Alcohol

Your explanation is fine.

When I was a beer drinker I would always hypo the following morning around 10am, I would try and pre-empt it by giving a reduced dose at breakfast and by eating a small snack around 9am. Since changing to red wine I don't have any issues and it hardly effects my bg levels.

I think one of the big dangers of drinking alcohol (except for hypo's) is recognising the hypo awareness symptoms when boozy, alcohol can mask the symptoms.

PG1759 said:

Thanks. What you've said about hypo the next day is what intrigues me. Last night I had 4 pints of lager which is the most I've had since diagnosis (8 months)
Today I've found I'm dropping a lot and wondered why that would be ?

Click to expand...

They say alcohol can effect bg levels for up to 24 hours after drinking session, might be worth giving yourself reduced bolus doses today until your bg levels settle down.

I don't drink beer so not sure if I'll be of much help but....
I drink wine or gin and slimline tonic. It drops my blood sugar levels. I went out on Saturday started drinking at around 1pm, I had dinner out - lamb and potatoes with no insulin, checked my sugars at around 10pm and they were low 4s so we got a chicken burger on the way home (to a party) carried on drinking and checked my sugars before bed at 3am- dropped to 3.8 so I had some lucozade before bed because I couldn't face any more food. Woke up to them in the low 4s, had breakfast and lunch with no insulin (probably around 60g of carbs in total) then my sugars were 5 before dinner at 6pm. I had my tea and I injected as normal. And they've been steady since.
So basically I find that alcohol sends me low, so I check regularly and eat carbs before bed (perfect excuse for a chicken kebab) to prevent a night time hypo. Then the next day I get to have a monster breakfast without thinking about it. Usually my diet is low carb (less than 50g a day) so I enjoy a night out because I can eat what I want the next day. I thought it was because your liver is digesting the alcohol so doesn't give you any glucose. However I do test regularly and all my friends keep an eye out for any funny behaviour. Hope that's of some help to you x

so it means type 1 diabetics can really drink.... i was perplexed as i like some booze occassionaly.... and after my diagnoses i thought that i can never drink again.....

Himtiw said:

so it means type 1 diabetics can really drink.... i was perplexed as i like some booze occassionaly.... and after my diagnoses i thought that i can never drink again.....

Click to expand...

Drinking does mess with the BG I don't imagine that anyone would disagree.
The problem is we are all human, so we might drink from time to time. The secret if you want to drink is to understand what it does to your system specifically BG. the only problem is that everyone is different and it can affect them differently.

For example if I drink beer then I get a spike depending on the alcohol (Low Alcohol generally mean higher sugar content) this may not be true of Fortified wines and spirits though as they can have odd effects.
So for strong Largers (like Holsten Pils 5% plus) these can initially lower BG so you get a low that 'may' be followed by a high later.

This is why non-diabetics get the munchies after the pub.

Gin has low sugar content, so to a lesser extent has Vodka (made from potatoes),Whiskey(Grain)...

The next day can be a challenge too :-

In my case I have what seems like a morning or day or poor absorption (low sensitivity to) insulin which can catch you unawares as it can cause a late evening Hypo.

Oh yes also once years ago I forgot my to take my bolus pen on a night out in London.

I realized when I got to the restaurant where we were eating, so I didn't eat, instead I drank Holsten all night when I got home later and tested I was 13.

But this is not to be recommended.

This one thing I haven't jumped into yet. I've been putting it off until I got a CGM lol

So far I have found that anything with carbs will put your sugars up, but then perhaps hours later will cause them to fall lol

I've gone out and had a beer or two and noticed they go up and then I usually wake up much lower then normal even if I go to bed at a normal number and that scares me a bit right now lol

I've had times when a bottle of beer or two sends my BG levels right up before bed. Then times when drinking for a night out and my BG have been fine. Not sure if that's because of the type or drink I'm having or the amount... Or just because of some dodgy dancing burning off my sugar lol

I think you just need to see what works for you and make sure you are aware of what's going on.

I've found that having a few drinks then getting some food on the way home works for me to keep my levels stable. However, I can confirm about being low the next morning, even after having breakfast.

Ross

I always find that if I drink more than two units of alcohol my bs spikes within an hour but that spike doesn't last long then the bs falls through the floor,and I've scared myself on a few occasions by missing the warning signs of impending hypo's,as it really did drop that fast!!!!!!! Safer for me not to have the alcohol I fear,but an orange juice and lemonade spikes my bs too,and I hate diet coke,so I'll turn into a hermit and stay at home lol.

For everyones info I was told years ago that Guiness has 30g of carbohydrate in it.

Hi everybody,
talking about alcohol, here's what my experience has been in these seven years of diabetes.

I used to be a heavy drinker, and still partially am. Apart from what the sugar content of drinks does to BG I would take into account the psychological effect of alcohol; it makes one careless. Alcohol puts me in the "who cares" mode, which could be quite dangerous in terms of BG. Furthermore here in Italy alcohol is consumed massively often at "aperitivo" time, together with all sorts of stuff to eat (chips, peanuts, sandwiches, pasta, cheese... whatever...), so the more you drink, the more careless you become, the more you eat... and BANG the BG skyrockets in no time.
A diabetic can hardly afford to lose control in dietary terms, and that's precisely what alcohol does.
Plus, there's alcohol and alcohol. If you just consider drinks for their sugar content, than I would say that the best choice would be to drink spirits (because you - normally - drink less of it), problem is spirits often come mixed with all sorts of stuff in cocktails. Negroni for instance (1\3 gin, 1\3 vermut, typically Martini rosso, 1\3 bitter, typically Campari) is very heavy sugarwise, and for me it means 6UI fro each Negroni. Beer again is quite heavy in sugars plus you tend to drink big quantities of it. So in my experience red wine is probably the best option.

For me, alcohol lowers my blood sugars... I definitely have a considerably reduced dawn phenomenon - ie what you said about the liver being so busy clearing out the alcohol it's not chucking out its 'helpful' morning glucose (glycogen) to help wake you up... So I always reduce my nighttime basal, even if I've only had one drink. I tend to follow Gary's advice in Think Like A Pancreas - which is to reduce basal by 20% for each alcoholic drink you have... Touch wood, this seems to work ok for me.

However - it definitely doesn't just affect my dawn phenomenon - like some others have mentioned, if I have a drink at lunch, or even early pm, then I'll be low before the day is through. Particularly the lunchtime one has caught me off guard a few times - I've had a glass of wine with lunch - which seems so inconsequential I've completely forgotten about it - injected my normal bolus ratio/dose for dinner - and found myself hypo-ing halfway through dinner thinking '***' - then I remember the lunchtime wine... So yep - for me, it always makes my numbers lower - one way or another... I almost always drink wine tho and mostly red - not sure if this is a factor....?

As a final thought - I just remembered, when I was first diagnosed and trying to stay off insulin as long as possible, I went through a phase of no matter how low carb I ate, my numbers were high (obviously I was hitting the end of my honeymoon) - anyway, I'd read about alcohol lowering numbers - so thought what the heck, and had a couple of red wines with my dinner... Sure enough the next day I was in the 5's (my fasting numbers had been low teens for weeks at this point) - so, in my wisdom I decided to drink wine every night - after a while the 'lowering properties' stopped - I can only assume my liver got used to that amount of alcohol every night... So I had decide whether to up my game on the alcohol drinking stakes, or maybe choose insulin... You'll be pleased to know I chose insulin over alcoholism... ;-)

I find that wine doesnt really impact on my levels as long as I have eaten something first, even if its just a handful of nuts.

Drinking on an empty stomach makes my levels drop a little esp if its following a walk or something active.

Andrea

Like others have mentioned here, I tend to have 4 -5 pints of larger at a time, but find that after alcohol consumption my sugars tend to be stable, but I still have a snack before bed, just to be on the safe side, my sugars tend to drop like a stone the next day, so I try to counteract it with a reduction in novo rapid.