111–120 of 136 posts
You've set up a torture loop for yourself instead of listening to your body and the existing medical device. And you are now piping medical biometric data through both Google Calendar and your Apple watch.
Sorry 1/2 into the article all that kept popping into my head is someone tell this man about a cgm like a dexcom . It all of this out of the box . My wife has been a t1d for 30 years the dexcom cgm makes all of this a lot better
I wrote the article- I’m very aware of Dexcom and it doesn’t have all this out the box
I used to use Libre + MiaoMiao + Nightscout, but these days I much prefer Dexcom G6 + xDrip + Nightscout.
Pros for the G6:
- No 3rd party transmitter (e.g. the MiaoMiao)
- It's smaller and can go on the stomach so it's less likely to get ripped off
- 1 less app involved -- xDrip integrates directly to Nightscout and there is no need for the Dexcom app
- Supposedly the glucose readings are a bit more accurate than the Libre
Cons:
- Sensors are more expensive than the Libre
- The transmitter is not rechargeable so you need to keep buying them every 90 days
I just wanted to add that your writing style is wonderful and that this was a pleasure to read. Incidentally, I work in pentesting, and one of my colleagues has Type 1 Diabetes; your overview of it and its resultant complexities really made me empathize with what challenges he has to surmount daily while still being one of the nicest, most approachable people in our team.
Yes... you can lead a normal life with diabetes (you can even be a top level tennis player - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zverev#Personal_life ), but this article really made me appreciate the level of self-discipline it takes to do that.
Incidentally, I created something related to this yesterday. A tmux plugin to display your glucose data as a status icon in your terminal. As a T1 myself, I use a Dexcom as my CGM and have it working around that specifically, but I'd love to open it up to other devices too, and offer more. Feel free to check it out! https://github.com/Cian911/tmux-xdrip
Great article! While I haven't done anything as involved I have found using technology to track health issues to be empowering myself. I'm curious about your thoughts on insulin pumps. I'm not very familiar but I know a few people with T1 that use them and seem happy with them. My understanding is that the idea is that they both monitor glucose levels and supply insulin to keep things stable. Have you considered them…
>Typically, a standard cheeseburger with a bun, beef patty, cheese, lettuce, and tomato can contain around 30 to 40 grams of carbohydrates, primarily from the bun. A standard serving of fries could add an additional 30 to 50 grams, depending on the serving size. Hence, the meal in the image could contain somewhere between 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrates in total.
That is pretty good! Good luck with your T1D, my got his diagnosis 5 years ago and it's pretty amazing technology we have for it now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Difficult to hide your diabetes when you wear a sensor on your arm and have to inject insulin throughout the day
Actually, the sensor is super easy to hide (especially with long sleeves) and injecting is also quite discreet these days. I've seen injectors that are about the size of a marker or a wireless earbuds case. It's easy enough to go to the bathroom right before lunch or when you get an notification on your phone.
I also have T1D and its a natural source for cool software engineering projects like this.
You might like these two posts: Using machine learning to predict when I excercised: https://dddiaz.com/post/glucose-datascience/
Using Genomic Software to explore my auto-immune genes: https://dddiaz.com/post/hla/
I talked to Matt about not owning our own data after GopherConSG where he gave this talk. It was enlightening how complicated the issue is - there's a lot of legal liabilities on the end of the data provider (the company that monitors the glucose) so I can understand why larger corps are a bit hesitant to open up. On the other hand, it seems quite heinous that users don't have access to data that is rightfully theirs…
I never understood this. Would this be like buying a BIC pen and they have a required license agreement where any entropy made with the pen is owned not by the creator of the data but by the creator of the tool used? With out the person the data would not exists.
Perhaps if your bic pen fed your scratches into a system that ignored aberrant marks, cleaned up your letters, ran a spell check, and printed the result in the font of your choice?
This glucose device is a sensor. Sensors generally produce noise, sometimes a lot of noise, and require post processing in order to get the signal you wanted. The raw data is interesting but often not reliable as input.
That kind of processing is usually complex and companies often seek IP protection and close their source or use DRM. Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of opinion but the motivation is clear.