{"id":19050,"date":"2011-08-20T10:58:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T14:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=19050"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:46:37","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:46:37","slug":"as-if-traveling-with-diabetes-wasnt-hard-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=19050","title":{"rendered":"As If Traveling With Diabetes Wasn\u2019t Hard Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traveling is always a pain when you have diabetes. Making sure you have everything<\/a> you need can take up an extra bag \u2013 insulin, test strips, glucometer, extra needles etc. Like most people with diabetes, I take all my supplies with me in a carry-on.\u00a0 It’s uncomfortable and means there’s a fair chance of being harassed by airport security.<\/p>\n

I once spent a week in Turkey without a glucometer.\u00a0 I’d forgotten to pack mine. My hotel didn’t have one and neither did the pharmacy in the town nearby.\u00a0 Since I was in the middle of nowhere in Turkey and had no good way to communicate my needs, I just gave up. I knew it was irresponsible to have no idea how high my blood sugar was.\u00a0 I guessed when I bolused and I was lucky that everything turned out okay. (My following A1c was high.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since then, I always stress about traveling and the longer the flight the worse it is. I have always found it difficult to manage my blood sugar levels on trips (even when I have a glucometer). The long periods of driving and flying (with very little movement) together with the unfamiliar food usually causes my blood sugar levels to rise. On short flights I don\u2019t eat at all and on very long flights (like the 10-12 hour Tel Aviv \u2013 New York flight) I eat very little. I\u2019ve also taken to completely cutting out carbs when in unfamiliar places.<\/p>\n

As if all this wasn\u2019t enough I woke up this morning and went to look at the latest news and \u00a0found a Reuters\u2019 report<\/a> saying a new study claims that changes in cabin pressure during flights may cause insulin pumps to deliver too much or too little insulin.<\/p>\n

The study was conducted after Australian researchers learned of a 10-year-old girl with type 1 diabetes whose blood sugar got too low an hour after take-off.\u00a0 After looking in to it the researchers found other cases of pumpers who had reported the same problem during flights.<\/p>\n

To see what was going on, the researchers put ten Medtronic and Animas insulin pumps on a commercial flight. \u00a0\u00a0They found that during takeoff (when air pressure was decreasing), the pumps delivered about 1 to 1.4<\/strong> extra units of insulin, on average (OMG!! \u2013 <\/strong>my basal rate is 0.45 u\/h)<\/strong>. And during descent, when pressure was increasing, some insulin was sucked back into the pumps — causing them to give out too little insulin, by less than 1 unit.<\/p>\n

Although the companies, Medtronic and Animas, did not have much to say on the matter, the researchers set out a list of recommendations for pumpers to follow during flights.<\/p>\n

Their recommendations include:<\/p>\n