Dr. Ergin talks about how much alcohol can diabetic drinks. How much alcohol is safe? 1 drink? 2 drinks? 10 drinks? Vodka? Beer? Wine? How does it affect blood sugar? Does alcohol cause low blood sugar?
Hello everyone this is dr ahmed ergin i am an endocrinologist and today i am going to talk to you about alcohol and diabetes let’s get started all right before we get started guys please subscribe if you like this video give it a thumbs up and remember to share can you really drink alcohol if you have diabetes i’m gonna tell you how to do this right if you have
A habit or if you have a social habit it’s okay sometimes and how it is okay we’ll just get on it right now so i’ll tell you a couple quick guidelines guys and if you listen to this you will never get into trouble okay now if you want to drink alcohol this is how you do it you have diabetes and you want to have couple drinks with your friends just limited to
Two drinks total okay if you are really having fun i’ll give you one more okay so and always have that drink with a meal and try to avoid this high carb or carby cocktails why is that i mean think about this you have diabetes and if they are putting a bunch of orange juice and a little bit the vodka in it you’re going to have problems right so waka is not
Going to really do anything too much if you’re just having a two drinks but the oranges can spark your blood sugar immediately now on the other hand um if you’re having a relatively let’s say you’re having a diet sprite with some vodka you know let’s take you there diet diet uh sprite and some vodka here that will be fine because actually studies show that a
Moderate drinking like a two drinks with your meal can actually reduce your fasting blood sugars and can actually reduce your insulin levels and insulin resistance not surprising it’s all about how much you are drinking and how you’re drinking it so if you are not having a lot of sugar when you drink alcohol and you’re limiting your alcohol to two drinks and
Maximum three drinks especially for women i would i wouldn’t exceed two because they’re less tolerant to alcohol but men generally can have one or two more drinks but two to three is pretty much max okay now why is that now the the the alcohol can actually help the insulin resistance at a low level but then you increase the alcohol consumption we call this acute
Alcohol consumption and if you go crazy and drink like 10 to 16 drinks in one night what you’re doing there is basically you are paralyzing your liver your liver is very tight your alcohol is very toxic to your liver so what happens is and if you didn’t really eat well and you kept drinking what’s going to happen is the next morning normal people like use their
Liver to keep having some glucose in their system because the the glucose that comes with the food pretty much disappears within three to four hours and then after that you are relying on your liver to give you some glucose from the storage right but if you are locking the door of that storage then even if your blood sugar is going down there will be no sugar
Coming out of your liver because of this acute toxicity and this becomes a real problem if you’re if you’re just on a you know a diabetic pill or something that may not be a big problem but if you’re on a sulfonylurea such as glucoside glyburide glucopride that increases your insulin levels or if you’re just purely on insulin like a long-acting insulin so what
What does the insulin do remember then when you take insulin or any medication that chronically increases your insulin level like cyclone urea drugs they increase your insulin level and that insulin level will basically reduce the sugar coming out of your liver okay so your liver will not release the sugar when you have too much insulin in your body and then you
Drink excessive alcohol and you shut down your liver even more then there will be really nothing coming out of your liver and after 3-4 hours there is no sugar from the food either then what are you left with then you may have a like a severe low blood sugar and it may be difficult to recover now we’re talking about type 3 diabetes here but type 2 type 1 diabetes
Actually patients with type 1 diabetes are at greater risk why because they don’t even have a hormone called glucagon especially if they have been diabetic for a while which is the hormone that tells your liver to make sugar to make glucose so think about this and then if you’re type 1 diabetic you’re on insulin you know that you have to be and your insulin and
Insulin reduces the sugar that comes from your liver and alcohol stops your liver from making sugar plus you don’t even have a messenger you don’t even have a hormone to tell your liver to make sugar then you’re basically negative you can go on a hyperglycemic coma low blood sugar coma if you drink a lot now again that drinking one to two uh alcoholic drink is
Not necessarily going to put you in coma okay that’s okay as i said even for type 1 diabetics if you are drinking one or two drinks and type 1 diabetics are a little bit different so every type 1 diabetic is a little bit different some type 1 diabetics are more insulin resistant than the others so the more insulin resistant you are the luckier you are when it
Comes to low blood sugar potential but if you’re a brutal diabetic if you tend to go low very easily then i would be very careful even if i had only two drinks i would be constantly watching my blood sugars to make sure now the problem is with the alcohol if you’re going to a bar if you’re going to a place and you start drinking yeah you start with one you’ll
Go there and say oh i’ll just have one and the next thing you know you’ll go for two then a three then a four then you open your eyes in er so that’s not if you don’t think that you have a really good willpower and if you have type one diabetes i would not step into a bar if you’re in a restaurant you ask for a glass of wine fine you will be okay glass of wine
Is not really going to drop your blood sugar another thing that you have to before we close another thing you have to be monitoring is alcoholic ketoacidosis so alcohol when when it shuts down your liver your body starts turning the wheel for for for the fatty acids and ketosis can develop that can happen for both type 1 and type 2 typically happens with the
Excessive alcohol consumption so and it can definitely put you in the hospital and if you’re on metformin um definitely that is something you have to pay attention because metformin does not necessarily increase your risk of going into metabolic acidosis or ketoacidosis unless you have risk factors but if you combine you know metformin and excessive alcohol
Drinking you are basically multiplying risk factors which may not be the best idea the bottom line for pretty much everybody avoid excessive drinking one to two drinks if you want to drink is the way to go see in the next video
Transcribed from video
How Much Alcohol Can A Diabetic Drink? Is It Safe for Diabetics? By SugarMD