Evolution of Diabetes Management: From Old School to Insulin Pumps #17

The evolution of diabetes management is at the forefront of this engaging episode of DiabeticReal. Deborah opens the discussion by emphasizing the importance of self-acceptance and the journey towards better health, especially as listeners transition into a new year. The conversation reflects on the traditional methods of managing diabetes, such as calorie counting and strict meal timing, and how these approaches often felt overwhelming during childhood. Deborah shares personal anecdotes, illustrating the challenges of adhering to these rigid dietary rules while navigating the complexities of growing up with diabetes. This heartfelt discussion serves to connect with listeners who have experienced similar struggles, reinforcing the idea that they are not alone in their journeys.

“This method did save my life… at the time I was diagnosed… [re: old school method of counting calories]…” 

Deborah, 03:52

Transitioning from the past to the present, Deborah explores the significant advancements in diabetes management brought about by insulin pumps. She discusses how these devices have transformed the landscape of diabetes care, allowing for more flexibility and spontaneity in daily life. The ability to calculate carbohydrate intake and administer short-acting insulin in real-time is a game-changer, enabling individuals to enjoy meals without the stress of meticulous planning that characterized older methods. Through her experiences, she conveys a sense of relief and empowerment that comes with adopting new technologies, showcasing how these innovations can enhance the quality of life for those managing diabetes.

  • Accepting ourselves while striving to improve is a key theme in diabetes management.
  • The old method of managing diabetes was focused heavily on calorie counting and food groups.
  • Insulin pumps have revolutionized diabetes management by allowing more flexibility with food intake.
  • Living with diabetes can be easier now with technology like insulin pumps and apps.

As the episode draws to a close, Deborah delivers a powerful message of hope and encouragement. She reminds listeners that while managing diabetes can be challenging, the advancements in technology and the support of a community can lead to significant improvements in health outcomes. She urges the audience to embrace these changes and to celebrate their progress as they step into the new year. With a focus on community support and shared experiences, the episode ends on a positive note, leaving listeners inspired and optimistic about their journeys ahead.

Chapters

  • 02:08 Introduction and Returning Back to Basics
  • 02:50 Understanding Diabetes Management Techniques
  • 11:08 The Balance of Insulin and Food (aka Old School)
  • 13:06 The Transition to Insulin Pumps
  • 17:46 Living with Diabetes: Embracing Change and Technology

Episode Resources

Episode Credits

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Transcript
Deborah:

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of DiabeticReal, and I'm your host, Deborah. I hope you all had a nice holiday break. I know I did. I didn't want to take a break.

You know, consistency is everything with podcasts, but also I know my personality, and if I just push and push and push and tell myself I can never miss a week. Then I'll burn out and then I'll feel guilty and then, yeah, I'm a work in progress. But aren't we all? And that's part of why DiabeticReal is here.

So we can support each other and we can learn through the joy of growing and not expecting perfection, but just. Learning how to accept ourselves and how to make each day better than the last. So with that, we're entering the new year.

And I promised you guys a couple of weeks ago that I would talk about the old-style, method of managing diabetes. And some of you already know the answer to this.

And it's like, how do I make this topic exciting? I don't know that you can make this topic exciting, but it's a core topic, so going to go back in time. Although, you know, in all fairness, some people may still use this method.

So I don't want to downgrade it, be down on the method or anything like that, because it may work for some people. So if it works for you, great, use it. Personally, I found it being.

Well, it felt like being shackled and it did not give me the results that made me feel healthy. So for me, I'm very happy to.

Leave this particular method in the past. But that said, I like to look at the cup as half full instead of half empty. So this method did save my life.

I needed this method at the time that I was diagnosed, and so for that I'm very thankful. But I'm also glad to have moved.

On to the insulin pump method now. So what we're talking about is calorie counting in the broadest sense of the terms. But it's funny because even just this. Morning, my husband was looking at something. He goes, well, this has. I don't know what it was.

X number of calories. And honey, the number of calories doesn't matter to me right now. That doesn't help me. Calories takes into consideration the amount of calories.

For instance, there's three main groups. You've got your proteins, you've got your. Carbs, and you've got your fats. And every food can basically be broken.

Into one of those groups or a combination of those groups.

Well, I should say a lot of foods. You look at them and say, okay, how many grams of carb, grams of protein, how many grams of fat are in each food?

And then there's certain values that are.

Associated with each of those. And you add those up and that's how you get your calories. It's like looking at an algebraic equation and you're looking at the final result.

That's your calories. Well, if you look at calories, what does that tell you? That really doesn't tell you how many.

Fats or carbs or proteins are in what you're eating. That just tells you a final algebraic equation, amount. And that doesn't really help you in. What you're doing, especially when managing diabetes. So when I was a little kid. And I remember that, you know this.

Okay, I'm six years old and this just sounded fun, this part, there's this.

Little booklet thing, it opened up, it was white. I wish I had in front of me, I would describe it, I'm describing it from memory. So there was like these little pages. Like there's a little tiny page and then under that, what do you call that? Accordion style or something? No, not accordion style.

Somebody can send me an email or a text or. I wanted to say tweet. I so desperately want to say tweet. Send me post on X and let me know what it's called. But you know where each page is. A different length and you lift them.

Up and then you can read each page. It's not that I'm using to an adult, but to a six year old, believe me, that's amusing. Especially when each page is a different color.

So you've got on each page, it's like this one describes all the different. Foods that are in the fats group. All the different foods that are in. The carbs group, all the different foods.

That are in the meats or the proteins group.

So here you have a six year old that's trying to learn how to be a nutritionist. And yes, I had to meet with nutritionists, I had to go through all this as a 6 year old and all of a sudden 0 to 60, learn how to be on a diet.

Because part of managing diabetes, especially in this old school method, was learning how to manage the food. Because the core of this method was that you took insulin by shot, by injection and there were two types of insulin.

You had the long acting insulin and that was the kind you took both of them in the morning or I should stop saying you, I'm saying You. As in the ya.

I took two types. The long acting was the kind that would, what they say is peak. It would peak later in the day.

So that was the type that would work more towards the suppertime and kind of COVID me in that long acting. And then there was the short term that would work for the morning, that. Would kind of peak at noon.

The idea was that it would cover me throughout the day and hopefully cover me to the next day. Now it got to the point where I had to take insulin in the evening and that was better coverage because then you had insulin. And it makes sense.

You're trying to cover the body for 24 hour period. So you take insulin, that would cover the long acting, would cover to the suppertime, that short acting would cover to noon.

But you're taking both of those, those are two different types of insulin, the short acting and the long acting.

And you take them both together in the same needle, you'd mix them together, obviously make sure you're taking the right amount of each, mix them together in the needle, take that shot in the morning, and then you do something similar at night. But at night I generally just take the short acting to cover me for the evening for like the supper that. I would eat and maybe any snack. But that meant that you had to.

Eat at the same time every day, ideally.

And you had to take the shot at the same time every day, ideally, because it wouldn't work if you're taking random shots at different times, because then you could have the shots overlap. Now you have too much insulin on board, and then at other times you don't have enough insulin, or if you eat at different times because then you. Have too much food on board, the.

Food is overlapping, so you've got too much food, not enough insulin, or you don't have food when you should have food. And now you're going to have what's called an insulin reaction, which is low blood sugar.

And that's not good either, especially if you have like me and you have seizures when you have low blood sugar, or as I found out later, if. You don't have seizures, you just end up dead. Not a good thing. Everything was about balance. It had to be timed perfectly, the.

Shots, the eating and what you ate. Because again, it was all about the insulin, the amount of insulin that you took. So you couldn't eat less because you'd have that insulin reaction.

And you couldn't eat more because you.

Hadn'T taken enough insulin to be ready for more food. And that meant you had to have A diet. It wasn't that I was on a diet. That's kind of a misconception.

You see someone and say, oh, you're diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. You must be on a diet because of the diabetes. You know, someone might be on a.

Diet to lose weight, but that's a separate issue from being on a diet to control the diabetes. It's about managing the blood sugars. When you're on this particular regimen with the insulin and the food, it's about the timing.

You don't want that insulin in there without food, and you don't want the food in there without insulin. They have to work together. It has to be balanced, and it has to be timed, especially when you're. On the insulin injections. As a kid, I had to learn what the values were for the food. I had to learn that potato was.

Not a vegetable, it was a starch, also known as a carbohydrate. Now, that got me in trouble in school. I'd go to school, first grade, second grade, and they would tell us, okay, kids, ready?

Here's your foods. What is this? Is this the peas? They are a vegetable. And snotty little kid. No, I wasn't a snotty kid. I was just a determined. It was like, peas are not a vegetable. They are a carbohydrate. They are a starch.

And my friends would be looking at me like, what is wrong with you? And my teacher, wise teacher that she. Was, would realize, oh, okay, that's right, this is the diabetic kid, okay? So she would give me a pass.

On my quizzes and tests and things, because I kept categorizing the foods according to the diabetic standard, according to the. Nutritional standard, according to the dietician standard. Rather than the way the schools were teaching as far as that corn and.

Peas and potatoes were vegetables. I was classifying them as starches, as carbohydrates, as in the same food group as bread. So it was an interesting, you know.

Later on, I learned how to interpret things according to the cultural environment that you're in. And if everybody wants that to be vegetable, okay, whatever.

But I know it works different as far as diabetes management, but when you're a kid, you don't quite understand those people. Management skills, sociology, things like that. We bounce forward a couple decades, and. In comes insulin pumps. Now, with the insulin pump, the beauty. Is you remove the long acting insulin. And now you have short.

In fact, you have even shorter acting insulin. They have synthesized insulin. Well, that came in with injections as well.

But let's not overcomplicate things. Okay? So now you have short acting insulin. That actually rather than working within a. Half hour, it works within 15 minutes, which is really good for a pump.

Now what you can do is you can look at the food and just calculate the carbs because the carbs are what is going to translate into sugar in the system. Now you look at food, like even pie, thinking about the recent holidays and.

Look at the insulin pump, calculate how many carbs are in that pie and dial in the carbs. When I say dial, you take your pump, you go to this thing called my pump. Now, pumps vary.

I'm on the Medtronic MiniMed pump and I would dial in the number of carbs that that pie is worth for that serving size. And since I have all the calculations. Already worked into the pump, that's something that I use. I do it myself.

But you work through it with your endocrinologist, if you're diabetic or with the clinical trainer, whatever, whoever it is that's helping you with your insulin pump, you dial it in. So the bolus wizard in the pump. Will automatically calculate that the math for.

You so you don't have to do it. I also do it in my head. But anyway, the pump will do it for you, so you don't have to know math.

It will calculate how much insulin this short acting, really short acting. Now short acting insulin you have to. Take to counteract the carb that's in that pie. So I take the insulin, I serve up the pieces or the pie is served up to me, whatever the situation.

So you can picture yourself at a fast food restaurant, whatever, and then you go back.

Now the only thing is when you get that food, you got to eat it right away because you've just dialed in some insulin, otherwise you're in trouble, just like we mentioned earlier. Got to have the insulin with the. Food, the food with the insulin.

You can't be dialing in insulin and then not eat or you're in trouble. That's when I have like low blood sugar, seizure, death, you know, that kind of stuff. So make sure those things go hand in hand. But the nice thing is now they can go hand in hand at the same time.

Now you're not giving an injection at the beginning of the day and then. Trying to make sure that you eat at certain times and make sure you in a place where you can eat at certain times, that you're not taking.

A bike ride and complicating things with. Exercise and that you're not at a place where you can eat or you. Forgot to bring a sandwich or all.

These other things in life that can complicate things and, and have trouble. And you're not having to stick to a diet. Now you can live life normal because you have this insulin pump and you. Can actually just eyeball it, as I call it. Now. I also use a tool and no, I'm not being paid by them.

I'm not an affiliate or anything like that. I use my fitness pal, myfitnesspal.com I. Actually pay for the premium subscription and. It'S got a barcode reader and I. Always carry my iPad around with me.

So you know, you go pick up something even, even cookies. I love grandma's cookies, the peanut butter cookies. And they're already in my, in my iPad and MyFitnessPal.

Once you eat something, it's already in your system. But I mean using that as an. Example, I can read the barcode with. My iPad with a barcode reader. And I say I pay for the.

Premium on MyFitnessPal because that's what allows. You to use the barcode reader. I can read it right there. Sticks the carbs into my diary, into my fitness pal. Pops up the carbs.

I've got the carbs right there. Dial them into my pump. Giving the insulin, Eating my cookies. Easy as that. So much easier. Even though I love those multicolored, multi sized papers from when I was six.

Life is so much easier. With the Medtronic MiniMed pump and my fitness pal. I can live life as if I.

I don't have to stick to some:We enter into our New Year of:

This is Deborah signing off on DiabeticReal.

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