Nearly every interaction I’ve had with a certified diabetes educator (CDE) has left me feeling judged and condescended to, no matter how well my actual diabetes care was going at the time.
Last week, diabetes headlines were dominated by a new study from the Faustman Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, published on Wednesday, August 8th on PLoS One, suggesting that a 90-year-old tuberculosis vaccine called BCG might hold promise for people living with type 1 diabetes. “Human Study Reignites Debate Over Controversial Diabetes ‘Cure,’” wrote Reuters. “Diabetes May Be Reversed By Long-Used Vaccine for TB,” proclaimed Bloomberg news.
First, the new Enlite sensor — and I really should use “new” in quotation marks because it has been available in Europe for about a year — is much more comfortable and accurate than previous Minimed sensors. Second, the Veo pump itself has a glucose suspend feature, meaning that if the Enlite sensor detects your blood glucose is below 70, it can stop insulin delivery on its own.
Glooko is a cable that connects iPhones, iPods and iPads to a variety of different glucose meters and automatically downloads blood glucose readings, eliminating the need for you to manually write down records.
In Mongolia, blood is considered a valuable food that should not be wasted.
My favorite diabetes book is Pumping Insulin but it's not exactly the sort of paperback you'd want to bring to the beach. So instead I'll recommend Farm City, by my friend and colleague Novella Carpenter. It's about her experience starting and running an urban farm in the Oakland flats -- she lives in an old house next to the freeway, and has managed to raise everything from bees, rabbits, chickens, ducks and turkeys to dairy goats and two enormous pigs. Her story is funny, inspirational, and wonderfully written.
“You know, it’s the funniest thing,” I’d say at lunch, wolfing down a turkey club with extra mayonnaise. “I’m feeling a little thirsty. Is anyone else feeling, you know, a little thirstier than normal?”
A form of diabetes characterized by age, a lack of family history of type 2, a gradual increase in insulin requirements, positive antibodies, and decreasing ability to make insulin...
I’ve become curious as to whether raw food – vegan or not – might be a useful eating style for all types of diabetes...
Trip highlights: riding an elephant through the Thai forest, horseriding through the pampas at sunset in Argentina...