Let’s get real here…I run on coffee
Seems every time I touch on one of my favorite subjects, (Coffee! Yippee!), there’s a slew of questions that come in about coffee and BGs. When my buddy Richard sent me yet another article on the subject, I decided it was time to get a little further into this topic.
The central question is “does coffee have any affect on blood sugar?” If you Google that question, you get about 1 kajillion different answers. But one article suggests that we need to separate out some of the active ingredients in coffee to understand the real culprit: caffeine.
Duke University conducted a very small study with a group of Type 2s, who were told to quit coffee, but instead given caffeine pills at breakfast and lunch that roughly equated to two cups of coffee at each of those meals. Blood sugars averaged 8% higher on the days they took caffeine over the days they didn’t– which is apparently statistically significant (considering glucose meters can have a 20% error rate and there were only 10 participants in this study, I am not sure about its validity, but we’ll go with it for now).
So how can this be given that just a few years ago researchers were claiming that coffee drinkers were at a lower risk for developing Type 2 diabetes? It might be that other ingredients in coffee help lower the risk of diabetes over the long term. Studies on decaf coffee’s long term effect could provide support for this theory, as could additional, more robust research on caffeine and its effects on BG. Either way, it doesn’t appear we have a definitive answer on this – coffee doesn’t appear to be bad or good for you, but as everything is for people with diabetes, individual results may vary. You may see a spike in BGs with your morning java, or like me, it might do nothing at all. Hate to leave it at “it depends,” but so it goes with the ‘betes.
One important thing to remember with coffee is that most people have it first thing in the morning when your “wake up” hormones start getting things going – including cortisol and adrenaline – two things that can sent BGs through the roof. It’s similar to the dawn phenomenon spikes many of us see in the wee hours of the morning – I know my basal rates get pumped up from 3am – 8am because I tend to rise at that time. So it may be that when you have your coffee, it’s your natural hormone fluctuations causing the rise, not the cuppa joe in your hand. Which reminds me, its time to go make my patented afternoon-double-strength-comes-out-like motor-oil blend right now. This blog should be called “I Kinda Run on Insulin but Mostly Coffee….”
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Thanks for the post on the topic, I have been wondering as well. I equated the raise in BG to the vanilla creamer – im not quite sure how my body reacts to caffeine yet. One good supplement for an alternative sweetener is stevia extract (its natural). Ive used splenda and its “approved for diabetic use”, but its still artificial and probably not the best for anyone to be injesting. Stevia has kinda a funny aftertaste in light drinks like tea, but you wouldnt be able to tell a difference if you are drinking motor oil:)