#314 Adam Naddelman, M.D. discusses Coronavirus
Coronavirus COVID-19 discussion for 3-16-2020
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Adam Naddelman, MD 0:00
My name's Adam Naddelman. I'm a pediatrician at Princeton Nassau pediatrics in Central New Jersey.
Scott Benner 0:10
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 314 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the Coronavirus situation. This one's going to be an overview with one of the brightest, most thoughtful doctors that I know personally. Adam and I met. A long time ago when Arden was born. Dr. Adam Needleman joined the Princeton Nassau pediatrics group in 2001. He completed his pediatric residency from New York hospital, Cornell Medical Center, and was chief pediatric resident the following year. Dr. Edelman received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson medical school in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he received a BA in biological basis of behavior. Dr. Edelman is board certified in pediatrics, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. So please don't judge him. You know, because he knows me. He's a pretty smart guy. Despite his tastes and friends. I'm going to ask you to please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. Today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, you can go to my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box or click on the links right here in the show notes of your podcast player to get an absolutely free no obligation demonstration pod sent directly to your house. Omni pod will send you a non functioning pump but otherwise it does everything else meaning it looks the same. It's the same weight you can wear it and find out if you like it in my experience wearing a demo pod. You forget that the only pods even there after a very short time then it's kind of up to your imagination what's it going to be like to live with it to shower with the to work out with it? Normally I would say go to school or something but you know right now maybe you'll just in your house what it would be like to wear the Omni pod anyway, to get an absolutely free no obligation pod experience kit. Like I said my on the pod.com forward slash juicebox. Not even the Coronavirus should stop you from making plans to take better care of your type one diabetes. Please don't tell me I was thinking of getting a pump. But oh, this whole thing happened. Don't do that. Just keep moving forward with your health. podcast is also sponsored by the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. That is the CGM that my daughter has been wearing for ever and ever. It's the continuous glucose monitor that we use to make decisions about ardens. dosing. Right? When does she eat the stop below? When does she give herself insulin to stop a Hi, how do we Pre-Bolus for meals? What are the trends look like? How do we set her basal rates overnight during the day while she's in school while she's at rest when she's sick when she's well. The data that comes back from the dexcom g six tells you everything that you need to know to make great decisions. And then you can make those decisions with your needles with your pens with your Omni pod, however you get your insulin dexcom.com forward slash juice box. Find out about it right now. Okay, so my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box dexcom.com forward slash juice box. And when you're all done, and this whole Corona thing is overwhelming you you need a happy place to go touch by type one.org. Go watch some little kids with Type One Diabetes living well for a little while, check out what they're doing. Find out how you maybe can even get involved. That'll be good for your soul, touched by type one.org. And now, my friend, Adam Needleman. My goal here is for people to have a really firm understanding of what's going on because I feel like the media, you know is actually I'm seeing them try really hard to do a good job. But it's all piecemeal, right? you'll flip it on, you'll hear one thing, you can't listen all day, you can't listen every time they update their thoughts. And people have been listening for two weeks now. And two weeks ago, it was, hey, there's this thing happening somewhere else in the world. And maybe it won't happen here. And I just think that everybody's got fragments of an idea. So I guess I want to start like simply by saying it's a virus, right. But Corona isn't just this thing that we're dealing with right now. Am I wrong about that?
Adam Naddelman, MD 4:43
No, that's correct. So coronavirus is just the name for the family of viruses. Like for instance, I'm sure most people have heard of SARS from a few years ago and there's another one called MERS that was a basically in the Middle East. Those are both in the same family of viruses. They're different strains of this Same virus
Scott Benner 5:00
family. Okay. And and so do viruses just appear? Do they mutate from other viruses? How do they happen?
Adam Naddelman, MD 5:10
Well, so they typically will mutate. So the thought here is that this most likely originated in an animal, the thought is perhaps probably a bat, in bohan, where they have these open air markets, where there's a, yeah, there's a lot of food, a lot of animals really, that are alive and in these markets. And the thought is that perhaps the virus was sort of native to an animal. And again, the thought is a bat. And then it mutated in some way that allowed it to jump from an animal to a person. It's similar to what happens with like, avian bird flu, where you see this in Asia every once in a while where there's a some strain of a bird flu that gets into chickens. And people get really panicked that it's going to mutate and jump to humans. So they start literally just killing off like hundreds and hundreds of chickens, in order to prevent that from happening. So this happened, it may it may have happened and jumped to multiple people at once. Nobody really knows. But the cluster clearly is the cluster of cases, that seems really seems like it started this all came from that area of China, right. And what
Scott Benner 6:16
I've been able to kind of glean about these wet markets is that they bring the animals in, and they keep them alive for freshness reasons, and then they start they slaughter them as you buy them and cook them right there. Except you have a situation where one kind of animals in a cage stacked on another kind of an animal, they would never be that close to each other in nature and,
Adam Naddelman, MD 6:36
and they wouldn't be that close to someone who was actually like preparing them for sale and for food. And they it kind of reminds me of like the old time butcher shops where you had like the animals hanging sort of in the window, but they were never alive, like you didn't go, you know, you'd go into the back and pick out your lamb or something they were hanging in the window. This is similar to that, except that the animals are alive. And they're stored, like you said, kind of in close quarters. And I don't know exactly how whether or not the those markets would meet the same kind of hygiene and sanitary requirements that we have in the US, etc. So you just don't know. But that's where the thought is that it came from.
Scott Benner 7:12
Yeah, some some of the images I've seen online, these things are being cooked on just wire grates or trash can lids and being slaughtered at the same place, they're being cooked in the same place they're being eaten. It really is. I mean, not that I know a lot about it, but it's it's overpopulation people need to eat, you know, and when there's not when there's not farm produced food, they have to go out in the, in the wilderness, and in this case, find bats and whatever else they can find to stay alive, you know.
Adam Naddelman, MD 7:38
So yeah, but the thought is that it probably jumped. So the virus must have mutated from whatever form it was in before and then jumped to a person and it was highly infectious at that point, and very efficient. So it would, it was very easy to pass from person to person, which is why it's spreading as quickly as it is. And then on top of that it unfortunately has the added characteristic of being quite a bit more dangerous than like a typical flu or a cold virus would be.
Scott Benner 8:07
So let's talk about how it transmits. It's, when they first started talking about it, it was I heard a lot of like, wash your hands, you know, but now I'm hearing more than it's airborne, or be on surfaces,
Adam Naddelman, MD 8:19
there are very few viruses that are actually airborne. measles is probably the best example of one. measles is probably the most infectious agent that we've ever encountered. Like if you take a person with measles, and you stick them in a room with 100 people that have either not had it or not been vaccinated, and you just let them kind of hang out in that room for a while 90 people in the room will get it, then so that's airborne. And that's like incredibly infectious. This is not that at least as best we can tell this looks like it's actually through droplets, which that just means you sneeze, then the virus is expelled from your mouth, your mouth and your nose. And it's on a little droplet of you know, fluid. And that either lands on a person or lands on your hand. And then I shake hands with someone and then they touch their face, and it gets passed that way. So the problem though, is with droplets, it can look like it's behaving like it's airborne, because if you sneeze on a surface, it can survive on the surface for sometimes as long as you know, several hours, then if someone else comes along and touches the surface touches their face or mouth, they can pass it to themselves that way.
Scott Benner 9:23
Is that uncommon for viruses to be able to survive like that on the surface of something
Adam Naddelman, MD 9:28
in a dry? No. I mean, the ones that are through droplets can survive. It's just this one seems to be a little bit more kind of Hardy and how long it can survive. It just it seems like it's it survived for a while. What they're saying now about this virus in particular is you really need like, this is what the guidance says it has to be more than 10 minutes of kind of face to face contact with a person that's less than six feet away. So you can see where all this social distancing stuff and I know I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit but that's where a lot of this these thoughts Coming from,
Scott Benner 10:00
right. So if we just don't have those interactions, we won't pass it around. And, and I guess one of the bigger issues must be that the incubation period takes a while, right. So once I'm affected by it, I might not show symptoms for a while or at all.
Adam Naddelman, MD 10:18
Yeah, so you can be infected and be completely asymptomatic. And some of the data that's coming out from what we're seeing overseas is, looks like people who are asymptomatic are sometimes the highest shadows of the virus, which is why it's so crucial to do the 14 day thing, because the thought is, you probably can be asymptomatic for as many as four or five days before you start either showing symptoms or your body just lights it off. But once you start showing symptoms, the guidance now is that you really ought to be symptom free for a week before you put yourself around other people again, so you could see where the 14 days certified before seven after that kind of a thing. And now it's not precise. And if you're sick with the virus, and it's confirmed, it's probably a little bit different in terms of timeframe, because it depends on how sick you get, how long it takes you to recover. But that's kinda where that comes from.
Scott Benner 11:13
All right, that makes sense. So there's just, there's no end to be really when you stop and think about regular life. You don't realize when any of these situations are happening, honestly, like if somebody sneezes like, it's just you're like, oh, God bless you. You don't think right? Now I have this because even if we get sick, it's interesting, isn't it? Like we don't live, at least I don't live thinking, Oh, I'm gonna get sick. And if I do get sick, I just think, Oh, no, I got sick, and then I'll wait it out or lay down if I depending on how bad it gets. But I never think I'm sick. And this can be passed on to so many multiples of people without me knowing it's happening.
Adam Naddelman, MD 11:52
Now, it's a great point. And one of the things with this virus, too, that makes it a little bit unique, I guess are not unique, but it just makes it more dangerous is it's a little bit more infectious. We think then what the flu even is. So they talk about viruses. And they use this our number, which is basically just a, a variable that gets factored into how they do a lot of these calculations in terms of how infectious thing is, but it basically how many people are you likely to infect if you yourself get sick with that illness. So like I said, before, with measles, if you're in an unvaccinated population, you're going to infect a whole ton of people, just a ton of people, right? with the flu, the average flu and an average season, you're probably you're like, say somewhere between one and two and a half people on average. With this, this appears to be more like two to three and a half or four. Now that doesn't sound like a big difference. But imagine a class of like 30 kids. And if you're gonna if every person and there's likely to infect three other kids, the whole class is going to be sick unless you split them all apart, right? If you only get infected one other person, then you're probably it's probably not going to get to everybody before there's some level of protection within that classroom because you have kids that are now immune.
Scott Benner 13:11
So I've seen a lot of those people are making visual representations of what you're just talking about where, you know, there's like 1000 dots bouncing around in the box, and they give, you know, three of the dots the Coronavirus, and as they start banging into each other, it moves across. And it is fascinating to watch how quickly that happens, how quickly three can turn into six that can turn into 12. And it just multiplies so amazingly fast in random ways that you would just just couldn't imagine, I guess.
Adam Naddelman, MD 13:40
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what we're talking about. I saw another good one the other day, which was like just a matchbook with four matches close to each other, and one that was further away, and you just like the first one, and then they're all gonna light. And then the fifth one that's further away, it doesn't like the same idea. But the one that I saw the same simulation you're talking about, I think was from the Washington Post. And that, to me was the best example. It was just sort of the random movement of people in a grocery store. And if, if, you know, that's really if it was airborne, like if you all if all you needed to do was sort of walk past someone and you could get it, then yeah, that really makes sense. But it's the same concept. And the more infectious it is, the more likely you're going to be in a scenario like that. I just
Scott Benner 14:19
think it's important to remember that most of the actions that are going to cause this the transfer from person to person are not things that you're aware of, you can't you know, you can you can say don't touch your face, for instance, but, you know,
Adam Naddelman, MD 14:31
it's impossible
Scott Benner 14:32
doubt yourself from doing that. Right, just the same as you when you approach somebody, it's really common to feel like you want to reach out and shake their hand or if you're closer to them, you want to give them a hug and you don't you don't imagine like, hey, that guy sneezed five minutes ago, and then I'm gonna hug him. Then his collar is going to hit my collar then later I'm going to adjust my collar and then later I'm going to pick my nose and then I've got the Coronavirus, right.
Adam Naddelman, MD 14:54
Exactly. Nobody thinks like that. And that's why I think it This has been such a challenge for so many people. Just the process. I mean, I think, you know, it's easy to say, Oh, you know, these people should all understand why they need to do this distancing. But it just doesn't. We're not, we've never been in a situation like this before, where you have to have such a high level of awareness of your personal space, and who you're letting into that space and whether or not you let your kids do certain things. It's just not normal for us to have to deal with it. And it sort of runs counter to everything that we do, like you're saying, on a regular basis. I mean, you're supposed to greet people, you're supposed to hug people that you care about, you're supposed to go visit your relatives, you're supposed to have, you know, fun with your friends at a restaurant or a bar or something like, it's to think that you have to sit in your house and spread yourself out and not get near anyone, it's just, it's really hard to fathom that we could be in this situation, but there is no doubt that we actually really are in this situation.
Scott Benner 15:48
This is not someone's imagination, this isn't media hype, it's
Adam Naddelman, MD 15:51
now is happening, I think you can make a really strong argument that we were actually pretty slow on the uptake of all of this with the knowledge that we had about what was going on to the rest of the world. And that's, I think the fear that a lot of people have, it's just that it may be too late. Like, there's a lot of people that believe once you get to, say 1% of the population, or, you know, maybe 2% of the population, once you get to numbers like that in terms of people infected, you can't contain it the way that we are trying to it. That's why now they're clamping down so hard so quickly. Because I think finally it's really sunk in. And I think the governors are the ones really leading the way on this, because they're the ones that have the costumes right in their backyards. But that's really where that all comes from. I was talking to Kelly, and she said, if this persists into a second season, I don't see how most of the population won't have had this in one way or another a year from now. Yeah, well, it's a lot like the Spanish flu, or the h1 and one from 1918. That's exactly the model of what we're talking about here. And that's exactly what happened. So you had this time of year, incredible outbreak where no one had any level of protection, there was no flu vaccine back then, like we have now. And there were no antivirals. And the conditions were not what they are now. And so a lot of people got sick, and then it kind of started to Peter out a little bit. And then when the fall came, it came roaring back. And now this is probably a little bit different than that. That particular strain of flu was just for whatever reason seemed to really kind of persist for longer than you might expect. But yeah, I mean, this virus, nobody has any native protection to it. And so we're in a similar situation where you could end up with a second wave, like we're talking about later in the fall.
Scott Benner 17:40
I think for people who can't believe that it could reach everybody, at some point, think of this, if you can, it's it's apples and oranges. But it's apples and apples in the same way, I think and you'll stop me if I'm wrong. We all have the common cold at some point during the year, nobody goes through a calendar year and doesn't have a cold, right? Like it happens eventually, which means these things get passed around in ways you don't imagine is that is that a similar way of thinking of transmission? Well, it would be if you weren't doing all the things that are happening out. So the whole goal of all this social distancing, and the you know, getting rid of all the
Adam Naddelman, MD 18:18
sports and Broadway and restaurants and all that is, the thought is that if you can get that coefficient of infection, that R value down to like under one. So if you get it, you're likely to only give it to just one other person instead of two, or three or four, that changes the whole thing. Because then you can get, like, let's say it gets into my house, just God forbid, but let's say that, and I get sick, and I give it to one of the other, you know, four people in my house, then and then the two of us both get better. After the 14 days we self quarantine, we're better in 14 days. And between the two of us we only I only give it to one person. So you can make an argument that the are like in my house was point five, right? Okay, you can see how then it died out, you know, and like my little cluster of it just stopped. I didn't go that I didn't go and give it to 10 other people, it just stopped. picture that all across the country. So if there's, you know, I don't have any cases are reported. Now it changes by the minute, but say there were 10,000 cases. If everyone did that, and only gave it to half of another person, then all of a sudden the new cases being reported that number will start to drop. And you'll get to a point where it doesn't have a way to get around enough in the community. But that's exactly why if you're going to make this these kinds of measures work, they have to be across the board across the country, you have to lock down travel you have to do all of that. Otherwise, like you're saying it what's to stop it from you know, okay, we do that we do a great job for three weeks and then a whole bunch of people come over from wherever they're from. They're where they all have it on a cruise ship and they get off they get off the cruise boat, you know, cruise ship in Miami, and boom, it just started here it starts up again. So everyone has to do it at once
Scott Benner 19:56
right so there's a way to affect there's a there's going to be a curve either up or down. And we can impact it by doing all the things that people are talking about, we're gonna talk about those things, too, so that people understand, I just think it's really important for people to hear, there's no way to just ignore this and stop it. You know, you're not gonna do that.
Adam Naddelman, MD 20:16
I mean, what I was saying earlier today, when I was talking to somebody else, just, I think you have to think of this as not so much that you don't want to get sick, it's that you don't want picture the person in your life who is the most well, most vulnerable, you know, whether that's a grandparent, or it's a relative that's fighting cancer, or it's a, you know, newborn baby that has medical issues, what whoever it is, and picture like these actions being put in place to protect that person from getting it. That's really I think, the way you have to think about it, because those are the most vulnerable people. And that's who we don't want to see all piling into emergency rooms, all at the same time.
Scott Benner 20:54
Yeah. And you have the diligence that's involved is, is extraordinary, actually, because if you think about when you're sick at home, maybe I'm just speaking for myself and about the gross people out. But you know, you make this you live in a family, you make an announcement, at some point, Hey, no one touched my drink, I don't feel well, you know, you mean or you've got kids and there'll be like, Hey, Dad, give me a drink your water that happens all the time. But you know, after a couple of days, once you're not not in anymore, you don't think to say to anybody, your kid comes by and grabs a water or you hug people or give them a kiss again, this is where I think it's going to be difficult for people not just to remember not to do it, but to be militant about the time that it takes, right, you know, now say I do that, say in your scenario, you come home, you have it, you end up only giving it to one other person your house, you wait the 14 days, you're both good. If the third person your house, gets it and brings it back in, can you get it again?
Adam Naddelman, MD 21:46
So that's a great question. It looks like I mean, again, it's just so hard because there's not enough testing to really prove all of this. But when you look at the what people are experiencing overseas, because they're ahead of us, they are not seeing reinfection at all. They're just not now, is it possible that the virus at some point mutates and there's a second strain of it, and maybe you can get the second strain? I guess it's possible. But that's not what's being reported at all at this point. Which is actually very promising, because when a vaccine does get developed, it can be against this particular strain of coronavirus. And you would hope that it would be effective. For that reason? Is there a chance that it could just morph again? Yeah, no, there's, it can mutate and change. I mean, there are lots of I that's what happens with the flu virus every year now that this is a different kind of virus. But the whole reason why you have to get a flu shot every year is that the strains will shift and change over time and turn into slightly different strains than they were the year before. And if you have just last year's flu shot, it's not going to be as effective as the one for the current season. Now, this is not the same type of virus, so it doesn't behave exactly the same way. But that's, in general, that's just a kind of a, like a
Scott Benner 22:58
kind of nonspecific or broad way to think about it. Is that in I realized this is a layman's term, example. But is that the virus or the flu in that other scenario? Is that that thing just trying to stay alive? Like, is it does it adapt? Like, is it adapting the way I think of, you know, we don't need our appendix anymore. Like,
Adam Naddelman, MD 23:19
sort of so think of it this way. It's not so much. Yeah, that I mean, that is the way to think about it. But it's, I think you have to just think about it as more like a series of random events, right? So you have these, this flow that's out there, it's probably mutating slightly over time, and the antigens that kind of get presented on the flu virus that ended up being what triggers the antibody reaction, and you, those are shifting slightly over time. And there's some, at some point, like one of them hits the jackpot and says, okay, we shifted, now we can infect people more easily now we can evade the antibodies that this person has from the flu shot they got last year. So now I can get past person a person. It's really just evolution, it's just shifting, there's little mutations that caused it to shift slightly, that at some point conferred advantage. And that advantage allows it to be passed person to person more easily or allows you to, you know, evade Tamiflu or allows the abaza to evade the the antibodies that are in your body that are from your Western flu shot like that's sets the way it works, typically. So thinking out into the future, it's completely possible that this will run through society will build up some sort of an immunity to it, it will dissipate. And as long as somebody doesn't decide to eat monkey brains next year, we should
Unknown Speaker 24:38
be like, like, don't I mean, like, is
Adam Naddelman, MD 24:39
this? No, I mean, yes, yes or no? Say it that way. I just wanted.
Scott Benner 24:45
This is our new normal, like, Have we reached a new level, like five years from now? Is there just going to be Corona season?
Adam Naddelman, MD 24:50
No, not necessarily. I mean, I think that this is probably going to look more like what happened with SARS and MERS. The difference with the with SARS especially Which is a coronavirus that was in Asia, but never really got out of Asia. And the only reason was for some reason that back that virus, when it jumped person to person, it tend to weaken a bit. So I know I'm not I'm not sure anyone really understands why this is. But by the fourth or fifth jump, it kind of petered out, it became much less infectious. So it was hard for it to get out of where it was, it infected a lot of people in those areas, a lot of people got really sick, but it never like, made the leap onto a cruise ship and ended up in the United States or ended up on an airplane. And, you know, there might have been isolated cases here and there, but it wasn't infectious enough. But ya know, it's look, I think that we're in a very connected world, it is very easy for an infectious agent like this, to jump and end up in the US or to start in the US and end up somewhere else. I mean, with the way people travel now, it's virtually impossible to expect that this wouldn't happen again, at some point down the road.
Scott Benner 25:55
Well, so then. So then I guess the question is, I think what people's there, I think fear, obviously is alive around the subject. I think most of its around the disruption of life, even more than health, at least the people I've talked to so far, I think we've done such a good job in America, at least in building a world a life for people where they get to do mainly what it is they want to do. Like, we're not used to being told no. Right? Yeah. You know, like that, that sort of thing doesn't isn't a custom. I think people don't want to get sick. But I actually think that it really, it really is more towards the people who are at risk. I think the people who feel like they're not at risk are probably like, whatever. So if I get sick, I get sick.
Adam Naddelman, MD 26:38
Well, and I think that explains why you saw so many people who thought it was a good idea to go to restaurants and go to bars and basically forced these governors to say, all right, you know what, you guys, that's it, you're done. Like, it's almost like when your kid won't get off his phone, and you have to eventually take it away from them. I mean, I think you're right, people are not used to this. And they don't believe it's a bad combination, because they're not used to it. And there's also a pretty significant level of mistrust. Among the way the population looks at authority figures and expertise and the media and the politicians and everybody else. Everyone's like, yeah, whatever, it's fine here. But this thing's all the time, no big deal. And people don't don't take it seriously. I mean, they're pictures of people at Disney World. Yesterday, it looked like any other day at Disney World, or, you know, people in restaurants or there was a data clear out Bourbon Street a couple nights ago, because people were out partying till all hours of the night, not taking it seriously. And you know, it's not their fault. I mean, this is like you said, this is the society we're in and, but you need really strong, really clear and kind of consistent messaging.
Scott Benner 27:43
explain to people why this is so important. That's why I wanted to do that's why I appreciate you doing this so much, actually, because I just I don't know, I, you look around you think this this is your reaction to this, like you know, it that Oh, I'm not in the in the group that's at risk. And by the way, too, for people listening. Watch how you say something like that out loud. Oh, it's only killing old people and sick people? Well, you know what, that's a hurtful statement to older people. And you know, people who have pre existing conditions, especially for most of the people listening this podcast, and I want to talk about that too, and find out if people with type one diabetes are at a greater risk. But I want to first find out how you're treating people. So you're a pediatrician, and are you getting massive amounts of calls from everybody now? I guess we'll go back for a second. I was with my son a few days ago, he was playing baseball, and he got sick. It started with a runny nose. And then he got kind of wiped out his throat started to hurt. He had a little bit of an intermittent cough. Looking back on it. He was in a warm weather place and he's got allergies. So the nose and the cough were probably the allergies and the sore throat ended up being most likely strep. But in that moment when it all started happening, and we were like, intermittent cough, it's not wet, his throat sore, you're like, Okay, he's got Corona. You know, like, your brain just jumps right to it. Now luckily for me, I was able to text you, but I texted you from right from urgent care because I took him right out of a situation took him right to urgent care. And I thought, Let's find out. You know, what's up with this kid. But the first thing I find out when I get there, so big sign hanging up, says, Hey, if you think you're the coronavirus, we don't have any test for that. So you know, put this mask on and wait your turn. So it turned out that gave him antibiotics. And he's of course significantly better now because he had it he had strep throat. But I'm trying to imagine all of the people in all the towns across the country calling their doctors offices that that is that your exists
Adam Naddelman, MD 29:47
right now. We're pretty much
definitely you know, my friends like you who text me and said
no, but it also is just No, it's okay. In all seriousness, yeah, I mean, everyone is concerned I mean, I'm sure, you know, for all the people that are hearing this, I'm sure there you have friends that are saying, Oh my god, I'm congested. I wonder if I have it. Or I'm coughing, I wonder if I have it, you know, and it's difficult because the numbers that we're seeing from China and from Italy, as best we can tell, at least 80% of people that get it are going to have a mild illness. Probably even more than that, it's probably a higher number than that, because we can't actually test everyone who's walking around with the symptoms like you described, but at least 80%. You know, it could be as high as 90%. But at least 80% of the people are going to have a mild illness. So what we're doing because we can't test, as you said, at least not yet, there are very strict criteria for who can actually be tested. But what we're doing is just saying, Listen, thankfully, and children, for whatever reason that it appears that the virus is actually quite mild, in general. So we feel very comfortable saying to the vast majority of our patients, if you're congested, if you're coughing a little bit, if you have a little low grade fever, you're okay to just hang tight at home, stay away from other people as best you can. And let's see what develops in the next couple days, and the vast majority of those kids are going to define as if they had a cold. Now, would it be great to be able to do a swab like we do for strep to say, hey, look, you have it, and then to prove to people that you had it, and you were fine, of course, but that doesn't exist right now. When you say in children, is there an age range you're seeing, they're saying that from all the numbers I've seen, it's really, it's really lm under 18. There are a few reported cases in overseas of, of older teenagers that got a little bit sicker than you might expect. But again, without knowing the background on them, it's hard to really say, but everything that we've seen so far is that kids under 18 are really my whole, almost our entire population other than the college age kids are, are really gonna have a mild illness. And it does look like you're the risk factors in terms of being hospitalized or ending up in an ICU. It really ages a huge part of it. So we've interpreted that to mean that if you're young and healthy, which most of our population is, those children are going to be fine. Now, you asked before about type one, there's no data yet that shows that type one is a significant risk factor for especially for the pediatric population. For severe illness with this, I would assume like any other infection, very poorly controlled type one is going to put you at a higher risk for for just getting sick in general. And the virus itself is likely to assuming Yeah, and it will also like in the way that all of you that are listening to this know that when your kids get sick, their sugars are all over the place, it's harder to manage their insulin, that is likely to happen with this too, but not to any extent any not at any greater extent than any other illness that they might get.
Scott Benner 33:01
Okay. It's It's funny, I was making a note to ask you a question, you kind of lead into it. The one thing that occurs to me while we're hearing numbers, you know, five guys found it, you know, had here and another thousand people here and you start hearing this thing? Is it? Is it your health? We don't ever think about that you don't ever get to see the person, you know, is it a person who's in poor health in other ways? Is it perfectly healthy people like it? Does it skew more one way or the other? Have you seen any data data about that yet?
Adam Naddelman, MD 33:30
Well, so there's no doubt that pre existing medical conditions are more likely to lead to more severe illness, like if you look at the population of people that ended up in the ICU in China or in Italy, like the average age of death from this in Italy is 81. Now Italy is a very as a much older population than we have in the United States. And their health care system is a little different. And there's all kinds of rules and regulations that are there. But so that's one, you know, one piece of information that I think is important that 81 for Italy. When you look at the numbers in Wuhan, China, it looks like being older than 50. And definitely being older than 60 or 70 are risk factors. Now 50 is probably I don't know how significant it is. 60 is starting to get significant. 70 definitely significant. So age is a factor. They found that men who were hypertensive with uncontrolled blood pressure that clearly was a factor. And now in that cohort, but again, without being able to do widespread testing, you really don't know these are all the sickest people they're looking at. They're not looking at every person who's sniffles and turns out the habit like some of these famous people that you're seeing in the media, right? Tom Hanks has it. Idris Elba has it now the player on the jazz that has it. Those guys got tested. Like they were sick for like five minutes and got tested and prove that they had. As far as I know, they're all doing just fine. Now if we could test every person that had that level of symptoms, it would probably be a little bit more reassuring because we could say it's About 80% that are mild, it's a higher number than that. The only thing that I think has us worried is, in some of the countries where you're getting a lot of testing now, like in China, the the rate of serious illness and the rate of like ICU admission, and even death, they haven't decreased as much as you would hope, the only place we're seeing the numbers come down in South Korea, and that they are doing an unbelievable amount of testing. And so the mortality rate there, it looks like it's significantly lower than it is in places like China, or in Milan, in Italy.
Scott Benner 35:32
I think that it's interesting, too, that you're seeing some, you know, the really well controlled places are seem to be smaller countries, that is countries that aren't as landlocked sometimes, you know, like they're having, it's just like you were talking about earlier there, it's easier to restrict people from coming in and out, which should say to you, if you're listening, it should say to you, I need to restrict people coming in out of my life, just like you need to restrict them coming in and out of your country. It's it's all the same thing. You're, you're just trying to limit contact with people,
Adam Naddelman, MD 36:03
right? To keep this from happening. And so yeah, you could see why like, going to an NBA game, going to march madness, yeah, going to a concert, or a Broadway show. All those things are tremendous, tremendously dangerous in a situation like this. So it makes sense to not be doing them now. It made me wonder
Scott Benner 36:22
from the conversation so far, if as we get further away from where this began, if you will see it impact less people at younger ages, like will it get? Will it weaken? Or will this be a virus that doesn't weaken as its past? And I guess there's no way to know that now. Really?
Adam Naddelman, MD 36:43
Yeah. So so far, it's not showing the same signs of weakening the way that SARS did like I was talking about earlier. But the hope is, like, if you look at what's going on, in Wu Han China, now, they clamp down an unbelievably crazy amount compared to what we could ever do here. And because they did that, they essentially got all of the active cases, away from everybody else, quarantine them, force them, essentially, to not even be with the people that they wanted to be around that all like they pulled him out of their houses in some cases. But by doing that the person each person fought off the virus, and then they're not contagious anymore. And so they can go back to society. And if you look on the news, now, you'll see videos of people walking around, whoo ha, and like, you know, I mean, not like nothing ever happened. But they're getting back to normal, because they took they took what we're doing here, and they turned it up about 10 more notches, and
Scott Benner 37:36
they were able to because I guess freedoms, not such a concern there.
Adam Naddelman, MD 37:40
Yes, there is a bit of a trade off, which I wouldn't I mean, there's videos of them, like spraying down the streets and crazy stuff. And pulling people out of houses like that, that will never happen in the US. But that just means it's going to take us probably a little longer than it took them.
Scott Benner 37:53
I saw something online that really made me smile The other day, some it said, your grandparents were asked to fight a World War, you're being asked to sit on your sofa.
Adam Naddelman, MD 38:00
Yeah, I mean, in all seriousness, like you, I mean, we all have like 40 hours of TV we'd like to watch and probably, you know, at least 50 hours of podcasts and books to read and all kinds of stuff. Just go and enjoy that stuff. Just go sit down and relax. My son
Scott Benner 38:14
said the most thoughtful thing about it so far. So you just said to me He's like, this is just like summer vacation. I don't really need to do anything. And I was like, yeah, hundred percent. Just go relax. I said, just take a vacation. We're just gonna take it here in the house. Yeah. Now when I when I find myself in the grocery store, are there ways to protect myself? Like when I do have to go out? What do I do?
Adam Naddelman, MD 38:35
Yeah. So I think ideally, you go at a time when perhaps it'll be less crowded. A lot of the grocery stores are doing some clever things like only every other register is open. They're putting a shopping cart between customers. So you can't get within six feet of the person in front of you or behind you. You're not going to stand in line with some guy on the line next to you and watching sneezing and coughing or whatever. So you're going to be spread out. I think you want to get in and out. It's not the time to like, you know, debate which peaches you want to buy for 10 minutes. Like, grab what you need to get out.
Scott Benner 39:08
I am we were so Kelly and I went together. And it was hard. First of all, it was very interesting for anybody that's been out. It was quiet, solemn, almost like there wasn't a lot of extra talking people were very, I think they were trying to be calm, but felt like on edge. Everybody looked at each other a little weird, you know, like when you are passing by. And I watched Kelly pick up a jar of pickles, and put them down and decided against them. And then she changed her mind and pick them up again. And I was like, well, you stop handling everything. Even though if that made sense or not. But I was like, decide if you're gonna buy the pickles by looking at them. And then that made me think about that, like you start your brain starts going. So somewhere there's a woman who's a nurse and she came home at the end of a night shift and she's got the virus on her. She kissed her husband, her husband came to this grocery Or put these pickles on the shelf? My wife touched him. Now we got it. Right. And it's hard not to do that calculus in your head while you're while you're looking at things and doing
Adam Naddelman, MD 40:08
Yeah, this is this is a difficult time for people that have any level of anxiety. And in all seriousness, I mean, you really can make yourself insane. By running those scenarios in your head about every single thing. I mean, the good, the good thing is, like I said before, over 80% of people are going to get a mild illness. So even if you were unlucky enough to pick up the pickle jar that was handled by the nurse who kissed your husband, or whatever you said before, you're likely going to be okay. I mean, even though we worry a lot about the rates being higher than what you'll see for like a typical flu season. I mean, we're not talking about like some movie, you know, some crazy like outbreak in a movie where half the people who get it end up in the hospital, that's that's not going to happen. The problem though, is we just don't have the capacity that we would need in our hospitals to deal with all these people stick at once. And that's really the point of the measures is to, is to flatten that curve that jump that spike in cases, like if you just picture like you were saying before, how fast but just look at how fast the numbers are changing. And then when you hear about it in the media, the whole goal is to get that to slow down and spread itself out so that the people who do unfortunately get more, who are more sick and need hospitalization have a place that they can go and the resources aren't being taken up by too many people all at the same time.
Scott Benner 41:25
So the basic idea is that we don't, we only have a certain amount of hospital beds, ventilators, things like that. And for people who listen to the podcast, it's actually an interesting overlap, because we talk about stopping rises in blood sugars before they happen. Because if you never get high, then you don't have to deal with the things that come with being high, you know, extra insulin crashing, getting low later. So we're really trying to stop the spike of, of infection, not because we think it's going to stop people from getting sick, but so that it spreads out illnesses over time, so that hospitals can handle people's illnesses, if everybody gets sick at once they'll overwhelm the healthcare system, right, we can spread it out a little bit, then your grandmother gets to go in and get the treatment she needs and come out alive. Instead of ending up in there with four other people's grandmothers. When there's only three ventilators and then they got to do any meenie miney. Mo to find out which grandma doesn't get a ventilator.
Adam Naddelman, MD 42:17
Right. Right. That's I mean, that's exactly what the hope is that you can let the healthcare system catch up, like, I don't know if you saw last couple of days, but some of the governor's now are starting to really ask the military as the federal government to even deploy the military and let them put up a 500 bed, you know, mobile army type hospital that they do all the time. You know, they have a lot of experience over the last 20 years doing this. And it would be incredibly helpful. I mean, there are abandoned warehouses, there are all kinds of buildings, how about taking some of the dorms that no one's living in now, and using them if you need to, there's all kinds of structures that could fulfill this. And that would just give everyone a big sense of relief that they're that, you know, the capacity is there, it's temporary. When we're done with it, you can take it all down. It's when there is a tremendous need for it.
Scott Benner 43:07
I think people think that's crazy. But it seems a little morbid, but my wife's lobby of her building was used as a mortuary during 911. Like the need to take bodies, and they just, they use the building, they did what they had to do,
Adam Naddelman, MD 43:20
right? I mean, this is this, it seems like you know, because I think part of the problem is we have a hard time with the notion of this is likely going to happen. So let's prepare for it versus, oh, no, this is happening, we need to do something now. We tend to be more reactive. And I think the governors are, to their credit to being much more proactive and trying to get ahead of this so that we don't end up in a situation like you're talking about. It's, you know, a lot of those calculations that were being done when people were talking about things like you know, rationing care. That was before all these measures were put into place and they and every study that's been done and every calculation that's been done really does show that even a day or two earlier with these measures can make a huge difference. So we're gonna have to wait and see whether or not it was enough and how and whether or not it was early enough.
Scott Benner 44:14
Yeah, we got we got to a too late by waiting that that that week in there because I know people talk about it as this has been ramping up for a few days. But I think if you really look back, it's been happening for a week or so in America.
Unknown Speaker 44:26
It's been a
Adam Naddelman, MD 44:26
week of, hey, should we be doing something about this? No, don't worry about it. Like that's been about a week. I you know, I was away. Like in the beginning or so of February and I saw in the paper an article about a novel Coronavirus in China. It was like a little blurb like on page, you know, 52 or whatever the newspaper. And I remember thinking like how that's interesting. I wonder if that's anything like SARS or MERS or these other ones. That was like six weeks ago. Yeah. And you think about where like, think about where you this was a week ago, think about two weeks ago. If I told you three weeks ago Hey, guess what in three weeks your son's cancelled, a college canceled kids are home from school all the major sports are canceled. There's nothing on TV for them to watch. It's It's amazing. And that's the worry is are we good? Three weeks from now? Are we gonna look back and go? Yeah, you know, when we were complaining about how we had the kids home from school, that's nothing compared to what's going on at hospitals. Now
Scott Benner 45:21
I got lucky. It was really lucky because I did more traveling this year than I have previously. And I've never been a hand sanitizer person. But I just thought, I've so many commitments, I can't get sick. So I bought one with a little pump. And I put in the door in my car. Every time I got in a you know, I got back in my car from a public place. I gave a little squirt. And I rubbed it around. And I even like thought, like I put it on my cell phone like dirty me like I thought, well, let me see what I can do here for myself. And so you'll find this. I hope you find this funny. But then if you do it with the kids, you know, like when Arden gets in the car, like here, and she rubs it around, and she always goes now I smell like Dr. Edelman.
Adam Naddelman, MD 45:58
That's great.
Scott Benner 46:01
And now I'm thinking looking back, I'm happy. It was random. But I'm happy it happened because I have been in a lot more public places and traveling through now. But I've just been kind of cognizant about it. I've been like, you know, like, I go through places, thoughtfully not touching things. I was on a train the other day, I just thought you know what, let me practice my skateboarding skills here. I'm not going to hold on to the bar, you know, and if I hold on to the bar when I get out of the train a little thing, is that stuff really? Is that just in my head? Or is that stuff valuable?
Adam Naddelman, MD 46:30
No, it's valuable. It definitely is valuable. You know, old fashioned soap and water is just as good. If you're worried that you can't find PRL anywhere. Now, you can't find hand sanitizer anywhere, but it No, there's no doubt that it's valuable. So yeah, I mean, practicing this hygiene all the time. Like even something as little as Hey, before you eat your dinner, Go wash your hands. Like I'm sure we're all saying that to our kids, our our parents did that to us. But you know, just like you said earlier, like you get lacs about it, oh, they're outside, they're having to catch thrown a ball around, they come in, they eat a piece of pizza, they don't always wash their hands. Now, I think people are saying, you got to really wash your hands you got to be good about and you got to really wash them, it's not enough to run them into the water for two seconds and say you washed your hands, you got to wash them with soap and you got to, you know, count to 20 at least, and really take your time and wash your hands. But no, there's definitely a value in what you're talking about. Now, for a while we used we were thinking for a while that people were getting like way overboard with the hand sanitizer and not exploiting their kids ever be exposed to any germs. There's a danger that we're going to go all the way back to that and never let kids that playdates anymore, and we're going to shut all this down. There's a value in your immune system being exposed to a wide variety of things over the course of your lifetime, especially when you're young. So there, there's going to have to at some point be a bit of a pullback from all of this, like when when the world returns to normal. But for now, you can't be too careful with this. If you want to use hand sanitizer, every five minutes, do it if you want to wash your hands 20 to 50 times a day do it.
Scott Benner 48:01
Okay, so let's recap here. And I'm gonna let you get back to life. I think, um, Adam has been talking about this a lot lately. By the way, how did you end up on crisc comos radio show talk. So
Adam Naddelman, MD 48:11
I listened to that show a decent amount just because you know, if I'm driving between offices or running home for lunch, I'll put it on and I just called it there was no nothing more than that. I called in and the guy who picks up the phones, asked me who I was I told him who I was. He said, Oh, that's great. Let me you know, I'll put you through first time I got on. He put me through, like almost right away. And then at the end of the call, Chris Cuomo said, Hey, you know, why don't you call back, you know, each day and kind of let me know what you're seeing and whatever. So I figured today that was Friday, I figured let me just see if I actually can get through I thought maybe there was like a back number. I don't know how, how it works. But I called again today. And it got right there again. So I don't know if they set my my number up now to be able to call through or what but I figured lucky. You know, he's talking about this topic. And he wasn't doing it necessarily from a political angle. It was more from the kind of conversation you and I are having. I figured let me offer a medical perspective because not not one of his callers was someone who was actually dealing with this for real and from the health care side. And it sounded like he appreciate I was on there today for I don't know, eight or nine minutes, I think. Okay,
Scott Benner 49:20
well, one day we'll get you back on here and you can tell people the story of how I called you in the middle of the night and you sat on your computer in your underwear finding a hospital to take art into while she was being bad. Yeah,
Adam Naddelman, MD 49:29
it was Virginia Beach right? What are you doing the beach?
Scott Benner 49:33
Yeah, we're on our way to the wrong hospital. And I heard you clacking away on the keys. And it was it had to be like 130 or two o'clock in the morning and you found a hospital that had a kid some kids dedicated center for for diabetes and that's it
Adam Naddelman, MD 49:48
all those kids they're all the people that were there were people that had trained I think at the Children's Hospital Philadelphia so we remember saying he like I have a feeling this might be a better option than whenever the closest place was at that point. You should Did you like turned around and drove in the other direction? But got there?
Scott Benner 50:02
Yeah, it was really. It was really something a long time ago. But uh, so I, I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of you first I for two weeks I've been like, Who am I gonna get on the show to talk about this if this really needs to be talked about. And then I got I landed coming home from Kohl's baseball thing, and I picked up Facebook and there you are talking to, you know, on on the Cuomo show about I was like, why
Adam Naddelman, MD 50:24
am I not thinking of this? So I really appreciate you doing this because I know you've been slammed, your your practice is going to go to is are you going to go to like, this kind of thing? Are you gonna start Skyping with people to see people. So we actually, about a week ago, when we started to realize where this was heading, we about as fast as we possibly could do anything put in place, the whole plan for starting to do telehealth. And so tomorrow is the morning we're going to have a couple training sessions with the people that we're doing it with. And then our hope is that by the afternoon, if not the afternoon, by definitely by Wednesday morning, we will be offering telehealth appointments for basically anyone who has I mean, we could do it for almost anything at least as a starting point. But especially for the kids who parents are worried. You know, just just like you said before, they're calling the office thing, oh my god, he's congested, he's coughing, he has this, he has that, instead of the nurses trying to just triage it without seeing him, we are going to actually do a virtual visit where we can see them and actually observed the child and talk to the parents and do a whole basically like an office visit, it's a good idea. But do it over the phone? Or do I have to do it on the computer, I genuinely think that
Scott Benner 51:37
you know, a lot of bad is going to come out of this whole thing. But a lot of good is going to come out of it too. We are going to become more agile, but we take care of things, you're going to see a lot of businesses follow suit, and maybe some of them won't go backwards again. Or maybe this is the thing you'll keep
Adam Naddelman, MD 51:52
you know, maybe we're definitely gonna keep it I mean picture like even the example you just gave about that awful night all those years ago, imagine if we had telehealth and you said to me Look at her now like you saw her a few days ago, look at her now what do you think's going on? Like, that would be a very different interaction than a cell phone at one o'clock in the morning. And I think I think you're 100%, right? I mean, look, there are times when we all think the world is changing in a way, and we're never going to get back to where we were, and it's all atrocious and good can come out of it. And I think this is one of those situations, it's just gonna take everybody thinking about it in terms of what can they do for each other and not just about themselves, you have to think about it in terms of your neighbors and your community. And if we do that, and I think businesses like you're saying are clearly going to adapt. And I've been saying for years, what in the world do we have to have all these people traveling all over the place to have these in person meetings? for like an hour that you fly to California for an hour meeting and you fly back? like that just seems so foolish? Now when you look at what people are going through, right? Yeah, I more recently?
Scott Benner 52:53
I do I do a fair amount of traveling to give these talks, right. And I just go about, I talked about how we do things on the podcast with blood sugars and stuff like that. And it's really valuable. And I see that I see the people having sometimes very instant, like significant changes in their health. But recently, someone contacted me and they were like, would you come to Japan? I was like, No, but I'll do it over the computer. And we did it. And it worked great. Yeah, I mean, there was really no difference between me not being there and being there.
Adam Naddelman, MD 53:22
Right. I mean, I could see like, for a live presentation in front of a lot of people, and especially question and answers, that can be a real value in a face to face. But, you know, these these meetings that you have some times where you have to really put yourself out in terms of travel, just to spend a couple hours in the, you know, there are certain industries where the face to face thing is still super important. And I think this was is likely going to change that for a long time. Like you're going to do a lot more of this a lot more skypes a lot more kind of video sessions, where you know, as the technology improves, and everyone's in super high def, and the cameras improved. It's not gonna be that different from sitting around a table if you have five computers set up and you can see everyone's faces.
Scott Benner 54:01
Oh, my daughter did her first day of high school from home today. She said she liked it. Is there a way I can keep doing it like this? A couple hours later, Cole got word from his school. They're going to distance learning for the rest of the semester, which is the rest of this year. And Kelly's working for him for for the foreseeable future.
Adam Naddelman, MD 54:21
Yeah, I'm in the same situation. Dana is now working from home. She's not they're not going in at all. My kids are all doing virtual learning. The boys are doing virtual learning with like, they're using zoom where you literally are watching a lecture and the kids are all on the screen at the same time and they're all participating. I think our kids generation is going to be really good at this. Like they actually in some ways, some of them probably will prefer it and may get more out of it because they can it's more condensed like that their lesson plans are right there. There. It's there's not a lot of like walking around between classes, and they're gonna find they can actually accomplish a lot this way. I think it's interesting when you think about the universities, I would I would it would be interesting to talk to people who are in that line of work. But you have to think that there's a real concern among some of these universities that someone is going to come around with a real good online platform for education. And it's going to cost like a third as much as what people are paying, now, you're going to get a degree that's actually really worthwhile, and you're going to be able to do it from your living room. I mean, there's no doubt that the social aspect of college is probably a bigger piece in some ways than the academic piece. But if you can do it for third the price, and this market,
Scott Benner 55:31
yeah, there's right. There's no reason not to try. So I, I just think it's, you know, it's not dissimilar to I say this about diabetes a lot. And sometimes people think it's odd, but, and I don't, I always say like, don't get me wrong, like I would genuinely do anything for Arden's pancreas to work, right. But because it doesn't, we've also had all of these amazing experiences, and she's become a much more resilient person than I think she would be at 13. So goods come from it, too, you can't ignore the good that comes from it, you can hate the bad, but you don't have to, you don't have to ignore the good stuff that's coming. So
Adam Naddelman, MD 56:06
I agree, I agree. And my office is about as crazy as you could ever imagine anything. Right now, there's no doubt about it that we would be life would be much easier right now for everyone who was working in my office and putting in the hours they're putting in if this wasn't going on, but I also have no doubt that when it's finally over, we will be a better practice and better physicians and better nurses. And more probably empathetic even to people like we will all be a little better. Because we worked through all this. It's hard to see it now because we're not at the end of it yet. But I really do, I really do believe that. But you got to really you got to just work it you got to you got to think about everything that's going on, you got to take the measures that the experts are recommending you got to believe the scientists, you have to you have to really think about what you can do for each other. You got to you know, all of those things, I think are critical for all
Scott Benner 57:01
you people who are always my wife said she heard you saying this earlier today. But I've seen it on Facebook a little bit for everybody's always bemoaning I don't have enough time with my kids. there's now an equal amount of people were thinking and saying out loud in some points. I don't want to be around my
Adam Naddelman, MD 57:14
kids this Oh, it's so true. And I was saying earlier that, you know, for every time you complained about all how to want to go to that practice, I really have to take into this. Now, how many people would you know, pay $1,000 to be able to have their kid just go to softball practice.
Scott Benner 57:29
I told my son tonight I said, you know, it's interesting. We live in a time, unlike any other time in history, so you have so much ability to do so many varying things. And he was home from school for three hours yesterday and told me he was bored.
Adam Naddelman, MD 57:43
They're bored out of their mind.
Scott Benner 57:44
Yeah. I said, I don't know how you're bored. You have a computer in your hand that could watch a space shuttle. You could, you know, I you just maybe you needed to dial in one time to the internet in your life to realize how amazing this is televisions that you have and contact with other people. You can speak to people if you want to face to face and all this stuff. And he's like, I don't know what to do. Like.
Adam Naddelman, MD 58:05
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I actually kind of hoped that maybe. And this probably isn't gonna happen. But just simple things, pick up a book, go for a walk, like go for a walk around the neighborhood, just you know, the weather's not bad. Get outside, sit outside for a while with a book like something that's just not the constant incessant, you know, in front of the screen and make you anxious and make you crazy because reading every last thing and hearing every last thing I feel
Scott Benner 58:32
I feel the worst for people who just not in the financial place for this for people who don't have a job that sends you home but just tell you can't come in, but you're not getting paid. That's a hard thing to fathom.
Adam Naddelman, MD 58:41
Oh, it's um, but it's unfathomable. I mean, imagine if you owned a coffee shop, or if you owned a restaurant or, you know, you're you're just an employee that's per diem somewhere or you just you're, you know, an hourly employee that you have no benefits, or I mean, it's just, it's unfathomable to think like what in the world is the certain industries going to do? Right? I mean, imagine being like a pilot, for instance. I mean, those guys aren't flying anywhere now. American Airlines cut 75% of their international flights yesterday,
Scott Benner 59:11
I saw that there's 75% of one of the European airlines just shut down. Yeah, they say they said we have no Scandinavian maybe I'm not sure one of them was just like, we don't have any. There's no call. Right. So you know, we're just not gonna fly planes anymore.
Adam Naddelman, MD 59:26
No, I mean, I agree with you. And I think Unfortunately, that's the next big me on top of the fact that the illnesses are going to pick up you're going to start hearing more and more about companies that are not doing well and employees getting laid off and it's going to be really, it's going to be awful for a while. That's why it has that we have to do these things now to hopefully shorten the duration of this and decrease how painful it does get.
Scott Benner 59:50
Yeah, no, I hope people believe that. Is there anything that I didn't bring up or that you didn't say that you think is important?
Adam Naddelman, MD 59:56
No. I mean, the only thing is I do just want to reiterate the social distancing thing. Think keeping yourself six feet apart, you know, with from people around you, including the kids. So no sleepovers, no birthday parties, this is not a snow day, there's a great post circulating about that too, that I saw. Don't treat this, like, you know, it's snowing, and we're gonna pile 20 kids in my basement and let them all watch a movie, you can't do stuff like that. You just have to stay apart. If you have elderly relatives, the best thing you can do is call them and talk to them, don't go visit them, stay away from them. Just because they're family, it doesn't mean that they might not have it. So you really need to take it seriously. If you are going to visit with people do it outside, you know, be outside be six to 10 feet away. Do it for a brief period of time. And but no contact like no hugs and kisses and all of that that has to stop now going to the bow.
Scott Benner 1:00:47
I'm just a genuflect a little bit. And you said that I I called my mother last night who's 76. And she lives by herself. And I just said, Mom, listen, Kelly and I talked about bringing you up here. But I think you're better off where you are by yourself. Yeah, I'm like, Well, you know, text every day and we'll call and everything but I think just you know, she's like, Oh, my card clubs not meeting anymore. And I was like, Yeah, that's good. I was like, don't do any of that stuff. I say go outside. I said the same thing to her. So it's so what I'm hearing, at least between you and I and you and I think pretty similarly about some things but common sense, right? Just use your common sense and don't get in contact with other people. You can't just decide that people look okay, it's you know, right, you know, you should
Adam Naddelman, MD 1:01:31
prompt exactly right just just and be patient because it's going to take some time this is not going to be over in two days. It's going to take some more time.
Scott Benner 1:01:39
Well listen in a world where social There are apps for dating apps that have never once warn people about like sexually transmitted diseases but those those apps are popping up now I'm hearing and telling people listen that Coronavirus blah blah blah, you know, so so I'm gonna let you go with this. What do you call it? You call it COVID-19 or do you call it the Coronavirus? I mean the medical world is calling it COVID-19 I think when we talk to patients and when I just talk about it with friends I'm always calling it the Coronavirus. I think you know COVID-19 just sounds like it just doesn't sound like a virus. I don't know. It just sounds like something different. COVID-19 is really like what they're calling the illness that people get. I'm using Coronavirus. I don't think the people at Corona are so happy that this is the Coronavirus, but it is what it is you must be out of their mind actually. Okay, so I'm going to um, I'm going to in a number of weeks when there's more to say I'm gonna force you to do this again. Just
Adam Naddelman, MD 1:02:29
you know, I'm happy to do it. I mean, look, this is changing unbelievably fast, like incredibly fast. Just thinking back to where we were a week ago. So I'm happy to do it again. If you think it's useful for you, all your listeners find out.
Scott Benner 1:02:42
So thank you very much.
Adam Naddelman, MD 1:02:43
No problem.
Scott Benner 1:02:46
This episode was recorded on March 16 2020. And Adam will be back if there's more to talk about and I think that there's going to be much more to talk about. huge thank you to Omni pod Dexcom and touched by type one for being fervent and long term sponsors of the Juicebox Podcast I appreciate your dedication to the show. Get yourself an absolutely free no obligation demo of the Omni pod sent to your house right now my Omni pod comm forward slash juice box but the links right there in your show notes. Were the ones you can find at Juicebox podcast.com. Start today with the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor by going to dexcom.com forward slash juice box again, where the links that you'll find all over the place. And of course touched by type one.org. Head over there, check them out. They're doing amazing work for people with type one diabetes. And you know what i guess if you're in the central New Jersey area and you're looking for a beautiful pediatric center, Princeton Nassau pediatrics, I've been taking my kids there for a very long time. So okay, everybody, listen. Let's do this together. Right, let's look out for each other like Adam was saying, to be cautious and careful. Let's try to ignore the fact that we don't want to stay in our houses for a couple of weeks. Just do the right thing here. And let's get past this as quickly as possible. And if you absolutely have to go out for any reason financial the buy food, whatever. You know, again, what Adam was telling you, keep your distance from people wash your hands. Let's not get in spitting distance, sneezing distance, will be kissing people you don't know or Come to think of it people you do know don't kiss anybody. You understand what I'm saying? Right? If you touch the handrail and something, try not to touch anything else till you handle yourself. Soap and water. Good, good, good, you know like this really get in between the fingers. I think together we can put an end to this pretty quickly and get life back to normal course. The next episode of the podcast will be out in a couple of days. Jenny Smith and I are going to talk about Sick Day management for respiratory illnesses. You know, like the Coronavirus
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#313 Fox in the Loop House - Part 2
Kenny Fox talks Loop Management
Kenny and Scott talk about DIY Loop and type 1 diabetes.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everybody, welcome to Episode 313 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's show is part two of a two parter with Kenny Fox. Now Kenny's name might not ring in your head like, oh, Kenny Fox, is that like Michael Jordan for diabetes? Well, no. But what Kenny is, is the data of a little girl who has type one diabetes, who really dug in to the DIY loop. And he understands it in a way that I find it inspirational. Now, Kenny and I are going to walk step by step through every setting in the loop, talk about it and kind of a big picture way. If you're not into a do it yourself algorithm for insulin pumping, I get that you don't need to be I'm not telling you to be. What I am saying is listen to the episode anyway. Because it's just another way of thinking about how insulin works. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. The Contour Next One blood glucose meter, and touched by type one, you can always go to touch by type one.org Contour Next one.com or dexcom.com Ford slash juicebox. To find out more about the advertisers, there'll be a little more about them later in the show. But for now, I think we should get to it. We're going to start right at the top by saying nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. And today. Also remember that what we're talking about is an algorithm that Kenny and I downloaded from the internet. It doesn't belong to a company, you just completely do it yourself. It has not passed through the FDA. So understand that while we're talking. Now that aside, using the algorithm. And watching the data come back from it and seeing how it reacts will absolutely supercharge your understanding of how insulin is working in your body. I'm telling you to watch a an app, a computer algorithm decide about insulin, it just elevates your understanding. At least it did for me. It's taken me a while to figure looping out and I'm probably not all the way there. But I'm getting closer. And I'm going to keep having these conversations with people who are ahead of me until we're all at the same level together. Luckily, I found Kenny and Kenny understands looping. And that's why this episode is called Fox in the loop house. Part Two. So insulin model, when you have yours, even lower than mine is what's the intention of making the insulin model a shorter time period.
Kenny Fox 3:01
So whenever I try to deal with loop, I'm doing my best to represent reality. So because I know that her incident her bonuses and stuff with good bazel only last four and a half hours. That's why it's four and a half hours. It's not just to get like a performance out of it, it's because I really think that the that's how long the insulin last. The rest of the model is a little interesting. If you see that top option is always that Walsh model, it's always got the line like higher than the rest of them. That's kind of what the pumps use it. It's more like a I don't know, like a straight line steady decay of insulin or insulin is really kind of peaky, right, it's slow to start, it hits hard kind of around an hour ish hour and a half. And it stays strong for an hour or two. And then it kind of fades. And so these other models more more accurately represent like how much insulin is left, because it's kind of more initially and then less later, where that wash model stays really high. And so that's why the that's one reason, even endocrinologist know that insulin lasts longer than three or two or three hours. They like to set people at like a three hour because for most of that curve, a three hour four hour Walsh model will accurately represent how much instance on board until of course, you get to the end when you say hey, it's over after three hours, and there's still two more hours left. And so then people are like, Oh, well, why do I says no more instance on board? Why do they keep dropping? Why is my blood sugar keep dropping? Well, it's because there really is more insulin on board but your pump is lying to you. So you either got to have your pump lying to you the whole time until the very end when zero is zero, or and then you can kind of just round down or you set it shorter and then it's like kind of accurate most of the time and then at the end, you still have insulin on board left for another hour too. So it's a tricky thing.
Scott Benner 4:51
Is this a case of because insulin works in choppy like ways, not smooth ways that you're going To have to lie to yourself or lie to the pump, or have the pump lied to you, however you want to think about it one way or the other. So let's lie on the more
Kenny Fox 5:10
cautious side. Yeah, I think for a lot of NGOs, they use the instant action time of three hours to give people permission to bolus when they're high, like, hey, if it's close to zero, go ahead and correct because after three hours insulins mostly done, rather than tell people, hey, this is how long it's been last. And if you see this number, round down, a better idea would be to use a better tool. But those are limited, right? You can use nightscout has a better, like in insulin action calculator, extra spike, these other open source apps and loop their insulin models they use for how insulin hits indicators is much more accurate than what comes standard in most pumps, where it's just a matter of getting these tools.
Scott Benner 5:52
And what I would do prior to loop is, I just wouldn't pay any attention is on onboard.
Kenny Fox 5:59
Exactly. Yeah, it becomes so inaccurate that you don't trust it anymore. So no one looks at it, which is what we'll talk about, we get to base rates and stuff like that's, that's the the piece people kind of ignore they people look at it and go, Oh, wow, there's a lot of insulin on board when someone's falling, but then they don't really look at it other than that,
Scott Benner 6:15
yeah, I just think of it is, I don't know, like, it's like putting out a brush fire to me, like, I've always got to charge toes ready. But I'm not always squirting it, I turn the water on when I see the flames. And so like it just, you know, I go I put something out, I keep walking around, there's more, there's more carbs, more more insulin. Now stop again, it's just to me. Diabetes is like a common sense. Like you can use insulin in a common sense way. It's when you get out of balance or out of rhythm, that everything gets messed up. And then common sense doesn't seem to apply anymore. Which is why I always tell people like when you get when you start bouncing, the best thing to do is to get low, get down, get steady and start over. Because you're just you're trying to you're trying to grab sunlight otherwise, you know, yeah, like it's just it becomes it just becomes an endeavor. That doesn't make sense. Okay. Kenny, also, by the way, at the beginning of the podcast, we're gonna let people know, this is an algorithm that you downloaded offline. It didn't come through a company it has not by anybody except the people who wrote it, who, by the way, are really brilliant people, but are not the FDA. And that you're not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, or am I? We have no, not even close. Right. And that none of this is advice. We're just talking through how we do it people should you know, definitely be precaution. You know, take precautions. Keep in mind that when I started the loop with my daughter, I had Jenny to talk to by text, I was able to reach out and speak to Katie, and had I not I don't think I would have made it two days. Honestly
Kenny Fox 7:54
with it. It was it's very frustrating to start to or it could be scary depending on which way you're coming from
Scott Benner 8:01
hundred percent. Okay, so what should we talk about next? Do you think basal rates?
Kenny Fox 8:05
Well, real quick on the model only thing left is that peak, you don't really see it much. But it's mostly like supposed to represent when insulin is at strongest. I use the adult one for my daughter, not the child one. So the child one has like a 65 minute insulin peaking and the adult 175 I feel like a little over an hour's when I see insulin pulling her down the best. So I went ahead and did that. You also see that if you extend the peak out and use the adult one instead of the kid one, you'll often get larger initial bolus recommendations, just because of the way the math works. So I use both a lower insulin action time and the adult peak that's a little higher. a fun thing if you want to test or kind of play with the shorter da instant action time without or peaks. without, you know, really testing it like an open loop or with your PDM or whatever is you can when you do the build. And there's a screenshot in that loop docs on how to change the insulin action time and peak, Katie had a great suggestion, just take one of the models you're not using, for example, we don't use vs. So I took the settings for Fiesta, and I changed it. So I just changed the peak to be what I wanted it to be like matching the adult one for example. And then I change the insulin action time to you know, the five hour one or the four and a half, whatever you're going to test. That way once you build your app, you can just switch between the models, and like use them for what you want to use them for. So if you want to try a five hour interaction time, and then find it's like too much, it's too aggressive or whatever it is, then you can just go into the settings and just tap and use the different model. You don't have to go back and rebuild. Sometimes building causes a lot of stress for people. So if you can do it once then you can just kind of toggle back and forth without having to do a new build. It's helpful. I guarantee you just spoke about most of the people's understanding as well. If they're getting into that Lu customisations. Yeah.
Scott Benner 10:03
Okay. sila rates is good. Yeah, rates is the next place to go. So you just said something, you know what? Maybe it's not maybe those things strategies the next place to go. So that's a cool one. Yeah. And here's why not all of you who even download loop are going to have this setting. So in very basic terms, if someone has written a program, it's an app, right? And this app is an algorithm that takes the data from the Dexcom, and sends it to your insulin pump, and makes these insulin decisions happen around it. There are other people working on additions to the idea. So there's sort of a basic one, is that called the is that always dev? Is that the one that's being constantly being developed? Or am I speaking wrong here?
Kenny Fox 10:51
Yeah, you're right. So the master one is the one that you know, is should be the most stable, it's kind of the one people would mostly download. Typically speaking, Dev is where all the is where some of the playing, there's actually like, kind of sort of a layer beyond that, like a what they call like feature testing, someone might build a little, a little change, they want to try, and they'll build that. And then once they kind of test it, it looks good. And they kind of put it into Dev, and that's where all kind of the fun stuff, the new stuff comes together, and hangs out for a while while people use it and make sure that all those new features don't just work, but they work well together. And then eventually, that gets promoted up to master after it's,
Scott Benner 11:32
everything looks good and proven out. So the very first time someone mentioned to me about an automatic bolusing. So right now, this this, this, this master branch of loop does not does not give you boluses of insulin, it manipulates your basal rates to try to try to get you to where it wants you to be. But I was somewhere a number of months ago, and some guy says to me, yo, have you seen this Auto bolusing? You know, addition to the loop? And I said no. And he told me about it and helped me check it out. And I forget if it wasn't written by a man named Ivan, maybe Ivan. Yeah. And Ivan's was cool. And you could turn it off and turn it on. But the ways to make it work were a little too detail oriented for me. So I was able to make it work pretty well. When there were carbs present in her body, it actually had a setting for like, have this work while carbs are present, or while carbs aren't present. And I couldn't make it work without carbs. And I and I could make it work with carbs. But when I tried to leave it on constantly, overnight, her blood sugar would be like, you know, 80 and all of a sudden it would like be giving her insulin. Oh my god. That's no good. So we got away from that. When an auto brand showed up. Did Pete right it? p pizza and the main steward and developer of lupia. Right. So Pete wrote this one, I gotta tell you, I've been using it for a while now. As a matter of fact, I got a note from Kenny and Kenny, he's like, yo, you seen this developer? This, uh, Audubon springs from Pete and I was like, already got it. And so yeah, you were ahead of it. I was surprised. Sometimes I sometimes I'm out the right out in the forefront. The flag I don't even have a sword. I'm just running ahead with the flag. So I'm the first guy to get shot Kenny.
Kenny Fox 13:24
Someone has to be
Scott Benner 13:25
shoot the guy with the flag first. So. So anyway, we're using that. And I have to say, it's pretty Skippy. So Am I understanding it right that when and insulin is pending, or when the you know, the loop is telling you, we think you're going to need another half of a unit soon. It will give you 40% of that.
Kenny Fox 13:48
gas. Yeah, exactly. So like the by default. So instead of increasing basal rates, it only decrease your basal rate, it will never increase. If you need more insulin, instead of ramping up your temporary basal rate, it will give you a bolus. But then just for safety, there's a a number you can actually change it to in the code, but it just uses 40% of whatever loop thinks you need. And it gives you that as a Bolus in the next five minutes. So I'll give you another 40% of that. So it kind of its slows down. So I mean, in theory, if your insulin need was the same, for let's say half an hour, because that's how long loop kind of can can give you a basal rate for it would give you it end up giving you less insulin over that half an hour because you'd never get to 100%. You know, 40% 40% 40% just gets smaller and smaller and smaller, but never really gets to zero. But it gives you a lot more up front. So Pete did some cool math was basically saying that if you had consistent insulin needs and you're going to run a single basal rate, increased basal rate for half an hour. You're basically getting 17% of what loop thinks you need every five minutes. If you just held steady for that half hour and then but With the auto bullets, you're getting 40% of it kind of right away. So you know, within the first 10 or 15 minutes, you're still way ahead in terms of like timing of the insulin, but after about 20 minutes, you're kind of about the same amount of insulin delivered. Unless you count the fact that we might change the base rate every five minutes, in which case you go back to what I mentioned before, where it starts counting over again to redeliver. So
Scott Benner 15:22
right, so using Arden's current situation, which, by the way, please believe me, no one set up just because it works perfectly during Kenny's conversation in mind right now. Like, so I want you to know, first she comes out of gym, you know, she's lost connection, Toradex calm, while she was disconnected the loop had taken her bazel away completely, so she didn't have any insulin coming in. And she gets back over finds out, hey, my blood sugar is actually you know, 60 I want you to know that we checked that with a finger stick. So she whipped out the Contour Next One meter, she checked her blood sugar, she's definitely 60 she feels fine. You know, I didn't share everything. She said in the tax. She's like, I don't feel dizzy, I feel 100% fine. She was you know, 15 or 20 minutes before that, like in the low 70s. And most of your like, the kid just went the gym class with a 70 blood sugar. But it also is because I knew that for the time prior to that she did not have a glut of even bazel running because this 85 blood sugar that was trying to drift eventually to 60 which it did over a number of hours. Loop has been taking away bazel for a while now. So I was pretty certain that even if she kind of got a little lower, it wasn't going to be a crashing low. It's just going to kind of like float down, which is exactly what happened, which is cool. But I just want to be clear we you know, I my daughter seven units of insulin based on the hope that her CGM pop back on it was right which by the way, it did pop on and it was right she it had her at 64 the the meter header at 60. You know, I'm that makes me comfortable. You might imagine the next reading drifted down to about 60 and then come back up to the meter. Yeah, we're at 60 right now. And but here's the great thing. She's now been eating for quite some time. So just like we talked about earlier with the cereal, like where you know, she looks like she's 85 or 90, but the cereals in there. Clearly, she's going up because she's eating the cereal, but the glucose monitor has not adjusted out of it yet. And we gave her some crushing amount of insulin vino for the cereal. And it still didn't help by the way Arden's coming out of that cereal, she still at one point was 171 error straight up. And the way we stopped that was by opening the loop. And hitting her with a big bolus of like three more units, she eventually had 13 units for that cereal, which, ironically, is how much I would have given her without loop. And I don't know why I didn't just do that it was because it was because I wasn't with her and nobody was around. But we stopped that cereal spike at like 185 200. And that space, it it leveled out. And as soon as it started to come back down again, we close the loop right back up. So the loop could start taking away bazel. Because those three units were too much they were enough to stop the spike. But they weren't going to be needed moving forward. And because ardens bazel rates like 2.5 an hour, I just basically I threw in an hour's worth of bazel to stop the spike, and then took away an hour's worth of bazel. And let that three units act as the bazel.
Kenny Fox 18:25
Does that mean we do something very similar. When I see a spike like that, I just don't bother to open loop because one, I can't do that from the watch. I'm not going to bother my six year old to say Come over here. Let me have your phone. And then I'll do that. But also I know exactly what you said, which is that what I'm giving ultimately is probably too much unless it's unless I miscounted the carbs. So that's one of those situations where it's like, well, if I miscounted the carbs and I'll go in and edit or add a carb entry kind of back in the past to kind of stack on top of the meal. But But even before I can even figure that out, it's just a big bullet. So you just need to stop the arrow, give it a big bolus, let Luke cut bazel I don't care if it cuts bazel or not. And if I think I miscounted the carbs then I go back and I add carbs. If I didn't miss count the carbs and just missed Pre-Bolus or whatever Miss timing, then I just let loose cut the bazel because for the same reason, she's going to go low eventually if it doesn't, so I just let it do it. That may mean you get a couple more ticks up versus open looping. But I just I let it ride. I just give a big enough Bolus to stop it in its tracks and loop cup bazel and hopefully land safer or safe safely or safer than she would have otherwise. I've done
Scott Benner 19:37
that too. I don't it's funny, isn't it like what you just said makes complete sense they but I would have been uncomfortable giving her five units to stop a one at going up. Even Yeah, even though I think you're not wrong. I think it probably would have gone the same way. So I'll try one day like I just like having the bazel back there.
Kenny Fox 19:57
Oh, it definitely helps. Yeah, it makes it makes a difference.
Scott Benner 20:00
So, so now right now at this meal, we've put in seven units for what I'm guessing is like 80 carbs. But at ardens ratio. She has more than that she needs more than that. Now I'm going to tell you right now I've seen it work enough times, going back to Pete's Auto Bolus, those things strategy to tell you that if we don't do anything else, that Auto Bolus is not going to let her go over about 170. That that's what I know is going to happen based on what because I've watched I've let the auto Bolus do its thing a number of times, so I can watch it. And so if there's a if there's a reasonable Pre-Bolus, you're starting with a lower number like this, it's going to stop her up in there, and it'll get her back down again. But the truth is, is that as soon as Arden's blood sugar adjusts, in a way that makes me comfortable that we're seeing some sort of upward mobility, you know, movement in her blood sugar, I'm going to ask her if she finished all of her food. And if she did, then she's going to put in probably three more units on her own put in the rest. Yeah, yeah, it's so it works. And I don't know, the technical side of it is lost to me. I don't know the changes that they've made in the basic Master, you know, version of this since we first started. But when we first started this, I think I've updated the master vert, you know, loop, maybe once or twice in the last nine months, the first two goes of it that I was using, were really, night and day, not nearly as good as what this is.
Kenny Fox 21:32
Yeah, yeah, it was a big, big one was how, how loop assumed that the only pod was delivering those basal rates, how it calculated when to start and stop its delivery. That was the big thing that was off a lot of the Medtronic pumps that had been used before, they instead of they just do it differently, they start, they restart the counter, but then they start a little sooner, without getting the detail to start sooner in like the Omni pod and a couple other of the Medtronic pumps so that and I think they sort of knew about it. But didn't think it was that big of a difference in the amount of insulin delivered and how much difference that would make. But with especially with littler kids like us, it made a huge difference, it would say that she'd have a larger percentage of insulin on board then than she really did, because it thought it delivered insulin and it didn't. So that that was probably the first big change. And the second big change was a the car model how loop expected the impact of carbs the hit, I thought it would be kind of steady like all those 80 carbs, we hit evenly, evenly raise the blood sugar across those two or three hours, instead of like more accurately modeling that most food hits faster sooner, and then it kind of steadily goes down. And so those were the two like significant changes that you probably experienced. And I did too, that sort of made me start to trust the system a little bit more.
Scott Benner 22:55
So let's jump to base. All right, let me ask you, for me, you heard me break Arden's Bolus into two different decision making entries? Yeah, well, actually, it's one it's so she makes an entry. So she said whatever it was, if it was 35 units, two hours, it means it says two or however much it thinks she should have, I always tell her just choose zero and enter it, then get that Yeah, put in the next one that it bundles them all together for the next one, so that you don't have to watch insulin, so that it doesn't deliver the first few units of insulin for the two hour model. And then you have to sit and wait for the to do that. So instead you deliver nothing on the two hour or whatever the first time because you're thinking and the adult delivered on the second go round. But I do that, so that Luke has a better understanding of exactly what you just said, some of these carbs are going to hit faster, some of them are going to stay with her longer. And that used to keep the bazel from going away. And it still would if I didn't have the dosing strategy of auto Bolus on. Because I have auto Bolus on it's now taken her Basal away, but it's going to try to come back with Bolus if it needs it. Whereas if we didn't have auto Bolus on that thing I just did with a two hour and three hour would have tricked the loop into keeping the bazel on.
Kenny Fox 24:15
Yeah, so like that three hour people find what those carbs is that if you put a longer absorption time, the initial impact is less you get less insulin recommended up front, typically you'll get the most insulin recommended up front on a two hour. But on a three hour let's say it's going to last longer, and it's going to the carbs have a chance of outlasting sort of the peak Enos of the insulin and Luke knows that so that it will offer more insulin later to kind of help compensate for that. So sometimes when people find themselves kind of high at the end of a meal, it may not be because there wasn't enough insulin it may just be that you needed more insulin but you needed a little bit later and you seem to totally pay This food actually is lasting longer than I thought. And it will often recommend another Bolus once you modify that absorption time. In the past like, Oh, this one, I thought it was two hours, it's probably more like three, you change it, it'll probably give you a bolus recommendation in most cases. So but doing the like, representing the food properly is isn't is important. And it's kind of a new thing I had to learn with lupus like, I don't know, how long does something take to eat night last in your system? So
Scott Benner 25:26
no, I know. It's interesting. I just, I kind of blank I do two and three hours. And it works every once in a while. If it's something like rice, like with a Chinese food, I might do two, I might do two and four hours. But it's you know, it's not always perfect. Again, I want everyone to keep in mind that Arden's a one c does not come from an 85 line that never moves. Like to be perfectly honest, like, because she was sleeping in. And you know, it all, you know, it all went well for me this weekend. But that's not normally what her it's not normally. Yeah,
Kenny Fox 25:58
it looks like for eight hours, you know, and I think that's part of the secret sauce or magic sauce of like a control IQ or some of these other algorithms is they you just enter carbs. And you don't talk about absorption time even like open APS and other systems, they have other algorithms, they tend to handle the dynamic carb things looks like a little bit better. You don't have to worry about how long the food is necessarily. I think that's that's pretty magical. But loop is, lets you kind of see all the pieces like it helps you understand, like, biologically what's happening.
Scott Benner 26:28
I think that that's really why I'm telling people about I always talk about glycemic index and glycemic load with people like you really need to understand the impact of the food. You know, it's how, how hard is it hitting? How long is it hitting? How long could it go? You know what I mean? Like, is this a? Is this a food that can only make it two rounds? Or is it going to go the full? You know, is it gonna go the full way? Is it gonna crush you? Is it gonna come out like Conor McGregor? And just like jump through the air and, you know, jam its face into yours? Or is it gonna go a little slower and you know, start more of a seductive dance with you before it starts the pummel you.
Kenny Fox 27:02
Yeah, like juice or candy or glucose tabs like I enter those 30 minute absorptions. I mean, they're probably more like an hour, but I do it as 30. So that loop doesn't try to overcorrect those. But I mean, generally speaking, like juices, kind of a hit quick and go away fast. You don't want to put a play introduces a two hour and she's just having it just for fun. Or having grapes by themselves. And that's it. Yeah, they don't last two plus hours and loop will end up making her golo kind of later that when you know because it just thinks the carbs are gonna last longer, and they don't.
Scott Benner 27:34
So let's talk about the basal rates then. And I guess we have to talk about them in two different ways. Like, do if you're using an auto Bolus pizza? And if you're not, so if all right, I don't know, though, it's funny. I have no
Kenny Fox 27:46
basal rates to just bazel Yes,
Scott Benner 27:48
I haven't changed ardens bazel rates, since we went to the auto mode, the only thing to understand is that is is how it makes up for stuff, it doesn't make up for bazel anymore, with anymore.
Kenny Fox 28:00
So I think this is where this is where I think this is where I start with most people that I end up helping out is uh, basically you know, is like switch your body needs some and you and Jenny have talked about that multiple times. So it's like if you didn't eat, or run around or whatever, and just kind of fasted all day and watch TV or something, you should be able to stay flat. Same with overnight. And so that's kind of the goal with Basal. And so but what I've found out get into like how you track it here in a second. But what I found is most people have like one bazel rate, maybe a couple but if you start with one, you end up able to see when those other changes show up. And I came to this just because on shots, Tessa was level that the basal rate and the insulin on board calculation worked all day, every day at any time. Day or night, it would always end up zero ended up being zero when she had no insulin on board. It was everything was done. So I just came from the mindset that she only had one basal rate, but I got the pump and start playing with it. And it just would mess up the math for tracking how long the insulin was working. So I just kind of stuck with one. But I found that with other people, it works pretty well to you just pick one. And then you can kind of see if you need another one. But you start with one I guess I just heard the other day that the sugar surfing guy, Dr. Ponder, I think sort of thinks the same thing. And what I think actually changes throughout the day, which we'll get to in a minute is sensitivity not bazel but when in a world of dumb pumps, all you have for automation is basal rate changes. So I think people are in one sense programmed to think oh, it's probably bazel but really what I think doctors and people are compensating for with base rates is often sensitivity changes not bazel but yeah, so Basal is is what is supposed to be but loop sees Basal as neutral as free insulin as zero doesn't track it. It trust that you said hey, I need this much insulin. Kind of as a baseline for my body. And so it doesn't really keep track of that. So if you have bazel too high, you may end up with the insulin on board number may show that you have zero or maybe even a negative number. And really, you're falling you actually have more insulin in your body than loop is aware of. But because I trusted you, I said, Hey, you said you need to this much insulin all day. So like, that's, that's what I'm giving you. So when you do an override, and you increase those bezels, it also can kind of complicate that calculation. So yeah, I think that's kind of the main thing is, is Basal is free, so you don't really track it. So what I do to test bazel, with closely if I find the search with like the tandem system as well, is you can test bazel without testing bazel in a closed loop. And it's pretty awesome, because you can look at that insulin board calculation, you know, assuming that interaction time is reasonable, anything six is a fine place to start six hours. But if you look at the insulin on board, overnight, you should get to kind of where you want to be in that correction range we talked about, and iob needs to be pretty close to zero and flat. If I obese, not zero, meaning like just bazel is all you have running at night, and you should be flat. If it's not zero, then something's wrong with your bazel. If you're constantly have positive insulin on board, like a bigger number more than zero, then your basal is probably too light, because it loop is constantly having to add more insulin to kind of push you down into your range. And if you're especially if you're above the range, you want to be insulin on board, that's a positive number, especially at night should always mean you should be falling. But if you're not, then something's not Luke doesn't know what it should know. And then the weird one that really throws people off is the negative insulin on board when you see a negative number in there.
Negative is is a deficiency of insulin, you and Jenny have talked about that a little bit before where if you turn your let's say your level when you wake up at 80, but someone wants to be at 100. When they Bolus they could turn their pump off, they could do a zero beta rate for a little while and you'll drift up. That just means your body has less insulin than it really needs just to hold you level. And that's on purpose. So negative insulin isn't a bad thing. But when you see negative insulin on board, you should always see you know, giving some room for sensor lag, you should see either right away or pretty close. Blood Sugar readings should start going up when you see a negative insulin onboard situation. If it's not going up when it's negative, then you're not representing the insulin properly in the body and loops gonna loop thinks you need more insulin you don't. So what happens oftentimes is people are falling, the blood sugar is falling and there's negative insulin on board means their bases are too strong. So as soon as you start curving up, let's say you treat a low loops like oh, yeah, I expected you to come up not knowing that you actually gave carbs. And so it's going to try and fill in that negative because what should work in this situation I talked about where you turn your pump off before breakfast, you actually can't just turn your basal back on, otherwise, you'll still keep drifting up because your body is missing the insulin, it needs to kind of maintain that balance. So loop tracks that negative amount how much you're missing. And it's going to fill it in for you to try to level you out. And then also correct for any, you know, upward momentum. So what ends up happening is you know, getting slammed back down, because you have too high of a bazel you have negative insulin on board and you're falling, and then you correct but don't tell loop about it. And then it's Oh, good, you're coming back out. Let me give you more to level you out and it's pushing you back down again. So you end up in this cycle overnight, we're constantly trying to bring someone up and lips pushing them back down because he thinks you're missing insulin, but you're really not. And that's what that negative insulin on board will tell you. And so you have to adjust your bazel. So that insulin on board is 00 means level, negative means up and positive means down, obviously, without food. And that will tell you so you can kind of scan your day and look for points in time where loops thinks you're kind of around zero and see what the behavior is of your blood sugar. And then you can know if your basal is too high or too low, and starting with a single basal rate will help with that because the insulin runs for four or five, six hours. So feel really high basal rate to catch a nighttime rise like most kids do. And then you cut it back later the insulin that you gave is still running you know until four or five in the morning and it's you're still gonna end up with this like negative iob and falling kind of situation. And it's not the not because your your little basal rates during those eight hours are are too heavy. It's because the heavier when you ran from like 10 to midnight, was probably a little bit too strong and it's just causing an impact later on the night. That was a lot but hopefully that makes sense.
Scott Benner 34:48
No, it doesn't. And I think it's important for people to understand the idea of like sensor like the CGM is reporting behind time a little bit.
Kenny Fox 34:55
A little Yeah.
Scott Benner 34:56
So by way of an example because you spoke there for A few minutes when you began speaking, Arden's Dexcom was telling me her blood sugar was 58. But it's not because she's had food in her for 35 minutes. Right. And so I'm not panicking. It's, even if it's, it's not 58. But let me jump to the end of the story, but it was stable at you know what I mean? So I know this food is now going to do what I expected to do, right? Like trust what you know is going to happen, it's going to happen as food went indoor, it's going to start impacting her as you were speaking, the Dexcom flipped over to 66. So obviously, her blood sugar didn't magically go from 58 to 66. In five minutes, it has been trending up. Like you said, it's now gotten two reports in a row to its to the text comms algorithms now gotten two reports in a row that it believes. So now it's going to start reporting it right. Exactly. Yeah. And so as soon as that happened, it took a little bit of more time for nightscout to know it. So I can kind of see it on a on a different screen, someone watching everything while we're talking for this explanation. As soon as nightscout knew her blood sugar was 66. It put her bazel right back on again. Like immediately, and now I shouldn't be right. And now in truth, this is the moment we should be bolusing that other insulin right now, whatever more insulin I believe she needs for her food. This is the time to put it in probably sooner even. But now for I can be certain with the data. I have backed it. Now's the time. But we're gonna let it go for a little bit just to see the loop does to let let it see what loop does. Now if she jumps from 66 to 90 next time or something like that. I'm bolusing right away. Oh, yeah, maybe even a little bit extra, right. But if she just drifts a little bit here, I'm going to be interested to see because the auto bolus is going to kick in because we only use seven units for something we told her that we told the loop and the loop believes needs 10 units. What's your suspend set up? 6060
Kenny Fox 36:55
Okay, yeah, so it will it could even start giving. That's why it turned the bazel back on. Okay.
Scott Benner 36:59
Right. Yeah, I used to have it at 55. But I she was getting low too much when it was 55. Where's yours? 70.
Kenny Fox 37:05
Okay, yeah, 70. Because again, bazel and curvaceous are locked into the base of the big one. And you got to make sure you you believe that loop will drop you the other big one will be sensitivity we get to but yeah, if you're, if you're not getting down where you want it to be like a lot of people will drop their suspend lower. And I think 60 or 65 is, is fine for the most part. But I find if I'm trying to push that kind of ad overnight, and lose my overcorrect a little and then I get woken up at my 70 alarm. So I just put the suspend a little higher so that mostly so I don't get woken up as often.
Scott Benner 37:38
I believe that I listen, I believe in our basal rates really well, like Arden got up this morning. 630 she didn't eat anything until, you know, just now. Right? And so and you know, she got down to 60 with Jim. So I believe in our basal rates. Perfect. Yeah. And overnight. She's, it's gorgeous overnight.
Kenny Fox 37:59
So I think what's nice about loop and that neutrally makes us all nicer people and talking about having tools is you have an insulin board calculator, right there. So you can see in nightscout, especially, but you can see on your phone too. It's called active insulin in the loop app, as you can objectively measure your basal rates, which is nice. It's not dislike, well, I think it's fine. It's you can at any point in the day, if you see zero and she's not level, then you can kind of question without the bezels right. And I think the other fun thing that comes into play is that idea of school for a lot of kids maybe makes them go up oftentimes, like stress or something maybe work for some people. Once you I'd like to try to tell people get your basal rate, like create a baseline where like to say, like weekends and not school will not work. So you know what normal life is so that you don't have to worry about crushing someone you know, on a weekday, if you can avoid it. And then you play with overrides the override feature increases your basal rate or decreases it however you set it. And use overrides for school and work that way. You can if you feel like maybe you're not as stressed at school or at work one day, and you'll end up meeting it you can just simply cancel the override and kind of go about your day and be fine. But if you need it, then it's there to use it and you don't have to keep fiddling with your settings every Sunday night or Friday night. Things like that.
Scott Benner 39:19
Okay, let's jump ahead here. So to insulin sensitivity now, yeah, it's funny. insulin sensitivity is wildly different for so many, you know, for everybody. Right? Ardennes during the day is 59. And overnight, it's more like 64. But I've spoken to people who have their sensitivity, like you know, it's 120 and so can you. I'll tell you how I think of insulin sensitivity and then please you tell me how you think of it and you know, etc. in my mind's eye, it's just sort of the amount of insulin it takes to impact me. You know, mean like just like this, what what's gonna knock me over? Like, you know, you can give me 59 and 59 will do what it's supposed to do. But if it was at 6565, wouldn't do it 65 would be like getting shoved by a six year old. But 50 nines, you know, like me pushing against somebody who's my, my weight, like, it's, it's the, and I know this is it's not it's not clear, because I'm never clear on insulin sensitivity, like, you know, I'm sure there's a really technical way to say it, I'm sure you're gonna say it in a second. But I find a lot of people get confused by it, and no more so than the idea that a lower number is more powerful.
Kenny Fox 40:39
So yeah, that's weird,
Scott Benner 40:41
right? So a lower No, it's a very basic mathematical idea. But still a lower number is more powerful. So my daughter, five 737 pounds, insulin sensitivity 59, during the day, your daughter, you know, much less. You know, wait, I would imagine
Kenny Fox 40:58
what's hers that? So she's her sensitivity during the day is about 200. And I would probably say realistically, it's probably about 225 250. So it's probably more sensitive. But I've looped dialed it down just a hair, because to make it behave a little more the way I'd like I use that as kind of a, an aggressiveness number to some degree to make loopback a little bit faster than maybe it would normally without causing so much of a low. Yeah, so sensitivity is yes, how much insulin it takes to move you a certain amount of points, your your blood sugars or how much insulin it takes to move you. So yeah, I think it's, it's, that's a good way to look at it.
Scott Benner 41:40
So how so I guess the next question is, and I want to talk about overrides more specifically, but the next question is this. Once I found we had Arden's settings close in loop, then I began to adjust them sort of like an equalizer on a 1991 rack system. Okay. Like I'm like, I don't know what treble point oh, nine is, but what happens if I push it up a little bit? Yeah. Right. Or what happens if I push this down a little bit like that? I, once I was close, then I could start fine tuning without knowledge, then I could start going correction range. Let me try 87 to 85, whoo, that was better. You know, you know, bazeley I wonder what 2.3 does versus 2.2. That kind of stuff. But starting out. You cannot adjust loop to ear? Did you know what I mean? Like it's just you have to start somewhere near? Near good. Somewhere near good. Right. And so my question is, do you know if I came to you today, and I was just like, guy on the street and I say, Kenny, hey, I really want this to work for my daughter. Do you know how to help somebody set this up? Like do you know how to go from scratch? Quick kidding. Add today, the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. You want to check it out. It's at dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. type that into your browser right now. If you're you know not good at typing, click on the link in your show notes. It's right there in your podcast player. There's notes in your podcast player, just find them and click last thing you could do is go to Juicebox podcast.com and click from there. All of these options are viable ways to get to the sponsors. While you're there, check out the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, go to Contour Next one.com there's a little button at the top, you can find out if you're eligible for an absolutely free meter. This meter is by far the most accurate one that my daughter has ever used in her entire time with Type One Diabetes. Lastly, if you'd like to see some lovely people doing wonderful things for people living with Type One Diabetes, check out touched by type one.org I'm doing you a favor. I'm shortening up all the ads today. You can do me a favor and click on the links dexcom.com forward slash juicebox Contour Next one.com touched by type one.org that's all I'm asking today. No big sell. Just go check them out. Look I'm done before the music it's like you owe me almost tears there's so much time left it's kind of weird, right? touched by type one.org helps people living with Type One Diabetes amazing organization. Contour Next One best blood glucose meter I've ever seen. Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor game changing technology for Type One Diabetes there. I said I was going to tell you more about it. Weird. Do you know how to help somebody set this up? Like do you know how to go? Yeah Rach
Kenny Fox 44:44
for Yeah, so it took a while a sensitivity was a weird one to wrap my head around to so the my process is look at basal rate, subtract iob. I go back to someone's graph if they've been running it for a little while. Helps I find closed loop is helpful, more helpful than an open Id be a little harder to see it on normal graph, but you could still probably get close. But I like to find how the neg makes sure that negative means up and positive means down and that they're kind of at their range, where they're supposed to be especially overnight. And then we just try to find what I call like that one magic bazel rate. And we pick one that works mostly overnight is easiest way to observe it, run that one all day. And then make adjustments from there we carb ratios and sensitivity sensitivity. I mean, it's so hard to like, really, I'm not going to stop my six year old and doing a sensitivity test that's even longer than a bazel test. So I once we get overnight solid iob, zero means flat, everything's dialed in, I just tell people, hey, turn your sensitivity more aggressive to a stronger a lower number, until you start to see that line that's fairly flat for you start to wiggle start to go up and down and go above your the range you set. And below that range, you set it to make sure it also goes below but doesn't go below, then it's um, you might still not have a strong enough bazel. But basically turn the sensitivity too strong to where you can see that it's obviously too strong and then kind of back it off a little bit. And that's kind of what I use for daytime ISF because I find that people are more sensitive during the day than they are at night. So you find what works overnight, make it too strong and back it off a notch. And the reason why people are more sensitive during the day I think is because growth hormones exists kind of overnight for everybody, me included, were growth hormones, I was reading some studies on this trying to figure out why this rise at night happens for my daughter that just kills me. So what I said earlier is that no matter how much I bolus her during those rises is IRB of zero was still zero. So the interaction time worked well. That seemed to indicate to me that she actually only had one bazel rate or not, it's crazy, intense rise period. So what I found is growth hormones don't make you go up necessarily, but they do make you more resistant sensitivity. But that means something else must also be pushing you up, which I've kind of found a correlation between how close dinner is to sleep or how heavy dinner is to sleep. And so it's probably just this weird digestion process you have when you're sleeping, that stretches out how long the carbs last, and the carbs kind of have a more of an impact because all these growth hormones released during your REM sleep cycles during the early hours of sleep. And so you have more growth hormone in your system at the beginning. So there's just more resistance there. So the only way to really model that and loop is to make the sensitivity, lower a lower number in those first hours of sleep. And then I sort of like ladder it softer and softer or a higher number as the night goes on to sort of mimic the idea that there'll be less growth hormone in the body. And so I might start with like a 200 during the day, and go all the way down to like an 80, which is less than half of what her sensitivity is, you know what, like nine or 10 o'clock when I know she's gonna be asleep, and then ratchet it back up. So you know, 115 131 6180 and then when she wakes up, it's I usually have around 200 or so. So and I found that to be helpful and to help Luke kind of semi automate and for some people automate those nighttime rises, but it's really not a bazel change as much as we're programmed to think, Oh, that's a rise, I need to get more bazel if you use increase bazel there instead of sensitivity, you may find that negative iob and falling kind of at three or four or 5am instead of just making a loop more aggressive because that sensitivity is really only comes into play when you're out of range. Do you that's kind of the cool part about sensitivity is if you're in your range at you know nine o'clock at night, and she's asleep, and great loop doesn't do anything. So if I made the ISF too strong, it's not a big deal. She's in range. But as soon as she's out of range and loop kicks in, you know, puts the pedal to the metal a little bit more. It could be an x faster.
Scott Benner 49:05
Yeah, it could it could be but oftentimes it's not there in those first hours. So it's, it's, as you mentioned, like how much insulin has taken knock you over. So it's but I think it varies throughout the night more than the day. But that's kind of how I approach sensitivity. It's interesting that just because your child is younger and growing, you're having the exact opposite experience night today than we are. Get like Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, when Arden's asleep, she just doesn't need. She needs less sensitivity, not by a lot, by the way, like listen to what you're doing, you're going from like, you know, in the hundreds to double digits and you're bounced around, we're really only moving between, like, you know, 59 and 65. Like it's not it's a pretty
Kenny Fox 49:48
tight tolerance. But how many basal rates Do you have during the day?
Scott Benner 49:51
Just one,
Kenny Fox 49:52
just one. Okay. Yeah, yeah, one during the day one at night. Yeah, I've seen that. If someone's not really going through a growth period I've seen unit with me too. So I wore a sensor for a few weeks. And I sort of like helped prove this theory out by, you know, all for the case of science, having a lot of ice cream before I went to bed, and I could see my blood sugar rise and sort of stay up and kind of in waves like kind of matching my sleep cycles, kind of stay up a little bit longer and take longer to come back down then if I didn't eat something right before I went to sleep, so I was able to sort of mimic the same process as my daughter, but unless eXtreme Scale one because I'm not type one and two. I'm not growing like you said the volume of growth hormone in my body is probably much less than someone who's actually growing. So the sensitivity will be different.
Scott Benner 50:39
We're growing just not in the same way.
Kenny Fox 50:40
So yeah, exactly. When you're having ice cream at you know, eating like a whole bunch of ice cream at 10 o'clock at night. That's Yeah, we're definitely growing that stuff not to be questioned, I guess
Scott Benner 50:49
I am pretty certain that I'll be wearing a Dexcom Pro in a little while.
Kenny Fox 50:55
So that I well, then you should for science, eat something really yummy before bed and see how that happens. I will be
Scott Benner 51:00
Yeah, I'm gonna be wearing the same thing. Like I just I was talking to Rick Doubleday the other day. And I said to him, when we got done, I was like, I'd love to wear a sensor for a while if I could, you know, to really understand, you know, better what I'm looking at. And
Kenny Fox 51:14
so I think Neil is fun is did this and you should eat something similar to what Arden does when she eats it. And you'll see the absorption time play out in both of you. Yeah, it'll look a little different. But you'll see the food stop at kind of the same time.
Scott Benner 51:28
That's exactly the stuff I'm excited to look at.
Kenny Fox 51:31
It's amazing. Yeah, we ate uh, you know, again, for science ate a breakfast sandwich from McDonald's. And it lasted a long time on those chicken ones. And, yeah, you could see kind of the initial carbs. And you can kind of see the sustained fat and protein in both of us. And actually, in one of those cases where we tried it, her blood sugar ended up way better than mine, on average, so. But it's fun. I do think
Scott Benner 51:53
there's many times where I'm doing a better job for art, and then my body's doing for me. Yeah, so interesting enough for art. And by the way, is her sensor went to 75. And then the next adjustment was only to 79. But it did just Bolus 1.15 units a little while ago, then the 79 jumped to 94, diagonal up
Kenny Fox 52:18
high. So you're above suspend, and it's like, Hey, I know you need more for the carb ratio. So it gave it to you. And it popped
Scott Benner 52:23
on like, so I'm gonna see if I can raise her with a text. If I can, I'm not gonna bother. But if she answers this text,
Kenny Fox 52:31
I mean, just take the recommended bullet, because all you're gonna ask her to do
Scott Benner 52:34
it, ask her if there's any insulin that's being recommended right now.
Kenny Fox 52:37
And you can actually you can try it hover over the loot pill with your mouse. And you can see at the very end of that little hover box that pops up, it'll tell you if there's a recommended bolus.
Scott Benner 52:48
Well, so the little loop thing I have right now says, See, I don't even understand this, the loop has put your
Kenny Fox 52:56
mouse over that box and you should see another box pop up.
Scott Benner 52:59
I only have it on my phone,
Kenny Fox 53:00
I do with my Okay, then tap this tap on the loop pill and you shouldn't need so you can refresh that page if it doesn't pop up right away. But p tap on the thing that has the loop put the number in the squiggly line, you shouldn't get a little hover box to pop up.
I don't know I said you need somebody to refresh it.
Scott Benner 53:18
It's my fingers too fat.
Kenny Fox 53:20
That can happen to a lot of pills. They're crammed together. little boxes just says loop device loop. You should see something like on the hover it'll tell you how long ago the Temp Basal that it's currently running insulin on board carbs on board. Predicted minimum and maximum.
Scott Benner 53:36
Let me go over to my iPad. Let me see if I can make that work. Yeah. Yes.
Kenny Fox 53:51
So bring it up on your computer and you can look at it and it's easier
Scott Benner 53:54
to figure out how to do that. I got I don't Yeah, I don't even remember how to bring it up on my
Kenny Fox 53:58
computer. I'm remember her sight. Are you kidding me?
Scott Benner 54:01
Wait, isn't it at the play here it is.
Kenny Fox 54:03
Roku app.com
Scott Benner 54:14
typing, which is always the best thing to do on a podcast. Yeah, people love it. And really, they're huge fans. Oh, here she is. She said what? Okay, so I'm going to ask her is the loop recommending any 1.8 do it. There you go. There we go.
Kenny Fox 54:48
Now it takes all of it instead of auto Bolus would just give 40% of that right. And then again,
Scott Benner 54:53
which it would likely do again the next time the CGM turned over correct. Yep. So Yeah, there you go. So when, listen, I you know, we're not going to be recording when this is all said and done. I'll remember what happened. I'll tuck in at the end. But look at what happened like Arden's a Urban's blood sugar has been right around at all morning five or six hours that she has been awake. She went to lunch, or she went to the gym, her blood sugar went to 60 she just ate a bagel grapes, puzzles, a chocolate chip cookie, popcorn. And a What did I say? tangerine? Something like
Unknown Speaker 55:32
that. Clementine. Yeah, time. Right.
Scott Benner 55:34
And she ate that stuff. It's 1255. Right now here. And that conversation began. Back here.
Unknown Speaker 55:46
Noon.
Scott Benner 55:48
Yeah, two minutes after 12. So it's, it's, it's, it's almost an hour later. And we have gracefully gone from 60 to 95. And even if she makes it to 150, which I don't think she's going to normally she wouldn't be coming out of a low, we would have Pre-Bolus sooner, and this wouldn't be happening like this even. But this is astonishing for the situation. You know, but if you don't understand how this thing works, none of that's gonna matter. Like it? Yeah, for sure. It's damn near impossible. And so, but I also think that for those of you who aren't considering any kind of closed loop system, whether it be loop or tandem or horizon, when on the PI puts it out, or you know, whatever else. Understanding what Kenny and I are talking about here today will help you make better informed decisions even without a an algorithm, I think, because just watching and you heard Kenny allude to it earlier, just staring for a little bit and watching what happens is such a teaching thing. And when I watch Lupe, take bazel away, give bazel back make a small bump with now with the the automatic bolus or before the automatic bolus when it would kind of ratchet up the bazel. It was fascinating to watch loop take bazel from like 2.5 and make it seven but only for like eight minutes and then bring it back again. And like I was like, Oh my gosh, this is really I'm learning a lot from watching that, you know,
Kenny Fox 57:11
yeah. And like I said, we had slightly better numbers in terms of standard deviation and a one C and time and range. When we were on shots, because of the same principles that once I figured out how to apply it to loop. Yeah, it'll just make your life easier. Being able to track insulin on board is really kind of magical in terms of figuring out your basal rate and just knowing when, when the drop stops, you just got to know and how much to correct for and, and all that it's just it's really empowering or most people are just kind of, again, being dynamic about how you talk about in with juicebox. But like at the same time, if you kind of know when it's going to stop, you can be aggressive and be more aggressive because you know how much insulin is working? And if you overdid it, you know how much to correct for a lot more precision in that approach.
Scott Benner 57:56
I think that loop is going to represent, you know, I shouldn't even say look, I think that algorithms in general, but for everybody, but for us specifically, I think it's going to represent a mid fives a one C. Just base I think so what I've seen and what I know.
Kenny Fox 58:13
Yeah, as I tell people like if they're in the sevens now like if you can just get the settings right and moderately Pre-Bolus then, and don't learn not to overcorrect, you'll get sixes pretty easily it shouldn't be that that complicated. And that's what I'm seeing with some of these people, once we figure out especially like, people that have their kids and they get really stressed at school and just need a lot more insulin these overrides work super well for that. And then, and then they ended up having, you know, like I Oh, there's one person I'm working with now that was in kind of a seven range and is now looking trending toward kind of a 6.2. You know, and and they just have even before that before their stats changed just by making some of the changes I talked about. They just have more, it's more predictable. And now it's not as crazy, you know, at least when they're high kind of know why it happened. So. So that's pretty great.
Scott Benner 58:59
It's amazing. Last thing I want to bother you about is overrides. And I don't know that I think about them correctly. So let me just tell you how I think about them. And you correct me if I'm wrong? Sure. I, I know I don't understand exactly what they do. But when I said an override for art and whether it's a decrease like you know, instead of it 100% of, you know settings, I go to 80% of settings or 50%. That's a decrease in insulin power. Or vice versa. If you go to 120 It's a 20% increase, like that kind of thing. Is it just an across the board increase? Is it literally like the correction range stays the same? The suspend threshold stays the same. But this is an increase of bazel rate. insulin sensitivity is the heart rate show carbery show is that in
Kenny Fox 59:49
Yeah, yeah. And the kind of the tricky thing about using them is that once you turn one on any like entries like carbon trees in that time have that Change applied to them. So if you used too strong of one, and entered carbs or a low one, some people get a little too extreme and they go, Oh, they're falling. So I turn an override on, which is not the time each and an override on but they'll do like a 20% or something really small and then enter like lunch. Well, then it thinks that lunch needs 20% of the insulin, your carb ratio, like 80%, less than what you'd need. And so there's no way to really go back and fix that. So you, you'd have to basically know that that happened and add 80% more carbs to that carb entry to get something equivalent. That's a tricky part. But yeah, an override changes everything, which is good and bad. I think there's a lot of cases where you only want to change one or two things, but because bazel and insulin on board, that bazel calculation is so important. I try to tell people that the override is should only be used in cases when bazel actually changed. Otherwise, you end up throwing off the math if you use like if you're stuck high and you're frustrated, and you use a 200% override 100% more than normal, you're doubling everything. Later on, you're probably gonna end up loops gonna think you're gonna land and you're not because you actually have more insulin in your body than you told it because all of a sudden, you told that your basal rate doubled. Yeah. And so yeah, you end up with a problem where lube would have landed you if the math had been right, but you won't, because you lied to it for a little while. So
Scott Benner 1:01:24
the only time the only time I really use it is sleeping it. So like I said, Arden's like 1.4 overnight cheese 2.5 during the day, that 2.5 kicks in at 7am. So usually she's drifting, I have Arden pretty consistently drifting to 70, when she wakes up in the morning for school at seven. So if I set an override at 6am, I set it about 50. So about 50% of power, this, that's enough to get in front of the drift, so she doesn't drift to 70. And so that when 7am comes, and the insulin sensitivity goes from 64 to 59. And more importantly, I think in that situation, that bazel bazel jump up, it keeps the bazel back at overnight,
Kenny Fox 1:02:06
and yeah, 50 percents about what your nighttime is compared to your daytime, right.
Scott Benner 1:02:09
And that's and that's how I do it. Now, the longer she sleeps, the less she needs. So if she's just going to sleep till nine o'clock that works, but if at nine o'clock, she's still sleeping, it maybe has to go to 40 or 30. Like you really, because at that point really consider what's happening. She has not had food, and she's not having any like body impacts on her blood sugar. Now for sometimes eight 910 a dozen hours like in a really sleeping in situation. You keep taking it away and taking away. The key is that when you wake up, it's got to go right back on. And when you Bolus, like you said before, it's not just for the carbs. It's not it's and it's not unique to Pre-Bolus still, you're not just Pre-Bolus for the carbs. You are you're also have to replace all that deficit that comes behind because basically, it's a paper tiger at that point, right? Yeah. Like any food you take in is just going to overwhelm you because there's just no insulin happening in your body. That was just enough insulin to basically keep, you know, like, like a, you know, a corpse from blood sugar going low. It's just not a living person. Right then nothing's happening inside of her in this scenario.
Kenny Fox 1:03:18
Is Arden have a drop in the morning before she wakes up? And then like a rise after she wakes up? Typically? No, not at all.
Scott Benner 1:03:25
Okay, that's good. You see that sometimes my settings take care of all of that. Okay, yeah, um, it used to be before loop. She'd wake up in the morning at seven. When her Basal went up with Bolus in the morning with Bolus, the rise.
Kenny Fox 1:03:40
Like she does have that rise. Yeah, she
Scott Benner 1:03:42
has it but we don't see it any longer. It doesn't actually happen. Because we're basically constantly like I said, you know, we've been talking for a while, like I said a long time ago, because I'm thinking about now as before, not now for later. And yeah. So I'm, I'm a head of that I Pre-Bolus. spikes I Pre-Bolus rises, if you've heard me talk about, you know, like, extended bonuses. People talk about extended Bolus is one way the way I talk about them is Pre-Bolus in the food, and then Pre-Bolus thing, the spike. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just always. It's a time travel movie, you know, what's going to happen in the future. You're just you're just always bettan you know, on the right team to win because you've got the almanac, and you know, who's gonna win? So
Kenny Fox 1:04:25
yeah, so when I use overrides, it's really like bazel changes. So what what's kind of fun with overrides if you have your basals dialed in, like I said, using the IP math, and typically people have the same bazel overnight as during the day but not always. If it's good, then what should happen with overrides and a lot of people don't experience when their settings especially bazel is not right. Is this doesn't work but if you can look overnight, and my daughter typically runs around 80 to 90 overnight, and if for some reason she's not if she's hovering around 100 or Hundred and 15 with some positive insulin on board, that means that her, her insulin needs have shifted maybe just for the day maybe because she's sick, I don't know. And I'll just run an override of about 1020 30% increase. So 120 or something like that. And then I'll run it. And, and I'll leave it on for breakfast and breakfast is sort of like the maker break like was this for reals or is just temporary. And if she doesn't go low from an increased override at breakfast, then I run that override all day long until I see her until I see that negative iob and blood sugar falling sort of situation again, where things sort of settled back at over. So I just roll over out of bed, look at nightscout see where she was at. If I get woken up with a 120 or 130 alarm overnight, and Luke can't keep her under that number, then I know her insulin needs have gone up a significant amount like she's probably sick. So she probably needs like a 130 or 140 or more to and then I just run that all day long. Again, checking it with breakfast. And and that's how we kind of get mostly normal days like I get ahead of it, I see the increase happen overnight, that shift sort of happens in that two to 4am timeframe, most of the time. And I just put an override on the compensate because her basal needs went up, but I don't think it's going to stick around for the next few weeks. And it usually lasts a day or two, sometimes a week if she's actually sick. But I always use that overnight as a measure to say how much more or less does she need. And use an override and I don't really mess with my base settings often because they usually work occasionally, if you get up to like 150% override, because she's sick. Sometimes the carb ratio has to be weakened a little bit because doesn't scale up quite perfectly. But I'd say 9090 plus percent of the time, it's just a 1020 30% override for the day, and then the day looks normal again. And then I watched the numbers overnight and wait for it to shift again. And then I cancel it and then we go back to normal settings. And it's it's really kind of magical to be able to see the patterns. Once you get some consistency. You can see those patterns coming and get ahead of them. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:07:03
well, listen, I can't tell you how thrilled I am that you found the podcast and and reached out to me because I think that I listened, I edit these shows, obviously. And then I listened to them for sound. So I end up hearing them two or three times. But I'm gonna listen to this one dozen times, because this was a terrific conversation. I just I can't thank you enough. And can I can I ask you, right here, start thinking about how we could take a person who knows nothing about any of this? How do you explain this to them? Like that's the thing. That's next, right? Because you and I are involved. You know, and everyone listening, you know, is involved with their kids, hopefully, but everyone wants to not be and they don't want to burden their children with teaching them all of this like is, is an algorithm based insulin pump ever going to be? You know, I guess skinned in an app where you don't need to understand what's happening behind the pretty picture on the front. Like I hope so.
Kenny Fox 1:08:03
I think the hard part right now is the settings have to be like that's why I think control IQ seems to be working so well compared to like a Medtronic where it's trying to figure out your settings. But then control IQ just trust your settings. So you have to if you can get it close, then you'll get good results. Just like loop if you can get it close, you'll get safe and good results. But I think the real trick will be how can could that Medtronic idea of just figuring it out for you ever work? I'd love it. I'd love for that to be true.
Scott Benner 1:08:30
Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, I'm gonna ask you to hold on for one second. I'm a thank you first and, and I'm gonna ask you because I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm not gonna let anybody hear the answer to I just like the screw with the episodes. So. Alright, guys, Kenny's done, but I'm not done with Kenny. I think it's pretty fair to say that Kenny will be back on the podcast at some point. Kenny could be Jenny loopy. loopy Jenny. Kenny could be loopy Jenny. Kenny Jenny. Kenny loopy Jenny Jenny loopy Kenny. Kenny Jenny late. I'll work on it let you know. huge thank you to Dexcom the Contour Next One blood glucose meter and touched by type one. Please go to touch by type one.org dexcom.com forward slash juicebox or Contour Next one.com. To find out more about the sponsors. Continued gratitude to the community that has put so much time and effort into the DIY loop. Talk to you again soon.
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#312 Fox in the Loop House - Part 1
Kenny Fox talks Loop Management
Kenny and Scott talk about DIY Loop and type 1 diabetes.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everybody, welcome to Episode 312 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's show is part one of a two parter with Kenny Fox. Now Kenny's name might not ring in your head like, oh, Kenny Fox says that like Brad Pitt, but for diabetes? Well, no. But what Kenny is, is the data of a little girl who has type one diabetes, who really dug in to the DIY loop. And he understands it in a way that I find it inspirational. Now, Kenny and I are going to walk step by step through every setting in the loop, talk about it and kind of a big picture way. If you're not into a do it yourself algorithm for insulin pumping, I get that you don't need to be I'm not telling you to be. What I am saying is listen to the episode anyway. Because it's just another way of thinking about how insulin works. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. The Contour Next One blood glucose meter, and touched by type one, you can always go to touch by type one.org Contour Next one.com or dexcom.com, forward slash juicebox. To find out more about the advertisers. There'll be a little more about them later in the show. But for now, I think we should get to it. We're going to start right at the top by saying nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. And today. Also remember that what we're talking about is an algorithm that Kenny and I downloaded from the internet. It doesn't belong to a company, you just completely do it yourself. It has not passed through the FDA. So understand that while we're talking. Now that aside, using the algorithm. And watching the data come back from it and seeing how it reacts will absolutely supercharge your understanding of how insulin is working in your body. I'm telling you to watch a an app a computer algorithm decide about insulin. It just elevates your understanding. At least it did for me. It's taken me a while to figure looping out and I'm probably not all the way there. But I'm getting closer. And I'm going to keep having these conversations with people who are ahead of me until we're all at the same level together. Luckily, I found Kenny and Kenny understands looping. And that's why this episode is called Fox in the loop house. Part One.
Kenny Fox 2:50
My name is Kenny and I am into computers and technology and helping people. My daughter Tessa was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes last year, about a year ago. I have four kids ages 865 and two and Tessa is the number two child she is six years old. Okay,
Scott Benner 3:11
that's a six. She's had type one for a year when she's diagnosed, how soon until you discover there's a do it yourself algorithm that helps insulin pumps talk to glucose monitors.
Kenny Fox 3:27
Well, it was kind of in the emergency room. So is when we went in for diagnosis. I spent a couple hours here there about four hours I spent the first part of it just googling and trying to figure out what diabetes was if there's any kind of cure what would work. Then I quickly realized there was no option there. So then started searching for diabetes technology and kind of found Dexcom found your podcast has mentioned somewhere in there I vaguely remember. And then I found looping and Katie's post about fine tuning settings. And that sort of oriented me to what the mechanics kind of involved might be with insulin and the body and Bazell testing and all that kind of stuff. How long after
Scott Benner 4:15
test this diagnosis? Did you end up with a CGM and a pump?
Kenny Fox 4:21
We got one, about three weeks into diagnosis probably would have been another week earlier if I had just said Yes, right away. But instead I was like, Well, how much does it cost? And you can never find out those answers until you just say well give me the prescription and we'll see how much the bill is. So yeah, I've only just just just put it on there. And then I'll, when they call me and tell him how much it is we'll figure it out. But by the time I got the call back to tell me how much it was and all that I started listening to your podcast and it was like, Well, obviously I'm doing this so just send it to me. So yeah, so we got that about three weeks in. We started pumping about six months. in I think it was like June ish to the month of June pumping with an omni pod. I think we were probably only the first few people to ask for an omni pod with our particular Kaiser, Southern California. Group and then I was just waiting for the right link because only reason we didn't start looping right away. So I got it later on July 3, I think I started and we started looping.
Scott Benner 5:22
So tell me, you said you think you're one of the only ones you mean, like in the practice, a lot of people didn't use on the pods.
Kenny Fox 5:27
Yeah, it wasn't typically approved pump get this extra exception process to go through and actually talk to Syrah and she she's the one that I think really pushed it to finally make it like they had a known process for how to get an omni pod very easily. I just asked for rather than having to fill out a bunch of extra paperwork or something.
Scott Benner 5:45
So it was an insurance thing more than
Kenny Fox 5:47
Yeah, yeah. And then our endo are. We see the nurse practitioner most of the time, she's like, wide just haven't really helped a lot of people with the Omni pod. So it's kind of up to you. Okay.
Scott Benner 5:58
We're not gonna help you. Little did you know, back then they weren't gonna help you anyway, you were just
Kenny Fox 6:01
Yeah, right.
Scott Benner 6:04
So, okay, so you're pumping chest for a month, and then you get your Reilly link, and you're off to the races with loop. How long ago was that?
Kenny Fox 6:15
Um, yeah, so it was July and it's March now.
Scott Benner 6:20
So hold on August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, that you're saying?
Kenny Fox 6:26
Yeah, the infamous got math.
Scott Benner 6:28
All right. Gosh, it's so easy. If you have enough fingers. It's very simple. So So eight months, so you've been doing it less time than I have? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Ah, but you're way better at it than I am, aren't you?
Kenny Fox 6:40
I don't know. Probably. Yeah.
Scott Benner 6:42
Oh, look at you. Right. That's nice. I'm so accustomed to discussing things with women. And they're, they're much more demure. Kenny like you were really like, Yeah, probably am, buddy. But, but but ladies are always sort of like, I don't know, like, it's, um, there's a whole research on that, that we're not going to get into now. But anyway, women, they say you should stick up for yourselves at your jobs more because men will stick up for themselves, even if they don't believe in themselves, even if we're wrong, right. Whereas women who do believe in themselves sometimes won't. So stick up for yourself, just like Kenny did. Now let's find out if he can back it up. To Kenny, you and I have messaged a number of times, which I feel like is a bit of an understatement. More than more than a number of times. Have we actually spoken voice to voice once?
Kenny Fox 7:27
We did once when you were heading out to a conference, I want to make sure our didn't.
Scott Benner 7:31
Yes,
Kenny Fox 7:32
leave setup was all solid. Alright, so Okay.
Scott Benner 7:35
So here's what so has your path gone through the same iterations of this software that mine has pretty much right?
Kenny Fox 7:42
Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So,
Scott Benner 7:45
up until now, you've heard on the podcast, Katie came on, she described what looping was, I think I had a conversation with Jenny, somewhere along the way, I've had a meltdown conversation with somebody where I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. Now, please keep in mind for everyone listening, that I just can't record every day as I'm learning something. And I really, I do want to say this here. Because sometimes these episodes get listened to, you know, not in the order, I hope they get listened to. But when you began listening to this podcast five years ago, if you did, I already had a plan in place. Like I started, you know, the podcast, when I already solidly knew what I was doing. When we decided to try any kind of, you know, an algorithm based loop. I didn't know what I was doing. And so I've been learning it. And you guys have been really cool about it. Because in the beginning, when I said, we're gonna try this loop thing, people just inundated me with, like, explained to me how to do it. I was like, I don't know how to do it. I can't explain to you, I, what I found was they were accustomed to me knowing the answer. And I was accustomed to knowing the answer sometimes, or most of the times as well. And so I've been purposefully spreading out these episodes, to give me time to learn in between them so that I'm not saying I don't know, for two years, you know what I mean? And then suddenly, no, one day, so it's a weird thing. It's not exactly a documentary of us figuring out Luke that you're listening to but so I'm a little further along. Now. I'd actually say I'm a lot more further along now than I was in the last episode, which, while you would have heard it a few weeks ago, if you're listening now, in you know, March, it was recorded six months before that. So I'm a little ahead of last time any of you heard me talk about it? I'm going to start by saying that when the Omni pod horizon comes out, we're going to try it. If I don't like the on the hot, the on the pot horizon algorithm, I'm going to try the tide pool algorithm when it comes out. And I'm going to, I'm going to devour all of it. Because this Do It Yourself experience has cemented in my mind that an algorithm based pump matched with a Dexcom transmitter and glucose monitor sensor is it's better at enough than I was with less work and the things it's not good at. I'm learning how to stop it from not being good at that. Do you feel more comfortable than that? If you describe how you use it, how do you how do you feel about it?
Kenny Fox 10:25
I think I think I would try some of the newer ones too. But I'm, I'm pretty comfortable with it as it is, it's probably has some pros beyond what we were doing. Before that we had actually better numbers, I guess, on shots, and maybe even a little bit on the PDM. Then when we started doing loop, but what kind of the goal was to make this a little bit less mentally taxing, but also allow me to let her go to school and be with grandma and grandpa or whoever, without worrying as much. So that's helped a lot to you. But then what I didn't expect the reason why I would stick with some kind of system. But why I really like loop other than the obvious like I can see everything that's happening in real time, which no other system at the moment has through nightscout. That's a big deal and watching how school goes, especially because she's only six. It's also like the overrides the things that allow us to manage and make Sick Day management easier when you really have sick days that we'd like with higher beegees until after we started loop. And our settings are fairly dialed in by the time sickness showed up this winter fall and just using the overrides intelligently, as made our sick days look a lot like our regular days, probably like 90% of the time. So to me just a lot easier. So I wouldn't, I would want a system that would do that. But I could, knowing what I know now I could probably use any system and kind of mess with profiles and things of that nature to get a similar effect. Yeah,
Scott Benner 11:57
I'm starting to feel that way through. Let's let me clear up a couple things just to be sure. Is your daughter still honeymooning?
Kenny Fox 12:03
No. So we had honeymooning on and off for probably after the three or four months, and I and I kind of found a little pattern with that, too. Like whenever honeymooning was happening, it would sort of pull her blood sugar down, but you'd mostly notice it. When she was eating, she'd just fall immediately. And he like another hundred grams of carbs just to bring her up very slowly. And I think I read an article somewhere that was talking about how the body's like neutral state is 72, sort of like where you wouldn't see any insulin or glucagon in the bloodstream. And so after I read that the next time she had a big honeymoon spell lasted almost a week, where she was just on her basal insulin, but no, nothing no Bolus thing unless something out of control was, she would just fall rapidly and then level out right around those 17 depending on how accurate the sensor was at the time. And if I just didn't treat it and just waited, she would like level out and hang out down there. She'd do it at night, you know, my alarms would be going off because she'd be showing 6869 like a blood test. And she's in the 70s I just finally had to turn my alarm down to like 65 or something after I knew the sensor was accurate. And she just cruise down there all night. And if I tried to give her honey or something to treat, she just come right back down within 1520 minutes. So we had a few honeymoon periods. And I haven't seen any for a good six months or so. It's interesting. So you saw stability to lower number during the honeymoon. And if you tried to put in carbs, you think her body was pushing it back down again? Yeah, because we had we had bazel locked in probably a week after we had probably less than a week after we had the Dexcom. We were close. So we had to back off just a hair on the lantis. But and we're having pretty stable nights. But yeah, the what I so I just trusted that the bezel was right. And if I just like waited, as after I read this article, it just Yeah, she just cruised kind of flat around the 70s it was pretty amazing to watch because you could see like a minus 15 or 10 point drops, and all of a sudden she just stopped and stay there. So it was it was pretty, a little scary at first but but once I saw it, we just wrote that whole week out like that I'd let her come down and didn't panic until she hit 60 or something like that.
Scott Benner 14:11
Nice. Arden had an illness recently that was one of those that you couldn't really see on her. You know what I mean? Like there was no huge change in how she was or how she felt or anything like that. But her blood sugar's were lower constantly for like two weeks like she didn't need the we went through about four or five days where bolusing for food was like a crapshoot, like do Is she gonna need this, how much of it like that kind of thing. And then she, you know, whatever was going on, it stopped and we're back in it. But more importantly to our conversation here. An experience just yesterday that I'm going to start by telling you about and then if it's up if it's okay with you, I'd like to walk through the settings of the loop loop algorithm and talk about each one of the settings with you and how you think about them. Sure. Cool. So the thing that happened yeah. Yesterday right? So Arden poor Arden Arden had her period. This whole this whole podcast. She's gonna listen back. Like, are you kidding me? Arden has her period right? And it got a little heavy. And so I over the weekend. Now I flew Friday morning to Atlanta to give a talk. Which by the way went great and thank you Atlanta. That was really wonderful. I got to meet Jenny in person for the very first time. And got down there Friday. Went to bed, got up, get my talk came home. Get up Sunday morning. My wife and I are going to drive two and a half hours to see my son play in his second start as a college baseball player. Now, excuse me his third start that we were going that that we were going to see it for the second time because Saturday I didn't go I was obviously in Atlanta and he was playing in Washington. So while I was speaking to a large group of people, my son got his first ever collegiate hit playing baseball, which was really interesting because my wife texted me something. I think it had a curse in it too. So I can't read it to you. But he got a double for his first hit. I read it and then got a little like weepy in front of people. for a split second, I had to pull myself down, which is very interesting. Anyway, I, you know, I finished my talk up, I got on a train, I get to the airport, I come home, I walk into my house at 10 o'clock at night, and my wife and I are going to get up at seven in the morning to drive two and a half hours to a different baseball field to see him play. But Arden's not feeling well, because of her period, she's tired, and she doesn't want to come. So luckily, there was no weirdness going on with her blood sugar's like there had been prior weeks, it's been incredibly steady. And I set an override and a temporary target. And I set that out, like for forever thinking that way she could sleep as long as she wanted. And you know, least nothing there would shut off or go back to the you know, normal settings. And I figured she'll get up later in the morning and she'll know, she'll text me and I'll tell her what to shut off and she'll be fine. And she'll go about her day and she's gonna do homework and hang out around the house. So this is damn near embarrassing, and hopefully she'll hear this years later and actually be a little embarrassed by it. But at 430 in the afternoon yesterday, Arden sent me a text and said, I'm up. Like what? So turns out she was sick to her stomach the night before and didn't go to bed till like three in the morning. And still she slept over 12 hours, which is insane. But, you know, at least it's a little better than had she gone to bed at 11 and slept till four. But No kidding. I am going to pull this up. I scraped because I had been watching the entire time I was going I want everyone to keep in mind. There were telephones in Arden's room that I could have bled to wake her up. I could have sent you know, Find My iPhone to wake her up. My neighbor knew Arden was by herself here, you know, like we didn't just like abandon her in her bed, like kind of a thing. You know, both sides of my house are being watched by my different neighbors. But I am going to admit I didn't think she'd sleep till 430. But I am looking at this graph. 24 hours I left the house and her blood sugar was
Unknown Speaker 18:17
at
Scott Benner 18:18
and it never went over 110 it never went under at the entire time. She slept from 8am till 430. And I'm going to tell you right now, Kenny, I used to be really good. And I still am really good at using insulin with a pump and a CGM. But I could not have done that.
Kenny Fox 18:37
That's pretty, it's pretty unreal. I wish my kids would sleep 12 hours and keep their blood sugar in range
Scott Benner 18:41
just to leave you alone. Right. But I could not have accomplished that. Without that algorithm. There's no way she would have had to gotten up. I mean, not that that would have been the biggest thing in the world. But my point is, is that that she could not have slept, but ended up honestly being eight hours with us not in the house without any intervention whatsoever. And that's the loop. That's what me understanding the loop is what made that happen.
Kenny Fox 19:05
What kind of override Did you set a higher or lower one?
Scott Benner 19:08
Lower, I took insulin away. So her so Arden's daytime settings are more aggressive than her overnight settings, mainly her basal rate, and her insulin sensitivities are stronger during the day than they are overnight.
Kenny Fox 19:25
School and weekends are just
Scott Benner 19:27
Well, this weekend. It's just for school. And excuse me school and weekends while she's awake. The problem is during the weekend if she sleeps in her daytime settings that begin at like 7am are viciously too aggressive for her to be asleep with. Gotcha. Alright, so inside of the settings of the loop, and for clarity, we're using the Omni pod with the Dexcom gs six you are as well. Yes. Okay. There are there's a setting for correction range, suspend threshold bazel rates, delivery limits. Insulin model dosing strategy carb ratios, insulin sensitivity. And Kenny and I are going to go through all of them now. Exciting. Yeah, I it is actually kind of exciting because I think you know way more about this than I do because your brain works more technically than mine does. But I'm hoping I'm hoping for today you're going to be the technical side. And I'm going to be the, the blue collar side, you're basically Jenny for this looping episode. Okay. Okay. So let's just start at the top correction range. When I got loop initially, what was told to me was, you know, this is the bottom and the top of, you know, like it, it was, it was explained to me as target. So, you know, I'm shooting for between 80 and 100, for example, or from between 90 and three, I don't care if it was a target range. But as time passed, and as people came onto the podcast and spoke with me and I met people privately, I began to think of correction range as when the when I want the insulin to turn on and turn off, its its aggressiveness, its corrections. Somehow, that tiny difference in language was a big deal for me, because I wanted Arden's blood sugar to be no lower than 70. And no higher than 95. Like That was my you know, like, that was my pie in the sky hope, right? But it didn't work that way. And I'm going to tell you what I ended up changing it to, but tell me what yours is and how you think about it.
Kenny Fox 21:37
It's, it's still like a target, but it's where it's where the blood sugar should land after the time insulins all done. So when it expires, when the insulin action time is over. So that's the unfortunate part about that is it's doesn't, doesn't try to keep you in a range at the moment, it's more concerned about where you're going to end up. And that's a little frustrating, I think, for, you know, probably juicebox folks, like when we were on shots, we would her carb ratio, I use Tesla's carb ratio stronger than probably what it needed to be because a carb ratio, strictly speaking, is you start at one number you eat, and then you end up at the same number eventually, which would be when insulins done, you know, a long time in the future. But I'm not happy with the spiked comes with that even with a proper Pre-Bolus. So we always dosed a little bit heavy, knowing that she'd probably be eating in three, three and a half hours, no big deal. And so that's, we were always thinking in blocks of more like, three or four hours, not five or six hours, which is how long loop says, at the instant. And the last. So having a target way out there six hours is, can be a little tricky. So I still use the target country correction range as where I want her to end up because that's, like, overnight, that's really applies. But you have to get used to reading the prediction line, and then figuring out how to tell loop everything that you know, so that where you end up even in the middle of that is sort of where you want to be and still try to shoot for a landing. That makes sense.
Scott Benner 23:09
So this is super interesting, because I'm gonna learn something here from you for sure. Because I've come to ignore, ignore the prediction line completely. I act like it's not there. And it's telling me nothing, but you're getting a lot out of it. So this is this is gonna be terrific.
Kenny Fox 23:23
Yeah, I had to get a lot out of it. But eventually, I figured I couldn't have the same experience that you and I were both dealing with when we started which is sort of yelling at loop and fighting with it. So I did figure out how I could tell loop what I knew. So that prediction on looked reasonable that I mostly agreed with it. And if I didn't agree with it, then I needed to figure out why. Either I didn't agree with it, and why loop thought otherwise. And eventually, some of those things, you know, mostly if it's around food, once you get most of settings close. It sort of helps me figure out how do I change things in the moment when things aren't working the way I want to, to get that line to look right and not not be too wrong.
Scott Benner 24:02
While I was in Atlanta, I was talking through something with with Kelly Arden just came through a she's a lower number. She was like 65 as they were going to food. And so putting in, you know, the the carbs, the accurate carbs. This thing didn't want to give her insulin right away. Oh, yeah. Right. So I told Kelly, like, just you know, we're gonna, you're just gonna manually bolus enough insulin now. And you know, so there's at least a Pre-Bolus going on, then come back around and check the pending insulin in a little while she starts going up and then you can put the rest in. But I used the sentence. The Loop thinks, and that's where Kelly was. Wait, what? Yeah, I said so. So I said, there's what you know is going to happen from your history with insulin. But at the moment, the loop doesn't know that. It's not, you know, it's not a it's not a living, breathing thing. It's an algorithm. And it's taking these settings, and it's taking what you've told it. And it's saying, based on what my settings aren't what you said, you just took in as carbs. This is what's going to happen. You don't need this insulin right now. But, you know, differently, you know, you know, something it doesn't know. But this is what loop thinks. And I was like, now here's how to tell it something to make it think what's true, instead of what it thinks.
Kenny Fox 25:26
Yeah, exactly. Meant to think like that.
Scott Benner 25:29
It's so funny, because you said, Yeah, exactly. And my wife was like, this thing is bullshit. What? So we two different conversations. And I said, No, no, I swear to you, I'm being as clear as I can be about this right now. This is as clearly as I know how to speak about it right now. So so. So for clarity, where do you have your correction set for your daughter,
Kenny Fox 25:53
usually around 85 to 100, during the day, overnight, 80 to 90, I think right now, I just changed it to 8585. Since we're on the United spoken about this route using the feature testing branch for call automatic bolusing. And that helps keeps us I can give her like a single number target and sort of try to shoot for 85 overnight, for example. And it does a pretty good job. But she has such low basal rates we can get into later. But with a traditional loop, but the bazel modulation, it just doesn't, it's too slow to act, because her basal rates are so slow, so low that it would take you know, 2030 minutes to give her a little tick of insulin from the Omni pod over over 20 or 30 minutes that it's I prefer the auto bullets like Oh, she needs it. She needs it now. So I couldn't give it to her. So I can, I've now changed it from a range of, you know, 1520 points to five points or so
Scott Benner 26:49
yeah, so Arden's right now is set it at seven to 95 during the day. And that started with me just like going alright, I, when I have it at 85, she gets a little low, sometimes I make it at six, she's getting a little low last time, let me make it at seven, then I'm starting to like feel like I'm fine tuning it. But I believe that after this conversation with you, I'm going to decide that there's a different setting I should be looking at instead of this correction range, but but we'll get to that. So. So for clarity, if you set your range at whatever, you set it at 90 and 150, you think I want to live between 90 and 150. That's not how this thing is thinking this thing is thinking that often the future based on everything that's going on right now, eventually, I want to keep you from going under 90. And it could be talking about hours from now is that right?
Kenny Fox 27:43
It might even be not even under 90, but it might usually what happens after you've done your initial bowl. So usually when you set up carbs, it initially tries to say, okay, you want to end up at the bottom to the middle or the bottom of that range you've set when it's choosing how much insulin to give you. But once you're past that, it's mostly shooting for either the middle or the top of that range. So if he's at 90 to 150, and you end up at like 180, it's really only a target to bring you down by the time the insulins done kind of around 151 3140, probably in that range. So if you prefer to be more like a 100, but you use 150 as your top range, you're more likely going to be sitting especially overnight, let's say around that upper line. So if you were to enter, it's a prediction or to enter into that range, it's not going to take any action, it's like it's fine, as long as you're going to land somewhere in here. Now you don't 150 it's cool with that, if you're going to under 90, and it tries to back off, if you're going to get over 150, it thinks then it's going to add some more. But if you're gonna land anywhere in that range, it's not going to take a whole lot of action. So if you want help to get lower into the 110 100, somewhere in there, instead of 150 you should probably have your target market where you'd ideally like to be but balancing like you mentioned, the risk of kind of going low if you shoot too low.
Scott Benner 29:02
Well tell me why you wouldn't just make the correction range 85 and 85. My top and bottom goals are 85 and 85.
Kenny Fox 29:10
Why would Yeah. So normally, it's just the amount of like, back and forth the amount of work I guess Luke puts into it. So if it's if the correction if the prediction kind of moves up or down a couple points away from that line, it's going to try to do something so it's going to change the basal rate temporary basal rates using and what the Omni pod. This is the issue we both struggle with early on was every time that bazel rate changes every time Luke makes a change the timer that the Omnipod uses to start delivering on that rate sort of resets. So if you need a couple of you know, deliveries point 05 within a certain hour, let's say then that amount, how fast that's going to tick. That counter starts over every time it changes. So it's like hey, if you need five in an hour I'm going to spread it out
every 12 minutes, and then the loop changes
Scott Benner 30:05
the Yeah, easily again, and then it starts all over again. So you're never really getting as much of it through that model is through the Basal model,
Kenny Fox 30:13
not as quickly Yeah, so what will happen is if it changes again, so if you need like five in an hour, it'll do every 12 minutes or so, let me just start over as is okay, and 12 more minutes, I'm going to give you something more than in five minutes sleep makes a change again, then it's the counter starts over. And once that calculation for how often that happens was fixed, at least what would happen is in five more minutes, it'll probably pick an even higher rate. And if five more minutes, they'll pick an even higher rate. But for someone with a lower insulin need, whether your basal rates are higher or low, but you don't need very much, it may take three, four or five cycles before that first delivery is fast enough that it actually gets in there, if it keeps changing every five minutes. So if you pick a range, it's more like it's less likely to have to change, if you're going to land somewhere in the range you picked. It's like, Okay, I'm good, I'm just gonna stick with this one, for a little while, that's kind of most of the reason otherwise, it's more, I just don't care if I'm 100. Or if I'm at five, I'm fine with either, so then you would just leave it there.
Scott Benner 31:12
So we're gonna jump around in the settings a little bit like the next setting in the, you know, when you look at it would be suspend threshold. But yeah, I'm gonna skip over that for now. Because I think that what we're talking about leads into insulin model. And if you disagree, then obviously, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about,
Kenny Fox 31:28
well suspend, suspend is easy enough suspend is in that situation you gave with Kelly loop is really concerned with you not going low. So if 60 whatever it was below, your suspend, that's why it wasn't giving insulin, it doesn't care that if she doesn't have a Pre-Bolus, the prediction, you might even show she's gonna go to 200 loops, not worried about that, I just worried about the fact that she's currently low, so I shouldn't be giving more insulin, which is a little frustrating. So that's, that's really where suspend is, if any part of that prediction line is going to go below suspend, then you should probably, it's going to stop giving insulin so you want to make sure you're not seeing lines dropping that you don't agree with you don't think she's gonna this year she was gonna go low, then you probably need to fix some settings. Otherwise, that suspend threshold is gonna like banging your head against the wall. Why is it cutting insulin when it shouldn't be?
Scott Benner 32:19
Quick hitting ads today, the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor, you want to check it out. It's at dexcom.com forward slash juice box. type that into your browser right now. If you're not good at typing, click on the link in your show notes. It's right there in your podcast player. There's notes in your podcast player, just find them and click last thing you could do is go to Juicebox podcast.com. And click from there. All of these options are viable ways to get to the sponsors. While you're there, check out the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, go to Contour Next one.com there's a little button at the top, you can find out if you're eligible for an absolutely free meter. This meter is by far the most accurate one that my daughter has ever used in her entire time with Type One Diabetes. Lastly, if you'd like to see some lovely people doing wonderful things for people living with Type One Diabetes, check out touched by type one.org. I'm doing you a favor. I'm shortening up all the ads today. You can do me a favor and click on the links dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. Contour Next one.com touched by type one.org. That's all I'm asking today. No big sell. Just go check them out. book I'm done before the music. It's like you owe me almost how there's so much time left. It's kind of weird, right? touched by type one.org helps people living with Type One Diabetes, amazing organization. Contour. Next One best blood glucose meter I've ever seen Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor game changing technology for type one diabetes. There I said I wasn't gonna tell you more about there's just weird. What I was gonna jump to next is insulin model. So yeah, so that's, I guess for conventional pumpers. That's insulin on board measurement. The idea that insulin lasts in your body for X number of hours. It's it's based in that idea, but not really like good. So this is more about the pump. I've come to think of it as the window of time that the pump considers the insulin for like, like if you Bolus and your model said it six hours, which I think is the default, right in the, in the in the algorithm. You know if that's a scenario, it's thinking, Oh, you definitely won't be high six hours now because we put in enough insulin right now. But if your settings are wrong or the foods you know, whatever, you're dehydrated, all the other things variables that the the algorithm can consider. That's not going to work for you. And so that's why you see some people with the loop. They're like, Well, my blood sugar went up to 180. And it sat there for like, five hours. And then it but it did finally come back down. And you hear them say that, like, that's some sort of a win, which I think for a lot of people, quite honestly, is a win. But for you, and I'm probably most of the people listening to this podcast, like, I don't want my budget to be 174 or five hours. And Kenny was the first person to say this to me, because steadfastly, everyone I spoke to said, don't touch the insulin model. Six hours, leave it at six hours, leave it at six hours. And Kenny was first starting to say to me, like, yo, mine's not at six hours. And this works a lot better for me. So mine is set. ardens is set at five hours and 15 minutes, I think. And yours is five, is that right?
Kenny Fox 35:52
Yeah, so hopefully I don't get in trouble.
Scott Benner 35:57
First of all, this Kenny's not in any way related to the to the the looping, like the people writing these algorithms. You're just the person using it.
Kenny Fox 36:05
Right? I am. And I would love to meet the people that are Katie and Kate and others. So um, yeah. So mindset at four and a half hours. And I'll tell you how I got there. So before? Really?
Scott Benner 36:17
Good. Tell me.
Kenny Fox 36:18
Yeah. So when we were on shots, I found apps like extra up and some others that would let me track insulin on board, I just found this cool app. And honestly, I was too cheap to buy a phone that would be useful with the approved dex comm app for my daughter. So I just grabbed my old android phone down next trip and said, Okay, well, that means I have to build a nightscout site. So I've built a nightscout site. So we put extra bond extra put all these like cool knobs and levers I had to Google about every time I was trying to figure out what these different pieces mean, and one of them was insulin duration. So what I did is I just once we got the bazel locked in, on my daughter, I would just watch, obsessively every day, when the insulin onboard time when the heard line would stop moving even just one point, like just nice and flat. And so it was between four hours, and like 15 minutes and four and a half hours somewhere in there. You know, we had to give some sensor lag and other variables, some sway there. But I ended up just dialing up from four to about four and a half on extra nightscout. And so I could with confidence know, when she would level out. So like, you know, if she didn't have a snack between lunch and dinner, she would level out right around five or six, and I could watch the iob number go down down down to zero. And sure enough, she'd be flat, I wouldn't treat no matter how fast she was falling zero would be, she was fine. It was fine. Basal was fine. Everything's happy, she's nice and level. The other benefit to that was I was always tracking how long it would last. But then it also allowed us to do things like treat and I know how much to treat for so I'd look at how much insulin was on board. If she was starting to go lower than I wanted to, you know, at that kind of three, four hour mark, knowing that I give him too much insulin most likely for that meal. And then I would just turn that insulin on board number into a carb ratio, and say here have this many carbs, and then she would level out. And you know, once the insulin board time was done, when it was zero, she would turn off level out. So that kind of predictability was important and comforting. And also, let me have the confidence to change the duration of insulin action in a loop. But I didn't do it initially, I really wanted to give lupus as a chance to kind of prove itself and say, Well, maybe six is right. And I read Katie's post about why messing with the insulin reaction time is could be bad. But frame that conversation she's having around the fact that pretty much every endo will have you set your pump insulin action time to something like two and a half, three, three and a half hours, which is obviously not right. So when they when you get into the loop group and you read the docs and people are really hard about Hey, you got to stick with six hours. It's because people are convinced over you know, years of time that insulin only last two or three hours and that's not the case. So and six is definitely safer than say five or four and a half it would safer to over represent how much insulin is in your body while annoying and possibly keeping you high. If it's not actually how long it lasts. It's still safer than under representing the insulin so and for some people I've helped out five and a half, six hours is about right so we don't really mess with it. But there's still a chunk of people that five is probably like a really good number that gets it pretty close. So I was just watching all that's all I could watch on shots and so I knew that number going in or most people don't really have a sense for that. What that number should be so you can test for it. But yeah, I changed mine to four and a half.
Scott Benner 39:44
So I think that it's it's pretty obvious. If you listen to the podcast that my concept is I try very hard to break the wall between the the time I don't know how to put this, let me get up to give me a second Kenny. So obviously, everything about insulin you do now is for later insulin doesn't always work exactly the way you want it to in the moment you put it in your body, right, it always takes time to build momentum or power, it peaks sometimes, you know, it's always, it's always about later about later. But I feel like this is gonna be a ham fisted explanation, because it's still something I've been mulling over my head for a while, I don't think I've ever said it out loud. But I think of the management of insulin, like the momentum of a car climbing a really steep mountain, you need to get to a pace and stay at that pace. And it's going to become more and more difficult as you go. But if you just keep this pace up, you'll make it to the top. And so I like the idea of there being active insulin all the time when it's needed. And it's so that so that the food or your body function can never really overpower the insulin that's active. And that so that the insulin is not overpowering the body function, I don't want anybody low all the time. Not saying that. I'm just saying that when you accelerate, and then take your foot off the gas, you drift back, and then it takes more effort to get going again. And so you know, instead just put your foot at one spot on the accelerator and head up the mountain. And I know that's not 100% clear. But that's the background way I think about using insulin, it's the closest thing to creating constant insulin action so that what's happening now with food is being in real time impacted by insulin because there's always insulin coming from the past to help you now. So instead of putting in insulin now for later, I think of it as putting in insulin later before for now.
Kenny Fox 41:52
Constantly, that makes sense. Yeah, it's way I have a really old big RV. And so driving up a hill, yeah, if you back off just a little bit, someone cuts you off or something you're, you're now Don't slow the whole time up the hill just to make it up. So you get to keep your momentum going to stay ahead of it. Wait, I found with diabetes, you always have to be kind of looking ahead a little bit always planning ahead and looking ahead, like if you know you're going to eat, you might as well give some insulin, but getting looped to kind of agree with you on that. Or, or to know when to how to use loop to be bold, so that you can keep the insulin moving when you need it just takes a little bit of practice.
Scott Benner 42:27
Yeah, it's just sort of this. It's tough because I try to say things a lot of different ways so that it eventually hits everyone. But I'm always talking about insulin for now is for later. And I know this is gonna sound like the same thing. But it's not if you just kind of like, you know, just microdose a mushroom right now and listen to what I'm saying for a second, okay? insulin for now is for later, but insulin before is for now. And that's probably more how I think about it than how I teach it. I teach now for later, but I think before for now. And so the minute you start taking away insulin now, you're just gonna be getting, you're just gonna get high later. And and I hope that makes sense.
Kenny Fox 43:19
It did to you, which is in the same way, in the same way, if driving my big vehicle, you take away the speed at the bottom of the hill, it's gonna affect how easily I can make it up to the Hill, right? I just don't have the power of momentum to push me up an hour.
Scott Benner 43:33
Or if you don't have that momentum going. The minute you come up on a speed bump or a branch to drive around, yeah, you're gonna lose your, your momentum. And now all of a sudden, the detour wins. Like, right, like, all of a sudden the meal wins or the you know, the spike in your adrenaline wins, that thing wins. Because you're it's the same reason why at the end of the story that I just, you know, I told you the beginning Arden's blood sugar, no lie 8am till 4:30pm while she slept right in that tight range, but when she woke up, she says to me, Hey, I'm gonna get a bowl of cereal. And all I told her was this, that's fine, your blood sugar is going to get high. Here's our goal. I'd like to try to keep it under 180 get it back down without you getting low. Now keep in mind, I'm not there. My daughter's about to have Froot Loops. She's not going to measure them. I'm not asking her to okay. And so I told her, you're going to get high. And she said on Pre-Bolus. And I said, Yeah, not gonna matter. Because you've been living on a deficit of basal insulin for the last eight hours, right? The before is not strong enough to handle the now and you were going to Pre-Bolus and we're gonna smash most of it. But unless you're willing, but you're at so I can't have you wait 30 minutes. I can't tell her to put in you know, 11 units of insulin and wait a half an hour because if she doesn't eat that cereal the exact right time, and God knows what that is that insulin is going to crush her. And I'm going to come home to a puddle of a kid on the ground, right? Or at the very least my neighbor is going to be handling something I'm pretty sure he didn't think he was going to be doing on Sunday. So I said, Look, we're gonna deal with it, there's gonna be a spike, right? So we're going to, you're going to go downstairs. The first thing I asked you to do, Kenny, I don't know what other people think of in this situation, like you would think Pre-Bolus thing. I said, Go make sure the cereal is not stale, because you don't need it all the time. And make sure the milk is fresh. Because the last thing we need is 10 units of insulin going in you and then you saying this milk doesn't smell right. Because I don't know how to eat that fast. You know what I mean? So, um, so she checks all the food, all the foods, right? I'm like, I cool. You know, go ahead and put in, you know, this, I think we use a massive amount of carbs, like 80 carbs or something like that. And it wanted to give her 10 units ish, like, right in that space. And I was like, Yeah, go ahead and do it. And I said, try to wait 1015 minutes if you can, and but I don't want you to wait much longer because we're there. And she did. She ate and it held on for a while. Right that Bolus thought for a little while but all of a sudden 15 I think no fifth is longer that 3530 ish minutes later, we got the dreaded 126 diagonal up now I know everybody's different. But 126 diagonal off means to me they penciled in their
Kenny Fox 46:37
index column showing a diagonal year you're having a problem Next comes arrow changes after two readings that are equivalent to like a diagonal so like if more than five like six to 10 points every reading it needs to have those in a row before it changes the reading hundred percent to a Yeah, which is way too slow. I like using extra power I get to see the plus and minus that. Reading the reading and I don't have to worry about the stupid next Camaro so while
Scott Benner 47:03
that super stiff line is still there, right on a second Arden's talking to me here. While that's super stiff line is there at 105 or 95, or whatever. I'm like, That's not right. There's no way that that cereal This Pre-Bolus has not been alive in here long enough to to hold back Froot Loops and milk, even for 15 minutes. So I'm like it's gonna go up. Oh, wait, I'm gonna go to lunch right now. Excuse me for a second Kenny. You guys is interesting artists coming out of gym. Then how are we gonna do this? With the carbs and like this. I'll talk you guys through this Hold on one second. I can finally talk about a loop thing about a lunch. Arden's leaving gym right now. And she was away from her CGM. So her blood sugar went from like 75 to 60. While she was in gym, she feels fine. She's going to eat that's not an issue. I'm not worried about that. So we're going to tell the loop that she's going to have 35 carbs. We're going to tell the loop to consider those carbs as a two hour impact. And then we're going to tell it 40 carbs and consider that as a three hour impact. So Arden has Zell's and a chocolate chip cookie, a half of a bagel, a pretty big bag of grapes. A Clementine a bag of popcorn? I can try to guess those carbs for everybody if you want. I'm gonna guess the actual test hitting carbs. Yes, I'm guessing the bagel at 25 I'm putting the putting the grapes at 15 to 18 now we're at 35 or 40 the cookies are gonna be another five for the chocolate chip. I'm at 45 the puzzles are probably 10 more I'm at 55 the tangerines like 12 or 15 I'm at 6570 I don't know popcorns 10 at ardens. Carberry shows 7.42 to one now as soon as it tells her that it says Of course not to give her insulin because their blood sugar 60 Yep. So I'm gonna say when are you going to eat? Do when do you begin eating?
Kenny Fox 49:32
So have you tried not giving Pre-Bolus in the situation since you're on the automatic Bolus will give a fair amount pretty quickly and then just text her and say hey, give the rest later.
Scott Benner 49:41
So I think of it just like that. But opposite. So if she tells me she's going to start eating right now. Like right now right now we're going to Bolus
Kenny Fox 49:51
Oh, yeah, that
Scott Benner 49:52
would just give it Yeah, sure. We're gonna put in probably like, I'm gonna guess like five or six units right now. And then I'll let the auto Bolus do its thing a little bit or will check for pending insulin and just do the whole thing,
Kenny Fox 50:05
if that makes sense. Well, the wonderful thing about the auto bolus is that since it loop doesn't use increased Temp Basal at all, there's not going to be a whole lot of pending unless, I mean for three hour, I guess there technically might be some pending, but there's almost never any pending, it's always recommended Bolus. So she can always just tap her watch her her phone and just hit the bullet screen, it should just have a recommendation. So if an even more insulin, there's always a recommendation with the auto Bolus branch, which I really love, because my six year old, I can just say, Hey, Bolus, and she just turns the watch over tops to Bolus green. If there's something there, she takes it. And then nightscout I can see if there is a recommendation before it would, you know, increase the Temp Basal rates? And it would it would loops like I got it, don't worry about it, I'll, I'll take care of it. I'm like, yeah, you'll take care of it eventually. But I don't, it's not fast enough. But I can't tell my daughter to pull it put this much in and trust that she'll hit the right number, using the watch or her phone. So now there's always a recommendation if she needs more. So I can say hey, I think you need all of it right now. So just just hit your watch. And she handles it just fine.
Scott Benner 51:10
So what I ended up saying is she said, I meeting like right now I'll be putting food in my mouth in three minutes. So I said seven units. Eat as soon as possible. Let's talk again in 15 minutes. But you just said you can see you can see recommended insulin on nightscout. I need to let you I need to let you dig around in my nightscout apparently I don't think I see that.
Kenny Fox 51:32
Well you have that loop pill right underneath the time underneath the clock.
Scott Benner 51:37
Right. Okay, let me
Kenny Fox 51:38
think. So if you hover over that loot pill with your mouse or if you use it on your phone, you just kind of tap on it. You should get like a list of information in that hover area. And one of the things you should see at the very end of it. It only shows up when there's a recommendation below you'll see the last things are listed in that list of all kinds of crazy information. So is a recommended Bolus
Scott Benner 51:58
I see the loot pill so right now I have four minutes ago squiggly squiggly line 103 what is squiggly line 123 mean?
Kenny Fox 52:06
The I forget that icon squiggly line I think means everything's Oh squiggly line 103 got it. Sorry, five minutes ago or four minutes ago, a squiggly line means eventually. 103. So the the end of the prediction line is 103 at the moment.
Scott Benner 52:20
It is I'll be
Kenny Fox 52:21
Yeah. All right. And but that will only update you know she's updating it on her phone so you won't see the next update until you know the next sleep cycle till next time it uploads night to night scout. So even though her prediction line probably doesn't look like that because she's put in, you know, seven units. You'll get the update eventually and you'll see the the eventual number will update.
Scott Benner 52:42
Okay, so Arden's all squared away. Let's go back a little bit here. So insulin model, when you have yours, even lower than mine is what's the intention of making the insulin model a shorter time period. And that's where we're going to pick up in part two, which will be out in just a couple of days, it's going to give you enough time to absorb this, maybe go back and listen to it again. And then we're gonna get through the rest of the settings list on loop. Hope you found this interesting. I just think Kenny speaks so wonderfully about loop. He's very clear. He understands exactly what he's saying. And he's helping me a lot to bring things into focus. If you agree, definitely check out part two. Coming up, I think Thursday night. Thank you very much to the sponsors. dexcom. Contour Next One blood glucose meter and touched by type one. Check them at a touch by type one.org dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. Contour Next one.com. Of course, there's always going to be links in the show notes of your podcast player. And at Juicebox podcast.com. I appreciate you supporting the sponsors.
If you're looking for more episodes about loop, check out Episode 227 diabetes concierge. Episode 252. A loopy few months Episode 304. loop de loop.
It bears repeating that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. A huge thanks to all of the people. Most of whose names I'm sure I don't know, who have put their blood sweat, tears time, effort, heart and soul into this algorithm. It's hugely, hugely, hugely appreciated by me and I'm sure by everyone else
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