Most alcohol works with your metabolism to lower your blood sugar levels. Up until just a couple years ago, there is scant information available about alcohol and diabetes, and since I'd been a bartender for any short time, I had been professionally curious. Any information I found said alcohol raises blood sugar. I had been mystified, frankly, because I enjoy a glass or two of wine when out for dinner and that I always find my blood sugar drops like a stone! Here's the real story: Most alcohol lowers your blood sugar levels.
All alcohol begins as carbohydrates, such as potatoes, corn, or grapes. The fermentation process converts the sugar from the carbohydrates into alcohol, leaving little if any carbohydrates behind. Pure alcohol, whether gin, vodka, whiskey, scotch, or wine, does not raise your blood sugar; it typically lowers it, and that is because of how it's metabolized.
Normally when your blood sugar level starts to drop, your liver converts stored carbohydrate, called glycogen, into glucose. The liver then sends the glucose into your blood stream, which will help avoid or slow down a low-blood-sugar reaction. However, when alcohol enters your system, the liver's first job is to metabolize the alcohol so that it may be cleared from the body. While breaking down the alcohol, your liver is diverted from sending glucose into your blood stream.
This process may take up to twelve hours or more, depending on how much you have had to drink. If you use insulin or an oral medication that prompts your pancreas to produce insulin, and perhaps Byetta or Symlin, and you don't eat any carbohydrates while you're drinking, your blood sugar levels will most likely drop and drop fairly rapidly. Eating carbohydrates while drinking is definitely advised to slow your blood sugar levels from dropping too fast and too far.
Even people who've endured diabetes for decades still have to pay extra attention so that our blood sugar levels doesn't go too low whenever we drink alcohol, and some people have discovered our lessons the hard way. My friend Miriam, who has type 1 diabetes and writes about diabetes for health publications, wrote about a pivotal night in her youth when she drank just shy of four beers.
The next morning her roommate found her lying on the floor blathering incoherently - an indication of low blood sugar. Her roommate called 911, and when the paramedics tested Miriam's blood sugar levels it had been below 20 mg/dl (1.1 mmol/l)! Because Miriam now lives alone with no roommate to intercede, she's learned to put certain safety precautions in place. "I know I can not drink that much again,"
Miriam said, "and basically have a couple of drinks when I venture out, I'll ask a buddy to call me the following morning and make sure I'm okay. If I'm not at work by 10:30 A.M., I've also given my co-workers saving money light to phone my apartment manager, who has secrets of my apartment."
The key reason why lots of people think alcohol raises blood sugar has become the effect from the mixer in a mixed drink. For instance, the Coke in rum and Coke, the orange juice in a screwdriver, and also the sour mix in a Tom Collins raise blood sugar levels. Very sweet drinks such as dessert wine, liqueurs, and (for some people) beer will raise blood sugar.
If you like a glass of vino with dinner, diabetes educator Kathy Spain says, "a moderate quantity of alcohol may have heart-healthy and circulatory benefits, particularly in men over forty-five and ladies over fifty-five." However, she counsels patients against excessive drinking because it can cause liver disease, pancreatitis, some cancers, and hypoglycemia. Moreover, alcohol adds plenty of unintended calories that you don't know while you're drinking.
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