Alcohol and Diabetes: Risks and Effects

This is especially true if you’re taking insulin or other diabetes medications that can cause low blood sugars. Ask your doctor if you are healthy enough to drink alcohol or if you are on other medications that may not be safe to drink while taking. If you are insulin-dependent, your doctor may suggest adjusting your insulin doses while drinking. When consumed with food, an occasional drink is OK, and if you choose wisely, it may have some positive effects on health. That sort of double impact can cause blood sugar levels to drop to dangerously low levels, a condition known as hypoglycemia.

The risks depend on how much alcohol a person consumes, as well as the type. The risk for low blood sugar remains for hours after you take your last drink. This is why you should only drink alcohol with food and drink only in moderation. At this point, alcohol can affect blood sugar in ways that are especially important for people with type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes and the Risks of Drinking Alcohol

If you are managing your diabetes with diet and exercise alone, drinking alcohol can still increase your risk of low blood sugars. And if you take insulin or types of diabetes pills that stimulate insulin production, drinking alcohol can lead to even more serious low blood sugar reactions. The risk of hypoglycemia is why experts advise people with diabetes not to drink alcohol if their blood sugar is already low.

Can You Drink Safely With Type 2 Diabetes?

However, that doesn’t mean herbal interactions won’t occur or be recognized in the future. Because of this, it’s important to check with your doctor or pharmacist before taking any of these products during Glyxambi treatment. An Internet Web site (/p450.html) catalogs the classes of cytochrome P450 molecules that can metabolize various medications. This resource can help identify medications metabolized by CYP2E1 that may potentially interact with alcohol.

1. After you drink alcohol, your blood sugar levels can drop up to 24 hours later.
2. The same stored glucose contributes to high blood sugars levels during the “dawn phenomenon” in the morning, too.
3. Many people with alcoholic liver disease also have either glucose intolerance or diabetes.
4. Wide variation exists among people in both CYP2E1 activity and metabolic rates for medications broken down by this enzyme (e.g., acetaminophen and chlorzoxasone, a medication used to relieve muscle pain).
5. Alcoholic drinks can cause both blood sugar rises and blood sugar drops, making it important to think cautiously and plan ahead.
6. Consequently, the cell’s protective mechanisms against oxidative stress are impaired, and cell death may result.

Alcohol’s Influences on Various Disease States.

The more alcohol consumed, the bigger the risk for serious low blood sugar. Some people who take oral diabetes medicines should talk with their provider to see if it is safe to drink alcohol. Alcohol can interfere with the effects of some diabetes medicines, putting you at risk for low blood sugar or high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), depending on how much you drink and what medicine you take. After you drink alcohol, your blood sugar levels can drop up to 24 hours later. Check your blood sugar before and while you’re drinking and then again before you go to bed. If you’re having frequent trouble managing your blood sugar levels, you should consider if it’s safe for you to drink alcohol.

Researchers have noted that approximately 40 percent of Asians lack ALDH2 activity because they have inherited one or two copies of an inactive variant of the gene that produces ALDH2 (Goedde et al. 1989). These observations imply that ALDH2 plays a crucial role in maintaining low acetaldehyde levels during alcohol metabolism. Consequently, even inadvertent alcohol administration to people of Asian heritage (who may have inherited an inactive ALDH2 gene) can cause unpleasant reactions. Thus, the potential flushing response should be an important concern for physicians and patients, because many prescription and OTC medications na vs aa contain substantial amounts of alcohol (see table 1).

OTC marketing strategies, however, often lead the consumer to think that these medications are safe to use on an “as-needed” basis, even though they can be potentially dangerous when used with alcohol. Certain opioid pain medications (e.g., codeine, propoxyphene, and oxycodone) are manufactured as combination products containing acetaminophen. These combinations can be particularly harmful when combined with alcohol because they provide “ hidden” doses of acetaminophen. As described in the previous section, alcohol consumption may result in the accumulation of toxic breakdown products of acetaminophen. These medications are sedative or sleep-inducing (i.e., hypnotic) agents that are frequently used for anesthesia.