Clinical Director
Diabetes Chill Mode — the iLet
In my lifetime, there have been so many incredible advances when it comes to tools for keeping blood sugars in “target” as much as possible. I am so grateful for all these things – from rapid-acting insulins to CGMs (continuous glucose monitors), life with diabetes can be so much easier. But the thing is, even when using the latest technologies, there remains a constant to-do list for diabetes. When I start to feel hungry, on top of trying to figure out what to cook for dinner every night, I consider how many carbohydrates to prepare based on where my CGM […]
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Keeping up with Diabetes Appointments
Keeping up with Diabetes Appointments There are a lot of different appointments when it comes to diabetes. There are the obvious ones, but then there are some that tend to get put on the back burner. Here’s the rundown on what is recommended for PWD (people with diabetes). Prescribing Provider Ideally, PWD have access to an endocrinologist – a doctor who specializes in endocrine disorders. The endocrine system is made up of many glands in the body and all the hormones they regulate. Diabetes is considered an endocrine disorder since insulin is a hormone. Endocrinologists typically have the most experience […]
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Barriers to Screening in Type 1 Diabetes
Barriers to Screening in Type 1 Diabetes Anita Swamy1, Marissa Town2, William H Polonsky3,4 1 Chicago Children’s Diabetes Center at La Rabida Children’s Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; 2 Children With Diabetes, West Chester, Ohio; 3 Behavioral Diabetes Institute, San Diego, California; 4 University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California Abstract Since the consensus in opinion and publication of scientific evidence to support the staged progression of Type 1 diabetes (T1D) in 2015, individual and collaborative efforts to identify people in early stages of T1D have emerged globally providing further supportive evidence of the benefits of islet autoantibody screening. Despite strong […]
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Stress and Blood Sugars
The amount of stress that we have undergone as humans in the last few years has been ridiculous. This is certainly not how I imagined I would be spending my adult life. It feels like every chance we get to come up for a breath after drowning in major horrible world event after major horrible world event, another awful thing happens. Even reading the word stress makes my heart rate go up. Stress & BGs When you experience stress – even if it’s positive stress – it can raise your blood glucose levels. This is because our bodies react in […]
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What are Biosimilar Insulins?
“Wow! Look! They gave me six vials of insulin! FOR FREE! I paid nothing!” I vividly remember the first time in my adult life that I didn’t have to worry about the amount of insulin I had through my insurance. I came home and told my husband that. His reply was so poignant and true, “that’s like me being excited for oxygen.” I remember being afraid to leave the pharmacy in case they were going to mail me a multi-thousand-dollar bill later and asked the pharmacist twice before leaving, “Are you sure?” And I remember her understanding my fear. Everybody […]
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Do you Gluroo?
When Greg Badros’s son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, his family quickly embraced diabetes technology, including a CGM and mobile apps. But what they found is that they didn’t have a good way of tracking multiple diabetes devices’ data with multiple caregivers. Luckily for other parents and loved ones of people with diabetes, Greg knew how to design software to help fill this much-needed gap. So, he developed Gluroo, a mobile app to help you log and track all things related to diabetes that affect families. Using Gluroo There are some devices or requirements needed to use GluRoo, but […]
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Manual Mode
This article was originally posted on Feb 23, 2023 For the last five weeks, I have been doing multiple daily injections (MDI). This was the longest time that I have ever been on MDI in my life. After years of twice-daily split-mixed injections with regimented routines of breakfast – snack – lunch – snack – dinner – snack, I opted to get an insulin pump at age eleven because I wanted to sleep in on the weekends. I have been using a pump of some sort ever since for a total of 24 years so far. I decided to try […]
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Latest Research on Women with Diabetes
Did you know that women and girls have been repeatedly excluded from research throughout history? In fact, after thousands of babies were born with severe birth defects from a medication for morning sickness, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) banned women from participating in research if they were able to get pregnant.1 It’s understandable to want to prevent severe birth defects from happening to thousands of babies again, but that does not mean that women should be excluded from research. The challenge now is that there remains a large gap in research about women in general, but luckily there are many […]
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Bumping While Pumping
Let’s talk about it Whether you feel comfortable talking about it or not, sex is a normal part of life. That’s right; we’re talking about sexual intimacy because, as usual, diabetes makes things more complicated. The key to ensuring healthy sexual intimacy with diabetes is honest communication. This can seem intimidating when you are in a newer relationship, but as the saying goes: “Honesty is the best policy.” Blood Sugars and Sex It can be difficult to talk about sex for many people due to the social stigma around sex. But without having conversations about your needs, you could be […]
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When the Parent has Diabetes
Your role as a parent is to teach your children as much as you can to prepare them for their future independence, or something like that. Your kids look to you for answers and guidance to many of life’s challenges. You teach them how to talk, walk, feed themselves, read, show empathy, wash dishes, do algebra, and hundreds of other things in their lifetime. You try to protect them from getting hurt in any way that you can, while knowing you won’t be able to keep them safe from many of life’s typical hardships. When you’re a parent with diabetes, […]
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