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ketogenic diet is what is revolutionizing life with diabetes, by, you know, curing it (not type 1 though). automating the process of releasing a chemical that is roughly speaking the cause of the disease is hardly revolutionary.
I looked into it for my daughter when she was first diagnosed but had a hard time differentiating fact from keto evangelizing and medical community hand wringing.
Or you could "hack" your body by eating keto-friendly foods: https://blog.virtahealth.com/with-sustained-type-2-diabetes-... https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/type-2-diabetes-reversal-the...
It’s about diabetes Type I, which cannot be cured by diet, as it’s caused by too little insulin in the body, not too much as with Type II.
ketogenic diet is what is revolutionizing life with diabetes, by, you know, curing it (not type 1 though). automating the process of releasing a chemical that is roughly speaking the cause of the disease is hardly revolutionary.
Do you know if any communities of folks managing T1D with keto diet? I looked into it for my daughter when she was first diagnosed but had a hard time differentiating fact from keto evangelizing and medical community hand wringing.
it is frustrating indeed that keto is being appropriated by fad evangelists. it's a diet that needs lots of reading and preparation.
i'm not a doctor, but common sense tells me that a diet that reduces the need for insulin should also help managing t1d, but obviously it's better to consult a professional.
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…
> 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 blamed if something goes wrong No, they're optimized for reducing risk as much as possible. The amount of scrutiny on a commercial product from a Fortune 200 company is about 2 orders of magnitude more than any DIY project would ever get.
To take a less sensitive example, NASA refused to allow SpaceX to do retropulsive soft landings for their Dragon crew/cargo capsules without a whole slew of regulatory work, which was just not a very effective allocation of resources for SpaceX. So instead of coming down retropulsively, similar to how they now regularly land their massive first stages with, the capsules come down using parachutes and a not-so-soft 'soft' landing as we've been doing since the 60s.
So you could argue this is safer. But that's not clear. What is entirely clear is that the cost and time effort that would be required to abide the regulatory requirements resulted in the entire idea being scrapped, derailing technological progress on that front. Perhaps with some irony, the capsules will still have the thrusters on the capsules to be used in case of an emergency abort - they just can't use them to enable genuinely soft landings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Someone wants to lose a foot and become bionic!
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…
Well in the last 3 months, I DID learn new eating habits, lost 15 kilos and had my meds cut from 6.5 tablets per day to 0.5 tablets a day working with a doctor and having good control on blood sugar. The big AHA is that progressive changes have to be made in how you eat rather than necessarily so much in what you eat.
In general, unless you have significant beta cell death already, it IS possible to mitigate or reverse effects of type 2 diabetes and this is vastly preferable to pushing organs beyond limits through drugs or insulin.
Does anyone happen to have a Medtronic device on the compatibility list that they are looking to sell?
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…
This is simply a cost question. In countries where the healthcare gives out the required pumps/injectors and medication for 'free', it is usually a cost/benefit tradeoff.
On the other hand: Not providing proper insulin dispensers costs a lot more in the end. The world has moved from simple throw away injectors (i mean the ones with no proper dosage dispensers and bottles as a storage medium) for years and the benefits far outweigh the cost of relatively simple modern injectors or pumps.
> maybe because it is felt that the patient is partly to blame for the disease
Since there is a very big spread in onset age even for overweight people it would be very bad for a doctor to have these kind of thoughts
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…
Thank you for this work. Do you know why the applicability to type two diabetes is not as clear as for type one? I'd love to read more about that. 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 blamed if something goes wrong. I live with someone who has a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) where the device came in a box with an…
> Do you know why the applicability to type two diabetes is not as clear as for type one?
I'm only stabbing at this, and it's anecdotal, but I believe it is likely due to the lack of consistency across type 2 diabetics. Whilst there is variation in Type 1 Diabetes, it is largely limited to lifestyle but the basic principle is the same - you don't produce insulin yourself. Type 2 diabetes is often caused by insulin resistance, and I guess varies wildly based on the individual, their lifestyle, and their genes.
> I live with someone who has a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) where the device came in a box with an insert saying "do not use this device to make medical treatment decisions." To see any of the readings you have to install an app whose start screen says it's experimental and, again, can't be used to make treatment decisions. But the user's manual has a chapter titled "Treatment Decisions" that tells you how to use it to decide when to take insulin and how much to take. It's frustrating that the messages have to be so contradictory.
I haven't been given a CGM for longer than a few weeks (NHS rules are a bit restrictive in my area if your control is good). However the rationale for not using the CGM to make decisions is based around how it gauges your blood sugar. Because it's relying on blood glucose levels in the skin tissue I have been told that there is a delay, and basically the CGM operates about 15 minutes behind your current glucose levels. This is ok when you're using it to track glucose levels over a day, but not particularly safe if you're relying on it to make a decision for obvious reasons.
> A final question: how essential is it to be tech-savvy to use this technology?
This is a question I have asked myself a few times. As mentioned above, it's pretty difficult to get a pump and CGM on the NHS in my area without proving that you can't treat yourself adequately with regular injections. I am unwilling to sacrifice my health to have a pop at getting a pump, so I had a look at private options. Whilst initially I think there's a fairly steep learning curve, there is quite a lot of documentation provided, and the community is pretty active and helpful. I suppose it's also helped by the fact that there is only a few pumps on the market (relatively speaking). The issue is that if something goes wrong in your config, which is not uncommon for a homebrew solution, then you have to go back to manually adjusting your insulin.
If a bunch of parents on the internet can hack it together, it's hardly impossible (I'm not trying to detract from the awesome work these people have done, but my point is that they have nowhere near the same kind of resources as pharmaceutical companies).
As a Type 1 Diabetic it's really frustrating seeing how stagnant treatment technology is.