I was watching a video series about drunk driving with real accounts and the cops Always ask “ are you diabetic” and I figured that they are asking because diabetics can appear drunk, but I researched it more and there is a legal reason as well
Ketones in your breath can give a false positive on breath tests.
If you say “ no I’m not diabetic when pulled over” and you fail your breath test, it’s difficult to change your answer after the fact.
If a cop asks me, I would say yes, but I’m well controlled and my sugar right now is normal” or something like that.
So once in a while my site goes bad or for what ever reason,my sugar spikes and I got one of these portable breath testers from Amazon, mostly so my daughter can use it if she is having a drink to assess her ability to drive.
So I saw I had ketones in my urine and I tested my breath and it read 0.02. That is within the legal limit, but I wasn’t drinking at all. And my sugar wasn’t that high and ketones were only 1+, which I will get just from fasting with normal sugars.
Anyone on keto diet probably sees +1 regularly.
So it’s 100% true that ketones can throw off these presumptive tests.
So I think it’s best if we ever get pulled over and they want to breath test us, we should ask for a blood test, where ketones won’t effect it.
But if you tell them you are diabetic, they are supposed to offer the blood test anyway,so I don’t know if they all do that.
This was a real eye opener to me, because I really didn’t think ketones could cause that much of a false positive.
Has anyone on here been breath tested? Did they ask if you are diabetic and did anyone get a false positive?
This is a game changer for how I will respond to police in these situations, but I don’t know how common this occurs.
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WOW. I never knew this. Thanks for letting us all know.
I guess ketones make you smell like you have been drinking, so it kinda makes sense.
In Indiana, if they pull a positive breath test, you can (at your own cost) demand a blood draw. The blood draw is not impacted by DKA
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An undiagnosed/untreated diabetic, is very likely to blow the breath test off the charts in an instant.
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