• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Alcohol

djry

djry

Well-Known Member
Messages
74
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
What's everyone's thought about drinking with diabetes ice been drinking a lot just lately and am on insulin.
 
Everything in moderation - just look at sugar content. I stick to Red wine generally now as less sugar. No beer apart from low carb version. Gin and slimline tonic is fine :)
 
rachxx said:
I dont drink...only lots of fizzy so tats bad
Click to expand...

If you drink sugar free it is usually fine (I think) - I've recently discovered sugar free Irn Bru! Over time you will not notice the different, regular fizzy drinks do contain so much sugar so personally I wouldn't touch them.
 
Nothing wrong with a drink so long as you do so in moderation and caution
 
I tend to drop with vodka and water so test to make sure you're not dropping and have a snack available
 
I had a few drinks this weekend, ate hardly anything and nothing even remotely high carb and it shot my sugars up. Just vodka with SF mix.
 
chalup said:
I had a few drinks this weekend, ate hardly anything and nothing even remotely high carb and it shot my sugars up. Just vodka with SF mix.
Click to expand...
I can't eat carbs when I drink at all but I do need a bit of protein and fat. They won't raise me but they will stop me from dropping. Any amount of carbs will raise me. Not sure about sf mix. Some say it acts like sugar to them. I don't use any so I can't say
 
Drinking and insulin can be a bad combination - use caution and watch carefully. Alcohol shuts down the glucose stream from your liver while it is processing it. For people not on insulin, this is not normally an issue. But if you are on insulin, and don't have adequate glucose from catbs for the added insulin to process, you can have a hypo - since you don't have the liver's glucose as a buffer.
 
chalup said:
I had a few drinks this weekend, ate hardly anything and nothing even remotely high carb and it shot my sugars up. Just vodka with SF mix.
Click to expand...

Kristin251 said:
I can't eat carbs when I drink at all but I do need a bit of protein and fat. They won't raise me but they will stop me from dropping. Any amount of carbs will raise me. Not sure about sf mix. Some say it acts like sugar to them. I don't use any so I can't say
Click to expand...

Alcohol very reliably drops my blood glucose. I can eat 20 carbs, without alcohol and 30 additional carbs if I have 5 oz glass of wine to shut off the glucose flow from my liver. Over the weekend, I had 40 grams of carbs (my normal tolerance to stay below 7.8 is 20 carbs). At 1 hour my BG was 6.5; at 2 hours it was 5.3, and at 3.5 hours it was 4.3. Without alcohol, 40 grams would have put me over 10 by 1 hour. On the flip side - had I been on insulin, and not consumed additional carbs (or adjusted my insulin down), I would almost certainly have been in hypo-land.
 
Drinking alcohol is fine as long as you're keeping hydrated and making sure your sugar is ok. I think the problem is a lot of people binge drink and don't drink water between drinks and that's where you can wind up in trouble.

I used to drink red wine and ciders. These days I rarely drink alcohol as unfortunately for me a few years back I got diagnosed with a bladder condition which flares if I eat or drink things that it doesn't like. If I drink at all I have a pear cider and nothing else. Even just having the one drink triggers intense pain. I miss my merlots. Merlots were good on my sugar levels too. Reasoning why I drink pear cider is I can tolerate pears, but I can't tolerate apples or grapes.
 
Back
Top