Wine/exercise

[Sheepish1947]

Can anyone shed light on this?
When I was first diagnosed with Type 2 the doctor said, ‘No alcohol’ and though the diabetes nurse said it was okay to just follow government guidelines I mostly only had a small glass of wine once a week. Then I started testing my blood glucose levels and discovered that wine reduced my levels by 2 to 4 mmol/l. Hooray! At the same time I was told to take plenty of exercise. Walking is fine as long as it’s after a meal but anything more strenuous, such as mowing the lawn sends my levels shooting up.
Does anyone else experience this? The diabetes nurse just says, ‘Really? That’s odd.’
As happy as possible World Diabetes Day to everyone.

 

[EmmaL76]

Absolutely not odd. Most alcohol but especially wine for me will instantly drop me in to the low 4’s. Probably the only time I’m ever in the 4’s. If I walk on the treadmill for an hour I have a nice slow drop in bs but if I ran I would shoot up but then experience quite a sharp drop when I’ve finished. The more you exercise the less your body goes into panic mode with the more strenuous stuff, and stops unhelpfully flooding you with glucose. It’s basically your bodies way of saying ah your gonna need some extra energy.. here’s some sugar

 

[42istheanswer]

Alcohol absolutely can drop blood sugar, what might have made the doctor suggest avoiding it when you were newly diagnosed with Type 2 is that fat around the liver (a significant factor in insulin resistance for most Type 2s) can also interfere with your liver's other functions including alcohol metabolism. I took the voluntary, independent decision to have a break from alcohol when I was diagnosed as my Liver Function Tests were deranged (above normal levels) so I figured my liver needed a chance to recover. (Though to be fair I had been on holiday for a week not long before the blood test so drunk a little more than I usually would have.) I've only actually had one drink since then, but did a little experiment with it and glass of red wine plus chocolate muffin equalled BG rise of only 0.3mmol after 2 hours. But as I said at the time, I'm not planning to drink daily to be able to eat cake daily . I'll be doing a bit more experimenting this Friday, as I'm having tea at a friend's which means we will have a couple of glasses of wine and some dessert. I'm thinking of putting my free trial Libre2 sensor on before then so that I can get a bit more information on whether BG shoots up then drops or just stays stable.

 

[Sheepish1947]

Absolutely not odd. Most alcohol but especially wine for me will instantly drop me in to the low 4’s. Probably the only time I’m ever in the 4’s. If I walk on the treadmill for an hour I have a nice slow drop in bs but if I ran I would shoot up but then experience quite a sharp drop when I’ve finished. The more you exercise the less your body goes into panic mode with the more strenuous stuff, and stops unhelpfully flooding you with glucose. It’s basically your bodies way of saying ah your gonna need some extra energy.. here’s some sugar

Thank you. That’s what I thought it must be. I’ll try taking a break between doing the cleaning and testing before lunch and see what happens. It’s fairly irrelevant as I can’t stop cleaning, gardening or eating!

 

[Sheepish1947]

Alcohol absolutely can drop blood sugar, what might have made the doctor suggest avoiding it when you were newly diagnosed with Type 2 is that fat around the liver (a significant factor in insulin resistance for most Type 2s) can also interfere with your liver's other functions including alcohol metabolism. I took the voluntary, independent decision to have a break from alcohol when I was diagnosed as my Liver Function Tests were deranged (above normal levels) so I figured my liver needed a chance to recover. (Though to be fair I had been on holiday for a week not long before the blood test so drunk a little more than I usually would have.) I've only actually had one drink since then, but did a little experiment with it and glass of red wine plus chocolate muffin equalled BG rise of only 0.3mmol after 2 hours. But as I said at the time, I'm not planning to drink daily to be able to eat cake daily . I'll be doing a bit more experimenting this Friday, as I'm having tea at a friend's which means we will have a couple of glasses of wine and some dessert. I'm thinking of putting my free trial Libre2 sensor on before then so that I can get a bit more information on whether BG shoots up then drops or just stays stable.

Thank you. I’ve never had a problem with my liver function tests and when my weight and body fat levels were tested on a Tanita scale they all came out low. I have about 3lbs to lose before I’m officially underweight so don’t want to cut down on food.
Enjoy your wine and dessert!

 

[helli]

There are a couple of ways that our body "gets" the glucose which raises our blood sugars: the food we eat and a drip from our liver.
Livers think of alcohol as toxic so when we drink, our liver focuses on getting rid of the alcohol. This means it does not drip glucose. Therefore, our blood sugars are lower when we drink wine, spirits, etc.
Unfortunately, some alcohol like beer, cider, sweet liqueurs and some mixers, contain carbs which can, in the short term, counteract the affect on the liver. Therefore, it is recommended to limit these drinks (or, for those of use with Type 1, we need to take some insulin). Thankfully, wine is low carb.