I am surprised this works. What proportions do you use?
Why surprised? Mojitos have a good bit of sugar. It’s lime, mint, sugar, rum, and water or club soda. I don’t know proportions, I just do it by taste!
I thought the rum might block the sugar absorption. Maybe if you don’t put too much rum?
No, a little bit of alcohol does not block absorption. It can delay, slow, or inhibit the liver from releasing liver glycogen. That is why they say glucagon shots don’t work on drunk people. But as far as what you eat, you can still get carbs. It may slow it a bit, but not with the amount of alcohol in a single drink. It’s fairly negligible. Otherwise a lot more diabetics would just drink heavily when they eat, to prevent spikes!
I think someone in the community uses this technique from time to time for heavy dinners (not heavily though). Maybe @britt_j?
Britt uses alcohol to inhibit gluconeogenesis. That’s a different thing.
OMG, let’s branch this. Poor DM started a fun thread and we’ve turned it into diabetic geek-talk. 
1 Like
Done!
It’s almost best to treat lows with a sweet cocktail because the booze in it can help prevent a low treatment from turning into a runaway rebound
2 Likes
A post was merged into an existing topic: Getting Down and Dirty: admit it here
A post was merged into an existing topic: Getting Down and Dirty: admit it here
For mild lows it should work fine. It’s pretty dangerous to treat lows with cocktails though IF you think you might be at risk for repeated lows (like say, you’re going low from increased activity) or if there’s a chance your drink may not be sufficient/it’s a really bad/quickly dropping low. Going low with alcohol in your system makes lows much more dangerous, since your liver can’t bail you out…
1 Like
For T1s that have been that way a long time, your liver doesn’t bail you out on its own anyway. Your alpha cells just stay “asleep and clueless” when low.
The danger is if you get so low or so loaded you can’t take in sugar and need a glucagon shot.
I’ve been diabetic for 25 years, and my liver still seems to respond at least somewhat to lows—when I’ve been drinking or when I’ve had enough recent lows to deplete my liver, lows are much more prolonged and take much more aggressive treatment than typical. Maybe my liver is weird though!
1 Like
I haven’t quite got a definitive answer on this, but I have heard other T1s say they come up from lows on their own. But I don’t understand why and when is it different for other people.
My endo told me long ago, my alpha cells just don’t know I am low. I never come up from a low without eating something. My liver totally ignores it. But I can spike from adrenaline and sports - no food required there!
If someone comes up by them self, does that mean you don’t have to worry about going low when sleeping? I mean, does your body just fix a low automatically?
I know I don’t typically just count on my liver—it seems to help some, but not fast enough to prevent me from going lower than I’d like. Sometimes I see on my Dexcom lows that dip into the 50s that I don’t wake up for and then recover from, but I generally have very good low warnings and wake up for any major lows, so not sure. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve never had a low needing medical attention/assistance though? I do suspect that under normal circumstances (no alcohol and no liver depletion from previous lows), I’d be unlikely to ever die from a low, but not interested in testing that theory!
1 Like
I would love to get some information on this topic, but I haven’t found any good references yet. I know there are differences between different T1s in how their liver responds.
My liver will dump a bunch of stuff out from exercise induced hormones. I can see dramatic spikes very quickly from just exercise. But if I am sleeping, it will do absolutely nothing to bail me out.
I am not sure if this depends on length of time you’ve been a diabetic or what the difference is. Interesting stuff!