I was in eighth grade when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. All I knew about diabetes then was that it was disease older people got. I wasn’t even really sure what being a diabetic meant. And surely there was a diabetes cure, anything except taking shots every day and being on a strict diet. My parents, although they were strong...

    High blood sugar was the subject of two recent posts on ASweetLife.  It’s not really surprising given how common high blood sugar is in people with diabetes, even in those who take very good care of themselves.  Oftentimes, however, we focus on the lows rather than the highs because lows are dramatic and they can take us down...

If a cat psychologist came to my home and did a quick evaluation of my cat Bougie, she’d probably call him mediocre, borderline stupid, and fearful.  It’s true, Bougie is afraid of strangers, he often looks bewildered, and nothing about him, other than his ability to shed, seems extraordinary.  But there is more to Bougie...

Diabetes doesn’t stop me from being a long-distance runner, but it does complicate my runs.  A few days ago, for example, while running early on a damp and chilly morning, I began to feel weak.  After eight miles, I stopped to check my blood sugar. I took my glucose meter and test strips out of my pack and fished around for the...

Tom Cruise’s futuristic contact lenses in the new Mission Impossible movie may not be as far off as you think.  Desney Tan and Microsoft’s Computational User Experiences group have formed a collaboration with Professor Babak Parviz and his Bio-Nanotechnology Lab at the University of Washington to build a contact lens that provides...

Any diabetic with a smartphone has suffered what I call an “Apple moment.” You look at your glucometer. You look at your phone. And you think to yourself, “I can use this phone as everything from a news aggregator to an email-getter to a virtual goldfish bowl. So why can’t these two devices connect? Well, here’s some good news:...

Diabetes technology has vastly improved in the last decade, and most people with diabetes who have the opportunity to wear an insulin pump or a continuous glucose monitor are grateful for the assistance they provide.  But even with these advanced tools, the biggest burdens of diabetes – the insulin dosing and blood sugar testing...

I have written about the GlucaPen before, but recently I had the chance to meet with the company, and to see the device in person. As before, I found the GlucaPen to be an obvious solution to an obvious problem—the kind of solution that makes you think, “Well, why didn’t I think of that?” What’s the problem? The beginning of...

Recently I wrote about using the glycemic index (GI) ranking to manage weight and diabetes. Another measurement many use for weight and blood sugar management is Glycemic Load (GL). I was confused about the difference between these two systems so I spoke with registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator, Susan Weiner, who straightened...

  Has diabetes ever made you cry?  If Dr. Jeffrey La Belle and his team from the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University are successful in their current endeavor, diabetics may be able to put their tears to good use.  In collaboration with the Mayo Clinic Arizona, Dr. La Belle and his team...