Move over Nick Jonas, these days Crystal Bowersox is definitely the hottest musician with an insulin pump.  In fact, she’s the hottest musician around – period.  I don’t just love Bowersox because she has type 1 diabetes.  I love her voice, her style, and her charm.  I’m looking forward to this week’s American Idol, so I can see the clips from her hometown Ohio visit.  For me, watching American Idol is kind of like a hometown visit.  I live in Tel Aviv now, and haven’t been back to Houston, my hometown, for many years.  But when I’m watching Idol, I immediately revert back to my 12-year-old Texan self.  The only real difference is that 12-year-old me snacks on Chips Ahoy and M&M’s, while grown-up diabetic me snacks on cheese and cucumbers.  I suppose another difference would be that 12-year-old me might think Casey James is cute.  Grown-up me definitely does not.  In fact, I don’t get him at all.  How is he still on the show after that horrific Huey Lewis performance?

On a different subject:  I enjoyed reading so many of the D-Blog week posts.  I wish I’d been organized and free enough to participate.  I found Scott Strumello’s post on To Carb or Not to Carb especially interesting because it addresses an issue that I never really consider: protein raises blood sugar.  Scott writes, “nutritional components, especially proteins, do in fact also raise blood glucose levels. The main difference is that while a piece of bread will show up in your blood glucose test results within a matter of minutes, protein usually takes anywhere from 6 to 8 hours before hitting your blood glucose.”

So often I find myself trying to figure out why my blood sugar is high, even though I haven’t eaten a thing for hours, or when I’ve eaten only protein and a salad.  Now I have a new variable to consider.  Protein.  And actually this brings to mind a DiabetesDaily interview I read the other day with Dr. Bernstein in which Dr. Bernstein says, “The blood sugar is not just dependent on the amount of carbs and the amount of protein, but also on the bulk, the physical bulk of what you’re putting in your gut. When you stretch your gut you raise your blood sugar if you’re diabetic.”

I think, my friends, that I cannot really handle the issue of gut stretching.  That is where I draw the line.  If you would like to tell me how you bolus for gut stretching, I’d love to hear.

And now I’ll close with  some very cute news: Little Adam took his first steps yesterday!

I took my sons for routine blood tests this week, and given that they are the offspring of two type 1 diabetics, you can imagine the fears in the back of my mind.  Their fasting blood glucose levels came back normal (thankfully), but what I found myself thinking about -surprisingly- when I looked over their results was – what if they had type 2 diabetes?  I always have type 1 diabetes on my mind because I know they may have a genetic predisposition to it.  But I don’t think it’s much of stretch to say that all of us eating a Western diet are predisposed to type 2 diabetes.

I do make an effort to keep my sons away from processed foods, soda, and junk food in general. I’m far from a tyrant about it, though.  And whenever they (or I) eat junk, I wish we weren’t eating it. But it’s everywhere, and sometimes -no matter how strong your will – it’s unavoidable.  So the question is, what will deter us from eating garbage food?  What can I do to keep my sons from wanting the food products that increase their risk for obesity and/or type 2 diabetes?

I touched on this subject in a post about whether Ronald McDonald should be forced into retirement.  And I’ve written before about why I’m not a fan of soda tax.  I think that America’s obesity (and diabetes) problem runs so deep that pointing a finger here or there isn’t going to solve anything. Soda is junk, but so is sugary cereal.  So are a thousand other products.  I don’t see small tax increases in these products, like 12 cents on a can of soda, as a real solution.  When it comes to a cigarette tax, however, I find myself feeling differently.

Recently I’ve been reading about Australia’s 25% tax increase on cigarettes.  This tax hike raised the price of cigarettes by $2 a box, which is enough, I believe to curb some cigarette purchases.  And moreover, as of July 1, 2012, cigarette packs in Australia will have no logos, color or font variation.  Each pack will bear the brand name and a graphic photo depicting the gruesome consequences of smoking like images of fat oozing out of blocked aortas, or rotting gums, or cancerous lungs.

Reading about this made me think that plain packaging laws might be a real solution for the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic in America.  Think of those DHARMA Initiative food containers on Lost.  If you weren’t stranded on an island, would you eat what’s in them?  No!  You’d never pay attention to them on a supermarket shelf.   If you had a choice, you’d choose the colorful, cheerful food boxes – the ones with pictures of attractive people, attractive food, or words like healthy and delicious written on them (even if they aren’t).  I’d do the same.

Of course, there are a million drawbacks to the idea of plain packaging laws.  I’m not about to raise a case for it here.  But I do think that it’s something that really could make an impact.  Imagine a plain white box with words Nabisco Chocolate Chip Cookies written on it in black print, and nothing more.  Not so exciting, right?  But wait… happens if you see a box labeled Swedish Fish.  Is there chewy candy or herring inside?

If we think about the Australian model of using gruesome photos on cigarette boxes, I say -in the case of junk food – that’s going way too far.  I think the shock effect wears off pretty quickly and we’d all stop noticing the ugly photo.  Or worse, it could have a Pavlovian effect.  Every time our kids saw a picture of diseased tissue, they might start to drool for candy.

Crystal Bowersox might be my favorite American Idol contestant ever, and it’s not just because she’s diabetic.  I admit, though, that I didn’t like her performance this week, but I’m going to blame it on the fact that she had to sing a  Shania Twain song.

Crystal is not just a mega-talent, and very cool, but what’s interesting to me is that she isn’t complaining about her diabetes.  It seems to be sort of a non-issue.  For those of us living with diabetes, we know it’s anything but a non-issue.  And so there seems to be something a bit noble about the fact that she’s keeping it quiet, and not dramatizing diabetes (and not looking for sympathy votes),  especially given the fact that earlier in the season she had a complication that required hospitalization.  I don’t follow tabloid news at all, but other than this headline which showed up in a google alert, I haven’t seen any news about Crystal’s diabetes.  And speaking of not following news, I  went to the American Idol website today (3 days late!) to find out who’d been sent home this week (sorry Siobhan Magnus) and I was shocked to see recipes on the AI homepage.

The American Idol recipes are just product advertisements under the guise of great ideas of things to serve at a viewing party.  Thanks, American Idol, because I really wanted to know how to serve microwaved processed cheese product to my friends.  And thanks for the great photography, too.  That bowl of Velvetta Easy Chessy Fajita Dip looks like throw-up, which might be why none of the ten million people who have visited your website over the past few months have commented on how great the recipe looks.

But wait, American Idol.  I’m not just ranting about your lousy recipes, I am going somewhere with this…

Randy Jackson!  Where is Randy Jackson?  I just said that I admired Crystal for keeping her diabetes issues fairly quiet, but right now, I’d like to hear a little more from Randy, who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2001.  Here’s an excerpt from Newsweek:

“When Randy Jackson, the Grammy-winning producer and “American Idol” judge, learned he had type 2 diabetes in 2001, he weighed 360 pounds. At 45, he was in “the worst shape of my life,” he says. For weeks he’d been feeling tired, thirsty and overheated. Even though his father was diabetic and took insulin shots, Jackson put off the trip to the doctor, thinking he just had a cold. “You don’t think it’s going to happen to you,” he says ruefully.”

After undergoing gastric bypass surgery, Jackson reduced his weight from 360 to 230 pounds.  And he wrote a book called Body with Soul: Slash Sugar, Cut Cholesterol, and Get a Jump on Your Best Health Ever.  And this is great!  This is promoting a healthy lifestyle and helping people change their eating habits.  Surely the book has better recipes than Kraft Foods Viewing Party suggestions.  And if not, I offer you this:  American Idol, you have my permission to use any and all recipes from ASweetLife on AmericanIdol.com. The following are my recipe recommendations for all American Idol viewing parties.

A refreshing cucumber salad, Missy Lieser’s Bacon-Wrapped Shiitake Mushrooms, Michael Aviad’s Parmesan Crusted Jerusalem Artichokes, Rani Polak’s Sesame and Herb Chicken Fingers, and my very own Buckwheat Apple Cinnamon Muffins.

Bacon Wrapped Shiitake Mushrooms

Jessica's Buckwheat Muffins

I’ve been vaguely following the reports on Jamie Oliver’s trip to a West Virgina school where he showed the children common vegetables, like tomatoes and cauliflower, which they were unable to identify.  This led me to think about my own childhood, and what I ate.  What I realize is that while vegetables did exist here and there in my surroundings, and I certainly could identify them, I never really ate them.

I led a gastronomic triple life as a child, since I split my time between three homes.  In my father’s house there were some chicken and rice dishes, a lot of microwavable soy products, some cucumbers and carrots, and pitchers of pink lemonade, which we considered a healthy alternative to Coke.  We ate Kraft singles on white bread, chewy granola bars, potato chips, graham crackers, and popsicles.  In my grandmother’s house there was a lot of boiled chicken.  There were greasy latkes, Empire frozen pizza bagels, and stale coffee cakes which were not really cakes, but challah stuffed with homemade jam as thick as tar.  There was strudel and there were cinnamon rolls which were – like the coffee cake – just a slight variation on the challah recipe.  My grandmother grew cucumbers in her garden, but we never ate them fresh.  The minute we plucked one it went right into a jar for pickling.  Same was true of the figs from her fig tree.  They went right to the pot, destined to become jam.  And then there was my mother’s apartment, where junk food ruled.  [Note: My mother was incapacitated with MS so she was not actually serving the junk food, but rather her caregiver of the moment was doing so and my mother was unable to object].

The caregivers who also drove my brother and me back-and-forth between our parents’ homes always stopped at 7- Eleven for cigarettes, which is where my brother got his Coke and Twix, and I got my Sprite and Kit-Kat.  (I just paused in writing this to look up the carbohydrate content of a can of Sprite and a Kit-Kat – 90 grams of carb!).  With our sugar in hand, my brother and I went into our mother’s apartment and straight to our Atari where we began heated games of Pitfall and Frogger.  As intense as it was to maneuver that primitive Atari joystick, it wasn’t enough of a work-out to burn off the sugar and calories in the snack we were eating.  And yet, we weren’t fat.  In fact, we were both about as skinny as possible.

So my question is, with all of the sugar, carbs, and processed food we were eating, why weren’t we overweight like so many children today?  Genetics, I’m sure plays a role, and we kept kosher which means we didn’t eat meat in fast-food restaurants.  Is this part of the reason?  Are the processed foods of today considerably worse than the processed foods of the 80s?  What other factors are there in the enormous rise in childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes in children? Does anyone know?

In February, Newsweek published a report by Sharon Begley, “The Depressing News About Antidepressants.” Begley, citing a recent study in The Journal of American Medical Associations, and the previous work of psychology researchers, Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein, argues that in most cases a placebo pill can be as effective in treating depression as an antidepressant – or in Begley’s words, “antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.”

As someone who suffers from depression and has taken Prozac on and off since 1998, I was shocked by Begley’s article. While I have no doubt that placebo effects can be real and, in some cases, powerful, in my own case and in the cases of many other depressives I have spoken with, the placebo effect simply makes no sense as an explanation for the benefits of antidepressants.  I suffer from diabetes as well as depression, and I believe that in many cases, taking a placebo antidepressant would be the equivalent of taking placebo injections of insulin.

Like most people who have tried antidepressants, I have gone on and off the medication many times and tried many different treatments for my depression, from psychotherapy to natural remedies to exercise.  What I have learned through these trials is that nothing has come even close to being as effective as Prozac.  And it took me nearly a decade of on-and-off misery and on-and-off Prozac use to come to terms with the drug, not as a demon or a panacea, but as a simple drug that alleviates my psychic pain.  To suggest that I would have improved equally well had I unknowingly been taking a placebo is not only wrong, it is also humiliating, and fuels the stigma that exists around depression and its treatment.   It makes those of us being helped by the pills feel foolish, it may prevent people from getting help they need, and it encourages intolerance from non-depressed people.

Andrew Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon, his masterful and comprehensive work on depression, put it this way when I asked him about this point:

“I’ve taken at least twenty different drugs and some have worked for me, and others not, and some better and some less, and the idea that that’s all in my imagination is profoundly alien,” Solomon told me. I don’t believe I had some underlying prejudice that caused me not to get a placebo effect out of Topamax but to get a huge response from Zyprexa.  My having a breakdown when I decided the Zyprexa was good and that I’d try stopping my Zoloft was also not in my imagination.”

Perhaps the most serious problem with the JAMA study and Begley’s article is that the placebo effect is not generally sustained. Depressed people might initially report positive responses from placebos, not only because they are full of hope but also because regular attention of doctors as part of a study protocol can break them out of their isolation. But there is no evidence that this effect is sustained. According to Solomon, doctors who he has interviewed have found that over time, the placebo effect fades, and the ones who are on placebo have a much higher relapse rate than the ones on medication. “This could be demonstrated in research,” Solomon says, “but because the FDA does not require longer-term studies, and because they would be hideously expensive, no one does them.”

It is true, as Begley notes, that we still don’t know exactly how SSRIs work, which is why after more than 20 years of SSRI research new ideas are still being put forth. And to complicate this matter even more, depression is entirely a subjective experience.  There is no reliable way for doctors and scientists to measure it, and there is no way to pinpoint what causes it.  The opposite is true of my diabetes.  I know that I have diabetes because, as a result of an autoimmune attack, my body does not produce enough insulin.  I can measure my blood sugar at any moment of the day and know whether I am too high or too low.  Unlike blood sugar levels, however, moods cannot be measured in precise numbers, but that does not make the medication for my depression any less critical.

There is no question that SSRIs do have a very real impact on the chemical make-up of the brain.  Ronald Duman, a researcher in the department of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine  has demonstrated that SSRIs can lead to neurogenesis, or the growth of new brain cells, which could turn out to be the explanation for how SSRIs effect mood.  And moreover, a newly published study conducted at the University of Iowa shows that the drug Lexepro helped stroke victims preserve brain function.

As Begly and Dr. Kirsch certainly know, the stakes in this debate could not be higher.  “I believe that Sharon Begley and Dr. Kirsch will discourage people who need them from taking them, and that some of those people will have ruined lives, and others will end up committing suicide,” Solomon said.  ”I believe they have blood on their hands.”  Arguing that antidepressants are no better than placebos without long term data on the placebo effect to bolster their claims is an ethical lapse of enormous proportions.  It’s no less dangerous than suggesting a diabetic could cope without her insulin.

I just sat down to blog (I actually had a serious subject in mind) and felt my eyes starting to close.  I am tired -for sure – but this is a different kind of eye-closing.  This is what I call shut-eye high.  The high, of course, refers to my blood sugar.  I just checked and the meter says 191.  It’s been months since I’ve seen a number over 180.

Since my son is in the next room, I’m stopping myself from shouting out the F-word and instead, I’m going to blog out my frustration.  Hearing Mike saying the word insulin in a sing-song voice (as in hint, hint, you should take some), is yet another source of frustration.  Shouldn’t he, of all people, know better?

I have a very complicated relationship with insulin right now because I’m breastfeeding, which actually lowers my blood sugar.  I don’t like to find myself going low while I’m holding the baby, so I would rather ride a little high.  And I have been okay with finding myself at 150 -160 after meals, but 191 is just too high.  (Side note: sometimes I have giant anxiety attacks about what if Mike and I both go low while we’re sleeping.  So I’d rather be a little high at bedtime then face that.  Mike has fairly frequent nighttime lows.  Even if I don’t hear him get out of bed to go eat, in the morning I know what’s happened by the food wrappers and containers that he leaves on the counter).

I haven’t been exercising regularly for the last few weeks and this too has wrecked havoc on my blood sugar control. Control, control, control.  I need some.  I hereby pledge to count my carbs for real.  And I’m going to start moving again, no less than a two-mile walk in the morning!  I would go on, but my face is about to hit the keyboard.  And the baby is starting to cry…

But one more thing: I took this quiz, Are You Attached To Sugar.  It obviously isn’t designed for diabetics, but I really appreciated the photo of the loaf of bread flowing into sugar cubes.  My result says that I have an unhealthy relationship with sugar.  Go figure.

A consumer advocacy group, Corporate Accountability International, wants Ronald McDonald to retire.  According to a CNN report, Corporate Accountability International plans to host a retirement party for Ronald McDonald as it releases a report Wednesday that calls for McDonald’s to stop using the clown.  “For nearly 50 years, Ronald McDonald has hooked kids on unhealthy foods spurring a deadly epidemic of diet-related diseases,” said Deborah Lapidus, the senior organizer at Corporate Accountability International. “Ultimately the report makes the case that it’s time that McDonald’s stop directing fast food to kids.  Really, Ronald deserves a break and so do we.”

Let me say straight-out: I do not like McDonald’s.  I don’t eat McDonald’s food and neither do my children.  I don’t like Ronald either.  As a child, I never found him appealing, and as a parent I find him down right creepy.

He also bears a disturbing resemblance to a rubber chicken.  But nonetheless, I now rise to his defense.

Corporate Accountability International’s finger-pointing at a clown doesn’t help the obesity crisis any more than New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed soda tax helps the obesity epidemic.  We could argue that there needs to be government regulation on all advertising directed towards children, especially when it comes to food products (cereals, fast food, candy, etc).  I would support this, and I think that it would be a worthy endeavor.  But targeting Ronald is not the path to better health for all.  McDonald’s isn’t going anywhere – I know it, you know it, they know it.  Rather than spending time and money trying to eliminate poor Ronald, why not use him to raise awareness about a healthy diet?   If he’s as influential as Corporate Accountability International claims, let’s tweak him, reform him, and help him be a better clown.  How about Ronald McDonald chomping on a carrot, or a commercial where Ronald goes to the farmer’s market?  Or Ronald eats an apple instead of an apple pie.

What Ronald McDonald needs is a makeover – less rubber chicken, more fresh leafy green salad.

And speaking of influential, the Corporate Accountability’s website says, “The average child sees about 20,000 fast food commercials every year. With marketing that overwhelming, it’s hard for even the most health-conscious parent to maintain influence over their child’s food preferences.”

Who are these health-conscious parents that allow their children to spend enough hours in front of the TV to see 20,000 fast food commercials?    You can’t complain about the commercials your child sees if you let him watch TV for hours each day, and you can’t complain about McDonald’s if you take him there to eat.  A six-year-old child does not end up in McDonald’s with a tray full of food by himself.  Someone takes him there, and someone pays for that food.

There are enormous problems with the American diet.  We are surrounded by terrible food and skillful marketing.  And our diet does lead to illnesses like type 2 diabetes.  As responsible adults and parents, however, we need to teach our children not to eat this food.  My youngest son, Adam, is almost a year old.  His favorite activity is putting things into his mouth.  He crawls around our apartment – which houses his two older brothers, two cats, and a giant dog – and examines everything, from toys, to cat hair, to shoelaces.  I follow behind Adam on his excursions, let him touch and explore, and as his little hand grasps something and brings it towards his face, I say, “not in your mouth.”  I use a stern voice, and he listens.  Those are the four words a parent needs.  We can’t blame Ronald McDonald for what goes into our children’s mouths.  We can only blame ourselves.

My husband, Mike,  and I both have type 1 diabetes – sort of.  The full story is that Mike has type 1 diabetes, and I have LADA.  Are you confused, like so many others, about the distinctions between these forms of diabetes?  Take a look, then, at Catherine Price’s clear-cut explanation of LADA, and how it differs from type 1.  If it helps to put faces to the differences between type 1 and LADA, then check out the story below of Mike’s frightening diabetes onset versus my very mild one.

Mike’s  diagnosis: Type 1: In November 2001, Mike began to feel ill. The first time he mentioned it to me we were at his cousin’s wedding. I guessed he’d had too much to drink and wasn’t especially worried. But days later, Mike still felt unwell. He was unusually tired. We attributed it to his work, long-distance runs and the sleepless nights we often had with our baby, Tom. But as weeks and then months passed, other things felt wrong, too. Mike was constantly thirsty. He drank orange juice not by the glass but by the liter. He drank milkshakes and cola throughout the day. And though he’d never had a sweet-tooth before, he began to eat enormous quantities of chocolates, cakes and biscuits – he even drank the syrup from a can of fruit cocktail.

Yet despite his gigantic calorie intake, Mike was losing weight. He thought that the weight loss could be the result of long-distance running. Then his feet went numb and his vision blurred. That’s when he went to the doctor.

Jessica ‘s diagnosis: LADA

I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes twice, first in 2000 and then in 2002 (with numbers higher than those in 2000).  I was far from a typical gestational diabetes patient.  I was young, and not overweight.

In the years since then, my fasting blood sugar was always borderline high, but not high enough for any doctor to make a clear-cut diabetes diagnosis.  I never had any symptoms of diabetes.   “You’ll probably develop type 2 at some point,” the doctor said.  “You should maintain a healthy diet and exercise.”  I did.

In 2008, however, while pregnant with my third child, I did an oral glucose tolerance test very early in the pregnancy.  My blood sugar levels were high and it was clearly not gestational diabetes (which is only diagnosed after week 24 of pregnancy).  I saw an endocrinologist who tested me for autoantibodies.  Positive.  He tested my c-peptide level.  Low.  Though I had not experienced any of the classic symptoms of type 1 onset, I was well on my way to being a type 1.

According to the JDRF Adults with type 1 toolkit, “LADA is characterized by age, a lack of family history of type 2 diabetes, a gradual increase in insulin requirements, positive antibodies, and decreasing ability to make insulin as indicated by a low C-peptide.”

My gestational diabetes in 2000 and 2002 was -  hindsight 20/20 – in fact the earliest stages of LADA.

Mike likes to tease me and call me a faker, since I still produce some of my own insulin.  To that I say, if I’m a poser, then he’s a copycat, because I had LADA before he had type 1, even if we didn’t know it.  So there.

New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has proposed a tax of 12 cents per can of soda (a penny per ounce). During his weekly radio address, Bloomberg said the soda tax would discourage consumers from buying sugar-laden drinks. According to the NYT, Bloomberg noted research suggesting that such a tax would reduce consumption of the sugary drinks, and drive down obesity rates and their accompanying medical costs. The main thrust, however, was on finding a quick source of revenue for a city in serious need of one. “In these tough economic times, easy fixes to our problems are hard to come by,” he said. “But the soda tax is a fix that just makes sense. It would save lives. It would cut rising health care costs.”

Indeed it might, but taxing soda alone will not promote good health. Like so many others, Bloomberg is using health as the easiest disguise for raising revenue. A soda tax is a deceptive, easy fix – the last thing we should be seeking now. Instead of an easy fix, Bloomberg and other policy makers should seek a long-term sustainable program that educates people about nutrition. If giving up soda is going to save lives, then let’s do it for real. How about making it illegal for anyone under 21 to buy soda? Instead of having teenagers loiter around store fronts trying to get someone to buy them a few beers, let’s have them out there trying to score a can of Coke. And what would happen if McDonald’s couldn’t serve soda to children?

Pepsi and Coca-Cola recently announced they would improve nutritional labeling on their products. If soda is killing us, then let’s not kid ourselves and think that a more visible nutritional label is going to make a difference. We need to go for the skull and crossbones. No one is going to pay attention to anything less than that. You know why? Because no one knows anything about nutritional labels. No one knows that carbohydrates and sugar are the same thing. The people who drink six cans of soda a day have no idea what 28 grams of sugar per can means. They don’t know this because lawmakers are looking for a quick fixes instead of going through the long and difficult process of educating people.

I’m not a Coke or Pepsi advocate. I think they’re selling crap, and I think they know they’re selling crap. But why are we picking on them? Why not tax all food that is crap, including breakfast cereals like this one?

(Apparently regular Froot Loops weren’t sweet enough for Americans, so Kellogg’s kindly created a marshmallow version). Or how about this – instead of singling out only one of the causes of obesity, why not make it difficult and expensive to sell all sugared products? Why not treat all sugars equally, as we treat all cigarette brands equally? Perhaps we can institute laws that require supermarkets to make a junk food section, with a tollbooth at its entrance and charge $5 per person to enter. Such a draconian and expensive measure might really lead to real reduction in the consumption of all junk food.

America’s obesity (and diabetes) problem runs so deep that pointing a finger here or there isn’t going to solve anything. Soda is junk, but it’s merely the junk at the top of the pile.

I’m a huge American Idol fan, and I take my Idol watching seriously.  It’s my version of watching sports on TV.  I attribute my Idol love to my childhood years of watching contests and singing shows with my grandmother, Bashy.  She and I watched a lot of Star Search together.  We watched Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters.  And we always watched Miss America.  Now I watch American Idol with my sons, who are great company, but many times as I watch I think of Bashy and I can almost hear her making snarky comments about the contestants (she should put some clothes on, she looks like trash, etc).  If Bashy were alive today she’d surely be making comments about Crystal Bowersox (she should wash her hair).

Dirty hair or not, I’m a big Crystal Bowersox fan, and I noticed some headlines saying she’s been hospitalized for (unconfirmed) diabetes complications.  This comes right on the heels of news about former Idol contestant,  Elliott Yamin, a type 1 diabetic who was stranded in Chile after the recent earthquake.  Yamin was low on supplies for his insulin pump.

Hopefully Yamin has found his way home safely by now.  And I certainly hope that Bowersox is well and able to compete.  Does anyone know if Bowersox is a type 1?  If so, that’s another reason I’ll be cheering for her.