Ask Dr Miriam

Q I’m diabetic and I’ve read that people like me can drink alcohol three to four days a week without making their diabetes worse. Am I right? A Well, no. A large Danish study was looking at drinking patterns in people before diabetes was diagnosed, because previous studies had showed a lower risk of diabetes with low to moderate drinking.

This latest study found there was a lower risk of diabetes with wine in contrast to an increased risk in women who drank a lot of spirits. The most important thing about this study is it looked at people with a healthy lifestyle and obesity rate of only 10%. In the UK many people aren’t healthy and our obesity rate is 25%. So it’s not all down to alcohol intake and I believe the guidelines to restrict weekly drinking to 14 units a week and spread alcoholic drinks across the whole seven days is still what we should be striving to do.