Well, I don't really drink other alcohol than wine. I suppose I could experiment . I don't find that other things lower my blood sugar. "Herbs" don't usually help T1s. I do use symlin in addition to my insulin pump;this very much lowers postprandials, but the total amount required for carbsremain the same.
I don't think that alcohol is an insulin mimetic- the primary reason for a basal is as a counterregulative to glucagon.

V.

Another glass of wine last night and another low reading this morning. I even added three triscuit crackers with some colby cheese and still it was 77 this morning. Tonight I"m going to try coconut oil.

I guess it's red wine, I'm also astonished by the drop of the carb ratio by 50%.

As you may have noticed, I'm hooked on the "insulin mimetics" right now, and by googling insulin mimetic wine, the first thing that appeared:

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/c...act/290/6/E1339

I guess that there are more mimetics in red wine than resveratrol, or you're an excellent responder to it. Really -20% basal and -50% bolus is huge.

And here is one about white wine causing a "diabetic condition", low sugar levels, hypos! Sometimes I wonder if the idiot is the journalist or the so called scientist...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/4717.php

I found another apparent insulin mimetic that is contained in wine, epicatechin, which, it seems is also contained in cocoa.

With you, the effects seem to be quite reproducible, but for being sure, you should do that over a longer period of time. Perhaps you would get a lower A1c as well and wine has a lot of antioxidants.

Very healthy nutrient, good for your heart, good for BG levels, good for blood vessels.

In moderation, sure, I don't think that a glass of wine per day will be harmful, surely a lot less than, lets say, metformin.

I'm definitely keeping the wine in mind. I don't like the idea of drinking alcohol everyday. I think it increases risk of breast cancer in women but if it keeps my glucose low it might be worth the risk.

I've been googling around to look into studies claiming that, since those studies aren't capable of determining which substance in wine could trigger breast cancer, besides alcohol related substances, I don't see the point of taking them as reference.

There are others that claim otherwise, that it actually protects from breast cancer. I've found some that pinpointed to resveratrol (the possible insulin mimetic in red wine) as the protective element. I'd rather believe studies that can exactly tell you why something works, than studies that just state "we have no clue why, but it really increases it by 60%, for sure". The latter studies usually know squat about what the involved people consumed through their lives.

Why aren't they looking into the carb consumption of those people? Maybe the combination of extreme carb consumption and alcohol in general (not related to wine only) is highly nocive.

Why isn't the incidence of breast cancer among women in Spain higher than in Norway, Germany, UK, etc...?

(Breast Cancer incidence in Spain, I can tell you that women there drink red wine like drunk sailors whiskey)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ar...i?artid=1872033

(About resverstrol)
http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Nutri...Resverstrol.htm

http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/F...97,4519,00.html

(Alternative Cancer Research)
http://www.cleavagecreek.com/

I know, confusing, only do what you're comfortable with...

I don't think resveratrol is what does it. I take high doses of resveratrol daily and I still have too high FBG.

I think alcohol keeps the liver busy and depresses it. It is too sluggish from processing the alcohol to make a big release of glycogen in the early morning hours. So you're not really doing anything but kind of disabling your liver a bit, preventing it from doing what it wants to do, pump out too much glycogen.

Why does it want to over produce glycogen? Dunno. That is the 64 million dollar question. Is it a good idea to use alcohol to depress your liver function? Dunno.

Interesting study about the Spanish women. I wonder what the rates are in France as they are supposed to be the longest lived in Europe and they drink a lot.

My FBG this morning was 116. That's the highest it's ever been. I did take a tspn of coconut oil last night but I also ate an atkins bar at lunch and two girls scout mint cookies and quite a bit of dark chocolate. I over did it. I also didn't take any milk thistle. I'l try to do better today.

At least a study has shown that it lowers BS on humans (the rest I found was on mice), but they talk about gramms not milligramms, 3 to 5 gramms according to this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol

What makes me suspicious that red wine may have other insulin mimetics is that in v-effect's case, her bolus is decreased by 50% after consuming 3 glasses of wine if I understood it right. Or perhaps the combination of all other substances contained in the wine do the job. Don't know.

I don't think you can attribute that to the lack of liver/kidney/muscle glucose dumping.

I guess that you take resveratrol for its alleged anti-cancer effects, or am I wrong?

Darn't, I just purchased resveratrol because somebody on Berstein's forum was chatting it up. Oh well, maybe, maybe I grow younger.

Yep I remember someone on that forum talking about how it helped them too. I was thinking after drinking the wine that maybe it would be just as good.

I'm seeing a pattern here. Just as with vanadium, other molecules like zinc, quercetin, etc... aren't water soluble or dissolve poorly in water. Usually these will dissolve well with alcohol, from what I've read.

If you buy some supplement, be sure that you buy an organically chelated one, that means, one that is bound to an organic molecule. That will make those molecular compounds water soluble. They will be a lot better absorbed than their pure counterparts, depending on your absorption effectiveness and the compounded organic molecule up to 20x better absorption.

Hydorphobic means "fear from water", like all cats excepting tigers. And hydrophylic is the opposite "loves water". Stuff that is hydrophylic will be better absorbed by our bodies.

A little list of some substances and their solubility I've found while googling around:

Vanadium/Vanadyl Sulfate = hydrophobic
BMOV, BEOV, BPOV, BAOV = hydrophylic
Zink = hydrophobic (depending on temperature and/or PH)
Zink gluconate = hydrophylic
Chromium = mostly hydrophobic
Chromium hexavalent salts = hydrophylic (WARNING! CARCERIGENOUS!)
Chromium trivalent salts = hydrophylic (WARNING! POSSIBLY CARCERIGENOUS!)
Chromium Picolinate = hydrophylic/fat soluble (The best combo you can have)
resveratrol = hydrophobic / alcohol soluble
resveradox(tm) = hydrophylic
quercetin = hydrophobic
bio-quercetin = hydrophylic
L-Carnitine = hydrophylic
Biotin = hydrophylic
Benfotiamine = fat soluble
Aminoguanidine = hydrophylic

You can say that hydrophylic will be better absorbed into the bloodstream and fat soluble will easily penetrate the cells.

The literature that I've read so far suggests that; if you're looking for a special supplement, make sure that it is either fat soluble or hydrophylic (water soluble) AND NOT TOXIC, like with the chromium example, where one molecule may be ineffective the other may be effective but toxic. If you get the hydrophobic one, look if it is alcohol soluble, but then you have to pour the powder into some alcohol and drink it, to get enough of the substance into your bloodstream to see any effect.

So no coconut oil for me... I've read others that had similar results as yours.

Nope I believe the coconut did not work as well as the wine. My FBG this morning is 98. I very low carb yesterday and took milk thistle last night with the coconut oil.

When I'm done with this milk thistle I'll go back to the siliphos. The problem though with the wine and the siliphos is they don't do anything for pp glucose. The best thing for that was the berberine.

Becky

are you still ongoing with your wine experiment?