer detects alcohol’s presence. But it detects within a short time of about 24 hours.
Hair is the most useful thing to detect after a long time. It can see after 90 hours.
Accuracy of urine test regards how long does alcohol stay in urine
It is a popular and inexpensive test to estimate the presence of alcohol.
Alcohol is present in urine about 1.33 time’s high amount than the amount present in the blood. We can take at least two samples from urine for estimation.
Traces of alcohol in urine:
We can detect alcohol after a long time due to the presence of its traces in urine. Its byproduct is ethyl glucuronide (EtG). It is a metabolite and another substance that is present in the urine. It lives long in the urine.
There is one thing that is a more reliable test than others.
Remaining tests:
Chemists do not prefer all other tests due to specific reasons. These reasons are:
- Expensive
- Inability to give alcohol concentration
- Unable to differentiate alcohol from its trances
Main answer for how long does alcohol stay in our urine?
It stays a long time in our body. It can detect by different body parts like:
Blood: Up to 6 hours
Breath: 24 hours
Urine: 80 hours
Saliva: 24 hours
Hair: 90 days
Symptoms of intoxication:
High blood intake is not good for your health. It affects your body badly. But if you drink high concentration, you will experience the following symptoms of intoxication:
- A slow process of inhabitation
- Confused while speaking
- Disorganized coordination
- Lack of concentration
- Suffocation
- Confused personality
- Euphoria
- Poor judgment
- Loss of consciousness
- Seizures
- Hypothermia
- Vomiting
It may also lead to high life-threatening risks.
- Vehicle accidents
- Risky results
- High level of violence
- Risk of suicide
Quantity of alcohol that is dangerous for your health:
First of all, we recommend you not to drink alcohol. It is bad for your health. But if you are taking it, do not over drink it.
High BAC can results in to death.
- 06% – 0.15% BAC:
It causes speech, memory, attention, coordination, balance moderately impaired; driving ability significantly impaired
- 16% – 0.30% BAC: It causes significant impairments in speech, memory, attention, balance, reaction time, and coordination; driving ability dangerously impaired; judgment and decision-making impaired; risk of blackouts; vomiting; loss of consciousness
- 31% – 0.45% BAC:
It causes a risk of life-threatening overdose and risk of death from suppression of breathing, heart rate, and body temperature
Maximum 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men is reasonable and safe.
Last words:
Drinking alcohol is not suitable for health. Your body takes days to metabolize it. The exciting thing is that your body makes fuel with alcohol intake. But if you are habitual drinker, it is inverse. Your body will use all its energy to metabolize alcohol.
Sometimes, you drink, you even forget about it. But alcohol is still in your body in the form of its traces and byproducts. Enzymes play an essential role to break it into simple substances. Then, these substances are absorbed in your body.
Alcohol stays in your body’s liquids for a long time. If you drank it a few days ago, your doctor could detect it by many tests. These tests are saliva, urine, blood, or breathe test. Sometimes, the hair test also helps to see alcohol.
A urine test is a reliable test than all others. It can show you results even 80 hours after your drink.
Now, let’s take a quick overview of its bad impacts on your health. It leads you to unconsciousness. You can feel vomiting.
So, take precautions while drinking and after drinking:
- Do not drive.
- Do not argue in any discussion.
- Do not go alone anywhere.
- Do not drink if you are a patient with type-2 diabetes.
- Do not medicine after drinking. It will show you rejection that leads you to medical damage.
