Fight A DUI

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.

The Mississippi Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s decision regarding a blood sample taken after a fatal DUI crash (the test found a BAC of 0.09 - above the legal limit of 0.08 for Mississippi). The lower court ruled last December that it was unclear whether the defendant (Dr. Samuel Shaw) was under arrest when the blood was taken. The Supreme Court has declined the prosecutors’ request to hear the case, leaving the prosecutors with virtually no evidence against Shaw. They key factor: the Appeals Court says Shaw refused to submit blood samples, which were then drawn without his permission.

Forbes is one of the many news outlets writing to let us know that Paris Hilton’s DUI Arraignment has been postponed. From the article:

 Hilton was originally scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges that she was driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of at least 0.08 percent, said city attorney’s spokesman Nick Velasquez.

…

The 25-year-old Hilton was arrested Sept. 7 after being stopped in her Mercedes-Benz SLR while, she has said, on a late-night hamburger run.

Hilton has no prior DUI arrests. If convicted, she could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $1,000. The minimum penalty for a first-time offender is a fine, probation and alcohol-rehabilitation program.

The $1,000 minimum fine in California probably matters little to her - but it should be interesting to see the heiress in a rehab program.

UPI is one of the many to announce that rapper Royce Montgomery was sentenced to 1 year in jail a summer DUI. From the story:

AllHipHop.com reported that a source close to the M.I.C. Records chief executive officer said that despite recommendations for parole for the rapper’s summer DUI, a Michigan judge instead chose to sentence the “Rock City” star to jail time.

“The actual situation was the DUI, but because he lives in the suburbs, you know how that goes,” the source told AllHipHop.com. “The probation people recommended that he do 30 days, but the judge was like ‘no.’ Normally the judge takes the probation people’s recommendations but they sentenced him to a year because they wanted him to think about it.”

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