Being diagnosed with Diabetes is a life changing event. As yet there is no cure for the disease and this means you will have diabetes for the rest of your life. You have to adapt and live with the disease.

In order to treat diabetes you will have to check your blood sugar level each and every day. You will either have to inject insulin or take some form of medication to make the body more responsive to insulin. Above all, you should try to get more exercise and control what you eat and drink.

Apart from the responsibility of having to take control of your blood sugar level, being strict about what you can and can’t eat seems the hardest thing to get used to. Most people enjoy eating and drinking and a restriction on this can seem very unfair. However, after some initial adjustment, creating tasty and interest diabetic food is quite easy.

One thing that many people wonder about is how alcohol and diabetes go together or maybe they don’t go together. This article will cover diabetes and alcohol consumption. How alcohol affects the body and how you can consume alcohol moderately if you have diabetes.

In reality, there is no problem having the odd alcoholic drink from time to time if you are diabetic. However consuming alcohol is akin to taking in empty calories. In other words, alcohol has no nutritional benefit even though it puts lots of calories into the body. This can make it hard to control the blood sugar level in the body. It may also lead to weight gain which can worsen or increase any diabetic complications.

After drinking alcohol, the liver will control the processing of it. One ounce of alcohol will take approximately two hours to completely metabolize. This depends on the size of the person and their physical fitness. During this time the liver stops making glucose.

During this process there is a possibility that the blood sugar level can become low and the person can become hypoglycemic. If you are hypoglycemic you may feel light headed, lethargic or even pass out. This is the reason why you have probably been told never to drink on an empty stomach.

So getting a small bite to eat is good advice before you start to drink alcohol. This is especially relevant to a person with diabetes as they should strive to keep their blood sugar within a given range as much as possible. The food will make the liver create glucose and it will enter the blood before the alcohol enters the body. And like most medication, if you take diabetic pills then your shouldn’t consume alcohol for a few hours after or as the prescription advises.

Don’t drink excessively. Alcohol has no nutritional benefits for the body and as a diabetic it will be harder to control the blood sugar level. Fluctuations in blood sugar levels will make blood circulation worse and may lead to nerve damage and further problems with the cardiovascular system.

Having a glass or two of wine with dinner is perfectly ok. Drinking alcohol as part of a celebration is also fine. As you become more experienced with diabetes you will know when you have taken on too much alcohol.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Related posts

• No related posts.