Before I go and confound the matter with my theories, let me just ask straight up:
What is the SD on people who drink alcohol and consume sugar? How does sugar affect the effects of alcohol on the body? What about the effects on the hangover?
According to JAMA, alcohol sensitizes the cells to insulin so they admit the sugar with a lower insulin profile than if the sugar were consumed alone.
which translates to english as:
(fill in blank)
does sugar make you get drunk faster or slower? Does alcohol make you crave or reject sugar? Does sugar help with the hangover or makes it worse?
I am just trying to figure out the wisdom of a saying in spanish that says: “Borracho no come dulce”: “drinkers don’t eat sweets”. What would be the wisdom behind this?
Some folks are pretty much E85 compatible for years at a time. Believe it or not, I think it’s possible to convert the body to alcohol, there are a lot of calories involved. A real drunkard doesn’t eat much of anything.
Sugar has similar effects on the human system as alcohol. It can be somewhat of a substitute. It can satisfy the same cravings.
Antecdotally, the Mormons, who say they abstain from alcohol, consume candy (suger) in much greater quantities than the norm.
Sugar also has an effect on the heroin high. It smooths it out and makes the withdrawl less abrupt. If you know anything about a soup kitchen in an inner city, you know that they will strictly restrict the sugar that they pass out. The druggies will beg for it. It will temporarilly work as a substitute to get them through to their next fix.
Wait, I’m confused. Why wouldn’t they rather give them sugar than have them go back out and use more heroin?
It’s called tough love, sugar.
See it all the time. You start by eating sugar as a child and the next thing you know you are passed out with a herion needle in your arm next to a candy store.
As for the Spanish saying, perhaps it refers to a point about how real hardcore alcoholics don’t bother with sweet mixed drinks and go for it straight up.
I’m so curious about this – in the past two years, I’ve developed a really nasty reaction to some forms of sugar. Soda pop in particular has a terrible effect on me, especially when consumed on its own. I get the usual lift (not extraordinary, just a slight sugar & caffeine high) but the CRASH, it’s awful. I become completely depressed and morose, unable to function. It’s bad enough that I’ve had to swear off the stuff, even though I love it.
But the only studies I’ve been able to locate talk about how kids DON’T react to sugar (as parents often claim) (and as I believe, particularly with respect to my son). Now, how can this be true, given what Spartydog posted?
I know there’s a link between insulin in your blood and serotonin in the brain, and IIRC it has to do with the level of magnesium in your body, whether it can be an effective buffer.
Because sugar makes for a better “ride”. By using it as an enhancement it actually makes it more difficult for the junkie to kick the habit.
IME, when I am drinking, the last thing I want is anything sweet (the reason why I seldom eat any birthday cake, as much as I like cake). But there are parties where they give ice cream at some point to rev people up. There is also this friend of my dad (the origin of this discussion) who sneaks to the kitchen and drinks a whole can of condensed milk when the drinks are creeping up on him.
The explanation I had heard is that your body is busy converting alcohol to sugar. If you dump a lot of sugar, it upsets the balance and stops that convertion. Hence it would be good to keep the buzz bot bad to avoid inhebriation. Any truth to this?
I don’t think I have an actual ANSWER To provide…but a couple of comments and maybe more of the same question.
I’ve had a gastric bypass. That is, the portion of my intestine that normally absorbs sugar (and much of my calories) has been bypassed. Therefore, if I eat too much sugar (sometimes it takes VERY little), I get very ill…a horrible yucky nauseous feeling, sweating, chills, possibly vomitting, etc. Basically, my body doesn’t do sugar anymore. It’s a known effect of bypass patients, usually referred to as “dumping syndrome.” Excess fat can cause the same problem.
Consequent to having surgery, I found myself with a bit of an alcohol problem. Wanting to be social with my “new body” I was going out more, having more opportunities to drink alcohol and WOW…the SMACK that booze gives me. Basically, I can never have another alcoholic drink, EVER.
It is my theory, based on how I feel, that my body is processing the alcohol similarly to the sugar. And in ADDITION to that, the way the alcohol is leaving my system gives me a whammy…post surgery, I no longer get hangovers (i.e., nauseous, head-achy, sluggish) I simply get tremors and want more alcohol to “cure” me. Instant addict. I ended up in the emergency room a couple of times before I figured out I was basically just poisoning myself. (Yeah, I’m slow, but never having had trouble with alcohol before, I didn’t figure it could be a problem for me now.)
I would love to know more about the similarities between absorbing and processing sugar and absorbing and processing alcohol. Not so that I could actually consume either…I’ve given up on that…but just out of curiousity. I have had people tell me now that alcohol IS a sugar. Is that strictly true?
L
That’s the other thing – there’s alcoholism in my family tree. I wonder if there’s some sort of “sugar-alcohol” gene I inherited.
bump?