My brother is here with us for a long term visit and he likes to drink. I’m afraid I’ve now kind of joined him and I’m hitting the bottle harder than normal. Normal is a 250ml glass of red most but not every night with my main meal. Now it’s triple that !! sometimes even more…
But the curious thing is that my morning fasting glucose levels have never been so low ??
I’m usually about 6.0 mmol/l on my meter but recently after a particularly boozy night I’m showing 4.5 mmol/l or there abouts. My weight is still trending downwards and apart from the slight hangovers I don’t feel that bad.
He’s going home next week so I’ll be back to my normal moderation, but it will be interesting to see how my morning fasting glucose levels react.
Any comments, anyone ?
Blood Glucose and Alcohol
Thanks Tessy, that’s just the sort of thing I was looking for.
It certainly seems to answer my lower fasting blood glucose levels recently. It will be interesting to see what the next few weeks bring.
And particularly after reading that article, I think my career as a boozer is at an end !
Just need to try and persuade my brother now …
I saw this topic come up on a Facebook page. Interesting. I’m not advocating we drink all the time, but I’m curious if it would have an effect before a large meal? For example, at holiday time to have a small glass of wine or liquor would this help keep your glucose lower as it processed the food from a large meal?
@Ronald_Weaver and @rhjan I gave up the drink for about 6 weeks in February. I broke it with a night out where I stuck to tequila and water. I did not test my blood the following morning but didn’t feel the signs of low blood sugar. I wonder if this is less likely to happen when you have food or stick to no-sugar alcohols, or if it’s more likely to happen when you drink a beverage with some sugars like wine.
I feel an experiment in my future 
I don’t think you are using the term “sugar alcohols” right. Sugar alcohols are sweeteners like erythritol.
Do you mean alcohol with unfermented sugars still in the drink (like wine) as opposed to alcohol with all the sugar fermented out (like hard liquor)?
Thanks for correcting my grammar. I wasn’t referring to “sugar alcohols” as in the sweeteners. I do understand what those are…
I wasn’t really using any “term” so yes, I was simply referring to sugary alcoholic beverages. I apologise if it was too close to something else. 
Perhaps I should have said “…stick to no-sugar alcohols…” to avoid any confusion.
I’ve heard if it’s just pure alcohol your body will strictly use the alcohol as fuel till it is all burned up. So it will stall keytosis till it’s gone. My problem is when I drink alcohol I get to a point we’re I’ll just start stuffing my face with anything that’s in front of me. If you don’t mind the stall and can control yourself you should be OK
My girlfriend went through a period of gestational diabetes with our daughter and was required to test her blood sugar periodically. Once during that time I was drinking quite heavily and decided to test my own blood sugar along with her. The result was the lowest I’d ever seen it, a full 40 points below my average (by that meter’s way of measuring it) despite the fact that I was drinking pretty carb heavy things like high gravity beer and moscato d’asti wine, along with eating starchy foods. It was a pretty interesting result to say the least.
Now I don’t think that alcohol exactly cancels out the effects of carbs that are taken with it, but something is going on there. Is it possible that, for the purposes of a ketogenic diet, the effects of carb intake are ameliorated by alcohol?
This is interesting. When I was in my boozer phase I saw the lowest morning blood glucose readings I’d ever seen.
But have there been any serious studies done on this ? What happens to insulin levels when alcohol consumption is higher than “normal” ?
Anybody want to comment on this…http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/3/608 ?
Or this…https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-3/211.pdf ?
Does this mean that a couple of 250ml glasses of red wine after eating doesn’t have much effect on insulin production but somehow or other reduces the risk of CVD…I never actually saw the link in either of these articles ??
Ronald, in general - I thought that alcohol stimulated insulin production, resulting in a lowering of blood sugar (all other things being equal). There’s some conflicting stuff in those studies/articles, and now I don’t know what to think. In looking around, some people are saying that a little booze makes your blood sugar go up, while a lot makes it go down.
A couple glasses of dry red wine, no huge deal, in my opinion.
Yes, I know, there doesn’t seem to be a definite answer as to what alcohol does.
You know, if I just followed my instinct, I wouldn’t drink alcohol at all…
It’s probably only been used for a few thousand years and I’m sure that our ancestors didn’t toast a successful woolly mammoth hunt with cups of alcohol !
One thing I noticed after listening to the Podcast with the 2ketodudes regarding alcohol, I tried the good distilled non sweet alcohol in particular Baccardi rum, and since I do not eat sugar and carbohydrates I definitely didn’t have the brain fog the next day after 2 drinks like I would normally get.
So a step in a different direction for my brain clarity was not having sugar and carbs . Also, i didnt have a woozy hung over feeling like i used to.
there’s a definite difference in what it does to me the next day now.
Carl says it makes him plateau weight wise, he mentions in one of his podcasts.
Anybody know which one?