201–210 of 260 posts
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I googled "diabetes in thin people" and found the term "skinny fat", slim but with a high percentage of body fat. These are people who may appear to their body to have enough fat stored to survive a tough winter. (This was how McDougall describes the onset of diabetes.) Can people with low body fat get diabetes?
Did you mean, can a person with low body fat get Type 2 diabetes?
The injections are really not a significant problem for me. A lot of people may recoil at the thought of injecting themselves often, as though it's painful. It's either not painful or maybe a little, but I just don't care much.
Much worse things about being diabetic are:
* Danger of low blood sugar
* Trying to get the right dose
* Timing the dose so it is effective at the right time
* Carrying around a bunch of stuff that I need or may need, like insulin and glucose tablets
* Trying to keep the insulin cold enough or fresh enough that it retains its potency
* Keeping my phone on and charged all the time, which has my blood sugar readings, and checking it at times where it might seem like I'm rude. I'd rather use a watch or special device, but the special devices are strangely bulky and don't hold a charge, and watches apparently can't receive blood sugar readings yet (without a phone also present).
None of those things are very terrible. Treatment is much better now. But they are all way worse than the tiny insulin needle injections.
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I’m Type 1 and I agree with him. Injections are not a problem worth solving for me. It’s the constant mental grind of tight-rope walking blood sugar through balancing food, insulin, exercise, and random body events (that you never quite figure out) that is the problem. Blood sugar testing is an annoyance, but the main problem is not the actual test, but the inadequacy if testing your sugars a few times a day as a met…
I've been using Dexcom now for two years, and it finally helped me to really understand certain weird things about my blood glucose, after having a type1 diabetes over 20 years. a) The morning peak is a dawn phenomenon. Solved with a higher basal setting 3 hours before waking up. b) Going to sleep with a 100 mg/dl and waking up in the middle of the night with a glucose of 300 mg/dl? Usually because eating fatty and h…
The CGM has allowed me to be more like a reaction machine. Going up? Injection. Heading close to to low? A few sips of juice. I can be more aggressive with my dosing know I can see those lows coming. It’s a huge cognitive load off, and has taking my control from poor to excellent.
But yeah, those night time alarms, huh? I’ll close the loop when it’s all done with my phone.
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What doctors and researchers get wrong about diabetes is that pin-pricks and injections are not even remotely bad. I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. You get used to that within the first week of diagnosis. No, the unpleasant part of being diabetic is having to live every second of your life as an act of weighing how what you're currently doing is going to affect your blo…
This seems like the perfect job for a machine. Is there a reason CGMs and insulin pumps aren't more common? Cost?
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I've been using Dexcom now for two years, and it finally helped me to really understand certain weird things about my blood glucose, after having a type1 diabetes over 20 years. a) The morning peak is a dawn phenomenon. Solved with a higher basal setting 3 hours before waking up. b) Going to sleep with a 100 mg/dl and waking up in the middle of the night with a glucose of 300 mg/dl? Usually because eating fatty and h…
I’ve been using Dexcom for about 6 months, and it’s taught me that the situation was utterly hopeless without it. I’ve figured out a few patterns like the huge nighttime sugar spike with fatty dinners, but overall I have unpredictable reactions to food and even moderate activity. Like you, I have usually spikes in the morning without eating, but sometimes dips. The CGM has allowed me to be more like a reaction machin…
Also instead of taking sugar when going low, try using a system that counts your basal rates to the IoB. Then after a meal you start going down a bit too early, you turn the TBR to 0%. Loop or AndroidAPS helps with this a lot.
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Right now it seems there is official support only to prevent hypos, but not to give you more insulin at night when you ate something too heavy and didn't guess the right TBR. Only the open source AndroidAPS for Android and Loop for iOS do this. And then you have a very limited set of pumps you can use.
The Medtronic 670g is the only pump that currently will automatically correct highs, but it only works with the Medtronic CGM which is untrustworthy. The Tandem t slim x2 only has support for hypo prevention today, but it supports at home firmware/software updates and they are pretty far along with the FDA on getting approvals for their auto dosing for highs. They anticipate a release this summer. I wish that OmniPod…
> Once ingested, water dissolves a disk of sugar, using a spring to release a tiny needle made up almost entirely of freeze-dried insulin. The needle is injected into the stomach — which the patient can’t feel, owing to a lack of pain receptors in the stomach. Once the injection has occurred, the needle can break down in the digestive tract. That's some pretty impressive ingenuity. Also sounds kinda terrifying if the…
Given that, it was quite improper for me to share my thoughts about how I would respond to an interesting development in medicine like this. So, thanks to all the thoughtful replies to the parent, they were very eye opening.