What’s more, when the liver breaks down alcohol, it converts it to fat, which can contribute to weight gain. Excess weight can contribute to the onset of type 2 diabetes, and it can make the condition worse. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) unawareness occurs when someone with diabetes has a drop in blood sugar but doesn’t recognize the symptoms.
- S.E., a 53-year-old Caucasian woman, was referred to the endocrinology clinic for management of type 2 diabetes.
- The alcohol addiction treatment center will help to cope with the substance dependence problem.
- People with diabetes have to be very careful when it comes to drinking alcohol.
- Diabetic eye disease (i.e., retinopathy) is another troublesome tissue complication of diabetes and one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States today.
- Patten (2003) investigated the role of recall bias in lifetime prevalence reports of major depression.
The hormone insulin, which is produced in the pancreas, is an important regulator of blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes, the pancreas does not produce sufficient insulin (type 1 diabetes) or the body does not respond appropriately to the insulin (type 2 diabetes). Alcohol consumption by diabetics can worsen blood sugar control in those patients. For example, long-term alcohol use in well-nourished diabetics can result in excessive blood sugar levels. Conversely, long-term alcohol ingestion in diabetics who are not adequately nourished can lead to dangerously low blood sugar levels.
The Direct Effect of Alcohol Consumption on Diabetes
This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism. The effect alcohol will have on your diabetes depends on how much you drink, what you drink, when you drink, and what your medication regimen can diabetics get drunk is. Speak with your healthcare provider if you have questions or concerns about how alcohol impacts diabetes. Alcohol impairs your liver’s ability to produce glucose, so be sure to know your blood glucose number before you drink an alcoholic beverage. Your liver will choose to metabolize the alcohol over maintaining your blood glucose, which can lead to hypoglycemia.
A team approach with gradual increases in insulin doses resulted in successful and safe management of her diabetes. Your healthcare provider will tell you how much alcohol is safe for you to drink. In some cases, women with diabetes may have no more than one alcoholic beverage a day. The main function of your liver is to store glycogen, which is the stored form of glucose, so that you will have a source of glucose when you haven’t eaten. When you drink alcohol, your liver has to work to remove it from your blood instead of working to regulate blood sugar, or blood glucose. For this reason, you should never drink alcohol when your blood glucose is already low.
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Over time, high glucose levels damage all major organs in the body, including the kidneys, heart, and eyes. Those who don’t maintain their glucose levels are at an increased risk of developing severe diseases and conditions related to organ damage. In the very worst cases, patients may suffer from strokes, nerve damage, cardiovascular diseases, blindness, gout, kidney failure, and even alcohol-related death. Abnormalities in the levels and metabolism of lipids are extremely common in people with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes and may contribute to those patients’ risk of developing cardiovascular disease (Durrington 1995). Alcohol consumption can exacerbate the diabetes-related lipid abnormalities, because numerous studies have shown that heavy drinking can alter lipid levels even in nondiabetics. The findings discussed here presents that the role of chronic use of alcohol on diabetes might be high of importance for clinical research and practice.
The development of both insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance, conditions that precede the onset of T2DM, are closely linked with alcoholism. It is well known that diabetes self-care behaviors are critical to disease progression. Unfortunately, many patients do not adhere to diabetes self-care recommendations despite their importance. Alcohol use has been identified as a barrier to diabetes self-care adherence. Excessive alcohol consumption not only negatively impacts diabetes self-care adherence but also affects the course of diabetes.
