It's probably a recurring nightmare for parents... that moment when the kids have learned to count WAY past 10 and start singing One Million Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Especially at the start of LONG a family trip. If you listen hard, you can hear the parents praying, "Please, whatever gods are out there... Kill me, my children, and/or all of us. Just make it stop." The alternative song that brings about prayers for a swift demise is The Song That Never Ends, but it's unrelated to this post.
Time passes, and eventually they/we learn to sing Show Me the Way to Go Home. Oh, but summer camp taught us an even better alternative! Murphy's Saloon, also know as Give a Cheer!
Apparently, the lyrics are regional, but there's nothing quite like a bus full of teens and tweens singing at the top of their lungs about something they know absolutely NOTHING about!
"Hey, Rob...? This is entertaining and all, but does this have anything to do with diabetes?"
The songs? No. The subject of alcohol? Yes.
There are things about the diabetic diet that can drive a dietician to the brink of madness. Two that I can think of immediately. The first is pizza. Between the variable size of slices, to the mystery of how much sugar might have been used when making the sauce, it makes it next to impossible to calculate carb content. The other thing... well, things, plural... are alcoholic beverages.
Drinks for growed-ups contain the perfect combination of substances to make your body scream, "WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?" If your beverage of choice is beer, it's going to have basic carbs. If you prefer mixed drinks, as I do, then they're going to have sugar. Mind you, I now have only one ounce of booze twice a year - once on my birthday and once on New Year's. But there was a time when I wouldn't turn down a well made Long Island Iced Tea. Gods above and below! You can barely make out the taste of alcohol in one made to perfection. I met one bartender whose secret ingredient was powdered lemonade mix. It was a delicious way to get soused. And the sugar in that lemonade mix probably did horrible things to me that the alcohol politely numbed.
Yeah, the sugar/carbs in various adult beverages drive a diabetic's blood sugar upward. If you're out at a bar, you can't exactly ask the bartender to slap a label of the nutritional value of your drink of choice, so you can't really guess at what dose of insulin you should take to cover your night out.
Besides, alcohol lowers the blood sugar.
Yup. The capricious Fates have decided that having a few drinks with your friends raises and lowers your blood sugar simultaneously. Fun, right?
My years of experience have taught me that it's usually the sugar that wins the glucose tug-of-war, but my best advice...? Don't drink. I don't mean "Don't drink EVER!" Save it for special occasions, just as you would a massive slab of seven layer German chocolate cake.
Twice a year, I settle down with a single ounce of Irish Mist on the rocks, and I sip it so slowly that the melted ice usually winds up dominating the glass. I rarely finish drinking it. When I was younger, however, I could knock back my drinks like I was on a mission to kill myself that very night. Peach or peppermint schnapps made me the go-to guy at several parties. "Oh, you wanna get smashed faster? Go ask Rob for some of his stash." There was one night when my friends and I bought a bottle of Mescal simply because Van Halen sang about it in their song Cabo Wabo. I wish digital cameras were a thing back then! "We drink Mescal right from the bottle... A salt-shake, a little lick of lime... Mmmm!" They sang it, we did it, and the faces we made as we swallowed what must surely have been gasoline would have made for some interesting tales later in life.
Here it is, later in life, and I can't help but wonder what kind of damage I did during that relatively short period of partying, my blood glucose bouncing up and down from moment to moment. Mind you, I wasn't an alcoholic. Booze was rarely a part of our regular gatherings... which was good, because I wasn't a happy drunk. Some people get happy or violent. I got depressed. It's why I can't even recall the last time I was drunk.
What my friends and I DID do regularly... is a topic for a different day.
That brings this bit of suggested diabetes management to a close. As with everything else I discuss, what I have to say is a matter of "should" versus "shouldn't." I won't say "you can't" because, as it turns out, I have no way of stopping you from doing anything. And if you doubt what I'm saying or are experiencing outright denial, you can always consult your doctor.
And now, in case any of you are cat lovers...
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