What I've learned that, as an adult in 2024 in the United States, you cannot take for granted: - That your medical professionals are acting in your best interest - That your insurance company is acting in your best interest - That your medical professional knows what they are talking about - That things that are legal to put in your body will not cause irreparable harm to you - That the legal level of pollutants in t…
You can always trust people to act in their own self interest, everything else (including your list) can be proven from that first principle.
Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
301–310 of 372 posts
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#302I had a very similar experience with eosenophilic esophogitis (EoE). It's an allergic reaction that causes your esophagus to constrict resulting in acute dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). It can get extremely unpleasant for me as well as anyone around me when an attack happens. The problem is that the latency between eating the food that triggers it and actual symptoms is many many hours, and the symptoms only appea…
FYI for any other EoE folks: Dupixent is now indicated for EoE. It’s resolved my symptoms completely (both the ones I notice and the ones my gastroenterologist checks via scope). I don’t experience any side effects. It’s an off-label use, but swallowed fluticasone is also effective for many people. Also has no to minimal side effects. I did that for many years before dupixent was available. Exciting that you figured…
How often does it need to be administered? Regular injections sounds like it might be more trouble than it's worth.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imho you can't really do a zero carb diet that's healthy. Keep in mind that even leafy vegetables have a bit of carbs in them. Low carb is possible and does indeed generally keep your blood sugar levels more stable. But even a meal that's mostly low carb vegetables and some meat still requires insulin if your pancreas has stopped working entirely. I'm obviously a patient and not a doctor, but from what I've read as a…
I didn't mean 'requires no insulin at all,' I know T1D requires some insulin to regulate blood sugar and to perform other functions in the body. What I meant was that, for example in the OP article, a 60g bolus of carbs brings blood sugar from the bottom of healthy range all the way to the top of the healthy range in one go. It just seems like an unnecessarily large and (for most) difficult to control jump in blood s…
The problem with just eating low carb meals in my case is generally that it offsets the balance in between meals, i.e. I'll start seeing a consistent rise that might be something like 0.5-1 point per hour which eventually adds up. Of course you could increase your baseline insulin to offset that again, but it requires a lot of experimentation to get that balance right.
I do occasionally switch out my somewhat carb heavy lunch for a lighter low carb meal if I'm really busy and don't have time to go for a walk for instance. Generally that does work just fine to keep the initial rise low, but requires another 2 units of insulin about 2.5 hours after the meal because my blood sugar level keeps rising.
So in short, yes moderating your carb intake and especially ensuring your meals are slow are ways to make managing your blood sugar levels easier, but in my opinion it still requires experimentation to find out what works or does not work for you personally.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#304When my wife was diagnosed with T2D, we went through the typical process many do - meet with a dietician, learn what to eat and how much, learn about insulin types and injections, etc. etc. She followed the process to the letter, and what we saw was the insulin injections make you gain weight, weight gain causes more insulin resistance, more insulin resistance means more insulin, more insulin means more weight gain,…
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can always trust people to act in their own self interest, everything else (including your list) can be proven from that first principle.
And this makes for a pretty lonely and downright harmful society, when viewed through that lens. And I'm not going to feel stupid or naive for feeling like children are tricked into believing the opposite is true. I want to also say, this state that everyone is acting in their self interest is not something we should promote, or be proud of, or assume is the natural state of things. It is a state that we are being fo…
To give a very active example, Zuckerberg isn't throwing billions into making ML models and then giving them out for free out of some sense of cosmic right, he's doing so to eliminate competition and further Meta's goals of making more money. But since his actions align with what most of us want, i.e. open source models, it's all seen as a relatively good thing. There is no such thing as "objective good" in nature, there's just how actions influence the person doing the moralizing.
Every living being on earth is hardwired to do two things first and foremost: survive, and make sure its species survives. The ones that weren't are simply no longer around. Helping others is ultimately something you do out of self interest, since you benefit from it indirectly. It is absolutely the natural state of things.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#306I'm T1D and currently working on something like this because diabetes healthcare in the UK is effectively non-existent past diagnosis. Managing the condition isn't too difficult after 30 years of it, but dealing with the politics of NHS diabetes care is astronomically more difficult than it was in any decade previously. In my experience, if you are not pregnant, or you aren't at risk of passing out in the next 15 min…
You guys are decades deep into an ideologically propelled plan to "Starve the beast" by denying the NHS funding so that care quality declines, and use that as justification to privatize the NHS entirely. The starting salary for a first-year doctor is below the national median income, and for a nurse significantly below. Their inability to requisition funds & time for care is something there is repeated labor action a…
The NHS is underfunded, but this isn't a problem of funding. The lack of a scientific approach to managing diabetes is strictly down to ineptitude.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
You guys are decades deep into an ideologically propelled plan to "Starve the beast" by denying the NHS funding so that care quality declines, and use that as justification to privatize the NHS entirely. The starting salary for a first-year doctor is below the national median income, and for a nurse significantly below. Their inability to requisition funds & time for care is something there is repeated labor action a…
>The starting salary for a first-year doctor is below the national median income Here you are comparing a doctor at the start of their career with a population consisting mostly of workers with decades of experience.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#308I'm T1D and currently working on something like this because diabetes healthcare in the UK is effectively non-existent past diagnosis. Managing the condition isn't too difficult after 30 years of it, but dealing with the politics of NHS diabetes care is astronomically more difficult than it was in any decade previously. In my experience, if you are not pregnant, or you aren't at risk of passing out in the next 15 min…
This is counter to my experience - my daughter has received fantastic care. We have regular time with the endocrinologist and get phoned up inbetween clinics. They have provided a closed loop system and all the backup we could have asked for. I agree about Glooko, it's not as good as diasend was.
Expect to start having appointments cancelled and to go years without hearing from them once she is passed to the adult diabetes team.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#309I'm T1D and currently working on something like this because diabetes healthcare in the UK is effectively non-existent past diagnosis. Managing the condition isn't too difficult after 30 years of it, but dealing with the politics of NHS diabetes care is astronomically more difficult than it was in any decade previously. In my experience, if you are not pregnant, or you aren't at risk of passing out in the next 15 min…
This is a surprising view given that I'm T1D in the UK and the healthcare I've received, along with the tech, support and collaboration with diabetic consultants has been first class. You are making an assumption that every doctor is like the one you have (I guess), but its simply not the case. Good luck with your programming, but the agenda you're pushing for it is remarkably short-sighted.
Re: Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
#310I'm T1D and currently working on something like this because diabetes healthcare in the UK is effectively non-existent past diagnosis. Managing the condition isn't too difficult after 30 years of it, but dealing with the politics of NHS diabetes care is astronomically more difficult than it was in any decade previously. In my experience, if you are not pregnant, or you aren't at risk of passing out in the next 15 min…
I feel your pain, but 'threats of criminal punishments for lazy medical professionals' isn't a great idea. There are already laws against medical malpractice, but it's pretty obvious why prosecuting doctors and nurses for 'laziness' would be incredibly counterproductive and result in a massive increase in bureaucratic ass covering rather than improved care. Ask yourself - what caused the NHS to get into this situatio…