Many medical professionals will tell you not to drink alcohol and this is probably good advice.
However if you, are like me, enjoy the occasional drink then we need to do it responsibly.
I was told that alcohol does in fact help lower sugar in the body, unfortunately most alcoholic drinks also contain a lot of sugar and it is this sugar that actually increases your blood sugar.
Being the type of person that I am I decided to test this theory. I tested my blood before having a drink and then every half an hour after for three hours. After several days of this, testing different drinks, my fingers felt like a pin cushion.
I did the same with each type of food when I was first diagnosed as a diabetic, and still do this to test each new recipe that I create or try, if my sugar goes up I discard that recipe or try to determine what was in it that had this result and try it again minus that component.
Here are my results. These drinks may affect you differently as we are all different, you may need to test yourself and watch your reactions carefully.
Light Beer.
Increased my blood sugar, there is not enough alcohol in light beer to counteract the sugar. (The amount of sugar in light beer and full strength beer is roughly the same.)
Full Strength Beer.
My blood sugar level actually stayed stable, apparently there is enough alcohol in full strength beer to counteract the sugar.
Dry wines.
Both red and white dry wines lowered my blood sugar, red wine was slightly more effective than a dry white.
Responsible drinking.
Occasionally we all need a drink, and after a hard days work or on a hot day nothing satisfies that thirst like an alcoholic drink. So try a:-
Goulburn Rosa
This is based on a dry red wine, the better the quality the better the drink. (Sorry Mr Winemaker. I know you have spent your life to make a perfect wine and I am about to undo all that good work.)
Pour about 1 cm of a good quality dry red wine into a tall glass.
Fill the glass with one of the following:-
Cold filtered water
Tonic water
Soda water
Cold green tea, (A friend of mine introduced me to this)
Any other fluid that is sugar free.
On a hot day ice can also be added to make this drink very refreshing on a hot summer├óÔé¼Ôäós day.
Have fun with this drink I am certain you will enjoy it.
Alcohol and Diabetics
Red Wine Improves Heart Health in People With Type 2 Diabetes
When it comes to the health benefits of drinking red wine, study after study reveals conflicting information.
Adding diabetes into the mix complicates these answers further, but new research suggests that red wine drinkers with diabetes may have better heart health than non-drinkers.
Researchers studied 224 people over the course of 2 years. Participants were randomly assigned to either drink a glass or red or white wine with dinner every day or a glass of water.
Participants did not know the study was about the effects of alcohol.
