Why Alcohol Might Be Good for Diabetics

Several studies over the years have found that diabetics who regularly drink a little—and we do mean alcohol—tend to live longer and keep their glucose under better control. For instance, I reported in 1999 that "diabetes sufferers who enjoy an occasional libation, compared with those who eschew alcohol, have just half the risk of dying from coronary artery disease. Those
who down a drink a day face only 20 percent of the teetotalers’ heart-disease mortality."

It's perplexed physicians as to why. And posed a dilemma. After all, doctors don't usually want to prescribe alcohol since it's basically empty calories, can addle thinking, and can contribute to the development of alcoholism in some individuals. So, particularly where a mechanism to explain the association remained murky, doctors generally ignored the link.

It may become a little harder to do so, now.

A study published in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that when people were served alcohol with a meal, their bodies more slowly converted the carbohydrates in the meal into blood sugar. And that's a good thing.

Australian researchers at the University of Sydney's Human Nutrition Unit fed a group of 10 men and women "meals"—usually amounting to no more than white bread with margarine or mashed potatoes. Why these carbs? Because ordinarily the body breaks them down into gluocse—blood sugar—so quickly that eating them is not much better than directly downing a teaspoon of table sugar.

However, when alcohol was consumed with the food—or even up to an hour beforehand—the body digested the food into glucose far more slowly. It parsed out the glucose into blood at a nice, steady pace, which is exactly what the doctor wants to see happen. Why? Because spikes in blood sugar can confuse the body's insulin-making machinery, leading to a spike in insulin, which is NOT good for the blood vessels.

Jennie C. Brand-Miller and her colleagues conclude that "under realistic conditions," moderate quantities of beer, wine, or gin—all three of which were tested in amounts equivalent to two predinner drinks—can lower blood-sugar values following a meal by up to 37 percent,. This, of course, is all relative to dining alcoholfree.

"These effects may provide a hitherto unreconized benefit of moderate alcohol consumption for cardiovascular health," the scientists say.

There is a caveat—isn't there always: The test subjects were all lean and healthy, i.e. not diabetic. However, there is the expectation that this may be one way for people who are at least prediabetic to stay that way.

Here's another caveat: In the new study, the scientists administered white wine in one round of the tests. In fact, red wines might have provided an even more robust advantage, based on data I reported 3 years ago. In that story, experiments—admittedly conducted in diabetic rats—showed that even without its alcohol, red wine's constituents could control their blood sugar after a meal as well as nondiabetic animals.