How Alcohol Can Severely Affect Diabetics

It seems that whenever you hear news about alcohol it's not usually good. The negative side effects of drinking alcohol are well known and can cause serious complications. One group of people that can be seriously affected by drinking alcohol is diabetics.

There are more than 23 million people who have been diagnosed with diabetes in the United States alone. Diabetes is a serious condition in which the sufferer's can either not to produce or simply can't use insulin properly in their body. This malady can result seriously negative consequences in some cases if mixed with alcohol. To understand how diabetes and alcohol can make such a harmful combination we have to examine just what happens when you take a drink.

First of all, alcohol is quickly if not immediately absorbed into your bloodstream through the lining of your stomach. Because it is a poison, your body begins to work immediately to remove this toxin. The toxicity filter of your body, as you may know, is your liver. The liver recognizes the threat that alcohol presents to your system and it stops doing whatever else was doing the work on filtering this alcohol from your bloodstream. One of the main functions of the liver is to change stored carbohydrates into glucose and send them back out into the bloodstream. Because the liver shuts down this process temporarily, diabetics who drink alcohol can be faced with having dangerously low levels of blood sugar. Add to that the combination of blood sugar lowering medications and results could be disastrous, even fatal.

In order to combat the negative effects that drinking alcohol can cause, one should never drink on an empty stomach. Eating something first helps not only to absorb some of the alcohol in the stomach, it also helps to keep your blood sugar levels elevated so when the liver does stop converting carbohydrates into glucose you were not nearly as affected. Diabetics should also limit the overall amount of alcohol they consume and try to drink slowly so their body has time to adjust to the effects of the toxic alcohol.

If you are diabetic and choose to drink alcohol, please keep these important life-saving tips in mind:

1. never drink on an empty stomach
2. limit the amount of alcohol you drink to one or at most two drinks
3. be sure to keep your test kit with you so that you can be aware of your blood sugar level at all times

For most diabetics an occasional drink is not going to harm you but be sure to monitor your blood glucose levels often, especially if you have more than one drink. Never take shortcuts on your testing! Be sure to have plenty of quality test strips on hand and test often. Find a good supplier with discount prices so you don't worry about running out. Visit http://www.DiabeticDiscounters.com right now and learn more about a healthy life for you.

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