Diabetes Type 2
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Alcohol and diabetes is a topic really important to a lot of people. You want to know if it is safe to drink alcohol. First, you need to know how your body uses or digests alcohol.
When you drink alcohol, it moves quickly from your stomach directly to your bloodstream. Within five minutes, there is enough alcohol in your blood to measure.
Your liver digests or breaks down alcohol. It takes about two hours to digest the alcohol in one drink. If you have more than one drink, the excess alcohol travels to other parts of your body. When it gets to your brain, you feel the “buzz.”
What about alcohol and diabetes? If you take insulin or diabetes medications such as glyburide or Prandin, you have to be careful. Drinking alcohol can cause dangerously low levels of blood glucose.
Your liver is working to remove the alcohol from your blood. It cannot regulate your blood sugar level. Production of glucose stops. Your sugar level can drop. Doctors call this hypoglycemia. It is dangerous.
The symptoms of too much alcohol and low blood sugar are very similar. They are:
You don’t want someone to think you are drunk when you have low blood sugar levels.
Diabetes is a disorder of your metabolism. Most of the food you eat breaks down into glucose. Glucose is a form of sugar in the blood. It is the main source of fuel for your body.
In the small intestines, the glucose passes into your bloodstream. For glucose to get into your cells insulin needs to be present.
If you are healthy, your pancreas will produce insulin when you eat. If you have diabetes, your pancreas does not produce enough insulin. The glucose cannot get into your cells.
Glucose builds up in your blood. It spills into your urine. It goes out of your body. Glucose never gets to your cells.
The most common form of diabetes is type 2 diabetes. About 95% of all cases of diabetes are type 2. About 80% of them are overweight. It is associated with:
If your diabetes is well-controlled diabetes, alcohol intake should follow the same guidelines set by the USDA. This means a maximum of two drinks for men and one drink for women.
One drink is:
A number of research studies determined that light to moderate drinking decreased the risk of type 2 diabetes. The studies suggest that a small amount of alcohol is better than no alcohol or a large amount of alcohol.
You should know that there is no clinical evidence to support this claim. A randomized controlled study is the gold standard for clinical trials.
It is important that you check your blood sugar levels. They should be between 100 and 140 mg/dL. Follow the advice of your primary care doctor or your endocrinologist.
In December 2009, a link between coffee and diabetes suggests coffee consumption can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Researchers analyzed data from 18 studies. The results showed that people who drank more coffee appear to have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Another study involved 17,000 men and women in the Netherlands. People who drank 7 cups of coffee a day were 50% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Doctors caution that 7 cups of coffee with caffeine can cause other health problems.
So, it seems that coffee and diabetes go together like a horse and carriage. Tea also has an effect on diabetes. Drinking black or green tea can improve insulin activity up to 15 times.
Margaret Stenerson
February 21, 2010
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"This website is for all diabetes patients, their families and friends. I want people to know that they can reverse this disease by learning what to do, where to go for great medical help, how to deal with insurance and all the other problems facing them.
I have worked with some great people to make this web site easy to understand and devoted to helping you. Please let me know if anything doesn't help you or if we can do something more that would be useful to you.
The most important factor in a person getting healthy is their personal determination and their will to be better. You have to summon that determination and then take the steps described here - we are here to help and support you."
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