Excessive alcohol consumption leads to fatty liver disease. And the accumulation of fat is known to displace and inhibit the synthesis of glycogen. So an alcoholic is certainly more vulnerable to hypoglycemia. Especially after drinking heavily, as it compromises the process whereby liver glycogen is mobilised. And in the elderly, all kinds of things can go wrong.
The purpose of my previous post was to point out that dying from hypoglycemia is very unlikely to happen to a healthy person. I was trying to be reassuring. Living with T1 diabetes is stressful enough, and many of us struggle to keep depression at bay. Uneccessary concern about dying because of a hypo is just not helpful.
This reminds me of an interesting murder case we had here a few years ago. A doctor murdered his wife using insulin, but it took him three weeks! She was ill at the time, and he was supposedly attending to her needs. He injected insulin every night, but it took 3 weeks to kill her. Trying to kill someone with insulin is hard work. Presumably he did this because insulin is not a poison and leaves no trace. But all the injection puncture marks gave him away.
