Advice about alcohol

Most people with diabetes can enjoy an occasional alcoholic drink but drinking too much can make your diabetes more difficult to manage.

There may be some precautions you should take depending on how your diabetes is treated. Discuss the effects of alcohol on blood glucose with your diabetes team.

There are a number of factors to consider regarding alcohol and how it impacts your diabetes management. These include:

Gaining weight

Alcohol contains a lot of hidden calories and sugar so it can be a cause of gaining weight. It can be surprising how many calories are in alcohol, for example, a pint of lager is equivalent to a slice of pizza.

Below you can see the calorie content for a range of alcoholic drinks:

Damage to the pancreas

Heavy drinking can cause inflammation to your pancreas, which is the organ responsible for producing insulin which regulates your blood glucose levels. If you continue to drink heavily it can lead to a condition called pancreatitis which will stop your pancreas from working properly.

Insulin resistance

Drinking too much alcohol can reduce your body’s sensitivity to insulin which means that it doesn’t break down sugar as well as it should. This will result in higher blood glucose levels, which can make your diabetes more difficult to manage.

Government guidelines on alcohol units

To help keep health risks from alcohol at a low level, it’s safest not to regularly drink more than 14 units a week for both men and women. The guidelines also recommend that if you choose to drink up to 14 units a week, that you should spread this over at least three days.

Do you know what 14 units look like? The following drinks all have 14 units of alcohol:

6 pints of lager (4% ABV)

6 medium glasses of red wine (13% ABV)

14 single shots of spirits (40% ABV) such as rum, vodka or whisky

It’s important to remember that alcohol can come in different strengths, so something that has a higher percentage of alcohol will also be higher in units than the examples given above.

Cutting down your alcohol intake

If you’d like to find out more about alcohol and ways to reduce how much you drink then have a look at the DrinkAware website or download Public Health England’s Drink Free Days app for free on iOS and Android.