Alcohol metabolism

(carl) #1

I was having a conversation with a friend who believes that alcohol turns to glucose, slowly, via gluconeogenesis. A quick search landed me on this excerpt which claims alcohol inhibits gluconeogenesis, leading to hypoglycemia. This jibes with my experience. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22524/

Blood Glucose and Alcohol
(Mark) #2

Are you still laying off the booze? How is that experiment going?have you tried any of the Keto wines like Dry farm wine?

(Peter Barney) #3

Sure fire way to drop my blood glucose to almost nothing a couple of beers or glass of wine.

(Stephanie Hanson) #4

So if a ketonian becomes hypoglycemic, would ketone product increase to counter that?

#5

cool, who needs metformin. :wink:

(Richard Morris) #6

Definitely. George Cahill dropped the glucose of starving men (producing ketones) down to 1.0 by giving them intravenous insulin - normal people would be in a coma but these guys were fine thanks to the fact that their brains were keto adapted and able to run 80% on ketones.

(Stephanie Hanson) #7

So if alcohol drops BG, is that around about way to stimulate more ketones? I guess I’m really wondering if there’s a role in the mild consumption of sugar free alcohol. I’ve abstained for a long time b/c I’ve read it drops metabolism down for 4-6 hrs. Maybe my data isn’t current.

(Kerri Hines) #8

I know some diabetics that specifically drink a glass of red wine before bed just because they have lower blood sugar in the morning after for this exact reason.
I thought this was much more mainstream knowledge. Maybe not the mechanism exactly, but that it lowers blood sugar by stopping the liver from secreting glucose for a bit.

#9

But if alcohol simultaneously inhibits fat oxidation, won’t there be a reduction of both glucose AND ketones? And promotion of fat storage instead?

(Steak and iron) #10

I think there needs to be more research on that but it sort of fits the general experience that alcohol increases hunger. Your blood glucose drops, your ketones drop, and your cells are starving so you want to eat,

(Stickin' with mammoth) #11

I did a fair amount of drinking last week, you know, for science. Here’s what I found.

  1. Yeah, it stimulates appetite but if you stick to very high fat food during your cocktail hour there’s only so much you can binge on before you want to explode.

  2. You feel like a beer virgin at your first kegger, it hits you so hard. Congratulations, you are now a cheap date. Use it.

  3. The hypoglycemia thing is real: I woke up in the middle of the night to my own stomach growling painfully and had to down some fat bombs and salted water to stop the agony. I haven’t known hunger like that since before keto.

  4. It did seem to mess up cellular balance. Ketosis, hydration, digestion, slow twitch muscle response–everything just seemed off for about 36 hours. I had my first hangover since the 90s. No, thanks.

Moral: Vodka is still delicious, but don’t poke the bear.

(Stephanie Hanson) #12

I would like to personally thank you for taking that scientific hit for all of us. So glad it wasn’t me.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #13

(groan)

#14

OK, poking around the internet, and I see more evidence of lowering blood sugar and a lot on the basics of how it is metabolized (first acetaldehyde (CH3CHO) and then a moment later to acetate (CH3COO-) and finally to carbon dioxide and water ).

This doesn’t answer the first question I have: Is it totally the liver that does that final conversion to CO2 and H2O? Meaning that the rest of the body is out of the picture (muscle and brain cell don’t get to use that acetate). If so, that’s interesting because with the liver 100% involved it’s obvious why too much alcohol (any at all?) is hard on your liver.

The second question is why does blood sugar drop? OK, from Carl’s link there’s the shutdown of gluconeogenesis, but that’s just the protein to glucose process .Why wouldn’t the liver kick out some glocose by converting glycogen into glucose using glycogenolysis? Or is the liver so busy with alcohol processing, it can’t?

(carl) #15

If I had to guess, that makes sense. All hands on deck to process alcohol first.