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drinking pints of beer

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drago72

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hello, i see here and there that drinking is bad for diabetes type 2. still, i hit morning fasting around 6.1 and during the day fasting around 5.6. if i go out drinking, somewhere between 4-6 pints of beer, then i have seen values as low as 4.1. i dont understand how that can be bad. could you please share your opinions? btw, i'm talking about blood sugar only. lets leave calories, fat liver, hangover, etc out of the conversation. thank you.
 
drago72 said:
hello, i see here and there that drinking is bad for diabetes type 2. still, i hit morning fasting around 6.1 and during the day fasting around 5.6. if i go out drinking, somewhere between 4-6 pints of beer, then i have seen values as low as 4.1. i dont understand how that can be bad. could you please share your opinions? btw, i'm talking about blood sugar only. lets leave calories, fat liver, hangover, etc out of the conversation. thank you.
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Hi drago and welcome.

The thing about beer is that it has quite a few carbs in it. For five pints I'd reckon on around 100g carbs. That's five days normal intake for me.

However if we drink alcohol, it ties up the liver for a while. This can interfere with the liver topping up your blood glucose levels. I noticed this effect in my early days post diagnosis but it has a downside, unfortunately, and I think of it as cheating the meter. Whatever carbs you've eaten have still gone in and will still be digested and converted to glucose (mainly). It can lead to elevated BG levels for much longer.

So I've been out for a meal, had some alcohol and tracked my BG. Mine can fall quite far, despite eating and drinking carbs. I'll often still be fairly low the following morning. However, I can often spend the following day or two considerably higher than normal.

The other downside for me is that the carbs I've taken in knock me out of ketosis even if they don't appear to do anything else. So these days the only beer I drink regularly is low carb or zero carb. Most are not worth it, but there are a couple that taste like proper beer.
 
Actually, alcohol per se is not blood sugar raising. Not at all - in fact the opposite. Zero carbs, zero nutritents. The alcohol-greeblies have eaten up all the sugar to make the alcohol. And, While the liver is dealing with the alcohol, it is not spurting out excess glucose into your blood stream, which is a common problem for those with type two insulin resistant diabetes. So it can and often does - lower our blood glucose. If it is blood glucose raising it is the other ingredients in the drink, not the alcohol. (This includes the sacrilege of adding sugar after the fermentation process, all too common.)

Why aren't you reading this in many places? Because alcohol is addictive. And the health and medical professionals don't want us to drink too much of an addictive substance. And yeah well, addiction can be seriously bad for we human folks. So it is not literally wrong - those with T2D being human and all.
 
drago72 said:
hello, i see here and there that drinking is bad for diabetes type 2. still, i hit morning fasting around 6.1 and during the day fasting around 5.6. if i go out drinking, somewhere between 4-6 pints of beer, then i have seen values as low as 4.1. i dont understand how that can be bad. could you please share your opinions? btw, i'm talking about blood sugar only. lets leave calories, fat liver, hangover, etc out of the conversation. thank you.
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I’ve not tested it out but everyone from doctors to the diabetic nurse, people on here all the books I’ve been reading all seem to be telling me to stay away from alcohol so it’s something I think most are all falling into line with and that’s not very common with diabetes from what I can tell
 
I had always wondered why my sugars dropped after a session on the beer back in my younger days, thanks for asking.
 
drago72 said:
lets leave calories, fat liver, hangover, etc out of the conversation. thank you.
Click to expand...
Something like 90% of people diagnosed with T2 are also overweight often with NAFLD. Alcohol as already mentioned is high in calories with no nutritional value. Excess weight around the middle is particularly problematic for T2's, and drinking is well known for causing fat to gather around our organs. It's no coincidence they call it a beer belly.
If we are discussing what's bad about alcohol it's impossible to leave out, calories, fat & liver because that just about sums up why it's bad for everyone
 
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