Drinking and Type 1 Diabetes. A long discussion, with some good 'splainin

Of course not, there is no reason in that situation that you would go low.

Alcohol does not drop BG. It can - in sufficient quantities - inhibit the liver from releasing glucose. But if you are sitting there reading a book, your liver would not be releasing glucose anyway.

Alcohol does not work like insulin to lower BG. The only thing it can possibly do is reduce the glucose that might otherwise be released from the liver.

How long have you been diagnosed? For most T1’s who have been diabetic for a long enough time, the alpha cells are not releasing glucagon and stimulating liver glycogen release anyway.

So in a situation like a T1 of sufficient years sitting around drinking, I would not expect any lows from the alcohol.

Under what situations might your liver release glucose? Maybe when you wake up. Maybe when walking around. Maybe when you are under stress. Under those circumstances, a sufficiently large amount of alcohol might inhibit your liver. But if you drink on regular occasions, you’d need to really pound a lot of drinks to see it affect your liver.

For somewhat new T1’s and for T2’s, the effect of alcohol is more obvious, because their alpha cells are still somewhat functional. So that is a different situation entirely.