Alcohol and Tolerance
15/03/2010
Your ‘alcohol tolerance’ describes the point at which alcohol affects you physically and mentally. The more alcohol you need to feel the effects, the higher your tolerance.
Lots of things affect your tolerance for alcohol but the main thing is your body mass. The higher someone’s body mass the higher their tolerance for alcohol is likely to be and therefore the more they can drink before they feel drunk. This is because the more blood someone has in their body, the more it dilutes the alcohol concentration.
Men usually have a higher tolerance to alcohol than women because alcohol enters women’s bloodstream faster. Women are also usually lighter than men, lowering their tolerance levels.
People ‘s tolerance to alcohol can increase over time, especially if they’re regular heavy drinkers. Having a higher tolerance means they need to drink increasing amounts to feel the effects. When people begin to get into the habit of regularly drinking heavily, their tolerance is likely to increase.
There are problems associated with having a high alcohol tolerance. For example, it can mean that although someone doesn’t feel drunk, they are still over the legal limit for driving. It may also lead to excessive drinking which could be damaging to health.
