I should clarify my prior post by saying that I’m not claiming it is impossible for caffeine to affect someone’s blood sugar. It’s just false to claim that it has this effect on everyone; besides myself, I know a handful of other diabetics, and none of them have noticed that caffeine has an effect on their blood sugar. (This has come up as a topic of conversation once or twice.)
Caffeine acts on blood sugar by reducing insulin sensitivity; it’s no surprise that diabetics do not display this effect.
Huh? I’m a Type 2 diabetic. I produce plenty of insulin. My body just doesn’t respond to it properly. If I were to ingest a substance that further reduced my insulin sensitivity, my blood sugar numbers would noticeably rise, just as I suppose they would for a non-diabetic person who ingested such a substance. Besides which, even a Type 1 diabetic, whose body does not produce any insulin on its own, would notice a reduction in insulin sensitivity. Just because your insulin comes from an injection doesn’t mean that you can’t have problems with insulin resistance.
I see a lot of hoo-hah about this or that substance having an effect on blood sugar; caffeine is probably the number-one thing I see mentioned in this context. If you want to prove this hypothesis, just go out to Walgreen’s, pick yourself up a home blood glucose meter, and do your own test. Check your blood sugar. Record the results. Ingest caffeine. Check your blood sugar again, after half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half, two hours – take it out as far as you want to. If you notice a significant rise, congratulations, you’ve proved your theory. But I would be pretty surprised if that were to be the case.