A $250 Biohack That’s Revolutionizing Life with Diabetes

Post by hycaria » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

randcraw wrote: post #17

bcatanzaro wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that Type 1 diabetes is due to lack of insulin (malfunctioning pancreas) while Type 2 diabetes is caused by too much insulin (leading to insulin resistance.) If this is true, insulin pumps for Type 2 diabetes don’t help, because they can only add more insulin, when the fundamental problem isn’t lack of insulin, but lack of response to insulin.

No matter who you are (T1, T2, neither), you die without insulin. It's the only way to remove glucose from the blood. Most T2's are resistant to the normal level of insulin in the blood, and must compensate by introducing ever more insulin until it reaches a high enough level to overcome the resistance and it acts to absorb glucose. Normally this is done through medications that either 1) increase the amount of insul…

Post by hycaria » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

jcims wrote: post #30

zaroth wrote: post #18

A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) uses a very thin gauge wire to sense interstitial fluid as a proxy for blood sugar. My kids have tried Dexcom G4 CGMs a couple years ago. The G4 was never approved to dose insulin directly off the CGM reported value, we would confirm with a finger prick before dosing a correction. The G4 also required “calibration” where you would type in the reading from a finger stick and it would…

Does the G6 interface with OmniPod at all or do you just use it like a continuous finger-prick test? My youngest (now nearly 16 years old) was diagnosed about two years ago. She's currently on Medtronic's closed loop system (860), but honestly it's so finicky I'm starting to look at switching systems. My daughter is basically at the point of burnout and sees the whole thing as nothing more than a major annoyance. She…

Post by dkarl » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 5:46 AM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #16

The article, strangely, leaves out the name of the project it's reporting on. It's OpenAPS, http://openaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ . I use it and have worked on the code. It's a massive health and quality of life improvement over anything that exists which is FDA approved. The core problem is that the FDA-approved devices are optimized not for getting the best result, but for ensuring the manufacturer can't be blam…

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #16

The article, strangely, leaves out the name of the project it's reporting on. It's OpenAPS, http://openaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ . I use it and have worked on the code. It's a massive health and quality of life improvement over anything that exists which is FDA approved. The core problem is that the FDA-approved devices are optimized not for getting the best result, but for ensuring the manufacturer can't be blam…

Post by mtgx » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

ThJ wrote: post #3

ThJ wrote: post #2

I have type 2 diabetes and I've always been a bit envious of insulin pumps, not because I love having a machine plugged into my body (I don't), but because they offer better control of blood glucose peaks, since they use fast-acting insulin exclusively. The pancreas secretes insulin in pulses and pumps can mimic that. What has turned me off from pumps (apart from doctors generally not recommending them for type 2 dia…

Why don't doctors recommend them for type 2 diabetes? Well, my general impression is that doctors live under this illusion that patients will somehow succeed in making lifestyle changes that will cause the disease to go into regression or disappear altogether. Also, they prefer to try medications like glucophage before they resort to insulin. There just seems to be less eagerness to finely manage type 2 diabetics, ma…