XWord Muggles Forum

DrTom wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:01 pm

Natalie wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:58 pm

Hector wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:09 pm Went very enjoyably (week 2-ish, MG-wise), after wasting much of the day (instead of doing the puzzle) working with four separate heating firms to diagnose a broken furnace. I'll celebrate this fun meta sitting in front of the . . . oh, yeah, we're out of firewood, too.

As a Californian, I need to know: approximately how many Manhattan cocktails does your body require to prevent freezing solid with extended exposure to temps in the 50s?

RE: your question: the absolute number of cocktails does not matter. One simply must maintain a constant level integrated over the desired time span of about one drink in the system. (One drink, in this case = 1 Manhattan made with standard beverages.) (For fellow geeks among Muggles, alcohol metabolism is steady-state, aka. zeroth order.) Bottom line. Have a Manhattan. An hour or so later, have another. Repeat. Enjoy. Stay warm. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Remember Winston Churchill: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Cheers ....

Well be careful because zero order comes with some tricky parts.

So. Let’s say you are at 100 mg% (well buzzed and probably at the level you do not feel pain) and zero level elimination (which is about 15 +/- 4 mg% per hour in a “social drinker”) means your elimination profile would look like this:
BAC.jpg
BUT, since zero order is also saturable, if you take another drink in 1 hour and then another in another hour (all highly reasonable!) you could hit an asymptotic rise in blood alcohol.
Asym.jpg

Then zero order is NOT your friend because you don’t get back to the approx. 17 mg% until first you crunch through all the excess alcohol. The simplest example of this is the “day after” a particularly hard party (that wine taste with your friends, that football homecoming) even after you have slept 7 hours or so and you are STILL buzzed. I believe at that point you have made an Asymptote out of yourself.

Geoduck wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:45 pm

DrTom wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:01 pm

Natalie wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:58 pm

RE: your question: the absolute number of cocktails does not matter. One simply must maintain a constant level integrated over the desired time span of about one drink in the system. (One drink, in this case = 1 Manhattan made with standard beverages.) (For fellow geeks among Muggles, alcohol metabolism is steady-state, aka. zeroth order.) Bottom line. Have a Manhattan. An hour or so later, have another. Repeat. Enjoy. Stay warm. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Remember Winston Churchill: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Cheers ....

Well be careful because zero order comes with some tricky parts.

So. Let’s say you are at 100 mg% (well buzzed and probably at the level you do not feel pain) and zero level elimination (which is about 15 +/- 4 mg% per hour in a “social drinker”) means your elimination profile would look like this:
BAC.jpg
BUT, since zero order is also saturable, if you take another drink in 1 hour and then another in another hour (all highly reasonable!) you could hit an asymptotic rise in blood alcohol.
Asym.jpg

Then zero order is NOT your friend because you don’t get back to the approx. 17 mg% until first you crunch through all the excess alcohol. The simplest example of this is the “day after” a particularly hard party (that wine taste with your friends, that football homecoming) even after you have slept 7 hours or so and you are STILL buzzed. I believe at that point you have made an Asymptote out of yourself.

But Natalie suggested one drink per hour, and given the zero-order kinetics (other than at the very lowest concentrations of alcohol), for the typical drinker the rate of removal is, indeed, close to the amount of alcohol in one average drink per hour. So Natalie's one-drink-per-hour recommendation would look more like a sawtooth if graphed, but the blood alcohol level would not rise over the long haul.

However, individuals vary greatly in the rate of elimination; those with very slow rates of alcohol metabolism might experience a rise (but with a sawtooth imposed on the rise) as in your second graph.

We experienced drinkers, on the other hand, have a higher rate of alcohol metabolism, so we might need a drink every 45 minutes, or 40 minutes, or 30 minutes, or...

boharr wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 8:04 pm

Geoduck wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:45 pm

DrTom wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:01 pm

Well be careful because zero order comes with some tricky parts.

So. Let’s say you are at 100 mg% (well buzzed and probably at the level you do not feel pain) and zero level elimination (which is about 15 +/- 4 mg% per hour in a “social drinker”) means your elimination profile would look like this:
BAC.jpg
BUT, since zero order is also saturable, if you take another drink in 1 hour and then another in another hour (all highly reasonable!) you could hit an asymptotic rise in blood alcohol.
Asym.jpg

Then zero order is NOT your friend because you don’t get back to the approx. 17 mg% until first you crunch through all the excess alcohol. The simplest example of this is the “day after” a particularly hard party (that wine taste with your friends, that football homecoming) even after you have slept 7 hours or so and you are STILL buzzed. I believe at that point you have made an Asymptote out of yourself.

But Natalie suggested one drink per hour, and given the zero-order kinetics (other than at the very lowest concentrations of alcohol), for the typical drinker the rate of removal is, indeed, close to the amount of alcohol in one average drink per hour. So Natalie's one-drink-per-hour recommendation would look more like a sawtooth if graphed, but the blood alcohol level would not rise over the long haul.

However, individuals vary greatly in the rate of elimination; those with very slow rates of alcohol metabolism might experience a rise (but with a sawtooth imposed on the rise) as in your second graph.

We experienced drinkers, on the other hand, have a higher rate of alcohol metabolism, so we might need a drink every 45 minutes, or 40 minutes, or 30 minutes, or...

Didn’t really follow all this but the last paragraph has my wholehearted support.

Bob cruise director wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:54 pm

DrTom wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:01 pm

Natalie wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:58 pm

RE: your question: the absolute number of cocktails does not matter. One simply must maintain a constant level integrated over the desired time span of about one drink in the system. (One drink, in this case = 1 Manhattan made with standard beverages.) (For fellow geeks among Muggles, alcohol metabolism is steady-state, aka. zeroth order.) Bottom line. Have a Manhattan. An hour or so later, have another. Repeat. Enjoy. Stay warm. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Remember Winston Churchill: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Cheers ....

Well be careful because zero order comes with some tricky parts.

So. Let’s say you are at 100 mg% (well buzzed and probably at the level you do not feel pain) and zero level elimination (which is about 15 +/- 4 mg% per hour in a “social drinker”) means your elimination profile would look like this:
BAC.jpg
BUT, since zero order is also saturable, if you take another drink in 1 hour and then another in another hour (all highly reasonable!) you could hit an asymptotic rise in blood alcohol.
Asym.jpg

Then zero order is NOT your friend because you don’t get back to the approx. 17 mg% until first you crunch through all the excess alcohol. The simplest example of this is the “day after” a particularly hard party (that wine taste with your friends, that football homecoming) even after you have slept 7 hours or so and you are STILL buzzed. I believe at that point you have made an Asymptote out of yourself.

I would have bet a lot of money that our muggle blog would never have had graphs about alcohol level.

Geoduck wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:45 pm

DrTom wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:01 pm

Natalie wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:58 pm

RE: your question: the absolute number of cocktails does not matter. One simply must maintain a constant level integrated over the desired time span of about one drink in the system. (One drink, in this case = 1 Manhattan made with standard beverages.) (For fellow geeks among Muggles, alcohol metabolism is steady-state, aka. zeroth order.) Bottom line. Have a Manhattan. An hour or so later, have another. Repeat. Enjoy. Stay warm. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Remember Winston Churchill: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Cheers ....

Well be careful because zero order comes with some tricky parts.

So. Let’s say you are at 100 mg% (well buzzed and probably at the level you do not feel pain) and zero level elimination (which is about 15 +/- 4 mg% per hour in a “social drinker”) means your elimination profile would look like this:
BAC.jpg
BUT, since zero order is also saturable, if you take another drink in 1 hour and then another in another hour (all highly reasonable!) you could hit an asymptotic rise in blood alcohol.
Asym.jpg

Then zero order is NOT your friend because you don’t get back to the approx. 17 mg% until first you crunch through all the excess alcohol. The simplest example of this is the “day after” a particularly hard party (that wine taste with your friends, that football homecoming) even after you have slept 7 hours or so and you are STILL buzzed. I believe at that point you have made an Asymptote out of yourself.

But Natalie suggested one drink per hour, and given the zero-order kinetics (other than at the very lowest concentrations of alcohol), for the typical drinker the rate of removal is, indeed, close to the amount of alcohol in one average drink per hour. So Natalie's one-drink-per-hour recommendation would look more like a sawtooth if graphed, but the blood alcohol level would not rise over the long haul.

However, individuals vary greatly in the rate of elimination; those with very slow rates of alcohol metabolism might experience a rise (but with a sawtooth imposed on the rise) as in your second graph.

We experienced drinkers, on the other hand, have a higher rate of alcohol metabolism, so we might need a drink every 45 minutes, or 40 minutes, or 30 minutes, or...