3 ms·

I think it's awesome that DIY options are becoming more readily available. I'm t2d, but have a relatively hard time with glucose control overall. If I stick t

I think it's awesome that DIY options are becoming more readily available. I'm t2d, but have a relatively hard time with glucose control overall. If I stick to eggs, meat and green veg, then I don't need much beyond the weekly Trulicity and daily Basaglar. If I have anything else, beyond the various food intolerance issues I have, I'm also experiencing Gastroparesis, which means what I eat may hit sooner, later or much later... as much as 20+ hours later, so I usually have to take a lighter tough to insulin and be more diligent about followup checks. It's a literal roller coaster. At least having a Continuous Glucose Monitor (cgm) makes it easier to track.

jacquesm 3y ago
Yes, the roller coaster is a great way to put it. One of my business partners had it so bad that whenever he was out of sight for longer than an hour or so people would start to worry if he was ok. We had a major crisis when he dropped off the radar for a full day, everybody pitched in until we found him (and not in a coma). Scary stuff, and with large variations between individuals in terms of severity and speed of onset of symptoms.
- tracker1 3y ago
  The worst, is the couple times I've experienced ketoacidosis... always feels like a cold/flu at first, and only when I'm coughing up water do I stop to take notice. I keep a keto mojo in addition to my cgm and glocometer... if my glucose is elevated at all, and my ketones are as well, time to start hourly injections until in normal range... I have my cgm alarm at 70 & 240, only because it will fire off many times after eating if I don't and takes a while to settle (few hours). Definitely sucks having a broken metabolism. Wish I could go back to my 15-20yo self and totally stop consuming most processed food, seed oils and sugars. It's sad that a glucose tolerance and resting insulin tests aren't normalized since a1c won't start slipping until years later.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    It's a huge problem. On the plus side though: there is an absolute mountain of information about this disease and there is substantial funding poured into getting it further under control. The holy grail (and artificial pancreas like a pace maker) is still a long way off. But substantial improvements have been made in the last decade and a half and I expect that trend to continue for a while. What I love about this story is that the DIY community managed to break the log-jam of the manufacturers and the regulatory authorities by simply providing them with proof that it can work and can work reliably enough to be allowed on the market. That shortcut probably shaved at least a decade (possibly more) off the progress charts. Manufacturers were (to some degree rightly so) antsy about closed loop systems because it would require them to assume much more liability than they are normally used to, the symptom->diagnosis->action loop that you can engage in by close monitoring and patching together available systems cuts the human out of the loop: the system will function autonomously and a software error or hardware glitch has the potential to kill someone. So the manufacturers were effectively all waiting on each other to show that this can be done safely and that holding pattern had already lasted for multiple years. In the meantime, the larger manufacturers had some time to gain the upper hand over reliability and teething problems of the newer generation of pumps and those came together just in time with continuous monitoring to enable a big step forward in a very hacked (but fully functional) way. No single manufacturer would have taken that risk at this point in time without that push. But now that it is done they can't be left behind either or they'll lose market share rapidly. It's a pity that there are not more diseases (at least, not that I'm aware of) that would benefit from this approach, diabetes is unique in that respect. Best of luck there. By the way: if you want to stay current with the developments in this field the best spot to look for is the announcement of trials, and sometimes the calls for volunteers for such trials.

jacquesm 3y ago

Yes, the roller coaster is a great way to put it. One of my business partners had it so bad that whenever he was out of sight for longer than an hour or so people would start to worry if he was ok. We had a major crisis when he dropped off the radar for a full day, everybody pitched in until we found him (and not in a coma). Scary stuff, and with large variations between individuals in terms of severity and speed of onset of symptoms.

tracker1 3y ago
The worst, is the couple times I've experienced ketoacidosis... always feels like a cold/flu at first, and only when I'm coughing up water do I stop to take notice. I keep a keto mojo in addition to my cgm and glocometer... if my glucose is elevated at all, and my ketones are as well, time to start hourly injections until in normal range... I have my cgm alarm at 70 & 240, only because it will fire off many times after eating if I don't and takes a while to settle (few hours). Definitely sucks having a broken metabolism. Wish I could go back to my 15-20yo self and totally stop consuming most processed food, seed oils and sugars. It's sad that a glucose tolerance and resting insulin tests aren't normalized since a1c won't start slipping until years later.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It's a huge problem. On the plus side though: there is an absolute mountain of information about this disease and there is substantial funding poured into getting it further under control. The holy grail (and artificial pancreas like a pace maker) is still a long way off. But substantial improvements have been made in the last decade and a half and I expect that trend to continue for a while. What I love about this story is that the DIY community managed to break the log-jam of the manufacturers and the regulatory authorities by simply providing them with proof that it can work and can work reliably enough to be allowed on the market. That shortcut probably shaved at least a decade (possibly more) off the progress charts. Manufacturers were (to some degree rightly so) antsy about closed loop systems because it would require them to assume much more liability than they are normally used to, the symptom->diagnosis->action loop that you can engage in by close monitoring and patching together available systems cuts the human out of the loop: the system will function autonomously and a software error or hardware glitch has the potential to kill someone. So the manufacturers were effectively all waiting on each other to show that this can be done safely and that holding pattern had already lasted for multiple years. In the meantime, the larger manufacturers had some time to gain the upper hand over reliability and teething problems of the newer generation of pumps and those came together just in time with continuous monitoring to enable a big step forward in a very hacked (but fully functional) way. No single manufacturer would have taken that risk at this point in time without that push. But now that it is done they can't be left behind either or they'll lose market share rapidly. It's a pity that there are not more diseases (at least, not that I'm aware of) that would benefit from this approach, diabetes is unique in that respect. Best of luck there. By the way: if you want to stay current with the developments in this field the best spot to look for is the announcement of trials, and sometimes the calls for volunteers for such trials.