Low-Carb Diet Can Disrupt DUI Tests
Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb has written a short note suggesting that low carb diets, which encourage the body to produce ketones from burning stored fats, can cause irregularities (specifically, higher Breathalyzer results):
Don’t laugh at this story because it is very serious and could happen to YOU if you are in the right set of circumstances. It seems the breathalyzer tests used by law enforcement officials can register a false reading based on elevated ketone levels in your body. As you know, people who are on the low-carb lifestyle, especially in the most ketogenic stages eating around 20-40g carbs daily, induce heavy ketosis in their body to begin burning all that stored fat that’s inside of them. That’s what makes low-carb work so spectacular!But a recent experiment by a scientist friend of mine showed those excess ketones that come from livin’ la vida low-carb can actually show up on the breathalyzer test in a negative way and create a false positive for the presence of alcohol.
Conducted over several weeks, the scientist first made sure his body was not in ketosis and tested his blood alcohol content. Predictably, it came back with a ZERO reading. Then he allowed his body to get into ketosis and ran a series of tests with the breathalyzer. He scored as high as a 0.04% blood alchol content, which is about half of what the legal limit is in most states.
Keep in mind that he consumed no alcoholic beverages, no cough syrup, no mouthwash, and had no residual starch/sugars fermenting in his mouth. This reading he obtained was based solely on the ketones his body was producing.
That’s plausible, but hardly a scientific test. What’s more, the 0.04 reading won’t get you arrested alone, and one must question whether or not a low-carb-only dieter could possibly reach the 0.08 limit alone. When combining low-carbs with drinking, it seems possible to cross the 0.08 barrier without being impaired, but one must question how common a ‘low carb dieter’ is going to be drinking carb-heavy alcoholic drinks.
In any case, something to keep in mind for low-carb dieters who enjoy a few drinks.
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