These Habits and Your Blood Sugar

Alcohol can change your blood sugar for hours, not just while you drink. A sweet drink can raise blood sugar first. Later, alcohol can pull it down.

This drop can happen overnight, while you sleep. So a toast at dinner can still matter the next morning.

Your liver is a busy helper that stores sugar for later. Between meals, it releases some into your blood. While it works on alcohol, it releases less of that stored sugar. With less sugar coming out, your blood sugar can fall.

Ask your care team how alcohol may affect you.

Smoking puts short-term strain on your heart. For a while after a cigarette, your heart beats faster. Your blood pressure rises too, so blood pushes harder on vessel walls.

Diabetes can already ask more of your heart and blood vessels. Smoking adds extra strain on top of that.

A red heart pumps blood into a curved blood vessel, beside a Heart work bar. When it works hard, a sugar cube, a puff of smoke and a pressure dial appear, the heart beats bigger with sweat drops and the bar fills to amber.

Key takeaways

• Alcohol can change blood sugar for hours after the last drink.
• Smoking adds short-term strain to a heart that diabetes already works hard.
• A low after drinking can happen overnight, while you sleep.

Try it

This week, if you drink, note the time of each drink and whether you ate. Then read the log back and see how the evening went.