The effect of different alcoholic beverages on blood alcohol levels, plasma insulin and plasma glucose in humans

In the present work we studied the effects of four alcoholic beverages on blood alcohol levels, plasma insulin concentrations and plasma glucose concentrations in men and women. The volunteers were healthy non-smokers and they were divided according to sex into two groups of ten individuals. The alcoholic beverages used in the study were beer, red wine, whisky and “cachaça”. In men, ingestion of the distilled drinks promoted a spike in blood alcohol levels more quickly than ingestion of the fermented drinks. In women, beer promoted the lowest blood alcohol levels over the 6 h of the experiment. Whisky promoted highest blood alcohol levels in both sexes. The ingestion of wine promoted a significant difference in relation to the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) as a function of gender. The ingestion of cachaça by women produced BAC levels significantly smaller than those obtained for wine.