Is Alcohol Undermining Your Healing?
Alcohol is a part of cultural, social, and family life for many people. The idea of not drinking alcohol can cause a lot of consternation, but there are times when not drinking might be just what your body needs.
In my nutritional therapy practice, I focus on helping clients restore their gut health and balance their blood sugar. Alcohol plays a key role in both foundational aspects of health.
If healing a damaged gut and/or improving blood sugar levels are your goals, eliminating alcohol from your diet is an important aspect of the overall strategy.
Let’s explore how alcohol affects digestion and blood sugar.
Digestion/Gut Health
Alcohol affects digestion and gut health in a few ways:
1) Drinking alcohol can have an overall negative effect on the nutrient-density of your diet. When drinking, you might choose less nutritious foods than you would otherwise, or you might not eat at all.
2) Alcohol negatively affects the ecosystem of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that reside in the gut and affect, at a minimum, your brain, immune system, digestion, and mood. This ecosystem is referred to as your gut microbiome.
3) Alcohol undermines the gut lining and is a factor in increased intestinal permeability (AKA leaky gut). An impaired gut lining can lead to food sensitivities and systemic inflammation throughout the body.
4) Alcohol causes your stomach to produce extra acid which can lead to indigestion.
5) Alcohol slows digestion and can lead to feeling bloated and uncomfortable.
6) Alcohol is a toxin that must be metabolized by your liver. Burdening the liver with detoxing alcohol affects the liver’s ability to manage it’s other 500 vital functions. Your liver is your digestive system’s MVP organ; supporting liver health and functioning should be a top priority in any healing process.
Blood Sugar Balance
Alcohol can both increase and decrease blood sugar levels.
Let’s break down why this is.
At the most basic level, increases in blood sugar occur following consumption of carbohydrates.
Alcoholic drinks are not necessarily loaded with carbs. Spirits, such as gin, vodka or tequila, are nearly carb-free. A 5-ounce glass of regular wine (not dessert wine) contains approximately 4 grams of carbs.
What you mix your spirit or wine with, on the other hand, may be carb heavy. Juice, for example, is notorious for spiking blood sugar. If your vodka or gin is mixed with juice, you’ll likely see a rise in your blood sugar level.
Even though not all alcohol causes an increase in blood sugar levels, it can still be problematic for blood sugar by causing hypoglycemia (low blood glucose). This is especially true in diabetics who use medications, or even berberine, to control blood sugar levels.
The reason for this is that when you drink alcohol, your liver must process the alcohol, which it views as a toxin, so it can be eliminated from the body via urine.
Detoxification in this case will be the liver’s priority; it will detoxify rather than doing its other job – releasing stored glucose into the bloodstream between meals and overnight – to keep blood sugar levels stable.
If the liver needs to metabolize alcohol rather than maintaining a balanced blood sugar level, hypoglycemia can result.
The hypoglycemic effect of alcohol can vary depending on whether the alcohol is consumed on an empty stomach (more likely to cause hypoglycemia) versus with a meal (less likely).
I witnessed this phenomenon recently while wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to monitor my blood sugar.
On most nights, I don’t drink alcohol and my blood sugar is stable and in a healthy fasting range (70 - 90 mg/dL).
But on a celebratory night out with friends, when I had a Cosmopolitan with my appetizers and a chardonnay with dinner, my CGM showed metabolic chaos with drastic blood sugar highs and lows!
This is just one example of why I love the continuous glucose monitor as a tool to see what's happening in your body.
Knowledge empowers you to make informed choices that support your health goals. Now that I’ve seen the objective data, I’ll be much less likely to choose that Cosmo next time!
Whether it’s a convenient truth or not, if you’re ready to optimize your gut health or blood sugar balance, going alcohol-free, at least for a while, will help you reach your goals.
If you’ve been trying to improve your gut health, reverse your pre-diabetes, or just figure out what to do so you can feel better now and age with grace and dignity later, I can help.
Book a free call to discuss what type of support you need to achieve your health goals.
