This article gives a good explanation of alcohol and diabetes.
http://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/d-teens-and-alcohol-no-bull-from-uncle-wil#2
To drink safely you need to first understand how alcohol affects you and me differently than it does the sugar-normals. Do you know anything about your
liver? It does all kinds of things for your body. It has more than 500 different functions, actually. But most importantly to our discussion today: It's a blood filter. It removes toxins from your blood. Toxins like alcohol.
But the liver only does one thing at a time. Everyone and everything else just has to take a number and stand in line until it's finished the job at hand. And on that list of 500 jobs is "remove excess insulin." Unless, of course, alcohol is in line first. Then the insulin just builds up in your blood while your liver is dealing with the alcohol. It takes hours for the liver to "clear" a good binge, and all that time the insulin stays in your system. It's like taking an extra shot of basal. Big-time hypos hit 8-10 hours downstream from
last call, when you're sleeping it off.
Oh, and when you've been drinking, your body will respond more sluggishly to the treatment of those lows. The rebound will be a lot slower than you're used to. So don't panic, just be prepared for a 2-3 times longer "recovery" than you'd experience with sober lows. Booze also reduces your awareness of lows overall, and sometimes even triggers a temporary state of hypoglycemia unawareness. So be aware that you may not be aware, O.K.
