Does Vinegar Lower Blood Sugar? Dr Chan Answers

Does vinegar help lower blood sugar spikes for people with diabetes? The short answer is: yes, to some degree, especially when taken with high carbohydrate meals. But how you use this information matters far more than the information itself.

This is one of the questions I hear often from my patients with diabetes. Watch the short video below, or read on for my full clinical answer.

What the Science Says

There are medical studies looking at the impact of vinegar on post-meal blood sugar. Vinegar, when taken together with high glycemic index, high carbohydrate meals, can help reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes, to some degree. And that is the finding of some small studies.

So the science does support vinegar having some blood sugar lowering potential. 

But it is important to know how to translate this information to action, especially at an individual basis, especially for individuals with prediabetes, diabetes, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome. We should guard against being too quick to put everything and anything that shows potential or even strong evidence of blood sugar lowering into a pill and depend on that as treatment or even use as supplement. Because regardless of what science says about the potential of vinegar in lowering blood sugar post meal, it does not replace nor should we allow that to distract us from the need to change and optimise one's eating habits holistically. That should always remain the focus and foundation. 

How to Actually Use This Information

My suggestion is simple. Vinegar has been used as a condiment for centuries across many cultures and cuisines. It is affordable, accessible, and it makes food taste good. If it also has some modest benefit in blunting post-meal blood sugar spikes, that is a bonus worth taking.

Explore ways to add vinegar to your foods. At home, experiment with recipes. When eating out, ask for vinegar to go with your meal, especially when you are having high carbohydrate, starchy dishes. The Japanese add vinegar to sushi rice. Mediterranean cuisines serve balsamic vinegar with bread. Here in Singapore, we add black vinegar to Bak Chor Mee. These are real, practical, culturally familiar ways to incorporate vinegar into your diet.

What I do not recommend is taking vinegar in pill or supplement form. Don't be so quick to turn all food that shows some helpful potential into a pill. Focus on improving one's dietary habits holistically, incorporate elements that you think may be helpful for what you need into your habits. In this case adding vinegar to carbohydrate rich food to lower blood sugar spike to some degree, if that is helpful, then explore ways to incorporate into your diet wherever possible.

And if your doctor has advised you to avoid or limit vinegar for any medical reason, follow that advice.

But Here Is the More Important Question

Adding vinegar to your meals is, at best, a good-to-have. A nice-to-have. It is not a must-do.

The must-do is this: holistically reviewing and improving all aspects of your diet that are causing unhealthy blood sugar spikes in the first place. Excessive sugar intake. Excessive refined and processed carbohydrates. These are the causes. Vinegar at best softens the edges of the problem. It does not address the root of it.

I often see patients who come to me asking, "Doctor, what can I eat to help lower my blood sugar?" And I challenge them with a different question. "Before we talk about what to add, let us look at what you are already eating that is causing the problem. Let us start there."

That is the more important question. Not what to add. But what to change.

Good Blood Sugar Control Is Not Enough on Its Own

Even beyond blood sugar control, people with diabetes need to think about the bigger picture. The goal of managing diabetes well is not just better numbers. It is preventing the devastating long-term complications. Stroke. Blindness. Kidney failure. Heart attack.

Achieving better blood sugar control through dietary change is necessary. It is the obvious first step. But it is not the only step. A truly holistic approach to diabetes management requires looking at every aspect of lifestyle and eating habits. Not just blood sugar. All of it.

Do not let the excitement about any one food or condiment, whether it is vinegar, bitter melon, or anything else, distract you from the bigger and more important work of holistic lifestyle change.

The Bottom Line on Vinegar and Blood Sugar

Yes, vinegar can help blunt post-meal blood sugar spikes to some extent. Include it in your diet where it fits naturally. Enjoy it. Do not be so quick to take it in pill form. And do not let it become your focus at the expense of the deeper dietary changes your diabetes genuinely needs.

Every person with diabetes is different. What matters most is building the habits that will serve you for the long term, not chasing individual foods for their individual properties.

Your habits can be powerful medicine. Food as medicine is not about putting medicinal foods into pills. Food as medicine should be about learning to choose foods that will help you combat diseases, Let us focus on that.

Learning About Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

If you have diabetes and are not as equipped with the essential foundational knowledge about reversing Type 2 diabetes as you should be, I have a structured online learning programme that you might find very useful. You can find out more through the link below.

Find out more about the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: Essential Basics - Structured Online Learning Programme Here

About Dr Chan Tat Hon

Dr Chan graduated from the National University of Singapore medical school in 1992. For the last ten years, his work has focused on lifestyle medicine. He works with healthcare and corporate organisations to design and deliver lifestyle behaviour change programmes, train health coaches and build communities engaged in cultivating healthy behaviours to combat diseases.

He also provides training and coaching to individuals with diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, cardiovascular diseases and other lifestyle-related chronic diseases through 1-1 personalised coaching, live webinars, and online courses.

• 1-1 Personalised Coaching with Dr Chan
• Online Courses and Programmes by Dr Chan
• Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: Essential Basics Online Programme

About This Video

In this short video, I address the question of whether vinegar helps lower blood sugar spikes for people with diabetes. I review what medical research tells us, explain how to use this information practically, and caution against the common mistake of turning useful food information into another supplement habit. I also explain why adding vinegar to meals is a good-to-have, not a substitute for the holistic dietary changes that people with diabetes truly need.

Full Video Transcript

The following is the full transcript of the video above.

Does vinegar help lower blood sugar. And if it does, what role should vinegar play in the management of diabetes? Should people have diabetes take vinegar regularly for blood sugar control.

Hi, I'm Dr. Chan. I'm a medical doctor from Singapore. My work, and my passion is in training and coaching people in the area of lifestyle modification for the prevention and management of chronic diseases. The videos I put up on this channel are focused on providing information on lifestyle habits and chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases that are impacted and modifiable by lifestyle change. And through that, I hope to inspire more people to start taking action to improve and unlock the power of their lifestyle habits as medicine in combating these lifestyle modifiable chronic diseases.

Today, I shall tackle these two questions. Does vinegar help lower blood sugar? Can adding vinegar to meals, help people with diabetes, reduce blood sugar spikes after meals. And if it does, then what role should or can vinegar play in the diets of people with diabetes? How should people with diabetes add vinegar to their diets?

Let's start with what medical science knows and says about this topic. And if you know where to look, we can actually find many medical studies on this. For example, these two studies done on people with diabetes, as well as people with insulin resistance. And they found that vinegar, when taken together with high GI, high carbohydrate meals does help people with diabetes reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes. And let me also show you these two other studies done on people without diabetes. In these latter two studies, they found that vinegar when taken at mealtimes with carbohydrates rich meals can help, to some extent, reducing the blood sugar spikes post-meal even in healthy adults without diabetes.

There are many such studies done on the impact of vinegar on blood sugar. I shared these four studies merely to highlight what medical science already knows about vinegar's blood sugar lowering potential. But I do not intend to go into a detailed analysis of each of these studies in this video. For those of you who are familiar with reading and interpreting medical studies, I would encourage you to look them up. But for those of you who intend to go read the studies, I just want to highlight and remind you of the things to note when interpreting medical research findings, such as whether the findings were statistically significant and how the studies were designed and what limitations that study design would put on the interpretations on the findings. Don't just take the headlines of any research articles and take away incomplete or worse, incorrect interpretations.

So back to this question that we set out to tackle in this video today. Does vinegar help lower blood sugar. Perhaps it would be useful to fine-tune this question a little further to make it more specific. Let's focus the question on does vinegar help lower blood sugar for people with diabetes and to make it even more specific, does vinegar help reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes for people with diabetes.

And from the various medical research that one can find that studied this. The answer is yes, it does, to some degree, to some extent, at least, especially for people with diabetes or insulin resistance when taking high GI high carb meals. That is vinegar, when added to foods or taken at meal times may help to some degree to blunt the blood sugar spikes from high GI high carb, starch rich meals. And this effect was seen in both people with diabetes, as well as healthy people without diabetes.

But before you run away with this information and use it inappropriately. Let me put a caveat and caution to how we should, and more importantly, how we should not be using this information about this blood sugar lowering potential of vinegar.

Firstly, even though vinegar has been found in some studies to help lower blood sugar spikes after meals, adding vinegar to one's diet, should and cannot be the only, or the main thing that one does to one's diet for better blood sugar control. We must always holistically review and improve all aspects of one's diet that impact blood sugar control. And we must also tackle all aspects of lifestyle for holistic and optimal diabetes management.

Secondly, and importantly, never stop or reduce your diabetes medications on your own. Please consult and work closely with your doctor.

My suggestion on how we should and can make use of this information about vinegar's potential to lower blood sugar is this. Even without diving deep to study in detail the basic science of vinegar's impact on our body's physiology and studying in detail all the available medical research and clinical studies on the impact of the intake of vinegar at meal times on post-meal blood sugar spike. Unless you have certain medical conditions where your doctor or dietitian had advised you to avoid, or be careful of your intake of vinegar. It is not a bad idea to experiment and explore ways to include vinegar into our recipes and foods.

If a common condiment that had been used widely for centuries around the world across different cultures and cuisines may help lower blood sugar spike post-meal. Why not? Especially if it is easily accessible, very affordable, and just as importantly, makes food yummy and enjoyable. Why not?

So go ahead and explore new ways to incorporate vinegar into your recipes when you're cooking at home. Or when you're eating out, if appropriate or possible, go ahead and ask for some vinegar to add to your food, especially when you're having high GI, high glycemic index, high carbohydrate, starch rich meals. Just like the Japanese do when having sushi rice. Or in certain Mediterranean cuisines, balsamic vinegar is often offered together with the bread basket. Or here in Singapore, where I'm from. We often add black vinegar to one of Singapore's favourite hawker foods, the Bak Chor Mee or minced pork noodles. Although the black vinegar used in this dish is often with sugar added, which is not ideal.

Even though we can find medical studies that suggest that having vinegar at mealtimes can help reduce, to some extent at least, the degree of blood sugar spike post-meal, I do not recommend taking vinegar supplements in the form of pills. And I will also caution against taking concentrated or excessive amounts of vinegar. If your doctor and medical team had advised you to avoid or reduce the intake of vinegar for whatever medical conditions that you may have, you should comply with that advice.

Also don't let this information of vinegar being potentially helpful in lowering blood sugar be a distraction to you, in terms of what you need to do to change and improve all aspects of your dietary habits to holistically and optimally combat diabetes.

I have a video on the three mistakes that people with diabetes make when it comes to the use of vinegar in reducing blood sugar. It is on my other YouTube channel where I post my longer podcast videos, where I will spend more time sharing and coaching. I suggest you go watch it after this. Link in the show notes below.

I hope you found this video useful. Let's unlock the power of habits as medicine to prevent and combat diabetes and other lifestyle related chronic diseases. Take care.

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