Does alcohol raise your blood sugar?

Question

Does alcohol raise your blood sugar?

Answer 1

The simple answer is NO unless it is mixed with a high glucose mixer but alcohol by itself will have a tendency to lower your blood sugars depending on how much you eat before, during and after the consumption.

Answer 2

Alcohol actually lowers blood glucose. The mixers may be the other problems your hearing here. In most cases 1-2 drinks is OK with food. Because the alcohol can lower your BG, the food helps stabilize it.

Answer 3

YES by the fact it contains Carbs & worse with wine.  

Answer 4

No. Infact, the opposite is true--alcohol can lower your blood glucose.

Normally, if you haven't eaten for a while, your body uses its liver stores of glucose (called glycogen) for energy. When these stores are used up, the liver makes glucose from other sources.

However, alcohol inhibits the liver from making glucose, so if you haven't eaten, you run the risk of low blood glucose (hypoglycemia). In addition, alcohol can increase or prolong the action of your insulin or oral agents. In fact, the glucose-lowering action of alcohol can last 8 to 12 hours after you had your last drink.

Alcohol is not food, and it does not provide any essential nutrients; even though your body can use the calories for energy, it cannot use the alcohol itself to make glucose. When calories from alcohol aren't used for immediate energy, they are changed to fat and stored as triglycerides. In other words, it is easier to think of alcohol as being like a fat, rather than a carbohydrate

Answer 5

not that much but somehow....

Answer 6

Decker187,

Strangely enough, the answer is both YES and NO! Alcohol Interferes with Your Blood Sugar Levels. Sugar glucose is the main energy source for all tissues.  Glucose comes from three sources: food, synthesis in the body, and break down of glycogen (the form of glucose that the body stores in the liver). Hormones maintain a constant concentration of glucose in the blood, which is especially important for the brain because it cannot make or store glucose but depends on glucose supplied by the blood.  Even brief periods of low glucose levels  - hypoglycaemia - can cause brain damage. Insulin and glucagons, secreted by the pancreas, regulate blood glucose levels.  Insulin lowers the glucose concentration in the blood, and glucagon raises it.  Because maintaining blood sugar levels is of extreme importance for your body, there are also other hormones released from the adrenal and pituitary glands to support glucagon’s function. Alcohol interferes with all three glucose sources and with the actions of regulatory hormones. Most often chronic drinkers don’t get enough glucose through their diets.  If you don’t eat, the glycogen stored in your liver will be used up within a few hours.  In addition, the body has a problem making more glucose because it is expending its energy metabolizing the alcohol.  Both of these effects of alcohol can cause severe hypoglycaemia 6 to 36 hours after a binge drinking episode.

Even if you think that can’t happen to you because you ate a healthy meal, you are wrong.  Alcohol can still affect blood sugar levels.  If that’s not enough, studies have shown that acute alcohol consumption can impair the hormonal response to hypoglycaemia.  So not only do you develop hypoglycaemia, your body also has trouble regulating and getting your blood sugar levels back to normal.

The facts are that chronic drinking causes excessive blood glucose levels (hyperglycaemia). Chronic alcohol abuse can reduce the body’s responsiveness to insulin and cause glucose intolerance in both healthy individuals and alcoholics with liver cirrhosis.  45-70 % of patients with alcoholic liver disease are glucose intolerant or are diabetic. Alcohol is really bad for diabetics because it interferes with managing diabetes. Alcohol can affect the effectiveness of hypoglycaemic medications. Treatment of diabetes by tight control of blood glucose levels is difficult in alcoholics and both hypoglycaemic and hyperglycaemic episodes are common.

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The information provided here should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed physician should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions.

Hope this helps

matador 89

Answer 7

Yes - alcohol breaks down into carbohydrates and then sugars, so the effect is not immediate.

Answer 8

Alcohol can s***w up your blood sugars by either making them high or low.  If you're binge drinking, or happen to drink a little too much, chances are your blood sugar will drop and you can pass out from low blood sugar, which is dangerous, while others around you will just think you're drinking too much and not think anything of it.

Alcohol, if it's really sugary, can raise your blood sugar and put your body into ketoacidosis, a dangerous condition where your body tries to get rid of sugar through the kidneys and throwing up.  Most people think that this is also normal when drinking, but not in diabetics, as this usually happens before the normal person gets to that level.

You should probably be a really responsible diabetic and not drink, or if you do, limit yourself to just 1 or 2, really monitoring your blood sugar levels afterward.  Good luck!