The other day I participated in an interview with Riva Greenberg about living with diabetes (more on our conversation later) and, as tends to happen when two diabetics start talking, we ended up on the subject of breakfast. “It’s my hardest meal,” I told Riva, confessing that after eating Fage 2% Greek yogurt nearly every morning for oh, the past five years, I have finally reached my breaking point. Maybe it’s the Symlin, maybe it’s general fatigue, but I can no longer make it through a cup full of the...

Bridget McNulty is a South African writer and journalist, and a Type 1 diabetic. Her first novel, Strange Nervous Laughter, was published in South Africa in 2007 and released in the USA in May 2009. She has written articles for a number of South African magazines, including ELLE, Real Simple, the Oprah magazine, Psychologies and Woman & Home, and frequently writes about diabetes. In 2008 she was voted one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s Awesome Women, an award extended to 30 South African women who are making a difference in their...

I just returned from a trip to Tokyo for work and am finally over my jet-lag and settling back into my old routine.  It was a crazy week: not much sleep, constantly walking, and encountering carb-laden foods wherever I turned. Soba noodles for breakfast, tempura with rice for lunch, dough-covered sweetened chestnuts for a snack — it was a recipe for disaster. And indeed that’s what I thought I’d be writing about for my first post upon my return. (I ate more noodles last week than I have in years.) But here’s...

I just had a lovely dip down to 38 mg/dl, so when I first saw a headline indicating that scientists had figured out a way to derive insulin from safflowers, I thought it might be time for another glucose tablet. But now that my blood sugar has rebounded, I can confirm that I was not, in fact, hallucinating: according to Canada’s CTV News, researchers at the University of Calgary have figured out a way to genetically manipulate safflower flowers to produce insulin. According to the article, “By inserting a human insulin...

Today’s a big day for anyone with Type 1 diabetes: JDRF just announced a partnership with the Animas Corporation to develop what they’re calling a “First-Generation Automated System for Managing Type 1 Diabetes.” Translation? They’re trying to make the first-ever artificial pancreas. Very, very exciting. To quote from the JDRF press release: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation today announced an innovative partnership with Animas Corporation to develop an automated system to help people with type...

Having diabetes makes me pay attention to all sorts of things that, in my previous life, I could have cared less about. Like, for example, the different ways that cottage cheese and plain greek yogurt affect your blood sugar levels. Or how many grams of carbohydrate are in an avocado . This morning, I’m surprised to say that I am interested in pig pancreases. I was looking through my google news alerts and came across this article from the daily student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh (bookmarked in my browser right...

I’ve got an interview up today with Dan Hurley, author of the new book, Diabetes Rising — and wanted to write a quick blog post to mention one of my favorite parts of the book: Hurley’s ear for analogies for life with diabetes that are so spot-on that I made my husband listen as I read them out loud. Consider this simile, courtesy of a systems engineer working on the software to control a closed-loop insulin pump, about why controlling blood sugar is so difficult — especially since, as Hurley points out, it...

When I was twelve, a friend of our mother’s came to pick my sister and me up from school during lunch.  She explained that Jonathan, our 18-month-old brother, was in the hospital, and that he would be fine, and that our parents would explain everything when we saw them after dinner that night.  We spent several nervous hours doing fractions and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with their family, until our parents finally arrived. “Jonathan has diabetes,” my mother explained.  “His body can’t process sugar.  He’s...

The closed loop system is the Holy Grail sought after as an engineering solution for type 1 diabetes. Unlike glucose sensors which need quite a bit of work to take over any decision making (see my last post for details), pump technology is ready. Indeed many diabetics, both type 1 and type 2, now use an insulin pump. The pump is basically a microcomputer that drives a tiny motor that pumps insulin from a reservoir into the interstitial space in the abdominal area. The computer is fast. The pump mechanism is quite small (the whole...

Show Background Information I’ve had type 1 for 8 years, since I was 22. I pump and take Symlin. I’ve heard that it’s harder to lose weight when you’re on artificial insulin. I’m not talking about the fact that you sometimes have to eat extra food to make up for exercise-induced lows; I mean, is there truth behind the anecdotal evidence that there’s something about artificial insulin that makes it more difficult? If so, why?