With our health assessors having finished all of our employee health checks and most of us are about to break for the Christmas festivities which will soon be in full swing, at Healthy Performance Towers we’d like to remind all motorists about the dangers of drink driving.
As well as being against the law, there is lots of evidence that driving following an alcoholic drink increases the risk of injury and accidents. Although there has been a decrease in those who still choose to drink and drive, there are still thousands of people who are injured on the roads each year as a result of drink drivers.
The alcohol limit for drivers in the UK is 80 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood (it is just 50 milligrammes in Scotland!). Although there are guides as to how many alcoholic drinks this equates too, it is difficult to determine these levels because it varies from person to person and depends upon the following:

• your weight
• your gender (men tend to process alcohol faster than women)
• your metabolism
• your current stress levels
• how much you have eaten recently
• your age (younger people tend to process alcohol more slowly)

The reason that alcohol increases the risk of driving accidents is that many of the functions that we need to drive safely such as coordination, clear vision, reaction times, and information processing are affected when we drink alcohol. You are also more likely to take potentially dangerous risks because alcohol inhibits your behaviours.
Don’t drink and drive

• Decide who, if anyone is going to be the designated driver and will therefore abstain from alcohol on a night out so they can drive safely.
• Take advantage of good public transport links if available or make sure you have a reputable taxi number.
• If you have no option but to drive, stick to alcohol free beers, ‘mocktails’ or soft drinks.
• Not every night out has to involve a bar or pub – book a table at a restaurant or go bowling or to the cinema.

The morning after!
It takes on average about one hour for your body to break down each unit of alcohol you consume and on some occasions it may take many hours for the alcohol to leave the system.  Therefore, you could still be over the legal drinking limit the day after!
Further information:
http://www.ias.org.uk
http://www.drinkaware.co.uk
We’d like to wish all of our clients and the many thousand of people across the UK who have had an employee health checks with Healthy Performance a very Merry Christmas – stay safe and remember; it is all about balance!  See you all in 2016!!