Scott Benner 3/12/21 Scott Benner 3/12/21

#452 Learning about Teplizumab

With Francisco Leon, MD, PhD

Enlightening conversation with Francisco Leon, MD, PhD, and the CSO and co-founder of ProventionBio, the company potentially bringing Teplizumab to market if approved by FDA. Leon is a Spanish immunologist and self-described “autoimmunity aficionado” focused on eradicating autoimmune disease through early detection and prevention. He clearly and comprehensively explains how autoimmune diseases are similar, research supporting the unexpected link between coxsackie virus and T1D in studies, and research on Teplizumab which has a BLA under review for approval by FDA for patients at risk of T1D with a PDFUFA goal date of July 2021.

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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 friends and welcome to Episode 452 of the Juicebox Podcast. My guest in this episode is Francisco Leone and you are not going to want to miss a word of what he has to say.

You may recall that recently on episode 433 Karla Greenbaum was on talking about trial net. And during that conversation, she spoke about a drug called, oh, Ready, here I go, to please a mob to place a mob Teplizumab. I think that's right to close them off. Well, I might not be able to say it, but you definitely want to hear about it. What's going to come next is an hour long conversation that I found absolutely riveting as a person who has family members and loved ones impacted by autoimmune disease. I hope it strikes you the same way. Please remember, while you're listening 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, or becoming bold with insulin. Alright, a little more business, and then we'll get right to it. Let's let the music do its thing first, though.

Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is ad free. But that is because of the support of Omnipod, Dexcom, The Contour Next One blood glucose meter, Touched By Type 1 dot org, the T1DExchange and Gvoke HypoPen. What I mean by ad free is there won't be any ads. But there will be a break in the middle of the show where I try, in 30 seconds, to get out the links to all the sponsors of the Juicebox Podcast. And I'm going to remind you of some links that'll be pertinent to this episode. We'll see what I can do 30 seconds, I'll give it a try.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 2:10
Good morning, Scott. Thanks for the opportunity. My name is Francisco Leon, I am the Chief Scientific Officer and a co founder of prevention bio. I am an immunologist by training, and perhaps you can tell by my accent that I am from Spain. I've been in the US for over 25 years now. My entire life has been dedicated to try to find solutions for patients with autoimmune diseases. And that's what brought me to the US. I can tell you a little bit more about my background later if you'd like.

Scott Benner 2:48
Yeah, I am interested though, before we move on. What made you focus on autoimmune?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 2:53
I actually came to Auto immunity from the science side. But it quickly became personal. Let me explain that. My mom lost her kidneys to very severe stone disease. She was on the waiting list for a transplant. And she had to wait for eight years. She go ahead and transplant and it was rejected by the immune system when I was a teenager. And so you had to go back to dialysis. And that that influenced me a lot because I just couldn't understand why would they immune system reject perfectly functioning kidneys and condemn that her to a life tied to a machine. So I went to medical school. In the middle of my medical training, I took time off to do research and I became a bit of an autoimmunity aficionado because back in those days this is the late 1993 the first trigger for autoimmunity was found gluten triggering celiac disease, the first antigen and I focused on that, try to understand how does our immunity start? I finished my medical education. I did my PhD in autoimmunity and in celiac. And I learned that the mechanisms that lead to celiac are identical to other autoimmune disorders, such as type one diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. It's always the same sequence of events. A genetic predisposition towards out immunity a vital trigger the loss of immune tolerance against yourself, tissue destruction, and then symptoms and complications. So, from very early on in my career, I wanted to be able to contribute to stop in this sequence of events. I did a residency in clinical immunology to have the patient side as well, not just that the laboratory side. And then I came to the US to work at the NIH, at NIH. And from there, I went to the pharmaceutical industry to translate all the basic research into medicines or solutions. And I was really fortunate that over time, I was able to contribute to a few drugs that have made a big difference in our community in diseases like psoriasis or inflammatory bowel disease at companies like Bristol Myers, Squibb, Johnson and Johnson. Ultimately, I get a little restless, because Big Pharma is really outstanding at doing the hard work to get medicines through patients. But they focus a little bit too much on chronic disease. They wait a little bit too long, until patients have too much damage, too many symptoms before they intervene. So I learned from one of the leaders in this field Professor height, and Dr. Height is both a professor and a Johnson and Johnson leader. He developed the theory that we should be focusing early on, he created something called the disease interception accelerator at Johnson and Johnson. And I totally bought into those concepts. But j&j was too slow to implement this new vision. So I left I became an entrepreneur, I started the company with the other co founder of prevention, Ashley Palmer, we started this small company called cell immune to start testing this concept of intercepting autoimmune disease. And to do it in a fast and cost effective way.

Cell immune was successful, we were acquired by Amgen, and that gave us the resources to then start prevention. Cell immune focused on celiac, but for prevention, we wanted to go all in into our community by tackling multiple targets upstream in the cascade of the immune events, the T cells, the B cells, the innate immunity, those are the three legs of the stool of autoimmunity. And we were very fortunate that our T cell drug plus a map was so successful at intercepting type one diabetes. That is what really put prevention on the map and the reason we are talking today, but I do want to mention that we continue working on celiac disease we continue working on B cell autoimmunity for example lupus as a Basal model disease. And we are the first company that has declared Our goal is eradication of autoimmunity by working upstream working in the early stages of the disease. So, we are now in a in a privileged and highly responsibility inducing position for us to lead this new era in medicine

Scott Benner 8:52
is the is the simple idea that you do screenings, find antibodies that say that this thing is likely to come for you and then jump in ahead of it.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 9:04
That is one of the main ideas you you could even go earlier than antibodies, you could go to the genetic predisposition as well. So as you know, Scott, were screening at birth for over 250 monogenic diseases and babies when they take a little bit of blood. Why not screen for autoimmune predisposition as well, it will just add a little bit of cost. But it could tell us if that baby is going to be predisposed to autoimmunity. And then parents could monitor you could try to avoid the triggers. But also you could try to be educated so that if disease does appear, and you can monitor that with the antibodies as the second test, you can react quickly and you can do intercepted before there is damage to the organs.

Scott Benner 10:03
Can I ask you? Do you know, are autoimmune issues becoming more prevalent? Or are there just so many more people on the planet that we see more of it?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 10:15
Both, they are truly becoming more prevalent as societies become cleaner. I don't know if you've read about this hygiene hypothesis, which now is no longer a hypothesis, it's proven. Back in the day, there were a lot of helminth infections. helmets are basically worms. There was a day in America when people had ring worms and things were not as clean as they are today. And the immune system has basically two types of responses, one type of response goes against one's and scolded th two response. And there is another type of response that is geared towards killing infected cells. And that is the th one response and they're balanced. Once the worms were eradicated, the th two arm was weak. And the th one arm began to dominate our responses. And that created the great susceptibility for the development of autoimmunity. And this is so fully proven. I'll tell you a very interesting anecdote. There's this region in Finland called Cordelia garden is a huge place that was split in 1945. Between Finland and the Soviet Union. In the Finnish side, as industrialization hygiene took over autoimmune diseases began to double every 20 years in terms of prevalence through prevalence. In the Soviet side, it remained flat. And the only difference was hygiene, it was the same genes, the same food, etc. So that led to research that finally proved the increase in auto immunities due to industrialization.

Scott Benner 12:17
Okay, I have to make sure I understand is the idea that we've done such a good job of cleaning things up that there were benefits we were getting from some of this, that we're not getting any longer?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 12:31
Exactly. us as we lost an enemy to the immune system, the immune system has began to turn against ourselves more often.

Scott Benner 12:43
Can I call you or Francisco? Of course, yeah, Francisco. Are you Are you married?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 12:48
I am. Alright.

Scott Benner 12:49
So I've noticed I've been married a long time that when my wife is mad at somebody else, she's nicer to me. Is that what we're talking about right now? You mean, our auto immune, our immune system has nothing to do so it's bored. And it's like, hey, let me take a shot at that pancreas.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 13:04
It is it is the case. The immune system has a finite set of resources. And when it is distracted with with an external enemy, it doesn't pay as much attention to the internal self.

Scott Benner 13:22
So George Carlin was right. you've ever have you ever heard the comedian George Carlin say that when I was young, we used to swim in the river with people's feces and I've never been sick a day in my life. That

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 13:32
it is it is true. I know this, this sounds almost funny. But again, let me go back to Finland. Finland is the leading country in the world in terms of autoimmune research because they have the highest hygiene in the world together with Japan. and Japan is terrible. Now in terms of a topic dermatitis, things like that affecting 40% of the population as well, they are having similar problems there. So the Finns are really tackling this problem. First, they began to follow all consecutive newborns in the country. They did the genetic screening. And then they they started to look for auto antibodies. So imagine imagine doing that in the US all newborns, right. That's something that requires a national effort, but the fence did it. This is a study called deep and the IP stands for diabetes, interception and prediction study. So they identified hundreds of patients with D one d. m, because they had collected samples from those children and even from their mothers for over 20 years. every three months they collected samples. They found that there was only one commonality to all Have those patients, they have an infection by coxsackie B virus in the six to 12 months preceding the onset of T one D. And those children who did not have any other infection have no worms, nothing, everything's clean, they're there, their immune system over reacted against that coxsackie infection. And later it was found coxsackie infects the beta cells of the pancreas directly. The receptor for coxsackie is expressed inside the insulin granules is like a Trojan horse for coxsackie. So the immune system of those children over reacted against coxsackie destroyed beta cells. And in those who have predisposition to autoimmunity, they developed to 1d. And if the mothers had immunity against coxsackie virus, the children have 50% less to one day. That was the genesis of our vaccine project. That's how prevention started our first project was, we need to develop a vaccine for coxsackie B virus, because then we can reduce the incidence of T one T. The second step was okay, what kills those infected beta cells? That is that T cells, the activated T cells. So how do we stop those T cells in people who already got the infection, that is the police map. And that's why we began working on these two areas. Just to complete the finish story. Once they realized what was going on, in Finland now that our companies that sell Dirt, dirt from farms that are not clean, they put it in the baby's bonnets, in the socks. It's in little pouches. And then the baby gets exposed to that diversity of antigens, that distracts the immune system. Now, in the immune system, just like in life in society, diversity is very important. If you don't have diversity of exposure, that's when the immune system focuses on just one thing, and that's never good.

Scott Benner 17:26
I have to thank you. You're not going to see this coming. But my daughter is almost 17 years old, and she was diagnosed with type one when she was two, I am a stay at home dad. And I was at that time. And she had coxsackievirus right before she was diagnosed with type one. And I spent a lot of time. You know, I think like many people do, wondering what they could have done differently. And I always thought, I wonder if I didn't wash my hands enough before I made food. Like it was a ridiculous thought. But it's all I had to try to understand it. And you just made me feel better over. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 18:05
Well, I didn't know Scott that she had coxsackie. You couldn't have done anything. coxsackie is a tremendously common infection. And it's just under recognized, because in most people, it only causes a very mild disease. It's an enterovirus, it causes some gut disturbance, respiratory disturbance. But over time, now we know it is not just a very likely cause of D one D. It's also a very likely cause of celiac disease, myocarditis, heart failure and heart transplant costs due to coxsackie, the number one cause of viral myocarditis, and recently also, potentially congenital heart defects in babies. So where we are now in the middle of our first clinical trial for this vaccine. And I think that's thanks to thanks to folks like you, educating people because most people don't know about coxsackievirus I hope that the trials will work and will be able to provide this vaccine so that people will have no infection by coxsackievirus

Scott Benner 19:25
Well, this this conversation alone leads me to believe that I can direct my children to in you know, when this vaccine exists one day to use it for their newborns and and hopefully they'll get to skip this diabetes hellscape that we live in. I have to tell you, we figured it out. Because, like we were we are, you know, as positive as we can be as a family that the coxsackie caused ardens type one or precipitated it because she got it and it seemed to go away but it didn't and then suddenly It was back again. And I remember our pediatrician saying that strange, you don't get this twice. So it was almost as if it never was gone. And then we started focusing on the other issues she was having, and sort of lost track of the coxsackie. And then in that it burst out again. And that's then then the the diabetes came in, of course, we lost track of the takasaki for a while, but then in retrospect, it just seemed obvious if it was a something that people get, it's so normal, and it's, you know, sort of like chicken pox and that you get at once you don't get it again, it must have never been eradicated from the first time as what we thought is that

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 20:37
that's correct. That's correct. coxsackievirus almost never gets cleared fully. And that's 60% of children with T one D who had the good Sankey infection. Before the diagnosis, there has been a study in donors cadaveric donors, people who donate their pancreas for research when they die, and it's the same 60% the virus is still in the remaining beta cells, it's something you cannot get rid of. So, so here's how things are gonna change Scott in the future, because there's a lot of hope, come in, for Arden, and for Arlen kids as well. So a whole new future. First, we'll be able to screen for genetic risk, the the markers are already known, so that their babies will be identified as high risk for this disease that disease and then you can use a knowledge to reduce the risk secondaries, vaccines will help prevent these triggers and reduce the incidence. But then third, for those who still will be exposed to other viruses, because coxsackie is probably not the only virus that causes the one the as I said is 60%. So there's something else other viruses probably. So what happens next, you screen with antibodies, all you need to do is to screen two to three times in a person's life to catch those patients with early disease, H 223, h five to six, nine to 10 or perhaps in puberty, because once the immune system reaches puberty, there is a general resetting of the immune system. When the genital organs appear, there are new antigens. And the immune system takes a break to allow new antigens to appear. Otherwise, nobody will have genital organs, they will be destroyed by the immune system. So during that resetting, the risk of autoimmunity starts to go down. Right. And that's why the peak of diagnosis of T one D is age 1213, just before purity. So if we can get people past purity, we're gonna reduce to one the lot. And then what happens to those who still will develop it because somebody will still the immune system will restart and develop it. So we will have immunomodulatory drugs like the police map and other drugs in development. If and when these drugs are approved, they can be given to people who have the antibodies, because the antibodies indicate the disease is already ongoing. It's just that you still have enough beta cells that you don't have symptoms. But do you want these truly a continuum? Once you get the infection, you break tolerance. Once you break tolerance, you develop antibodies, you start losing your beta cells because the T cells kill the beta cells. And it's a countdown. Once you have two or more auto antibodies, there are four total different auto antibodies is no longer a matter of if but when will you develop clinical q&a. And that's when the countdown starts for us to intercept as well. The sooner we intervene, the more beta cells the patient will have. And we can even prevent insulin dependency if we rescue enough beta cells. And I will tell you in a minute about the results of our clinical trials at risk to illustrate this concept of early prevention, but I just want to complete the continuum but by talking about what happens once you develop clinical t Wendy what happens if somebody has lost all of their beta cells? Is there a hope there?

Scott Benner 24:58
Alright, you ready? There. Second Let me see what I can do here and go check out the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor at Dexcom comm forward slash juice box learn more about the Contour Next One blood glucose meter at Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box get a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump or see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial the Omni pod dash at my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box support the T one D exchange T one d exchange.org. forward slash juice box. Do you want to check out the glucagon that my daughter carries? g Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juice box? And of course always throw your support behind touched by type one.org Would you like to learn more about the company we're hearing about today? prevention bio.com pr o v n t i o n bio.com all these links are available at Juicebox Podcast comm or right there in the show notes of your podcast player. And if you're looking for those diabetes pro tip episodes that you've heard so much about, they're in there, too. They begin at Episode 210. And you can also find them at diabetes pro tip.com. I do. Let's look hold on I started at 2506 and went to 2556. I was like 50 seconds. Alright, so not 30 seconds, but not bad. And no full ads, right? Please support the sponsors when you can they keep episodes like this going, they keep the show free. They keep your juice box flowing. Let's get back to Francisco. There's a lot more coming. It's a really great episode, I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed making this for you.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 26:49
Is there hope? The answer is yes. As you have seen recently, tremendous progress has been made to generate pancreatic beta cells from stem cells. So there's going to be an opportunity to replenish beta cells in our them and in other people who need beta cells. But we still need to overcome one issue. When you transplant beta cells into a patient, this is a transplant, the same thing is gonna happen that happened to my mom, the transplants going to be rejected by the immune system. And this is called Allo rejection. It means a reaction against something foreign. The second issue is if you have to and the and the cells are truly beta cell looking, they are going to be destroyed by the auto immune attack. So you have two problems. Again, that's where these immune modulating drugs are going to be helpful. Because they will stop the outflow and the auto attack. We have already data that shows that the police map reduces both Alo and auto attack of beta cells. So in the future, and I'm not talking 50 years from now I'm talking five to 10 years from now, it will be possible to transplant stem cell derived beta cells and give the person map or another immune modulatory drug at the same time to induce tolerance against those cells. And then we will be able to start talking about the cure 41 D, D one D is going to be the first autoimmune disease to be eradicated by vaccination by early screening and detection by early treatment, and finally by replenishment of beta cells.

Scott Benner 28:56
So you'll you'll put the beta cells back, and then you'll protect them from being attacked. And then you'll stop the body from doing what it did the first time with the plus map

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 29:10
with the plus map and with other approaches. It's just that the plus a map is the first

Scott Benner 29:15
is encapsulation one of those ideas the idea of putting the cells inside of sort of a packet that's protected.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 29:22
Yes, so encapsulation will help. The problem is, so far it hasn't worked. Because when you put cells inside the capsule inside the body, there is something called the foreign body reaction. And it's another immune attack is a bit different. This attack is not specific against the beta cells because the immune system doesn't see the beta cells once they are in the capsule, but it reacts against the capsule. And it It causes something called fibrosis that surrounds the capsule with a material that makes it difficult for insulin. When to come in and out. So there are groups now working on better capsules, and we certainly root for them. But in our opinion is gonna take multi pronged approaches here to succeed, okay, perhaps a capsule that is semi porous, it allows some transit but not not a lot of so that you have some protection afforded by the castle. But still immune modulation to have a more specific reduction of the reactivities.

Scott Benner 30:38
It's kind of fascinating how well your immune system works, but that how stupid it is at the same time, isn't it like that a foreign body could be in your in your inside of you. And that your immune system could look at it and say, well, we can't kill it. So we'll surround it so well that it can't pass in or out of what we surround it with. But it can't look at your pancreas and go, hey, that's ours. Let's not do that. It's um, it's fascinating how strong and yet unguided it can be.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 31:08
Yeah, it? Well, the problem is it's it's this trigger, the trigger is what fools the immune system, because the immune system is programmed to attack cells that are infected, so that the infection doesn't propagate, right. And we're just unlucky that certain viruses have learned to infect the beta cells, because they are generally well protected. The beta cells are normally the last thing the immune system attacks, think think that in our entire body, there's only one gram of beta cells is so precious, is it has some mechanisms called immune privilege. And that's why the viruses hijack it and go inside because they know if I'm, if I'm inside the beta cell, I have a high likelihood of survival here. But eventually, the immune system finds a way to kill the cell, kill the virus, but then the collateral damage is type one diabetes. So

Scott Benner 32:08
the coxsackie hides in the beta cell, because it's such a protected spot. And the auto, your and your immune system does such a good job of rooting it out that eventually it gets to it.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 32:19
Exactly. Wow.

Scott Benner 32:20
So it's like a crab trying to hide in a shell under the ocean and the fish that go by and just sift, sift, sift, and eventually hit one and there it is.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 32:28
Exactly. Wow,

Scott Benner 32:29
no kidding. I did not expect this to go this way. I'm having a good time. And at the same time, I hope you'll forgive me, I'm much more emotional than I usually am. While we're doing these things. So I feel a little flush at the moment. I don't want to I don't want to lose track of what I'm supposed to be doing here. Okay, so how close so I have people from trial net on whenever they want to come on, because I love obviously what they do. And it's starting to, to please them ABS an interesting name, because it's a word that used to get thrown around years ago, like, oh, there's a drug, you know, and now all of a sudden, it's like, hey, this drug might be coming and it is coming. And like, where are we at? And what's the application real world without the rest of the stuff needing to be figured out yet? Like what can we do right now?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 33:17
Right? And thank you, Scott, for mentioning trialnet because they are the heroes in this story. Prevention is standing on the shoulder of giants. Here we are the last cog in the wheel. We take all of this research, and we translate it into a drug that can be brought to patients right then I don't mean to minimize our hard work and the team's hard work. The prevention team is amazing. But it's been 25 years since academic folks like Jeff bluestone, Kevin Harold and the trial net group, Carla Greenbaum Bama trial net, and everybody it's hundreds of people who have been doing one study after another after another. And things not always worked. And that's what you were referring to at some point, the prisoner was considered the failed drug. Because one trial failed the primary endpoint. The newly diagnosed protege study failed the primary endpoint. But prevention, we recognize that the trial failed the drug. It was a problem with the endpoint. The drug still did the same thing how you have always done it has always shown protection of beta cells. That's what we acquired to place a map and then try on that conducted the at risk study tn. While we are conducting a repeat of the protege study in newly diagnosed patients so that way, we can cover both sides of the coin. The at risk data will help us If the FDA agrees, provide this drug to patients who have early disease, the so called at risk, which just means early disease, and then the the new study, it's called protect, will help us provide the drug to newly diagnosed patients, but with the same exact mechanism, protect the beta cells from the outer immune attack. So you ask the question, what can we do now? So it's it's coming, it's coming. The so called producer date, which is the technical term for the date when the FDA is going to opine on the blizzard app is July the second. So it's imminent, in just a few months, we are going to know if the FDA considers that the data merits approval. And if they don't, they will tell us what else is necessary. But we're hoping that we should be able to provide this drug to patients in the very near future so that we can stop intercepting disease. The other thing that we need to get out is the need for screening. Because if we have the drug, but folks don't know that they have the preclinical disease, the pre symptomatic disease is not going to help them. So we need to get out to families, and, and just show families that if they get screened, they can prevent disease in other family members. And it's not just the children, sometimes the parents develop the disease years after the children. So everybody needs to get screened. And now there are great initiatives in place to facilitate this jdrf has to one detect, do you want detect is an amazing program, it's at home to just go online, you sign up. If you haven't students, you pay $55 that is covered by students, if you don't have incidents, prevention has subsidized this program, we provided the grant, and you only pay 10 bucks to get all the auto antibodies done the panel, you take a drop of blood from your finger with a little Lancet, put it on a filter paper, send it on the mail, in a prepaid envelope. And then a few days later, you get your results at home in a secure email. And it will tell you if you have at risk of developing clinical T one D or not if you have auto antibodies or not. So this is a huge, advanced national program offered to everybody. Obviously, families are the most aware. But even the general public should start to think about this, it doesn't really hurt to get tested. And if you're negative, you have that peace of mind, if you're positive, now you have knowledge that might help you stop the disease.

Scott Benner 38:05
That's excellent. No, I can't, I can't say enough of what I think of what everyone's doing. I and your date is July 2, so you're coming up by so say this happens, then I send in my paper and you find antibodies. And it's past July 2, and the FDA said okay, I start taking the drug and it does what.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 38:29
So if we get approved and you are positive for two or more auto antibodies in this at home test, you go to your doctor because we want your doctor, your endocrinologist to confirm the results and to take additional blood because when you have two or more auto antibodies, you have early stage to one day. But the question is how advanced is it? Do you already have these glycemia which is when you have abnormal glucose levels in your blood? And that's an important question. Because if you have these glycaemia you have 75% chances of developing clinical T one the insulin dependent in five years, and you have 30% chances in one year. So that means it's urgent. But if you don't have this glycemia the risk is lower is 44% in five years, and then you may is your choice, you may want to wait or you may want to act that that question is still a bit unresolved. What happens without dysglycemia our application to the FDA is for patients with auto antibodies and dysglycemia. We will recommend that then your physician considers the police map. So then the plisson map is a drug that He's given us 14 days of infusions every day between 30 minutes and 60 minutes. The reason it's like This is to prevent and minimize side effects. by splitting the dose, in very small doses that are given daily for 14 days with this has been tested over all of these 20 years of research, that if you do it this way, the safety profile is well managed. So you will receive infusions for two weeks. And that's it. The pleaser mob is not a chronic drug. And that's a big differentiation from other therapeutics that are in the market. And the reason is that we're catching the disease early and resetting the immune system. So we don't have to give this drug every month for life. as other drugs need to be given one, once you have lost your your function of your organic cetera, it's a chronic disease. Here, we're intervening early. And that affords us the ability to just those once the data is as follows. After you get two weeks of the person map, that median, the median is basically the average delay to developing clinical to end with insulin dependency is three years to three years delay, on average, after two weeks of therapy, is what the data showed that some patients will have one year of delay, the vast majority will have at least one year, some patients have eight or more years of delay. And then what happens next, that question, we don't know the answer yet, we believe we should be able to those again. And, again, they lay the disease for another number of years. But those data are not available. That is work that we are going to undertake now. But our hypothesis is that by providing the person map a few times in the life of a pre symptomatic patient, we might be able to indefinitely delay the disease. And then if you indefinitely delay the clinical disease, you're almost talking about the functional cure in a way because you never need insulin.

Scott Benner 42:36
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I'm see as you're talking, it keeps occurring to me that everything you know about this comes from what your mother went through, and, and how grateful I am, then everybody will be when they hear this, that her experience led you in this direction. You know,

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 42:57
thank you, Scott. But I obviously I am I owe everything to my mother. But you you you owe more to others than to me because I'm really just less than the last cog in the wheel here. There's so many people who have worked on this for so long. Let me mention that our chief medical officer, Dr. Lenny Ramos, who is the transplant nephrologist. And that's the reason I met her because again, the kidney transplant. She actually worked with the pleasant lab many years ago in an academic setting. And she is a big part of the reason why we pay attention on the police a map and acquire the drugs. So it just cannot be under emphasized how it takes a village to do this. Hundreds and 1000s of scientists and physicians and more importantly, the volunteers, the volunteers in the clinical trials. They they take the risk to help society and it's it's they are the real heroes,

Scott Benner 44:09
we'll know for certain I mean, I'm just hearing your you know, I see your background here. And then in my mind, I'm thinking of all the just like you said, all these other people, and I wonder what all their impetus was like what what what got them to lean in this direction. Take the risk, you know, if they're going to be involved in a study or devote their lives work in this direction, it's just very, you'll never know. You know, one day when you know if if what you say is true if there's a future where my children's children can take a vaccine that stops them from getting coxsackie virus that stops them from having an auto immune response. Don't ever know how lucky they are or where all this came from. You know, it's it's really fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to stop you because you are doing such a great job but I do have some questions. In front of me, are we at the point where I should ask them to you? Or do you have more that you want to add?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 45:04
Now, please, let's go with your questions.

Scott Benner 45:07
Okay, so these are all from people who listen to the podcast. One person wants to know if the effectiveness is in any way can connected to the age of the patient.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 45:18
Yes, there's no, we have the data is published, the effect of the blessing man was similar in children and adults.

Scott Benner 45:28
Okay, there's next question which you've covered, they wanted to know about what you would need to qualify to use the drug besides antibodies, but you've gone over that they'll need to be some world glucose testing, I guess, right, making sure that you are on your way into the process of not being able to hold back your own blood sugar anymore. Right. Do you have any plans of using this on people who have had type one forever to see what impact it has on them?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 45:59
Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is yes. But I need to qualify the answer. So on one hand, the low hanging fruit is the combination with beta cell transplant, in my opinion. But it is true that, you know, even in patients with long standing disease, there is always a little bit of C peptide, which is the marker for beta cells in the circulation in the blood, there is always a little bit of C peptide that can be found, comes up comes down, it seems that there are always some beta cells that start to grow, and then disappear. And the question is, is that an attempt by the pancreas to regenerate the beta cells that is quickly overcome by the immune system. And then you could potentially give the police a map at that time, when those beta cells are starting to grow, before they are destroyed. But this is purely speculation. And we don't have any data to support this other than this observation that even even after 50 years of T one D, you still have some beta cells in your pancreas.

Scott Benner 47:18
Okay, are there any side effects from taking the treatment? Either short or long term?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 47:25
Yes, all drugs have side effects. So with the prism app, the observations are related to the mechanism. It's an immune modulating drug when it gets into a patient's body. And it deactivates that T cells that killed the beta cells, that the activation results in something called release of cytokines for a few days, when the cytokines are released. About a third of patients experienced a skin rash. Just like if you had like analogy is a bit itchy. It only lasts a few days, and it resolves by itself. The second observation, the patient doesn't see this, but the doctors will see that about two thirds of the patients have a change in the white blood cells in the circulation, changes in the numbers. And those changes also are limited in time, everything's going back to normal within four to six weeks. And because the plasma is given just as a two week infusion, we haven't seen any side effect long term, we have data up to seven years, there hasn't been an increase in infection, there hasn't been an increase in anything else. So at this time, we'll feel comfortable as a company presenting this data to the FDA for their evaluation, and we hope that they will agree with our assessment.

Scott Benner 48:59
Excellent. This is the show has a worldwide audience and their people are wondering outside of the US is are you working on getting approvals in any other countries.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 49:12
Indeed, we are actively discussing with the European regulatory agency and now with the British regulatory agency as well after Brexit and with countries in the Middle East, Israel etc. We are trying to do as much as we can. But let me also mention that we are a small company. And the biggest thing that we believe could help us bring this drug worldwide will be a partner. We are actively seeking partnership with a big pharmaceutical company so that they will help us expand access outside of the US. In the US we can manage but outside of the US We will need the partner.

Scott Benner 50:02
Yeah. Well, um, I don't bring this up very often. But my wife is a drug safety professional for her entire, like, adult life. And she's incredibly good at it. And if I let her hear this episode, she's gonna want to come work for you. So

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 50:20
all right, let's talk.

Scott Benner 50:23
It's really amazing. Well, you have to reach back to your old friends now. Right? You didn't burn any bridges leaving j&j did you?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 50:29
know, I didn't, I didn't know this. I am. I am doing what what they told me to do. Yeah. So suddenly j&j is a wonderful company. As you know, they are now really, really busy manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine. So that that actually is impacting a little bit of progress in other areas. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's logically focused on COVID, the FDA, the pharma companies, but I think we're all seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with COVID. And then we should be able to focus on these other problems. And actually, as you know, COVID-19 affects predominantly people with diabetes, and COVID-19 can trigger diabetes. So

Scott Benner 51:20
we had a gentleman on a couple weeks ago, who got sick, had a stroke, develop type one diabetes and needed a five way bypass. Terrible.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 51:30
Hope he made it.

Scott Benner 51:31
He's doing well, actually. It's fascinating. Yeah. Listen, if for people who can't believe what you just said, my wife just stood in the kitchen and explained to me the other day, the reason we got through the vaccine so quickly, is because companies really did put aside a lot of their other work and focus their employees on just one thing. And I can personally attest the fact that she's been sitting in my dining room for 12 to 18 hours a day, working on this for the last year. So it,

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 51:59
thank thank you to her and all others who who have given us throughout time.

Scott Benner 52:06
Yeah, no, but I, to your point, like we do also need to get back to looking at other things like this. Just real quickly, as I go to the next question. Claire would like you not to forget Australia, she says Australia always gets left behind and type one diabetes. So

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 52:18
yeah, we are looking, we were talking to Australian folks as well. It's such an innovative country, and they have a great system there for screening. Again, going back to screening, that is the key. And Australia is one of the few countries in the world with with a screening program, a screening program that we don't have in the US in the US, it's only trialnet and a few other programs, ask in Colorado, etc. So we all need to enhance screening lobby, so that this becomes more of a national effort.

Scott Benner 52:52
What ages did your FDA submission cover?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 52:56
Our current submission is h seven and above the trial started at above age seven, so eight and above to 45. But we probably will. If we believe that the drug should at least get approved age eight, and above, okay,

Scott Benner 53:19
is an there's always the sign um, I know you're not you wouldn't be telling anybody to do it. But doctors could see the value and use it off label or no,

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 53:30
we can certainly not recommend that. But a doctor can always use judgment and look at the scientific data, look at the clinical data, look at the label, and then determine what's best for their patients. And that's something that we as a company, all we can do is to continue doing trials. So we have now in place, all the plans to study age zero and above children from from birth and to expand into other populations as well and do combinations and with beta cells, etc. Expand the label to maximize access.

Scott Benner 54:12
auto immune markers, like you said, you need to have to Is there any efficacy change if people have more markers?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 54:21
Yeah, that's another great question. We have cut the data in so many ways to try to answer that question. And the FDA has done that as well and clinicians. And at this time, what the caveat is that the study, the pivotal study, at risk, TN is a small study. So when you start cutting the data in many different ways, you end up with very few patients in those groups. And it's a bit hard to make conclusions, but our conclusion is that the drug has the potential to help every patient as long as they have beta cells. So the only group with may not see benefit is when the C peptide is undetectable that those patients may or may not have enough beta cells to protect. But as long as you have detectable beta cells, given that the mechanism of disease is similar in everybody, it's all driven by the T cells. We see benefit in across the board. Wow.

Scott Benner 55:27
Wow, that's amazing. I have one more here. It just slipped away from my eyes. Oh, are there any unknown drug interactions?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 55:36
No, because this is a biologic drug, a monoclonal antibody and biologic drugs. They typically don't have drug interactions. They're highly specific. So actually, in terms of FDA approval, you don't even have to study this because it's well known that biologics don't have drug drug interactions

Scott Benner 55:57
are things really moving that way. Like ideas like stuff like Xolair for asthma or chronic urticaria, stuff like that, that that's a biologic as well. Do you think the industry is paying more attention to that now? Or do we just understand more so we can, can work in that space better?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 56:18
I'm both, I think there is a lot of progress in the design and manufacture of biologic drugs, which are more specific than oral drugs, pills and tablets. There is a place for both, right? The problem with biologics is that they have to be injected. And some people don't like injections logically. So there are instances when appeal or a capsule can get you through a disease and there's no need to go for injections. But if you are looking for something highly specific and safer, because it doesn't have these kind of interactions, and something that can be given less often. Because the biologics typically have very long effects, then biologics are a good solution.

Scott Benner 57:13
Yeah, I suffered low iron a year or so ago, and the I and the the oral just was not doing it for me. So I took an infusion a couple of times, to bring my ferritin levels up. And it was amazing how quickly it worked, compared to what what was happening with the oral meds?

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 57:33
Well, Scott, let me make a plug now, for celiac disease, because celiac disease is the number one cause of low iron anemia in the US of unknown origin, and is highly associated with with Type One Diabetes. So just like folks need to screen for d&d Auto antibodies, family members of d&d patients should also take a celiac test, if they have any of these unexplained manifestations, as the same is just a finger stick and and looking for auto antibodies against the celiac antigen.

Scott Benner 58:12
And that celiac can can be present and impacting you in ways without you feeling sick to your stomach when you eat food. That's correct.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 58:21
It's not common. It's not common, but about 20% of patients with celiac don't have gastrointestinal symptoms. Okay.

Scott Benner 58:29
That's interesting. Well, okay, is there anything that we missed, or we should have said that we didn't, I don't want to leave anything out.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 58:38
I really appreciate this opportunity to get the word out, because raising awareness is the most important thing now. so that people can benefit from these advances we've discussed. So just thank you for all the work you've done to educate your audience. And if anybody has any questions, we have our info at prevention bio.com if you have any questions, we'll make sure to address them

Scott Benner 59:10
I'll put a link in the show notes so people can get to it I just genuinely appreciate you doing this. And that and that you were able to make it work in your schedule because I was I was so tight I didn't know where to put you and I really wanted to have you on so thank you for for being flexible like this.

Francisco Leon, MD, PhD 59:25
No, thank you Scott.

Scott Benner 59:30
Huge thanks to Francisco for coming on the show and doing such a great job of explaining to please a map that I get a pleasant map I have it I might not have it. Anyway, I found everything about this hour to be incredibly uplifting and hopeful. I hope you did as well. Thanks also to on the pod Dexcom touched by type one the T one D exchange, Gvoke glucagon and the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. The advertisers make the show possible. They give me the time and the freedom to do these recordings, edit them and get them to you. So all my thanks to them, please, if you have a need for any of those devices, and you'd like to learn more, use the links that are provided in the show notes, we check them out. It'll help keep the show free. Before I go, let me thank you some really amazing reviews were left recently on Apple podcasts for the show that I greatly appreciate. Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to rate and review the show so positively. I want to remind you again, about prevention bio.com. If you go there, I've been doing this this morning and click on their pipeline, you can read about the drugs that they have, and what they're hoping to do with them and where they are along the process. It's very, very interesting. It's fascinating worth a little bit of your time. The show has resources that we hope you use, and by we I mean me as I'm the only one here. The diabetes pro tip episodes, as I mentioned earlier, begin at Episode 210. And they're also available at diabetesprotip.com at that same link, you'll find all of the defining diabetes episodes. Of course, you can always go to Juicebox Podcast comm to find those things. And if you're on Facebook, and you're looking for an incredibly supportive group of people talking about type one, you're looking for the listeners of the Juicebox Podcast. That group is called Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. It's a private group. It has about 10,000 people in it, and the conversations are just there. Excellent. I hope you enjoyed the show today. I really enjoyed bringing it to you. Next week, we'll be talking to someone who eats low carb, who has type one diabetes, we'll be talking to Elizabeth, the founder of touched by type one, and much more. If you're listening in a podcast app, please press subscribe. If you're loving the show, please share it with someone else. And if you're listening online, that's not how the kids do it anymore. You can if you want I'm not going to hassle you but your apps on the phone way better ways to listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing. I appreciate it when you share the show with others and review it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I really enjoyed bringing it to you. I'll be back soon with much more

#451 Swimming Skittles

Quite a journey…

Mike is an adult living with type 1 diabetes

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 451 of the Juicebox Podcast.

So sometimes I struggle to describe the episodes here in the beginning. And when I do, it's mostly because so much happened, that I don't know how to encapsulate it. This is going to be one of them. You're about to hear Mike, Mike's an adult. He is a father, he's a husband, he has type one diabetes. And the best I can say is, this is a story of him growing up and living with type one. I think it's incredibly interesting and valuable. I do not know how to put it into a sentence. Please remember, while you're listening 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 are becoming bold with insulin.

If you've been hearing about those diabetes pro tip episodes, you can find out more about them at diabetes pro tip.com, where they begin in your podcast player at Episode 210. There's also information about the defining diabetes shows afterdark episodes and so much more at Juicebox podcast.com.

This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries g vo hypo Penn. Find out more at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. This episode is also sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. And you can find out more at Contour Next one.com Ford slash juice box there's a lot going on at that link. It is well worth your time.

Mike Sasser 1:58
My name is Mike sasser and I've been a type one diabetic for coming up on 25 years.

Scott Benner 2:04
How old are you, Mike?

Mike Sasser 2:05
I am 3838.

Scott Benner 2:09
So you were 13. And you were diagnosed?

Unknown Speaker 2:11
Yeah. And how old are you? Turn 14 just turned four? Just

Scott Benner 2:16
14? Okay, we'll say 14. How you have children? How old are they?

Mike Sasser 2:20
So I have a 12 year old who thinks she's 17. A eight year old who think she's five and a seven year old boy who? I don't know what he thinks.

Scott Benner 2:35
I'm sure he doesn't think much of anything. Yeah. Give me one second because you're, I'm gonna check your voice that you know, it might get sorry. It's working. I just said I wanted to check into my ears. I think in my ears. You're a little low. But on the recording. You're good.

Unknown Speaker 2:49
Okay, sounds good. So

Scott Benner 2:50
I'll turn my turn my ears up a little bit. So the reason I asked about the age of your children is I was wondering if you are concerned that they might get type one.

Mike Sasser 3:01
So, No, I'm not. And specifically, because they're all adopted, which, which doesn't mean they won't get it. But if they get it, it won't be my fault.

Scott Benner 3:14
Mike's like, I can step back from that one and just go Hey, what a coincidence.

Unknown Speaker 3:17
Yeah.

Scott Benner 3:19
Oh, that's nice. How many? How many should give Three? Three children? Yep. You know, I'm adopted. Right,

Unknown Speaker 3:25
Mike? Oh, I didn't know that.

Scott Benner 3:27
Like, you gotta listen all the episodes, not just some of them. So yeah, no, no, I

Unknown Speaker 3:31
like

Scott Benner 3:33
what led to adoption. Did you just want to adopt? Were you having trouble conceiving? How'd that happen?

Mike Sasser 3:39
Yeah, both actually. So my family's my wife's family. And I had a history of infertility. And my, my father actually is adopted as well. So when my wife and I got serious, my girlfriend time, and I got serious about family. We just kind of had fairly frank conversations on if we couldn't get pregnant, would we be willing to adopt? And both of our answers were Yes. And five years into marriage. We weren't getting pregnant. And so we just decided All right, let's let's do this. So we adopted all three of our children through the foster system here in California.

Scott Benner 4:23
That's really lovely. But because you wanted children you could never really enjoy the freedom and the great feeling that came with not being able to get pregnant and having sex.

Unknown Speaker 4:35
It's funny.

Mike Sasser 4:37
I joke with a lot of my friends who you know they've their wives have birth children that when we brought our daughter home or first starter home, we were able to

Unknown Speaker 4:49
raise resume,

Mike Sasser 4:50
you and each other intimately that same night where they had to, they had to wait, you know, a

Scott Benner 4:56
little while at least, your celebration is definitely different than most The virus that's for sure, right?

Unknown Speaker 5:01
That's exactly right.

Scott Benner 5:04
Do you feel okay, Is everything all right? Are you wearing a diaper? What's happening?

Unknown Speaker 5:10
Why is that? I don't I don't get any of that that

Mike Sasser 5:11
none of that's funny because I don't understand it. Yeah. Trust me,

Scott Benner 5:14
it wouldn't be funny if you understood it. Oh my gosh. So diagnosed that 14. Was there any diabetes in the family line?

Mike Sasser 5:26
Yeah. So none that we knew of my dad was adopted, and we had no family history. No, none, medical or otherwise. So, it turns out here the last number of years, my dad has been able to track down his biological family, and there is a significant history of diabetes there. But for us back then it was totally out of the blue. Maybe,

Scott Benner 5:52
maybe your dad's not adopted, maybe they sold him for insulin.

Unknown Speaker 5:55
It's possible Oh,

Scott Benner 5:58
my gosh. Well, you know, it's, I feel your pain on that. Because anytime that I'm involved in a medical situation, the doctors likes to tell me about your medical history. And I was like, I I'm the first one. So I don't know, you know, and that really does. You know, it's sometimes I think it hurts because you don't have any preconceived notions, but sometimes I think it helps because you don't have any preconceived notions, you kind of learn things clearheaded Lee, right, but I know race situations, it would be nice that just have an uncle to tell you like, Oh, yeah, hey, here's how this, how this has gone and give you a little bit of a head start. But that's Yeah,

Mike Sasser 6:37
yeah. And like you said, on the flip side, you know, if you if you have a family history of cancer, or something like that, I feel like, you're going to be looking over your shoulder, you know, especially as you get older, like, oh, when's that? When's that cancer coming? So I know, there's probably positives and negatives to it. You know, we have my mom's side. And then obviously, I had had my dad, so me not being adopted, the immediate family, medical history was available. Just nothing, you know, past that, at least on my father's side.

Scott Benner 7:09
So 25 years ago, your regular an MPH.

Mike Sasser 7:15
Yeah, so I took both long lasting throughout, twice a day. And then you know, short, short acting insulin, generally, four times a day. So I would combine the morning and night shot together. So minimum of four shot today. Why I was supposed to take though most of the time I did not take especially if your high school

Scott Benner 7:39
really tell me. Yeah, that.

Unknown Speaker 7:42
Would that.

Scott Benner 7:43
Tell me about that? You just ignoring it? Or what are you doing? Yeah.

Mike Sasser 7:48
So and also sorry, my voice is super raspy. We're here in the Central Valley in California, and we've had tons of wildfires. And the smoke is just really gotten to me. Well, you're the only one that knows

Scott Benner 8:01
what your voice is supposed to sound like to everyone else. Like they just think you have a sexy voice. So let it be.

Mike Sasser 8:06
Because makes me sound like I'm at 88 instead of 38. So no. Yeah, when I got diagnosed in 96. So like a little quick rundown, you know, everybody's got most everybody's got fairly traumatic story. My, my grandma, who my grandparents, we were very close to as a family, and she had gotten cancer late 95, early 96. And so she was dying from that sometime in those few months. I developed diabetes but or developed threat word. It kicked in, and but my family missed all the classic symptoms, you know, drinking like a racehorse and peeing like a racehorse. And then she died early February. And then two months, two days later, her husband, my grandfather passed away, more or less, you know, broken heart. And at the same time, during that stretch I had been will just say violently dislocating my shoulder sports injury. And so I've been in and out of the hospital. I had, I think, in a matter of three months, I dislocated it like three or four times. And so anyway, I was having all these symptoms, but at the same time, a lot of crazy life was happening around me. So my parents mostly thought that it was just how I was reacting, you know, Grandpa, Grandma dying and all this medical trauma to my body. And in all my grades went from A's and B's all the way down to C's. Teachers were calling, wondering what's going on and the explanation was, you know, life's just rough right now. So In May, right before I graduated, actually, the night before graduation, I went in for a pre op for my surgery for my shoulder the following day. And when the nurse was drawing the blood out, she gave me a really, really funny look. And, you know, so I did, I didn't know anything different. And so my parents took me home and I'm probably within half an hour, we get a call from the family physician saying get down here immediately went down to his office, he's like, you know, talking to my parents, your son's diabetic, yada, yada, you got to get them into the ICU immediately. And so, you know, how to sugar of it was like 741 when they found me, and so, you know, ICU for a day, and then in the pediatric ward her nine more days. And I don't know, I kind of have a pretty easygoing personality anyway. So, although that was really, really scary, I didn't realize the gravity of what had happened to me. Yeah. Or what it was going to look like for the rest of my life. And so, you know, for the first few months, you know, doing all those shots and all those testing, it just sucks. And, you know, fast forward now I'm going into high school. I didn't have a whole lot of friends go with me from junior high to high school. So in a way, it was cutting, starting new with new crowds. And I didn't want to be that weird guy was no different than everybody else.

Scott Benner 11:43
Like, you just want to be there for your own reasons. That's all. I'm dying to understand what the nurse sawle drawing the blood, like, do you think there was Skittles swimming in your blood or

Mike Sasser 11:54
something? super thick, you know, just inhumanly thick. Something was definitely wrong. And so anyway, yeah. So I mean, that was, that's kind of the setup for just a high school of wanting to conceal it. And, and just not taking care of myself. And I mean, I have a sense apologize to my parents, because they, you know, they were on me, you know, how are you testing? Are you taking shots and averages live? Like, yeah, testing. You know, you remember, you know, before many dinners, my mom's like, Alright, go and go in and test before dinner. I go in my room, sit down for like, two, three minutes and just come back out. And you know, how's your sugar? Oh,

Scott Benner 12:37
it's fine. So So, Mike, let me jump

Mike Sasser 12:41
is pretty bad.

Scott Benner 12:42
Yeah, let me jump in here. So I understand if it struck you that you wanted to conceal it. At school? What I don't get is then like, I mean, you went into the room, you did the whole thing. Like you were in there, like why not test your blood sugar? What was your you remember your thoughts around that?

Mike Sasser 13:00
No, all I could say is my personality. I'm, I'm ridiculously stubborn. And I think I just at some point made up my mind that you know, as a 14 year old, without the the wisdom of age, going, you know, I'm just, I'm just not gonna deal with this, like, I'm fine. You know, of course, I feel horrible. But I think you know, if you're if your sugars are running high for a long time, your body just starts getting used to being uncomfortable. And you know, you you feel normal at 250 when you shouldn't, yeah. So you know, I still take shots to bring it down from like, crazy highs and stuff like that, but it was just very undisciplined, very undisciplined.

Unknown Speaker 13:46
I have a couple

Mike Sasser 13:47
and I didn't change my eating habits really, either. Okay.

Scott Benner 13:50
Well, I have a couple questions, I guess. So. Let me let me kind of like rummaging around in my brain for a second. I wonder if you could tell me, did you have any long term feelings for what the impact was on your health? And if you did, did you care or like, What, did you have any thoughts around that at all?

Unknown Speaker 14:09
No, because

Mike Sasser 14:11
I didn't know any other diabetics. You know, part of it's like a rebellion, right? If somebody tells you, Hey, this is what's gonna happen, you're like, well, it's not gonna it's probably that teenage boy, Romano or machismo or whatever, whatever you want to call it. So it was like a denial of what, you know, the future could possibly hold and not really believing it would happen to me. That's pretty athletic, pretty capable. So you know, I just didn't see it coming. I didn't, didn't have foresight at all.

Scott Benner 14:44
You're making me wonder. I'm actually making a note here. Like I'm going to try to find a psychologist to talk to I'm like so interested in that concept of it can't happen to me around you know, smoking or this or anything like I like who buys a pack of cigarettes, smokes everyone and conch believes. I've heard that this might not be good for you. But I mean, that's got to be for other people.

Mike Sasser 15:06
You know, it's a it's a really Yeah, I'd love to hear and answer. Your question I kind of wonder is, is how do you teach children perspective? Or teens perspective? You know, it's like, some things you have to live out and learn. And no matter of people telling you matters, apparently. No, I

Scott Benner 15:27
mean, do you think this is why people like a couple 100 years ago, just the punch their kids? Do it? study?

Mike Sasser 15:34
I think I think people still want to do it, they just know that they're gonna get thrown in prison for it.

Scott Benner 15:39
We've, we've, we've legislated the kid punching out of parenting, you know, I mean, the frustration, I mean, being serious the frustration of saying something to somebody and having them just be like, Oh, yeah, and yes, and you to death and walking away is one thing. But you know, around medical stuff, it really is something very different. And it's funny that diabetes fits the bill for life threatening. But I don't know, because you do it at home, it doesn't happen in a hospital, like for whatever reason, you can get away with it feeling like, Oh, you know, it's not, it's not going to be that big of a deal. Or maybe it's just because the impact, maybe you just explained it, really, maybe it's because the the real serious impact won't happen for years. And because your body does sort of adjust the feeling higher, I'm helping. I'm helping a kid right now. It's funny, she's probably the age you were when you were diagnosed. And, you know, she was very accustomed to the mid to hundreds. And, you know, for the first couple of days, you know, I'd get a note that was like, she feels really low. And she was like, 120. And I was like, Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Like, that's, it's gonna be like that. And then it only took a few days for and now suddenly, if her blood sugar gets over 180 she's complaining that she doesn't feel well.

Mike Sasser 16:54
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty amazing how how well, your body adapts now quickly, it learns.

Unknown Speaker 16:59
It's crazy. But

Mike Sasser 17:01
you know, I mean, I think I think part of it is is for for young kids are also like, teenage in junior high age, how important it is for them to get into community with other diabetics. I was so isolated. And so there was no accountability. And no, like, you know, like, you can talk to your friends about something at that age that you don't want to talk to an adult or a parent about?

Unknown Speaker 17:29
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I

Mike Sasser 17:31
would just, you know, for anybody in that age range that is diagnosed is really connected into community. And knowing that it's okay, knowing that, you know, you're not a pariah. I think it's really important for us, I mean, probably important for everybody. I guess,

Scott Benner 17:50
to have like, a sounding board to write like, someone who we're sure has similar experiences. Where did you find that? Or did you?

Mike Sasser 17:59
I didn't really, you know, I think so really what what changed, unfortunately, changed my outlook on PBS was, was just starting to realize a lot of the effects of it. I think, so I've had significant diabetic retinopathy in both my eyes and have had surgery, I think four surgeries, maybe five. And one your eye? On my eyes. Yeah, my left eye is is good. And, and I can see 2020 with glasses, and in my right eye, unfortunately, and the first surgery, the while removing scar tissue that the doctor accidentally ripped the retina, and is basically Game Over in my right eye after that, so I'm blind in my right eye. You know, and, and, you know, and then just other neuron neuropathy issues. Really like, Oh, crap, I need to, I really need to start taking care of this. And then then probably the most credit goes to just getting married. And my wife, you know, is like, and then I want you, I want you to be around to pay me

Scott Benner 19:13
100% Yeah, so I want my wife to be around to the baby.

Unknown Speaker 19:19
And then,

Mike Sasser 19:20
and then also, a real big shout out goes to just technology. So the first five years through high school and into college, it was on injections, and you know, like, didn't want to deal with it. And part of it was like the inconvenience of it, which sounds ridiculous now. When I was, I think five years into it, I got my first insulin pump. And now like totally changed my world. And you know, every iteration of new insulin pump and CGM everything has just gotten better and better and better. So today, you know, 20, almost 25 years into it. My diabetes can troll. anyone sees her better than they ever have been. mostly due to technology and, and, you know, the fact that I want to see my kids grow up and get married and hold a grandbaby.

Scott Benner 20:12
So when at the beginning of I mean, at the beginning of the Reaper coming to collect, you just were like, Oh, geez, I guess I'm not going to be the one that gets away with this.

Unknown Speaker 20:21
Yeah,

Mike Sasser 20:22
yeah. Well, and again, like I, I never had a community of diabetic so it wasn't like, acknowledging that other people will or won't. It was, you know, like, single soldier, I'm just going about this alone. And so yeah, when those no those things started to hit, it was like, Well, that was stupid. I guess I should have, you know, should have taken care of this. That was five, six years previous.

Scott Benner 20:49
Let me ask you about doctor, the doctor's visits in that time, like, you know, I'm, I'm always a little stunned, because a lot of people tell that story of like, Oh, my parents, like, did you test you know, did you give yourself your insulin? And you're like, yes, and then they go, okay, but there is a report card at the doctor's office that tells you that that probably didn't happen. But how does how does that fail? Like, in your perspective, how does that checkpoint fail people? Well,

Unknown Speaker 21:15
my,

Mike Sasser 21:16
the first doctor I got when I got diagnosed, was in our local area. Apparently, one of the the best endocrinologist, there was one of the heart. Now, the hard part was it I think this is gonna sound weird, no, no matter how I say it, but so he was he's Chinese, and he would go to China to visit often. Which is all great and good. But when he would come back, like his accent, his English was so hard to understand. I have to ask my parents, but I honestly think we're all I had no idea what you're saying. And you're trying to catch up and be like, I you know, and so obviously, we get numbers. And you know, we get our a one c back and, you know, average of you know, like, whatever, 250 bucks, or whatever it was. And it was a era we got, we got to try better. We got to do better. So I don't know, I think there was a disconnect. Obviously, obviously, there's a disconnect in there somewhere. And

Scott Benner 22:22
what did you say? What do you say the average blood sugar was like, 250. Yeah, probably that 250. That's an A one C of 10.3. By the way, I went insane. Let me let me shout out real quick. One of the listeners, who is a coder who who made a one C and blood glucose calculator for the podcast, it's at Juicebox Podcast, comm forward slash conversion, or you can get it on the main page with the menu, but I just went to it typed in 250 mg dl and it told me you're a one C is 10.3. And by the way, if you were in Europe, you'd be a 13.9. And yeah, anyway, insane. Yeah, handy to have. But I want to go backwards a little bit. As I plug my a one seat calculator into your conversation. Don't worry, you're making me think of a childhood vacation where we went to the Great Smoky Mountains and spent like a week. And when we came home, my dad spoke like Tex Ritter for like a month. Yeah. And yeah, and I don't believe he was doing it on purpose. I don't think he was like doing that Madonna thing, you know what I mean? Like, I think he just picked up an accent. And that's it. It's an interesting idea that you could go home to visit somebody and come back and just be more difficult to understand. But still, the number doesn't lie. So does that. Does that mean? That that number doesn't mean something to your parents? Or, but that even That's insane. Cuz your dad, your dad would know about this right? Or no?

Mike Sasser 23:52
Yeah, I mean, part of it is kind of a foggy memory going way back then. You know, I mean, I'm not that old. But that was a few years ago. Um, you know, my, my dad was a firefighter for, I don't know, two and a half decades. And so I think there was like this. This idea of, we kind of know what to do, but not specifically for this sort of thing. Like, in general, I can take care of medical stuff. And I don't know, I mean, I think part of it was to, you know, I was still involved in sports, although those were kind of crumbling, as my health crumbled. You know, puberty, just life in general. And, and, again, I probably would go back just to the fact that we were alone and didn't have a community to really, you know, tell my parents, you know, what the heck's going on here? Yeah, your son is not doing well. And just general ignorance, you know, like, I kind of find it little hard to believe, but apparently in my high school, which I don't know, I think we're close to 4000 kids, you know, I was the only one who was supposed to go to the nurse or taking my shots or whatever it was. So the nurse at the school didn't really have a good understanding what it is which, you know, like, your last or second last podcast about talking to people about diabetes. Type One Diabetes is really good, because, you know, a lot of people have general knowledge, but not specific knowledge about it. Yeah. And so if they don't have specific knowledge, they don't really know what's dangerous, or what not, and what to look for and what not to

Scott Benner 25:36
know. I mean, I'm not I'm not coming down on your family, I just, I'm really trying to, I'm trying to dig away at the, at the reasonings, and maybe other people can recognize it in their lives or, or even practitioners listening can understand that whatever, you know, whatever. Mike's doctor said to Mike and his parents didn't lead to Mike having a better a one C, or any kind of outcome or anything like that. And you see yourself, it's interesting, the way you dug into it, your dad's probably a more blue collar kind of guy, like, we'll just get it done. And you are athletic. So you appear vital. And the only mean, like, so it's just like, I'm fine. Look at me, it's almost like when the thin person has a heart attack, everyone's like, how did that happen? Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, then people can eat poorly, too. You know, like, it's, it's interesting, I literally think of a friend of my parents growing up. And the father was just, he was a real and active and man, he died in his 40s. And he ate terribly. And I think he was actually a victim of the fact that his body didn't put on weight, because he just thought, like, the rules of nutrition didn't apply to him. You know, and, and so maybe when you're just active and young, you just think the rules of how diabetes works don't apply to you. Or Yeah, you know, it doesn't even make you want to take the time to figure it out. But it's a different way. No,

Mike Sasser 27:02
there's probably something else I have a big streak of, I guess, anti-authoritarianism, I don't know if that's a word. Check it out.

Scott Benner 27:09
It is now is now if everybody

Mike Sasser 27:12
tells me to do something, I generally want to push back against it. So you know, if I had doctors who were saying you need to do this, that this, you know, you need to be filling out your little logbook for everything you're eating, I'm going there's no way in Heck, I'm gonna be there. Mostly because you've told me to do it. Which is not a great recipe for success in life in general. But

Scott Benner 27:36
watch the tramcar please. No, thank you.

Mike Sasser 27:40
I mean, there's there. Yeah. So another big help for me was, you know, when I met the time, I got my insulin pump. I switched insurances, and I gotten a new a new endocrinologist who I, I had, I gotta think now, she's been with me for 20 some odd years, but her personality was, you know, this is your thing, you deal with it, I'll help you, I'll coach you. But you know, you're not a kid, even though I still was in a lot of ways, right? You take care of it. And so it, it was a, I suppose, all throughout high school and into college. It was like other people wanting to take care of me. And push back against that. And then, you know, there was a get along with, you know, getting married along with seeing the issues that were coming up. I was like, Oh, crap, I better take care of this. I gotta, you know, because if I don't, I'm gonna die. Nobody else is gonna die. If I don't take care of this. Yeah, it'd be me. So anyway, yeah. Well,

Scott Benner 28:43
it's interesting, too, that when your wife made the same demand, you didn't feel that way.

Mike Sasser 28:48
Well, that's not necessarily true. Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 28:52
Let's ruin your marriage.

Mike Sasser 28:54
Honestly, in a lot of people fight a lot of marriages, they fight about sex and money. And our fight has always been about my health. And especially those first few years it was it was not good. And many fights many fights over that. But

Scott Benner 29:13
I'm just laughing to myself, Mike, because I conjured and I apologize already, but I conjured up an image in my mind of you and your wife having very lovely sex while she yelled at you about your blood sugar. how's this going? What's your blood sugar? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 29:31
Jesus, one thing that ever happened.

Mike Sasser 29:34
You know, she probably frustrated if my blood sugar was low during the middle of it. Yeah. Um,

Unknown Speaker 29:40
no.

Unknown Speaker 29:42
You know, I mean,

Mike Sasser 29:43
she wants me to be around. And, you know,

Scott Benner 29:46
I gotta be honest with him. Like, I want you to stick around because it sounds like you're getting laid a lot. So just would be a damn shame if that came to an end for you.

Mike Sasser 29:57
I don't disagree. No, I, you know, again, she just wanted the best for me. And I'm sure part of that is, you know, she wants the best for us. Yeah. But a big part of it is, you know, the best for me. And, and, you know, she's seeing me go through these eye surgeries, and, you know, and all the all the complications that goes with that stuff. And you know, and then as I accrued a couple more medical issues moving on, I was just like, Hey, man, you know, you really got to take care of this. And her biggest frustration is speaking on her behalf would just be, you know, the lack of me wanting to take care of myself. You know, which ties into who I am as a person and my youth age. personality. So, anyway, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:51
well, your management style Now, obviously, is different. You started the pumper act in the college ages, what do you think would have been different? If like, if you were diagnosed today versus when you were diagnosed? You think, do you think like, I mean, how much is like, how did you even find the podcast? Like, what is it? What is it that's different about your life right now, that would be valuable for people to know?

Mike Sasser 31:14
Well, I mean, a technology played a huge, huge, huge role in me being where I'm at today, physically. And I remember I were, I've been on the Guardian from mini med for I think, coming up on three years, something like that. And then the previous two years, I was on Dexcom. I think it was the G five back then. And that was like mind blowing, health changing, being able to see that little arrow. Yeah. It was like, radically changed the way that I saw my diabetes, what was happening, what wasn't happening, the trends, you know, all that kind of stuff that your listeners, and most of your listeners would know very well. So just the technology made such a huge difference for me in being able to manage. Well. And then also, I said before, I think just the the social aspect of it, knowing people with diabetes, and getting involved with people diabetes, so I think, no, I like how I found your podcast. So I work as a civil engineer, even though I'm not licensed yet. Don't tell anybody.

Unknown Speaker 32:32
No one knows. It'll be fun.

Mike Sasser 32:34
Yeah. So I'm working. I listened to podcasts often. Which again, you know, listening to podcasts while doing math. Right.

Scott Benner 32:47
So if I drive over a bridge in California, and I, I end up three feet shy of the other side, I'll know what happened.

Mike Sasser 32:53
Right? Yeah. So we don't work on public projects. Yeah. So if you're in a private place, and it falls apart, it can be my fault.

Scott Benner 33:02
Can you imagine I'm tumbling to my death from the third floor. My last thought was the engineer was probably listening to a podcast when he did the math on this thing.

Unknown Speaker 33:09
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I listened to a lot of podcasts. And, you know, I

Mike Sasser 33:17
found a lot of the podcasts I found kind of earlier on, it just didn't really connect with me, for whatever reason, and, and I also can, like, switch to podcasts. So no have like, one a day I listened to you one different type. And I have a desire to, in general, help people who are in pain. And, you know, that can kind of tie into some of my, we'll just call it faith based thoughts. But in the desire to help people who are in pain, generally physically, because I have a better understanding of that than then emotional or mental or whatever. And it's like, well, if you're going to do this, you need to really just be outside of yourself and get more reference on people and how they feel and think and what their experiences are. So, I mean, that kind of drove me to the podcast, and then I, I can't remember which one I listened to first, but I had a rule. And the general rule I, if somebody is podcasting about diabetes that doesn't have it, and it kind of irks me automatically. But for whatever reason, I mostly probably your personality, yours doesn't hurt me at all. And

Unknown Speaker 34:39
I guess, you know,

Mike Sasser 34:40
it's probably because I don't feel mothered, and here's my, you know, anti authoritarian again. I feel encouraged by your podcasts and not mothered. Well, there's a number of other ones that just kind of like, well, this is what you should do, and this is how you should do it. So hey, no,

Scott Benner 34:55
no, no, I listened that was really thoughtful and I'm very proud of myself for not stopping You in the middle to proclaim that I have the best diabetes podcast. Because I felt like that's what you were saying you listened to a lot of them, they didn't work out for you. And then you found this when I was like, Oh, this is where I want to be sarcastic right here, but I let it go because you were really thoughtful. I appreciate knowing that and yeah, and and I, I appreciate that it strikes you that way. I don't want to tell anyone to listen. Like let's like, strip all bullshit away for a second right? And let me tell you something, I could take you and 900 other people and fix your blood sugar's by Wednesday. I got I can do it. I know how to do it. I'm good at it, you know, but I don't think there's any benefit to people with type one diabetes for them to be spoken to like that. I just I can see where that would just rub you the wrong way immediately. Not even just because I don't have Type One Diabetes but because like you've been fighting you've been in this fight for so long, and it's not going your way. I can't imagine how infuriating it would be for someone to come along go no no just flip that switch and turn that dial and just let's move that to there. Okay, there you go. Like that would make me want to jump off a building if I if someone did that for me.

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Mike Sasser 38:58
And it's also just the idea that, you know, you could fix it by Thursday, or you know, in a few days or whatever, but you're not going to be there necessarily next year, falling or whatever, you'd

Scott Benner 39:08
screw it up

Unknown Speaker 39:10
to take care of it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:11
you know, you'd mess it right back up again, because you have these. So the way I think about it is is it I don't know you can call them like ghosts or you know, just things that aren't true that you think are true about diabetes. And yeah, in a nutshell, Mike. So many people's basil insulin is wrong. And when your basal insulin is not right, nothing else works well, right. And so everything that you see happening isn't real. It wouldn't be happening like that if your basil was correct. And so and what's the one thing that people with diabetes ignore more than anything else? It's their basal insulin. Yeah, they just don't pay. It's like it doesn't matter for some reason. It's fascinating and so on. You know, again, going back to this girl who you know this 14 year old girl who I'm talking with right now, Basil insulins at point four really needs to be point eight. Again, imagine she's got she's got 50% too little basil and so on. Yeah. And so you say, hey, push your basil up. And then every time it's not just tired, it's everyone I've ever spoken to. I can't do that I get low all the time. You want me to give myself more insulin, but I get low? I'm like, No, no, you're getting low, because you don't have enough basal insulin, you're coming in with extra meal Bolus trying to make up for it. The food digests out of your system, the insolence left behind, it crashes you low, you panic, because you don't know what's happening. You eat a bunch of food, you don't cover it, you shoot back up again, you get caught in this loop, it happens constantly. And then I come along and say, Hey, you know what your problem is here, you don't have enough insulin. And their minds just overload. They don't know how to think about that. So even when I put this person that I'm talking about where they needed to be, I've watched them for the last three days. Because of their preconceived notions that are all built on these ghosts, they make the wrong decision at every turn. And now and then it's my then I have to explain over and over again. No, you can't do that. That's not why you got low. This is why you got low. Are you sure? Are you sure? Because what I think is and I'm like, Yeah, I know what you think. But what you think is completely wrong. You know, and so if I were to set it and leave that person alone, they'd screw it back up in three seconds.

Mike Sasser 41:32
Yeah, and that's exactly the story of my life for, for the first I don't know, 10 years of pumping, was having my basil away to hide, you know, to cover. I mean, I'm sorry, that my basil way too low, and cover with these giant bolsters at mealtimes, which, you know, cross my fingers, you know, was, was wrecked enough. And that was a arm wrestle that me and my endocrinologist have had for years and years and years and years. And it took a long time to swing that back around to correct proportions.

Scott Benner 42:07
Yeah. And, but and, and knowing that, and me being around this for so long that I understand that about people. That's why the podcast works, because it's not trying to jam it all down your throat in one hour. Or it's, it's, it's, you have to keep listening. So that it so that I'm my voice is that tapping on the back of your head that makes you one day just go Okay, like, I know, it's not apples to apples, because this isn't management. But I one time got an email from somebody that just said is a very simple email. And it said, okay, you went, I'll get an omni pod. And I was like, what, like, there was nothing else to the email. And I laughed when I read it. Because what I recognized was that he had listened to this podcast for so long that he was finally like, I'll try this pump. I mean, I'll do it. And and it wasn't even. I don't even think it was his decision. At that point. He was just like, Oh my God, I've heard about it enough. I'll give it a shot. And I think that about management to like, one day, you're just going to be like, Oh, my God, I'll Pre-Bolus if this guy will just shut up, you know? So, yeah, 100% Yeah, 100%, you know, and it just takes time and it takes time for it to, to sink in. It's easier when you're dealing with the newer diagnose people are the easiest, because they have no preconceived notions of what this is. So you just tell them do this, and they go, Okay, and then it works. And then they're like, wow, that worked. And that's the

Unknown Speaker 43:34
Yep, yep.

Mike Sasser 43:37
That's all people that are there. The hard part?

Scott Benner 43:39
Yeah. You're you're all thinking you know what you're doing? You don't? Listen, I said all the time. If you know what you're doing, your agency would be in the mid fives, and it would stay there Stabler with very little effort. And that wouldn't be an indication that you know how to use your insulin. That's it. Not that. Well, not that hard. It's incredibly hard. Mike. By the way, the podcast is popular because yeah, it's hard, you know? Yeah, it's,

Mike Sasser 44:05
I mean, no doubt it is, I think, you know, I've been bumping around in the, in the low sixes right around 6.0 for a long time. And I know, for me to get under six, that I'm gonna have to really, you know, start cracking down on step two. And part of me is like, Am I am I okay? where I'm at? Do I want to focus so hard on this one aspect of my life? And which is, you know, important. It's a big part of who I am. And, but it's not all of who I am. So it's hard in a way where it's like, trying to decide how much time you spend on your overall health versus the time you spend living, I suppose I suppose those are obviously tied together, but I'm not sure Just kind of an interesting equation.

Scott Benner 45:01
No, yeah, good point. He really do. That's why that's why I'm I pride myself on taking some of these big concepts, explaining them out over episodes, but also whittling them down to basics. So that in the moment the basics lead you and the episodes, educate the lead. I don't know if that makes sense or not. But yeah, in the end, man, get your basil, right, assess it periodically. Pre-Bolus. And understand the difference between carb impacts its glycemic load and glycemic index. It's the whole game. That's it. And after that, it's timing and amount, use the right amount of insulin at the right time. And you're done. If it's on a if it's on a business card, how to get to it. And I've been on that,

Mike Sasser 45:43
I've been on that the Guardian closed loop system. So that's been a super big helpful thing for me, okay. Because it kind of joke like, it covers a multiple multitude of incorrect, or counting sins. On my side, I should say multiple, but you know, allows me to be a little less specific, exactly right about, you know, the numbers. So

Scott Benner 46:12
now, so you can be more aggressive with the carb count. And then the Guardian can take away the basil, if you've overestimated, is that it?

Mike Sasser 46:19
Yeah. Or flip it can be less, I can give less of a bolus, and it will make and again, not like, you know, here's a, here's a big bowl of ice cream, and I'm gonna take, you know, five units of insulin, not that crazy. But you know, if you're off,

Unknown Speaker 46:37
I don't know, I

Scott Benner 46:38
510 cards, you know, it'll, it'll cover for that. At the very least keep a 250 from happening or something like that. Yeah,

Mike Sasser 46:46
yeah. I mean, you know, I, I'm in range way, way, way, way more than I'm out of range. Yeah. And, you know, also, I think a lot of diabetics will kind of figure out that they, you know, they're if they have a regulated schedule in their life, and that it's a lot easier to take care of, because you know, what to do when to do it? And if you generally, I don't know, maybe this is just for our family. But we have similar meals, over a week or over a month. So you get a good idea of, you know, okay, this meal is going to require more or less, or you know, you can do you kind of get into a it's easier to estimate what you're doing, because you've done it a number of times.

Scott Benner 47:35
I agree with you. I mean, it definitely having a schedule, takes away some of the variability, and it takes away your need to have to, like, guess on the fly. If that and yeah, but I also think that eventually, I mean, maybe I'm wrong. But for me, I've gotten good at guessing on the fly, too. But I also if you really if you heard the conversation a second ago, if you really heard like, when when I thought about like a loop. I was like, Oh yeah, be more aggressive. And you're like, you could even be less aggressive. I was like, ah, and that migrate, there's the difference between ardens five, five and your six? Oh, like probably the truth.

Mike Sasser 48:14
You know, it is yeah, it is 100%.

Scott Benner 48:17
It's mindset, it's just about like, I'm going to, I'm going to you know, I used to talk about this more years ago, but in my opinion, be bold means that I'd rather get low once a month, because I was too aggressive than be high every day because I wasn't right. You know, and so, and, you know, also that doesn't mean just like start using more insulin it again, it's basil Pre-Bolus glycaemic low glycemic index understand foods, you know, the difference between 1010 carbs, excuse me of watermelon and 10 carbs have a baked potato, different impact. Right? Right. And so you can't just count 10 carbs and put the insulin and then later go, like, I don't understand what happened. Because what happened was, is that some foods don't punch at the same weight as others and you have to address to know that, you know,

Mike Sasser 49:08
yeah, and then I also have, you know, so hey, here's more issues. I'm the only and so I got like eight years ago or something like that I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. And so what I can eat for that has been a big effect on the diabetes side. And then a few years ago, I got diagnosed with gastroparesis, and just don't know if you're familiar with it. Yeah. So it's just been that's been real trick to start learning, because things are digesting a lot longer than twice as long really, then would have normally. So all of that kind of has been. Well, let's

Scott Benner 49:51
balance it. Yeah, dude, your six is impressive, given all the the roadblocks, honestly, you know, the gastroparesis is amazing. is a big sticking point in obviously talking about being aggressive, because you could what I mean, in short order for people, you could eat something, and it might digest the way you expect, or you could eat something and digestion doesn't happen for a really long time. And if you put your insulin in and the digestion doesn't happen, you get low. Is that basic? Right?

Mike Sasser 50:20
Yeah, yeah, Correct. Correct. Yeah. Well, that's such, which is why I think why the, you know, the closed loop system has has

Unknown Speaker 50:31
helped

Mike Sasser 50:34
me do it again, kind of covers the covers the unexpected digestion timeline. Yeah. But you know, even with that, like, depending on what food you eat, you know, naturally, you know, things with loss of oils or grease are going to take longer to digest. So there's still a good amount of, you know, planning, okay, what am I eating? How long is this gonna take? What do I take now? Do I take something later? You know, all those sorts of things factor in when we just like they would with anybody?

Scott Benner 51:05
Yeah, really? Well, two things. First of all, I genuinely believe that algorithm based pumping is going to save countless people with type one diabetes. Like just it's once you have the settings, right. You know, you could I can use it yesterday, Arden had Arden eighth. And this goes into my second part, which is diet. So Arden ate something in the middle of the day yesterday, that was just really difficult to deal with. And it pushed her blood sugar up to like that 181 90 range. And it's, it didn't matter how much insulin I gave her. I must have been six hours at 180. And so and we were aggressive through those six hours, which is probably how I stopped it from being 300 to be perfect, right? Yeah, right. Yep. And you would expect after that, that overnight, she's going to be low. Except that because of the algorithm that's managing Arden at this point, I can see how it managed her basil overnight. And it's fascinating. Like, I'm genuinely fascinating how she needed insulin in places didn't need it in other places, and her blood sugar last night. So you know, coming down out of this one, I got her here at 176 at 11:45pm. Right. But by two in the morning, she's 116. And I birth by three in the morning, she's 81. And she was 81 to 95 all the way up till noon. And that's that's, that's while everyone was sleeping, and coming out of a stubborn high because of a diet choice that used a lot of insulin. So yeah, it's just you mean that? Everyone who can afford it? Just try it. You know, try that try one thing, right? Yeah, gotta be like, man,

Unknown Speaker 52:54
we gotta

Mike Sasser 52:56
we gotta figure out how to make I mean, shoot insulin accessible to everybody. It's ridiculous. And then, you know, these these great tools, I don't know, whatever. Now we can get into politics and talk forever about what's wrong.

Scott Benner 53:10
There's obvious stuff is wrong? Well, but and then the other problem. I see I struggle to call it a problem, because I think at the base of what this podcast is about, it's the idea that if you know how to use insulin, you can manage your diabetes well. And an extension of that is you could probably eat anything you wanted, if you knew how to use the insulin for it. I think sometimes people hear that and think, oh, that's, you know, great, like, I'll just eat cake forever. But I don't, I don't mean that I've never meant like, just eat terribly all the time. But at the same point, like some people are going to eat in a less healthy way than others. And that shouldn't preclude those people from not having high blood sugars. Right, right. So there's obviously you can make different diet choices that will make your insulin use less, and that will change everything for the better. But at the same time, I'm not into telling people what to do. And I don't like the idea that Oh, just because this person eats I don't know like more processed food than probably they should what they don't get to live healthy, you know with their insulin like that doesn't make sense to me. So the the basis of the podcast has always been you can eat what you want, if you know how to use insulin. And at the same time, I'm going to tell you I know how to use insulin, right? Yeah, yep. A macaroni and cheese out of a box. Crushed Arden yesterday. And and most people would not have had the nerve to throw in as much as long as I did once it got out of hand. So you know a lot of Boston Yeah, it's just it's it's not real. Like it's I can't give her I can't there's other parts that I can give her. That wouldn't do that to her. But it's it's I mean, it's it's in a box. There's cheating here.

Mike Sasser 54:59
Not sponsored by Kraft macaroni is what you're trying. I don't think

Scott Benner 55:01
I'm ever getting that one. No, cuz, Listen, I'll be great to Kraft macaroni and cheese. That stuff is hard to abuse insulin with certain it's not poison to be perfectly. Yeah, you know? It just it and so people need to understand that it's but it's a choice, right like I looked at Arden when she said, Yeah, I think she's getting her period if I'm being honest. And she's like, you know what I really want. I'm like, oh God. And so I said, I don't think I can keep your blood sugar down with this, like, I'll give it my best shot. And she was just like, I don't care. So you know, that's going to happen to people. And when that's going to happen to people, they shouldn't end up needing AI surgery 20 years from now is what I'm saying.

Mike Sasser 55:43
Yeah, I know, this didn't and I think, you know, I think a lot of the tools are out there that help make up for bad decisions and bad self care, which isn't an excuse to have that self care. It just mitigates some of the what would have been, you know, really bad. eventuality is of it? Yeah. So the goal is still for individuals to take individual responsibility, and to do the best they can learn their body, you know, and just use the tools appropriately.

Unknown Speaker 56:17
Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Benner 56:18
Yeah. Listen, not being able to be perfect. Shouldn't be cause for health decline. Yeah, if you can help it, and I think with insulin, it can be helped. Yeah, that isn't to say that, I don't think you probably shouldn't eat, you know, processed food 24 hours a day. I don't think you should. And, and I try not to and I try to have my my family not do that. And it's a big difference. You know, like, it really is. And it's tough, because a lot of us are brought up in households that don't have a lot of money. And so boxed or bagged food is usually more affordable. It's usually easier to prepare for people who are working long days, like there's good reasons people end up in this scenario, and then they put whatever they put in it makes it taste like heaven. You know, and eat real food. You're like, Oh, so bland. It's like, yeah, doesn't have 19 chemicals in it that make your brain go, Oh, my God, this is amazing.

Mike Sasser 57:20
Yeah, I mean, you know, that those are just choices that that families have to make. And and I'd say, in general, you know, eating like a healthy diabetic should be the goal of anybody. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:33
yeah. As the person with diabetes, there's

Mike Sasser 57:34
so much crap out there and your food anyway. And you know, I get it. Like, if, if you're on the road, and you need to go grab something, you just need to go get it? Yeah. And then, you know, like, what are you willing to sacrifice monetarily in life? If you can? You know, like you said, there are people who can't hear it, if you can, you know, like, hey, maybe we give up this toy, and work on eating a little better, a little healthier. So, you know, and those are all just, again, you can't legislate that. I can't boss people around, that's just got to be either a self discovery or an encouragement to go, Hey, man, this is this is gonna be, you know,

Scott Benner 58:15
yeah. And that

Mike Sasser 58:16
and I don't have high hopes work for the United States. In that regard. It's gonna get worse, just

Scott Benner 58:20
in general, it's, you know, path of least resistance is usually the path that gets taken. But I think just in general, that's really what I mean for the podcast to be like the informations here, you know, okay, now you know how to use the insulin, your choice about what you eat next is not up to me. And I'm not going to like sit here and tell you what to do. I am doing a series of with people about how they eat. So people are coming on and talking about different, like, ways of eating. And so that'll be there too. And maybe, maybe someone will hear it and go, Oh, wow. I'll try that. You know, but the concept that I'd come along and tell them like, you have to do it like this. And if you don't, you're gonna die. I mean, listen, even that might be true, but that's not my place. And right, you know, I'm not into telling people what to do. So it just

Mike Sasser 59:07
yeah, and the more you learn, well, and maybe this is just my personality again, but I feel like the more you tell them, the more they'll resist that and be like, No, you know, I'm going to do what I want to do.

Scott Benner 59:15
Do Do you think you're the only one that feels that way?

Mike Sasser 59:18
Nobody told me I might just be a certain stranded people.

Scott Benner 59:22
I think no one wants to be told what to do. Some people push back and some people Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I don't I hate being Oh my God, I there's some things that make me so upset being told what to do. I hate. I don't like the concept of wasted time breaks my heart. You know, there's an I'm sure that, you know, if you had a VCR and you had tapes in my whole life, you could it wouldn't be hard to figure out why I feel the way I feel but there's just some things that just ring a bell inside of you and and, you know, then your personality takes over. Are you a person that just goes okay, I'll let it go. Or are you somebody who just fights and I mean, yeah, you sound like you You fight and I fight to, you know,

Mike Sasser 1:00:02
that VCR reference totally just dated you.

Scott Benner 1:00:05
I wanted to my dad, we were so broke, right? You want to know, you want to know how in hindsight, I can tell my dad was gonna leave my mom here it is, well, we were broke in a way that is hard to put into words and a VCR when they were first available cost $1,000 only thing you could do with them was either tape, you know, something from your television, where you could go to a place and rent a movie to watch now, in my town, you had to go to a pharmacy who had a small room in the back where there was maybe 30 choices of movies to rent and renting the movies was really incredibly expensive to my dad comes home one day with this VCR. And to say that the VCR was now the most valuable thing in the house would have been an understatement. You know, like it and so everyone's like, we never spend money on anything. What is this? And then I realized, like, I think my dad had decided to leave us and he was trying to sprinkle like, things in the house that I don't know exactly, but he clearly like, stopped worrying about financial things. Yeah, and started like, you know, just being like, here, you guys that you'll like this. Now Meanwhile, the pharmacy was too far from my house to walk to. And he was the only one that drove so when he left. I had $1,000 box sitting under my television. I couldn't do it. I kind of ended up being mean, you know?

Mike Sasser 1:01:35
Yeah, kind of sold that thing and went out and bought some comic books or something. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:01:41
listen, I was angry back then. I should have thought it through the window of where he moved to. But but but but anyway, like, you know, everyone has stuff going on in their lives that were has gone on that impacts how you act today. And you know, there's plenty of people who get nervous or stressed and reach for food, because who knows why? Because, you know, maybe they were sad one day and their mom came along and they're like, here, honey, have some chocolate. You know, like, Yeah, because I didn't know where to form. And, and my point is, is that when you eat that food, you shouldn't have to have a blood sugar of 300. So, you know, I used to avoid it. Yeah, that's what the podcast is for me is it's good. Yeah, it's managing insulin, and then you decide how to do it from there. Have we missed anything, Mike?

Mike Sasser 1:02:31
Um, well, I guess I real quick. I think well, the way that we got connected to do this podcast was Oh, yeah. Yeah. She had a podcast with Jenny, Jenny or Jen. Jenny.

Scott Benner 1:02:48
I think I don't think and I think she's Jennifer. Jenny. I don't think I've never heard anybody call her Jen.

Mike Sasser 1:02:54
My sister's Jen. So I know. I get it mixed up. Anyway. And it was on the mini med in The Guardian closed loop system. Oh, and so you guys went through it. And I all fired up in a negative sort of way. And I just felt like it was in general.

Scott Benner 1:03:17
There usually it's bad. Yeah, it was your like, they did a hit job on the on the back. And I love the Medtronic. Yeah, you yelled at me Hold on. I can find that. Well,

Mike Sasser 1:03:29
messenger message that's a well Holy, Holy moly, not dating myself. Now. So I after I listened to it, you know, I'm sitting there at work. And I stopped on my civil engineering. And I pick up my phone and start typing something on Instagram. And I get it out. And then as soon as I send it, I get Oh, crap, man, that was stupid. So then I delete it. And I'm like, I need to have a better you know, more measured response, and just kind of share my feelings. And then seriously, within like, two seconds, you you pop the response back to me something to be effective. I saw your message, and then you deleted it. You know, we'd love to chat and I was like, Oh, crap, I got caught. So anyway, and then so kind of my response to that was or the reason why I was a big deal. And then I retracted It was kind of this idea around, I was no identity and I was I I find identity in my Medtronic pump and CGM. And so the problem was, in that I felt you know, part of my identity and being crapped on really tough work, you know, that's how I perceived it to be Yeah. And instead of having a measured response going, Hey, let's talk about this. You know, these are, these are what I see about it. These are, you know, how it's really saved my life and a lot of ways the initial reaction was just, you know, anger and lashing out in a way, digitally yelling a wrecking. And you know, so I think that's kind of how this conversation started. Because you know, something in my life that I have been working on is really where do I find my identity. And when you when you're identifying something, or where you find your identity in something, those people in that group that align with you are kind of your, you know, your team, or your tribe, for lack of a better term. And so anybody who's outside of that there's there there can be this automatic response of, well, you're not us, you're not one of us. And so then there's, there can be a negative view of anybody outside that, which ultimately is super unproductive, and super unhelpful. And so just the idea of like, taking a step back and be like, look like we can disagree and have a great conversation about the pluses and minuses. I don't need to be defensive. Yeah. And so that's kind of the genesis of how we meeting.

Scott Benner 1:06:13
Yeah, we have to, I have to tell you, I, I really was being genuine, I was interested in your thoughts, because I didn't feel yelled at I just, I was like, Wow, he really identifies with this part. And and, and so that didn't strike me for two reasons. One, I don't use an insulin pump. And I guess, and also, my daughter doesn't feel like, I don't think she feels like her diabetes. So that's a different, like, that's outside of my concept. But also, my brain just doesn't work like that. In general. Like, you know, when people you know, you watch a football game, your team loses, and people are just destroyed for days. Yeah, I don't feel like that. Like, like a football game is entertainment. And when it's over, it's over. I don't ever think about it again, like 10 minutes after the Eagles won the Super Bowl, I kind of forgot the Eagles won the Super Bowl, it's like, wow, that was really exciting. And then like, it was sort of over and I didn't care anymore. I don't have what you're talking about that, um, that that, that tribal feeling to things. Even when I watch my son, and maybe, you know, watch my son play baseball. And like, you know, so he, he, my son can pitch and actually throws really hard but doesn't pitch. He's not a pitcher. But this summer, and other times happened to him in college in a couple of places. There are times when they just they run out of pitching and they're like, hey, he throws like 90 miles an hour. And you know, and he'll get in. And people are always saying to him, I'm surprised at how calm you are given all the pressure. And his response is always the same. I don't feel any pressure. And they're like, why he goes, Well, I am not a pitcher, I'm doing you a favor. And so you'll get what you get and be I don't give a crap if we win this game or not. And and and I was like, I never understood that because he's felt like that forever. And I'm like, What do you mean, you don't care if you win, he goes, and he'll say, Look, I don't mean I don't care if we win, like I want to win. Everything I'm doing is geared towards winning. But this day is about me doing my best. And that's it. And if that doesn't end up in a win, he doesn't see that as part of his. I don't know, identity, I guess like Yeah, he showed up and he did his best. I'm not connected to this game. Except for the fact that I'm playing it. But how this ends doesn't, it doesn't change who I am or what I did. And so that I think is kind of the concept around here in general. You know, I know that's how I feel, and why I wasn't insulted or sad at your note and why I was just interested in hearing more because here's from my perspective, Jenny's Jenny's as smart as they come about diabetes, and she's used that pump. And so I'm like, Alright, well, let me get Jenny's opinion of the pump. And I'm sure if I would have gotten you, you would have given me a different opinion of the pump. But you also have a different story. And Jenny story is more clean in that her her management is good. She knows how to use her insulin. She's got you know, real ideas about all the pumps. And so I her opinion, I can't believe I'm going to say this to you. But her opinion about the Medtronic pump carries more weight with me than yours does.

Mike Sasser 1:09:32
Yeah, for sure. Right. And and I

Scott Benner 1:09:33
totally get it but I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just like, I think hers is more. You know what, you know, what a reporter supposed to do? Right? Like just yeah, just talk about, like the facts as far as well as they see them. And, and so I wasn't like, oh god, I did something wrong. I'll fix it for this guy. I was like, Look, we did a thing. I'm proud of how we did it. Now. Let me find out why it made you feel that way because I think that would be interesting. for an hour never brought it up?

Mike Sasser 1:10:05
Well, it's it's good. And, you know, my point in the retraction was just that the feelings that I was having were wrong. And that, you know, having that exclusiveness in whatever route that you have, is it a way to bridge anything? You know, like? I don't I don't know, maybe there's a, maybe there's a try to frame this. You know, like, we, I think we all get broken down into two groups that we either choose to join or have to join, like, you know, type one diabetics, we're all in this group, not because we've chosen it, but because we're here. And so now if we're, you know, listening or watching commercials for type two diabetics, it is our is. And again, maybe this is not your personality. It's my response, like, man, those GM type two diabetics, they

don't know how good they have it, or, you know, or whatever? Or is my is, do I have a feeling of empathy? And like, man, yeah,

I get it, like, this sucks for you. And, you know, how can we how can we build a bridge? How can I be empathetic, and my initial response in general, is, is a selfish and like a protective of the group that I'm in, in general. And I, we obviously broke down all the way into, you know, this specific pump, I'm was am wearing. Yeah. So it's just that idea of like, you know, like, we need to be, as people, and especially now and in our world, people who work on building bridges outside of the groups that were already in, again, whether by choice or not by choice, and working on empathy and sympathy, to move forward. And so and it's really, so that's what I wanted it, you know,

Scott Benner 1:11:58
I think you did that work through, but you didn't have because you made me aware of something that I honestly never would have considered. And at the same time, I'm thinking, listening to you that I think hearing that having that reaction, reconsidering it and then meeting up with me today, I think my day ends up being valuable for you as well. Am I right?

Unknown Speaker 1:12:16
Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure.

Scott Benner 1:12:18
I saved you basically like, No, I'm just kidding.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:23
Oh, man,

Mike Sasser 1:12:24
maybe you taught me a life lesson or helped me. Three, three, learn a life lesson that I've had to learn hundreds of times before.

Scott Benner 1:12:30
Well, I hear what you're saying, Mike. And you're welcome. Now, just kidding.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:35
I appreciate it.

Scott Benner 1:12:37
Nice. Just kidding. But, but I mean, like, Listen, let's be honest. That's what conversations supposed to do. Oh, sure. And we really have gotten into a weird space where between headlines and tribalism and wanting our team to win all the time, and not having context for what we're talking about anymore. And feeling like, you know, it used to be called politically correct, right. But now it's it's woke culture where just anything that seems wrong, has to be burned to the ground. And there's no nuance in any conversation. Like, that's not a good way to come to an end. Like what you and I did is, that's how people were supposed to talk to each other.

Mike Sasser 1:13:18
Yeah, yeah. 100% on that, I mean, if anybody's listening that that's what i would love, you know, the legacy of this episode is just have conversation and view the other side, weigh it. And, you know, take the pros and the cons and go from there doesn't mean we got to agree. You know, I may never be a fan of the Omni pod. But that doesn't mean that I have to hate you for you know, every single episode talking about Omni pod.

Scott Benner 1:13:46
Yeah. You also should take conversations about the Omni pod as conversations about pumping, just from my perspective, right pump isn't on a pod. And like, right, look, it's easy to get these things confused, because of, you know, ads, but I want you, whoever you are out there to do whatever works for you. Right? You put it on the pot on and it turns out that the candle angle or something like that doesn't do well with your body type than get a different pump. You know? That that's it. That excuse me on the pod Now, hold on one second. Neither I nor Omni pod has the expectation that my job is to talk every person with diabetes and using an ami pod, right. And by the way, they might expect that. You know what to see, the interesting thing is no, I know they don't

Unknown Speaker 1:14:37
know. And

Scott Benner 1:14:38
because of conversations like yesterday, I put up an episode yesterday where the person said I tried it on the pod. It did not work for me. And I got rid of it. And we had a whole little conversation. If you go back and listen to that one. I don't know what it is 373 maybe. And you really think about editing and listen to the conversation. I could have edited out what she said about the Omni pod. But I would never do that they would never ask me to do that. And I don't think that would lead to this being an honest conversation with people. So I just want people to be better. Don't get me wrong, like making a podcast. I'm not just any podcast making this podcast is time intensive. This is a full time job, right? And so if I can't get compensated Somehow, I can't make the podcast and I am not going to ask you for money. The listener, like I'm not going to put up a Patreon and say, you know, or, you know, ask you to pay for, you know, put it behind a paywall and tell you every episodes, let me tell you something, if I put this thing behind a paywall, and made you pay 99 cents for every episode, I'd be wealthy. But I'm not doing that. And I would never do that. I'm gonna make my money through advertisements, like a good American. And if I and if I can't, then I can't, but that's the way I'm going to try to do I could never take money from you. I just had someone asked me the other day if they could pay me to fix their kids blood sugar. And I said, I'll fix your kid's blood sugar, but there's no way I'm gonna let you give me money. Right? That's just money.

Mike Sasser 1:16:08
I mean, just send it my way.

Scott Benner 1:16:10
Listen, Mike. Again, I meant everything. I just have it if someone's getting the money, it's going to be made not yet. But now I just don't think I don't think good health should cost extra. Yeah,

Mike Sasser 1:16:21
that's all well, yeah. And I guess I would you know, just to, to put a bow on it what you said a minute ago, just about you just want people to be better or healthier? or How are you verbalized? It's like, that's the goal of discourse, in my opinion, and having conversation, it's just like, let's get better as a group, and whatever the issue is, whether or not it's, you know, pumping, diabetes, whatever, politics, race, just have the conversation and let's work on getting better, and getting better as a people. And as a person as

Scott Benner 1:17:00
an individual. We've ignore it, we ignore nuance, we don't take time to find context, we make leaps, a guy's not wearing a mask, he doesn't care about my health. Right? That's it just like that i subscribe, you know, I don't know if that's true or false might be either, you know, this politician is on this side. This one's on this side. That means that one is for this and that one's for that oversimplification, right, I subscribe to a concept. There's a I've spoken about it here once but there's a an author, he's Long, long daddy killed himself. So. But he wrote a commencement speech. And delivered it called This is water. And I know now everybody who hears my accent is like, That's hilarious. His name is David Foster Wallace. I read this as water. Once a year, I give the commencement speech in a small hardcover book to everyone who graduates from college that I know. Because in that commencement speech, among other things, what, what the author is saying is you don't know why people are doing things. And I've always kind of taken his thought and boil it down to this, like, you know, a guy speeds past you, and traffic cuts you off, you know, almost kills you and speeds away. And your thought immediately is, you know, this guy's a bad person. He doesn't care about other people. He doesn't care about safety. He's terrible. And I think it's very possible that that's true. But I prefer to think maybe it's just really got to go to the bathroom. And I've driven fast having to go to the bathroom before. Now. Is that true of everybody that cuts you off? It's not. But it's much healthier for me to believe that it's possible. And to not judge? Because the truth is for someone who just cut me off in traffic, they're really just trying to get to a McDonald's and run through the place like a lunatic so they don't soiled themselves. And yeah, and when the truth is that some people have a good reason for doing what they're doing. And some people have a bad reason. And I've done those things for what I thought were good reasons. It seems very strange for me to just assume that everyone I see is an ass and doing stuff for the wrong reason. Yeah. And so I like when you're yelling, you know, and you were yelling at me, it's fine. But But like, you were you were really pissed. And I, I just thought, like, Oh, this is interesting. I wonder why he's mad? Let's find out. Let's find out. You know? And because I can make up reasons why I think you're mad all day long. But that's not the truth. And now we know why you were upset and we know about a million other useful things about you and, and, you know, maybe the next time somebody pisses you off, you'll stop yourself, maybe we all want anyway, context and nuance. It's worth working on, you know,

Mike Sasser 1:19:51
it's worth working on, which is, you know, part of it. I mean, that's a set a general goal in my life and all interactions and so I suppose I would just encourage anybody who's listening who doesn't have the personality of Scott to to make that a kind of a personal goal to to work on. It's good and healthy for my heart. My family.

Scott Benner 1:20:14
Yeah. Mike listen to that's my goal. I often fail at it.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:19
Yeah. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:20:20
yeah, totally for sure. So I often I often have the exact reaction that that you know, other people have to and I just try my hardest to you know, backpedal from there as quickly as I can. My are no yellow yells at me all the time. She's like, it's fascinating. She's like, you're always get upset and then 20 minutes later, you know, the right thing. And I'm like, Yeah, I grew up poorly. Cut me a break. I'm trying. I get the parental guidance of a, of a mole rat. Lucky I got this bar. Shut up.

Mike Sasser 1:20:57
I mean, it's not funny, but it's funny.

Scott Benner 1:20:59
What happens? You know, my dad left my mom, you didn't really try too hard. My mom was busy work and trying to keep us alive. You know, happens to a lot of people that we have. Yes. Yeah. The Brady's weren't sitting around making sure I did my homework. So you know. I said, so I don't do the right thing every time exactly when I tried to.

Mike Sasser 1:21:19
And nobody does. Even if they had perfect parent. I don't know. He's got perfect parents. But my kids are perfect parents. Like I don't know

Unknown Speaker 1:21:25
what you're talking about.

Scott Benner 1:21:30
Yeah, there was if there was such a thing as perfect. There wouldn't be therapists, that's for sure. That'd be the first thing.

Mike Sasser 1:21:37
But that is for sure.

Scott Benner 1:21:38
Yeah. But no, seriously, man. I just think you know, I think a lot of things you said here today were really valuable. And I'm sorry, took you over the time. But I thank you so much for doing this. I'm glad you

Mike Sasser 1:21:49
got to work for a few hours. Also,

Scott Benner 1:21:51
I gotta say to other people. This is not an open invitation to yell at me through messaging. Okay.

Mike Sasser 1:21:56
Mike's Mike's nobody got first amendment right.

Scott Benner 1:21:59
Yeah, you send all the notes you want. I'll just block you. I don't want to be yelled at I just Mike's note. Hit me the right way. Don't be like, Oh, no, I have some stuff. I'd like to tell Scott. Keep it to yourself or start your own damn podcast. Leave me alone. Yeah. Okay.

Mike Sasser 1:22:11
There you go. Yeah. Message Board for just people ranting. Nobody's going to read it. It's a place for you to rant while

Scott Benner 1:22:18
yelling scream. You know, people used to go for a ride and scream in their car. Get back to what works.

Mike Sasser 1:22:24
Okay, yeah. Just Just pull over and don't cut somebody off while you're doing it. You're gonna have a big you know, heart issue of identity while you're cutting them off. Go

Scott Benner 1:22:36
cry in the shower, like a normal person. Leave me alone. Okay. Like, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Mike Sasser 1:22:44
Thanks for the time. I appreciate it. Scott. That's my pleasure.

Scott Benner 1:22:51
A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. g vote glucagon. Find out more about tchibo hypo pen at G folk glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. you spell that GVOKEGL Uc ag o n.com. forward slash juicebox. I also like to thank the Contour Next One blood glucose meter for being a sponsor on today's show and of the podcast in general. Find out more about that great little meter at Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box and of course to Mike for coming on the show so openly and honestly describing his life with Type One Diabetes. I'll see you soon.

#450 After Dark: Psychedelics

ADULT TOPIC WARNING. Psychedelic Drug use and Type 1 Diabetes

Psychedelic Drug use and Type 1 Diabetes

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio - Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 450 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is yet another in the after dark series. After Dark series you say, I don't know what you're talking about Scott Well, let me tell you all the way back in 2019 at Episode 274 we did our first afterdark when we talked about having type one diabetes, and drinking alcohol that led to 283 we'd edition 305 trauma and addiction 319 sex from a female perspective 336 depression and self harm 365 sex from a male perspective 372 divorce and co parenting 380 for bipolar disorder 393 bulimia and depression 399 heroin addiction Episode 422 is with Amy. And it was so varied and multifaceted. I think those things mean the same thing. But it was so much that that I just called it after dark Amy. The point is that these episodes are about topics that exist in everyone's day to day life. But there are topics that we don't talk about. And I thought that there should be a place for people with type one diabetes to talk about the stuff that goes on in everyone's life. That you know, for one reason or another isn't the kind of conversation you have and mix company or whoever proper people say stuff like that. Anyway, today's show is with Ashlyn Ashton is 23 years old, she has type one diabetes, and she used to psychedelics. So we're going to talk about it.

I want to start here by saying that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before you make any changes to your medical plan, or become bold with insulin. I'll also throw in that I can't. For the life of me imagine using psychedelic drugs. I'm actually not a drug user at all. I don't even drink but I also don't have any judgment about other people's business. All that said, it's gonna be some pretty clear talk about how to use psychedelic drugs in this. So if you're a kid, stop now do not listen to this without your parents. Please forget, please, I commend you if you're under $18 this Alright, that's it. You've been told. Towards the end of the episode Ashlyn is going to bring up something called dance safe.org I'm just putting it here, so it's in your head. It's an interesting organization that helps people test their drugs to make sure they're pure. There's a whole world around drugs that I did not know existed. But this seems like a kindness dance safe.org Alright, let's get going.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is brought to you by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, go to my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box to see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash or to get a free no obligation demo pod sent right to your house you can do all of that at my Omni pod comm forward slash juice box. The episode is also sponsored by the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. Find out more about ardens cgm@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox Omnipod and Dexcom are absolutely indispensable tools for everyone using insulin. You know what else is pretty great. Touched by type one.org check them out at touched by type one.org or on Facebook or Instagram.

Ashlyn 3:53
My name is Ashlyn I'm 22 years old and I've had type one for the last 13 years I think 2008

Scott Benner 4:03
it wasn't seven you were nine

Unknown Speaker 4:05
Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:06
you were diagnosed Okay, that seems like a long time doesn't seem like a long time to you

Ashlyn 4:13
not yes and no. Yes When I think about it, but diabetes wasn't really something that the forefront of my life until kind of recently

Scott Benner 4:25
interesting. Okay, so you're saying when we do the math you recognize that's been a long time, but you didn't think about it till more recently. Is this going to be a story where you didn't really pay much attention to diabetes at first or your

Unknown Speaker 4:37
opinion? Oh no, I

Ashlyn 4:38
medium cared for a lot of like my teenage years. I never went like full burnout stop taking insulin or anything like that. But I just kind of, you know, I never the endo to me was just like the prescription lady.

Scott Benner 4:54
Medium care your first person has ever said that. I found that. I like that a lot. I took Medium care of the situation so

Ashlyn 5:02
well my my Awan C's were never like over, you know, seven, like, eight. I remember, you know, I don't think I really got it under seven and a half until I was like 17. Okay.

Scott Benner 5:16
Was that trying to think here? So you if you were diagnosed like 13 years, you know what year it was? Did you say and I didn't hear

Ashlyn 5:26
2008 I think.

Scott Benner 5:28
Okay, so what kind of technology Do you have at that time?

Ashlyn 5:35
You're gonna laugh but I've been on MDI the whole time.

Scott Benner 5:39
I'm not gonna laugh. So you were just MDI with a meter you didn't have a glucose monitor, nor do you have one right now.

Ashlyn 5:47
I'm wearing a CGM. Right now I have the G six on I think the first time I use Dexcom was maybe back when the g4 was a thing, the big bulky one. I didn't really like it. I grew up in Florida, like we we always were swimming and stuff. And it was just people gave me like, weird looks at the beach and stuff like that. And I felt a lot of like, pressure.

Scott Benner 6:12
Okay. I, you're not the first person that said they don't want something stuck to their body, that's for sure. I'm sort of like musing in my head that you call it the bulky one, because I do remember that it was taller by a bit. By I guess it has a different feeling when you're wearing it versus when you're looking at it on somebody to? Because like I

Unknown Speaker 6:32
also Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Ashlyn 6:35
Oh, no, I also think I got bigger. You know, and I was like, 11 it was it took up a wave bigger patch of real estate on my body. I

Scott Benner 6:44
gotcha. I understand. Okay, so MDI for it sounds like a long time just to meet or do you remember, like, how frequently did you actually test? Was it just a meals? Or how did you handle day to day stuff?

Unknown Speaker 6:57
Um,

Ashlyn 6:57
I was younger, it was mostly at meals, if I fell off, you know, like, I'd say average three times a day. Not anything crazy. As I as I got older, I did go through some periods of burnout. But I always just kind of did it off a feeling for maybe a year, which is not the best.

Scott Benner 7:20
Before we keep going, is your cell phone near the microphone?

Ashlyn 7:23
Yeah, I can move it. Is that any better?

Scott Benner 7:28
Well, we'll know in a second. Sometimes you're, you're starting a word. And there's this electronic thing that happens. Because your phone's always like pinging sites and it's always getting information that kind of interferes with the mic if it's too close, but Okay, so three times a day to somebody who was diagnosed today, even to you now that you're using a CGM. Like think of that in hindsight for a second. If I if I told you today, you were only allowed to know what your your blood sugar was three times today. Does that sound insane to you now?

Ashlyn 7:58
No, I, I go not. I'm one of those people that freaks out in the two hour window. Now.

Scott Benner 8:05
No kidding. Say you're warming up new sets, and you're just like, the world's coming?

Ashlyn 8:12
Well, it wasn't always like that. I ran into some issues. I recently moved to Colorado. And the altitude has kind of,

Scott Benner 8:22
yeah, make sure

Ashlyn 8:24
changed everything to an extreme sense. I had to cut my basil in half. and troubleshoot doing that all on my own. Because, you know, I didn't have an endo up here. And because of COVID, they were all booked out. And I tried doing telehealth with my doctor in Fort Lauderdale. And he just didn't understand the altitude and just kept telling me to raise my basil.

Unknown Speaker 8:50
And

Scott Benner 8:51
I just, I just made me think of something. If we could build a colony for type ones, 6000 10,000 feet in the air. Do you think nobody would have diabetes? Because you're right, you're like the you're the countless person in a row who's told me that at higher elevations, specifically in Colorado, not for nothing, that they need significantly less insulin than they do at a lower elevation. Do you think it'll level off at some point you've been able to talk to anybody who's gone through it?

Ashlyn 9:21
So no, the answer's no. I've talked to a lot of people here in Colorado, and they say that you adjust and all of that. And I think that right now I'm making the switch over to tandem. I have my pump training on Tuesday. I'm very excited.

Scott Benner 9:38
Got the control like you're out.

Ashlyn 9:41
Yeah, just because I'm noticing that during the mornings, the basil seems to be pretty good for the 15 units, but overnight and like after 3pm it's just I'm going down. You know, and I can't keep waking up three times a night.

Scott Benner 9:59
It's super easy. First thing I'm enjoying talking to somebody who had an eight a one C as a matter of course, who's thinking like you are now it's so we're gonna have to get back to this at some point. But firstly, I want to know about about the growing up time with diabetes. I want to understand a little bit if it was you and your mom or you and your Dad, are you on both of them, or how did they management work?

Ashlyn 10:22
I got the diagnosis that night and I have a younger sister, they instantly put her in the trial net over at University of Miami. And I remember it vividly. We were on vacation at the Bahamas and she had got my mom had gotten the call that my sister had the antibodies and it was just like a vacation ruining

Unknown Speaker 10:41
moment.

Scott Benner 10:43
I think if I get that call while I'm in the Bahamas, I say hey, you know what you call back in a couple of days. I getting that now, while I'm paying all this money to be. That sucks.

Ashlyn 10:54
So yeah, so then my sister got diagnosed when she was five, and we're five years apart. So maybe a year after I got diagnosed. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 11:02
Wow. And yeah.

Scott Benner 11:06
Sounds like a lot. It really does especially so did your sister just do MDI as well, which she managed basically the same as you.

Ashlyn 11:13
So my sister has like a, she has a funny relationship with insulin and food and she's all over the place. Her a onesies have been in the 10s and just really weird, binge eating habits. She tried the Omni pod for a while, but she has. She has like severe eczema and the cranial I kept like rejecting for her

Scott Benner 11:40
severe eczema that can be auto immune to skin issues.

Ashlyn 11:47
There's runs in my dad's family pretty hard,

Scott Benner 11:50
does it? Can I say something that I found out about recently? Hold on one second. I don't know if this is for. We'll keep talking. But I'm gonna see if I can find something. Find out if it's for eczema as well.

Ashlyn 12:05
She also has issues with the Dexcom. And she's one of those people that has to put like the

Scott Benner 12:09
bunch of barriers and everything on

Ashlyn 12:11
Yeah, or else it'll come off like in a day.

Scott Benner 12:14
No kidding. Well, there are some newer drugs over the last couple of years, that are are for things like hives. allergic reactions, like the asthma, you know, stuff like that, that in the past people have thought of as not being you can't really impact it. But these, these newer drugs seem to have a real impact on something like that. And I'm wondering if there's something like that for eczema as well, though, I don't know. But I do think of it as a an autoimmune issue. When your skin and when your skin has odd reactions like that two different things. Which I guess we don't find crazy. But okay, so your sister sounds like she had or has an eating disorder? Would you call it dyeable? emia?

Ashlyn 13:07
No, she, she's like right at the cusp, where she's just eating and doing a lot of insulin at once. And she hasn't really figured out the whole not taking the insulin part of it. And that's why I try not to address it, because I'm like, I don't want to make that click in her mind. Oh,

Scott Benner 13:25
you think she's close to diet, believe me, but she hasn't actually figured out how to make it happen yet.

Ashlyn 13:31
Well, she just hasn't. She hasn't. She hasn't stopped like stop taking the insulin for what she eats. And it's at the point now where she's also on Metformin. And I just, she's a very, she's struggling. Yeah, very strong willed person, then you cannot make her do anything she doesn't want to do. And this is her life. And this is what she's choosing. And I have to step back. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 13:56
No, I understand. And she's entertained still. Is that right?

Unknown Speaker 13:58
She's 17. Yeah. Wow,

Scott Benner 14:00
good luck. I tried to talk Arden into taking a vitamin the other day, and it turned into two hours of my life. So I was just like, just swap this one little tiny bite, okay. I feel like I have a tiny bit of understanding about what you're talking about. And yet the rest of it is, is a little foreign to me, but we're not here to talk about her. I just tried to understand the vibe. And what makes you personally say, because it sounds like you were in your late teens when you decided you don't want your a one C to be in the eights. How does that it was

Ashlyn 14:36
it was really diabetes related. I just started taking more of an interest in like overall health. You know, I noticed that I felt better and I think honestly, it was just, you know, I was using the same dosing practices and everything. I just was eating lower glycemic foods.

Scott Benner 14:52
Okay, so just just an overall like decision on your part, like, Hey, I'm going to do a little better with my diet and then that impacted your diabetes.

Ashlyn 15:00
Well, I started working at like a health food store. And you know, the options there, everything was kind of lower gi and I started, you know, buying food at work. And then I was like, Hey, I kind of feel better. Wow.

Scott Benner 15:11
Yeah. It's amazing how feeling better will will impact your decisions. So I guess them with that in mind. You, you reached out to me and asked about coming on and you were specifically like, I think I could be in an after dark episode. And I'm always interested in those emails when people are just like, I'm definitely going to be an after dark episode. If I come on the podcast like, oh, okay, how come? Yours was just super specific. And I guess I want to ask you about it and find out more about it. So can you describe what made you reach out?

Ashlyn 15:47
So I started with all of these altitude issues in Colorado, whatever. It got to the point where I ended up going to the ER, they turn me away, and I called my primary care physician just out of, you know, sheer, like, if the hospital doesn't help me, who's gonna help me, you know? And one of the, the nurses, she was like, Look, I was really thinking about you and your situation. I don't really know how to help you. But I did start listening to this podcast, and I think it would be really helpful for you. And I, at the time, I was working in the cannabis industry, and I was, you know, trimming with my hands. So I needed something to listen to. And I was like, why not?

Scott Benner 16:27
Oh, that's so a nurse. So you have low blood sugar issues because of the altitude that sends you to a hospital. The nurse tells you about the podcast, you've got time to kill, cuz you're trimming? What do we call it? Is there a way to say, Are you trimming buds? What do you do?

Unknown Speaker 16:42
Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 16:43
there you go. Sorry. No,

Scott Benner 16:44
we're good enough. Wait, do you see how little about what you and I are about to talk about that? I understand. It's gonna be fascinating for you.

Unknown Speaker 16:51
That's why I was so nervous about this. I'm like, I'm going to talk to a dad about now.

Scott Benner 16:55
Don't think that just think of me as a guy who doesn't know anything about this. And is 30 years older than you. Okay, so. So do you do you smoke on the regular? Is that part of your life?

Ashlyn 17:08
Oh, yeah, it's been it's been a part of my life since about 1615. I wouldn't say constant until you know, I moved out 18. I really like marijuana because when my blood sugar is high, it kind of helps relieve the symptoms until you know, the insulin has time to work.

Scott Benner 17:30
Okay, so there was a time when you couldn't keep your blood sugar down. It comes with symptoms like like, how did it make you feel when your blood sugar was high just for people to understand.

Unknown Speaker 17:42
So

Ashlyn 17:44
I'm going to make like an allegory to like glaucoma where people have like the bulgy eye feeling. When my blood sugar's high, I get very sleepy and it feels like my eyes are going to bulge out of my head. And the marijuana kind of helps, you know, decrease that pressure behind my eyes.

Scott Benner 18:04
Now, I will sound like a dad for a second. Okay. When that happened, you didn't think I wonder if I gave myself more insulin if my blood sugar would go down?

Ashlyn 18:13
Oh, no, it's already insulin on board. It's not using lower blood sugar.

Scott Benner 18:17
No, no, no, no, I don't mean that. I just meant okay. So you weren't, you weren't higher all the times you were jumping up staying up? Kind of smoking not to feel bad while you were higher than let the insulin bring you back down. Now you do a better job of balancing the insulin against your meals, I guess.

Ashlyn 18:33
Well, yeah, I just I was smoking regardless. And it was just kind of like, Oh, my blood sugar's over 200. And I don't feel as bad and, you know, I mean, just kind of relax and wait for the stuff to kick in.

Scott Benner 18:46
Gotcha. happy accident that though, that the weed helps with high blood sugar kind of sickness that you felt.

Ashlyn 18:52
Yeah, it's just something that you know, over time, I was smoking regardless, and it was just like, cool side effect.

Scott Benner 19:00
Finally, a side effect that I love. Right, you're used to putting on those commercials, and all the side effects are like, you'll poop in your pants, or you might off and your kidneys will explode. But now you're just like, you're gonna feel good. So it just takes away that feeling. And that was a happy accident. Did you move to Colorado? To be closer to weed? Becca?

Unknown Speaker 19:23
No, no,

Ashlyn 19:24
I have family over here. And at the beginning of COVID, I had I just was at a job I didn't love and I just wanted to change and you know, my cousin lives out here and she's always just like, whenever you're done with Florida, come out.

Scott Benner 19:38
Okay, nice. Do something for me. If you were putting on the spot here for a second. Be a salesperson for a second talk. talk me into smoking weed tonight.

Ashlyn 19:51
Oh, talk you into it. Yeah, probably not a peer pressure. No, no.

Scott Benner 19:56
Don't think of it all like 2020. Thank you very much. You know, we're just sitting around like, you're a commercial. You're, and you want me to, you're trying to you're trying to get me to buy a Honda, except you're trying to bring me over to your side here. I'm just interested, like, what would you say to somebody if I said, I have tons of interest in doing this, but I just, I grew up in the wrong time. I don't think of it the way you do. Make me feel comfortable with it.

Ashlyn 20:24
So this is like when I got my grandma to smoke with me.

Scott Benner 20:27
Okay, you know what? I would have known to ask like that, I would have just said, How did you get your grandma to try?

Ashlyn 20:34
She has glaucoma. That's pretty much all I had to say I was really I don't know, it just, you know, it's something that helps pass the time. And honestly, during quarantine, it's been needed. I just, I have a highly anxious person. And it's just something like I can't drink. Really, alcohol is not something that sits in my stomach very well. Plus the diabetes aspect. So smoking weed naturally was just kind of like, well, if I can't drink, I'll do that.

Scott Benner 21:12
Well see now I feel like we're getting to it. So you do have a low level of anxiety kind of all the time.

Unknown Speaker 21:19
Oh, yeah. All the time. Right.

Scott Benner 21:21
And this helps with that.

Ashlyn 21:25
Yeah, it does, as long as you're in the right, like set mindset and setting, which is something we'll get into about the other stuff.

Scott Benner 21:33
Yeah, I love that. This is even why you came on. You're doing such a good job of teasing the story out. I don't know if you're doing it on purpose, and you're a genius or if it's just happening naturally. But I'm very much enjoying this. So. So you have a natural kind of level of anxiety. Has that. Is that a lifetime thing? Have you felt Oh, yeah. As a child?

Ashlyn 21:51
Oh, yeah. When I was like three or four, I was the kid that was hiding behind their parents legs would let my mom go out to the mailbox without me. It was not anything to do with the diabetes. I was born this way. No, no, I

Scott Benner 22:03
understand. So since you were little, what about? Can we help for a second? Like, let's use the lockdown for a second? Do you have any pile up feelings of like, like dread about the lockup? Like I'm never getting out of here. Life's never gonna be the same again. Do you? Has that become worse over the last year?

Ashlyn 22:23
It's not really much ado about the lockdown as much as far as like the diabetes not being the same, honestly. Because when all of this started, I drastically cut carbs down. I, I had a grazer when I eat, you know, and I had to stop doing that. And just like how many I broke out the food scale even which for me is unheard of.

Scott Benner 22:45
So you were said the lockdown for you. It's been more about like, not just being on a 24 seven, like popping a little something in your mouth, like snacking for out of boredom.

Ashlyn 22:56
Right. And I just you know, everybody says the diabetes is the job that like you can't take days off from and that's kind of the feeling that I have sometimes.

Scott Benner 23:05
Yeah, that idea that you can never get away from it.

Ashlyn 23:08
Right. And it's like the first thing that I do in the morning. And the last thing I do before I go to bed is probably looked at the Dexcom app.

Scott Benner 23:15
So just being high make you ignore your, your blood sugars, or does it just not make it feel as on the present?

Ashlyn 23:24
And I know that's a problem that a lot of people have. I know and you guys did like the after dark weed episode he he said something like that, like he ignores his diabetes. But for me, I've been smoking so long that like, No, not at all. You know, if anything, like I'll just be watching TV and like have my phone open. And I just glanced at every once in a while and just act accordingly. Yeah, you know, I just make sure to get some like, keto munchies. You know, pepperoni sticks are like my favorite.

Unknown Speaker 23:59
Because you do get munchie when you're high.

Unknown Speaker 24:01
Oh, yeah.

Scott Benner 24:02
Okay. Is there a level of trying to make this clear for people who don't know anything about it? Is there you know how you see a person take a shot, like a shot of whiskey, and they don't have anything else. You know, I go there that sometimes that relaxes a person, but that same person could have 20 shots, and then they would just fall on the floor into a puddle. So can you take like, how does weed work? Like is one hit the same as, like, could you take enough hits in five minutes to just obliterate yourself? Or is that not possible?

Ashlyn 24:36
It is very possible. I think what you're talking about would be similar to like a gravity bomb or ice I smoke concentrates, which is basically how it sounds concentrated weed through like a like a device that heats it up. And you know, I have a higher tolerance. It doesn't destroy me, but for you who's never released. moped, if you were to go and take a small hit of concentrate, you would probably be high for like five hours

Scott Benner 25:05
just shut my eye. And that would be like sitting down and kind of incapacitated. Hi.

Unknown Speaker 25:12
Oh, yeah,

Scott Benner 25:14
you've got me googling gravity bomb, by the way, in case you're wondering. I'm doing right now. Good luck. No, I found it. I'm good. I see. Okay, all right. That's something that can't be described on a budget. Okay, so that so that is, so that's a possibility. And I asked because then that means that you are thoughtfully smoking throughout the times that you are to keep yourself in a space where you can look at your blood sugar and say, I see that my blood sugar 68 and I should eat some carbs. Like not not Oh,

Ashlyn 25:49
yeah, I don't even let it get to 68.

Scott Benner 25:51
Okay, because you could smoke yourself to a place where you looked and were like, hey, my blood sugar 68 I'm gonna die, whatever. That could happen.

Ashlyn 25:59
Oh, no, that's not me. Other people's mileage may vary, but that's not me. I could never do that. Because it's just, that's not my personality.

Scott Benner 26:07
Okay, so Okay, that's interesting. That's interesting to know. So no matter how, what level of

Ashlyn 26:14
what's the word, we'll get into it. I feel when we start talking about everything else, you'll be like, Oh, okay.

Scott Benner 26:19
I'm trying to understand, because I'm trying to see like, no matter how, what level of high you are, it's funny. I don't even have a word like I would if you were drinking, I'd say drunk, right, no matter how drunk you are. But I guess it is no matter how high you are. Right. That would be

Unknown Speaker 26:33
there's other terms that would

Scott Benner 26:35
use some of the national order. Yeah. Which Oh, gosh, should I be saying?

Ashlyn 26:41
Do you want to be hip and cool? Like the kids? I guess I would say, and I get really high. Sometimes I'll be like, I'm Stoney. baloney.

Scott Benner 26:50
Okay. So what you think in this situation is what I should have said when I was asking the question, no matter how Stoney baloney You see, that doesn't work. I feel like these are not good adjectives.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
No, they're not

Scott Benner 27:07
great, where there's a whole section of society where enough words has been made up that you can't speak English with them anymore. Alright, so we have to stick with Hi, just don't think Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay, okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm just trying to like, illuminate like, is it possible because he tried to understand the other side of this conversation right now You and I are talking. But somebody's mother's listening. And they're looking across the room right now at their seven year old who hides behind their legs all the time. And they're thinking, Oh, Jesus, Johnny's gonna smoke weed when he gets older. And so, it's so how, you know, so what's their level of concern? Like, look at yourself, from my perspective for a second, should I be worried about you?

Unknown Speaker 27:54
No, not at all. Okay,

Ashlyn 27:56
I, you know, I pay my bills, like, I'm going full time working full time going to school on top of, you know, the diabetes, the weed all of it. But if for a moment, my responsibilities were slipping, I'd cut all of it out. But I have that level of self control with myself and that level of accountability. And that's where things start to get shaky. If you have an addictive personality, if you you know, can't hold yourself accountable, then you can't play this game.

Scott Benner 28:23
So there are people who use and aren't addicted. And there are people who are addicted. You've seen both kinds of people.

Ashlyn 28:30
Oh, yeah, for sure. And it's, it's honestly, people with an addictive personality. It's not It's not the weed. It's the person.

Scott Benner 28:38
Yeah, okay. So even if this was Oreos, they'd be eaten too many of them

Ashlyn 28:43
right? And it's just whatever your brain chemistry latches on to and you know, you have to make that choice for yourself and really sit down and say you know, do I have a level of self control to where I can balance

Scott Benner 28:56
Yeah, I feel like my I don't even know see it's funny. I don't think of it as self control I would think of it is things that I'm more or less were just left my head things that just sort of naturally happened to me like more or less Where the hell's the word Ash on I didn't smoke anything and I can't find it. They call this a pothole right if you're smoking

Ashlyn 29:23
I have never heard that I'll

Scott Benner 29:24
have to use it like I've hit a pothole meaning I can't think of a word. Holy Christ. Wait a second. proclivity. Wow, that's why I couldn't think of it because it's a word from 1978. But but like some, like, I don't believe I have a proclivity towards like addictive stuff that way. Like I feel like you could give me weed and I could use it and then three days later, never think about it again.

Ashlyn 29:53
That's me with with everything though. Everything in anything, you know, I'm just not who I am.

Scott Benner 30:00
Yeah, like I'm not a smoker, but I could smoke a carton of cigarettes this week and then never think to have a cigarette again. But right, but smoking the cigarettes would feel like work to me. I'd be like, Oh,

Ashlyn 30:11
I could never I

Scott Benner 30:11
can't believe I promised I was gonna smoke a carton of cigarettes is how it would feel if that odd situation came up. And I feel like Alright, so what's the difference between smoking and edibles? I feel like I feel like I hear Seth Rogen talking about a body high versus something else but I don't understand the difference.

Ashlyn 30:38
So the difference between smoking weed and edibles is definitely duration of highness. And a lot of people if you're not living in an illegal state, and you're, you know, going down the down the street and buying it from somebody how much is in there, you don't really know. And that's where you kind of hear all these horror stories of people. You know, buying edibles and then you know, laying facedown for two days.

Scott Benner 31:07
So if I get a chocolate chip cookie, and it's not a it's not a weak cookie, and it's got extra chips in it. I think lucky I got extra chocolate chips. But if I get a gummy that's a weed gummy and somebody put in way too much weed in my gummy. I don't get to think who I got extra t hc is a THC PS. Yeah, I get to think oh, I'm laying on the floor staring at the car. So it's not like getting bonus chocolate chips. It's like it's a it's it's like somebody taking a prescription medication, compounding it wrong, and you're getting way too much in one pill. Well,

Ashlyn 31:40
from what I understand, it's a different absorption as well. You're absorbing the when you smoke, you're absorbing the THC through your lungs. And when you take an edible you're absorbing it through your stomach lining and to my knowledge is may or may not be right. There are two different tolerances. To listen. We're

Scott Benner 31:59
taking your word for it, because I don't know if you've noticed, but you're much more comfortable talking about this than diabetes. So

Unknown Speaker 32:06
you already know

Scott Benner 32:07
you're way smoother when you come to this. I'm like how did you get your blood sugar down? You're like, yeah, it's just a different food. Tell me about weed well, so you don't you don't eat your weed.

Unknown Speaker 32:19
No,

Ashlyn 32:20
I'm not I'm not a huge fan of apples. They do have sugar free edibles here now, which is great. But I just duration of time. And it's just sometimes like I wake up in the morning and I feel groggy after and that's like, I that's a commitment.

Scott Benner 32:43
There's a great article, I think it was from California as a number of years ago, when because weed was legal in California before Colorado, excuse me before like anywhere else, right? Like Colorado was diverse. So this article is out of Colorado is in a major newspaper. It was this big company that was thinking about leaving Colorado, because somebody in New York asked for something to be shipped from Colorado to New York and you know, supposed to be overnighted in a day or two later, it wasn't there. And they called up. And the person they spoke to was like, hey, Relax, man, I'll get there. How do we hire people who aren't high? Because if we can't do that, I gotta get any work done here. But I think that's how people think about it in general. Do you know what I mean? And I'm not saying that's true. I'm saying I think that's the like, I have no judgment about you smoking at all. Like I don't feel in any way judgmental about it. I don't like I'm not sitting here thinking like, Oh, you shouldn't do it. I'm not telling you. I've never done it. And then I'm telling you right now, I don't know why. Like, there's nothing stopping me from doing it.

Ashlyn 33:50
That's that's your prerogative and your choice. And honestly, everybody needs to make that choice for themselves. I'm not somebody who, you know, when somebody has never smoked weed, I'm like, why don't you try it? You know? No, that's, that's honestly horrible behavior. And I hate when people do that, because that's somebody's life and somebody's choice and don't influence them.

Scott Benner 34:11
Well, it is interesting, isn't it that, you know, that culture in general, especially, I guess, here, it says that when you turn 21 you can drink until you fall over on your face? And that's not just okay. It's almost like a rite of passage. But there's a guarantee somebody listening right now saying, well, like what about the person she said might get addicted to it, it could ruin their life, but nobody ever talks about like beer could ruin your life or, you know, cigarettes could ruin your life or any other things that sugar could ruin your there's a lot of addictive things that could ruin your life. This is the only one that people have judgement about, for some reason that they'll voice out loud. Like I'm sure people look at you kind of like side eyed if you're a drunk, but they won't say anything to you about it. And if they do, then they'll say to you Hey, I think you have a medical condition. You know, alcoholism is a medical condition. But nobody thinks of weed that way at all and other drugs. So the reason you came on is because you sent me an email and you're like, hey, do you want to talk about being a type one and using psychedelics? And I was like, wow, there's two things, one of them I know a lot about, and one of them I know absolutely nothing about. That'd be great. Why don't you come on the podcast and talk about that. So in my mind, when you say psychedelics, I think mushrooms, like psilocybin, these are the words that are popping into my head that I don't know anything about.

Ashlyn 35:40
So so when I said psychedelics I'm pretty much open to talking about whatever, silicided LSD you know, anything like that? I

Unknown Speaker 35:53
have.

Ashlyn 35:54
I have a lot of experience with that kind of stuff and trying to manage diabetes while you're doing it.

Scott Benner 36:02
Well, that's what the rest of this hour is about. So where do you wins the art? What's the first You caught me with the LSD for some reason? Cuz that feels like a 60s word in that funny. I'm like, Oh,

Ashlyn 36:13
I'm trying to talk to the moms on the podcast, you know,

Scott Benner 36:17
try to make sure they understand what you're talking about. Or you think I like I was hipper than them when I went with psilocybin. And they were like, I don't know what that is.

Ashlyn 36:26
Yeah, I was surprised. I was like, what are we on Joe Rogan?

Scott Benner 36:30
I know some stuff about a couple of things. I love culture. Like I love knowing about things. I don't necessarily need to need to ever try some things, but I do like knowing about them. So okay, so what's the first I was gonna say psychotropic, but I don't know if that's different than psychedelic. Oh, Christ. Okay, you explain it to me? What's the first thing you ever did? How old were you?

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Ashlyn 40:59
I the first time I tried psychedelics it was I just graduated high school and I kind of reconnected with some family and they were really into like the electronic dance music scene. And for my graduation, they bought me a ticket to go to a festival. Maybe two weeks before the festival I had to go up there to do orientation for my school and we wanted to do like a trial run and how everything would go you know, do it at home, try it be safe. And I took maybe 1.5 grams of mushrooms, you know, followed up by a little bit of a little bit of fruit punch because vitamin C potentially eight silicided.

Scott Benner 41:52
So you take 1.5 grams, and then you drink vitamin C to make it more potent.

Ashlyn 41:58
Yep, it makes it a bit more potent and the duration of action is maybe like an hour less.

Scott Benner 42:04
And this was practice getting high. You were practicing to go to an EDM concert where you would do it there. Is that right?

Ashlyn 42:11
Huh? Yeah, I just wanted to do a trial run just to you know, you have a handle on thing.

Scott Benner 42:16
This is the most responsible approach to an irresponsible thing I've ever heard. You made me think of when bank robbers run out warehouses and tape it off like a bank to try first. Like we just want to make sure we know where it's gonna be. So okay, so your practice at home? What did you find out when you're cracked? And you were like, 18 ish?

Ashlyn 42:38
Yeah, I was 18. I just went on a walk, you know, watched a movie went to bed. It was really relaxing, mild. And I was like, I can do this. Is it fine?

Scott Benner 42:49
is is that amount considered micro dosing? Or is that not? No, no.

Ashlyn 42:56
Anything like under point five, I believe is micro dosing. The beginners dose is about a gram to a gram and a half. And then like standard usage is probably two to two and a half grams.

Scott Benner 43:11
Hmm. Interesting. I feel like I'm not gonna be able to have ads on this episode. No, no, I'm gonna have to get different advertisers for this one. Find out who makes it gravity Bong and forget them here. Okay, because I've heard of people using like, micro doses of mushrooms to medicate. Like, day to day medical issues.

Ashlyn 43:36
I cannot speak to any of that. I am very skeptical of the whole micro dosing day to day ideal.

Scott Benner 43:44
Ah, okay, so that's a whole like sub culture of mushrooms. Maybe like that's a different branch.

Ashlyn 43:51
Yeah, that that's the you gotta talk to like the Silicon Valley guys who do that in code and stuff.

Scott Benner 43:58
I see what you're saying. I hear what you're getting at.

Ashlyn 44:00
You think I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm not taking point to to go do some math homework.

Scott Benner 44:06
Ashlyn like, I'm not screwing around. If this is happening, it's happening. How long does it happen for like you when you do it? How long does it last?

Ashlyn 44:15
So with with mushrooms, it's about six to eight hours, depending on how much you take. And then with acid, it's about 12. Plus,

Scott Benner 44:24
could you just jump right off the tracks onto something else? I wasn't done with the mushroom thing yet. So how do you So talk to me about managing your diet? Well, it's just gonna be a weird segue. But you said you've made changes in your diabetes care over the last couple of years. And you talked about earlier having a one season the eights, what is your a one c now?

Unknown Speaker 44:45
So

Ashlyn 44:46
I haven't gotten it tested for a while, but if I look at clarity, right now, it's 6.4.

Scott Benner 44:51
Okay. So I mean, I believe in the data, I use data to track Arden's you know, in between her blood draws, and I I find a number of different apps to be really close. So I'm how I'm completely comfortable saying you have an A one C, and the six is now. And so obviously your management is different now than it used to be you have a Dexcom, you said, You're obviously you're starting to see trends and understand the data and everything. What is it like? So you talked about, when you're smoking weed, you can keep up with your blood sugars? Is it still possible with mushrooms?

Ashlyn 45:27
Yeah, it's definitely possible. But there's a threshold. I have never, you know, taken more than, oh, I've never taken more than six grams at a time.

Scott Benner 45:44
Did that number scare you when you thought of it in your head?

Ashlyn 45:47
Well, because I, the one time I took five was a complete accident. And I normally don't even go that far, I'll normally stay around to maybe less than that. Just because I if you start taking bigger doses of psychedelics you cannot see. And that's not something I'm interested in.

Scott Benner 46:07
Okay. So hold on, I got a couple thoughts here. So there's an amount that you can take where you can still manage yourself. Do you always have a wingman? When you take them? Sir? Oh, yeah,

Ashlyn 46:17
100% 100%, I would not be doing this if I did not. And that's something that I want to stress. This is not a solo venture kind of thing. You know, when I do this kind of stuff in public, it's the only time I bring out the Dexcom PDM. And I make sure to give that PDM to somebody else.

Scott Benner 46:36
Okay, so you have a straight person with you. Every time you do mushrooms, there's somebody you know, that cares about you. And if it's going to sit with you for six to eight hours while you're high and they're not.

Ashlyn 46:46
Well, they're not not always straight, but it's another pair of eyes.

Scott Benner 46:50
So, okay, so we have two high people looking at your Dexcom person, is that right?

Unknown Speaker 46:56
Yeah, it's family, you know, they have my best interests at heart.

Scott Benner 47:00
Okay. All right. So there. So there's an amount that you feel more comfortable at, like you're you feel more in control that, but let's, let's go for Yeah, let's go for a second, to try to understand the difference a little bit. You smoke weed, you're relaxed. You do mushrooms? What are you

Ashlyn 47:22
so in the beginning phases, when it starts to kick in, I normally I'm anxious beforehand to begin with. But some people that I've seen online, they think compare the come up on mushrooms to similar to low blood sugar, you kind of get that disoriented, feeling sweaty, you're just kind of like what's going on. But then you've kind of hit the peak at levels out and then you're able to like you feel not as confusing bodily signals.

Scott Benner 47:52
Okay, what point to garden gnomes talk to you and dragons made of penises fly around? When does that happen?

Ashlyn 47:59
I've never been there. And I don't want to be there.

Scott Benner 48:02
Okay, so. So there's so there's a there's, so just like we talked about with the weed, you could smoke enough weed to knock yourself out, you could drink enough to knock yourself out. You could take enough mushrooms to put yourself somewhere else where your brain is talking in pictures that are likely

Ashlyn 48:16
Well, you reach a point in it's called ego. And what really happens is once you start getting into those bigger doses, it kind of feels like people call it being in a loop. And you kind of like your memory gets very scrambling. And you'll like it's like moments of clarity. And I like to describe it as like peeling the layers of high off. If that makes sense. Okay, you like peak, and then it'll be like mental confusion a little bit, and then it'll be like, you kind of gets stuck. Almost some people describe it as where you're just kind of like stuck in one moment. And you're on a loop. And that's if you take a lot and that's not you know, I I don't like that feeling. And that's not something that's very like, it does not make your diabetes easy to manage when you don't know what time it is,

Scott Benner 49:21
is what you're saying that things slow down so much that you can take a macro view of ideas that is so far back you've never been able to pull that far back in your life because everything's going so slowly.

Ashlyn 49:35
Yeah, kind of time distortion is huge. And then dispersion is huge. And I've only seen the looping thing through other people. That's not really something that I've experienced myself. I have no interest.

Scott Benner 49:52
What's the there are people who have done this that just never come back from it right? They're just like, they lose their minds afterwards. That's It's not.

Ashlyn 50:01
Yeah, it's people who have like latent schizophrenic genes and stuff like that I have a, an ex boyfriend who that kind of happened to and he never really bounced back. But that it, that's a whole other story.

Scott Benner 50:18
I'm not I don't, I don't need you to tell me about him. I just wanted to make sure I'm in an interesting situation here. I listen to everybody who, you know, you say I have type one diabetes. And if somebody were to send me an email and say, Hey, if type one diabetes and I, I pilot a train, you know of a locomotive, I'd be like, I would love to hear about that. You were like, I have type one diabetes. And I do like a dog. So I was like, I would love to hear about that. Then once you get on, we talk about it. It's not in, it's not every conversation where someone listening can go get a train and drive it. And so I want to make sure that while people are listening, that they they understand that, you know, that there's more to it than just like, Oh, I do a little bit of it. And you know, I see a pretty color. And six hours later, everything's cool. You also seem like you're not really well, you're not sure if you're able to manage your blood sugars? Or how do you do that? So how do you let's take any kind of judgment out of it for a second, you're a person who's decided they're going to do mushrooms and you have type one diabetes? How do you approach that, so that you get through it? Well.

Ashlyn 51:28
Like I said, before, mindset and setting, if you're somebody who's uncomfortable, and like kind of has like a little bit of trepidation about the whole thing, do it at home where you feel comfortable, where you have a whole gallon of juice in the fridge if you need it. You know, you want to make sure that you're comfortable. Because if you're not that's going to come out and you're not going to have a good time. And so for me, I have to make sure that I have a level of baseline comfortability, and I plan for a tizzy to happen.

Scott Benner 51:58
So the mindset impacts the high?

Ashlyn 52:01
Well, yeah, in a way, if you kind of it's easy to get, let your emotions get the best of you if that makes sense. And if you start, like fixating on a part of your life that you're not comfortable with, or there has been in the beginning, one or two trips, where I just bodily did not feel right. And I did. zeroed in on checking my blood sugar because I was like, this kind of feels like low blood sugar. And, you know, the trip was not as fun as it could have been just because, you know, I was paying attention to diabetes during that time.

Scott Benner 52:37
Are you saying that diabetes can mess up a trip the same way can mess up a soccer game, like it just doesn't act the way you want it to one day and I got my whole Saturday's ruined. Now. Let's get brand. So then you just you were able to then just like hyper focus on it, you just were like, I'm just gonna pay more attention to my blood sugar, because my body feels different. And that's an idea that I, I think a lot of people don't relate to, or at least I don't like the idea of how does my mind feel versus how does my body feel?

Ashlyn 53:06
Well, for me, I've really, I'm somebody who's very big on like, the brain body connection, like, if I don't feel right, I'm testing. Okay, you know, and I feel like that has been the thing that, you know, when things do get kind of crazy, or, you know, things go off the handle, that's been the thing that saved me

Scott Benner 53:24
that so like when you felt like really low, for example,

Ashlyn 53:28
well, I remember one of the first times that I had done like a bigger dose of mushrooms. In my dorm, I had my blood sugar went down to 40. And immediately it started causing like, visual distortion. And I was like, Whoa, this either just really kicked in or something is wrong. And so immediately, I just went to test and it was 40. And I, you know, drank a bunch of juice and then carried on. But the thing is that in my experience psychedelics do not affect my diabetes in any discernible way.

Scott Benner 54:04
Don't make your blood sugar go up or down or anything like that.

Ashlyn 54:07
No, it's just the stress that you have, or the you know, I make sure to eat a huge meal beforehand, just so that the fat and stuff tides me over. I want that straight line the whole way through.

Scott Benner 54:19
I would think to an anxious person in general, you've probably by now with a Dexcom realize that anxiety pushes your blood sugar up a little bit, right.

Ashlyn 54:29
And I don't really have that big of like stress, caffeine or adrenaline response versus what I've seen from other people.

Scott Benner 54:37
Gotcha. Oh, that's interesting, because I was wondering like this even weed when it releases your anxiety, do you see like just a gentle lessening of your blood sugar or not? I wasn't certain.

Ashlyn 54:48
Sometimes I can see like, if my blood sugar's already going down and I smoke weed, they can kind of exacerbate that a little bit but at this point, I'm so used to it or compensated It's not a big deal. Okay?

Scott Benner 55:03
Where do you get mushrooms from? Like, I don't mean the guy's name. I mean, is it? Like how is it regulated? Like if we can't if we can't regulate weed gummy bears, how are we like, meaning like for potency? How are we doing that with mushrooms?

Ashlyn 55:19
There's actually different strains of there's a lot of good information on the internet, if you look into it, the most common one, they're called a golden teachers. That's kind of the the bigger kept mushrooms. And then there's like the smaller ones, which have a name that I can't say. But it's just it comes with the territory. And honestly, I'm a big researcher, if I'm doing something, I'm going to find out everything about what I'm doing. So that you know just gives me that sense of ease.

Scott Benner 55:56
Have you ever tried to I Alaska?

Unknown Speaker 55:58
No.

Ashlyn 56:01
No, I have no interest that you kind of really lose yourself and you throw up and that that's like three days and I don't know how that could be managed with type one. I I've seen people do DMT and stuff like that. And I have really no interest that looks not very fun. What the hell

Scott Benner 56:21
is the empty? My Don't let me just cover your mouth when you're, you know, this generation. You don't you don't respect me at all. I'm just kidding. What is the Mt.

Ashlyn 56:33
DMT you may have to Google it.

Scott Benner 56:37
I can do that. Imagine if the FBI came in right now. And they were like, let's just look at your history real quickly. Wow. dimethyl tryptamine

Ashlyn 56:48
Yep. So it's, it's a psychedelic, and some people say, and this has been like debunked, that it's the chemical that your brain releases when you die. Okay, um, it's a five minute hallucinogenic trip. And you this is like, what when people imagine psychedelics, this is the drug that they're talking about? I believe, you know, you really. That's the one that kind of takes you to like another world for five minutes. And

Scott Benner 57:18
then we're tied I came from is what you're saying?

Ashlyn 57:20
Yeah, the Grateful Dead was not putting that in people's lemonades.

Scott Benner 57:24
So there's a chemical substance that occurs in many plants, animals, just like when you hear about people looking frogs and stuff like that in the

Ashlyn 57:31
Yeah, way more way more closer to something like that. Um, it's pretty much the the mack daddy of psychedelics.

Scott Benner 57:41
Hmm. There are there are some animals that do that with other animals too. Like there's there. I've seen like a video I think of a was a primate of some sort. getting high off of a another animal was interesting that it just sat there.

Ashlyn 57:57
Oh, yeah. Like the dolphins with like, the puffer fish,

Scott Benner 58:01
stuff like that. Like that's really is fascinating, isn't it? Okay, so that you don't do, but you've done it. Well, I like how you were like, no, but you've done LSD, or you just said LSD so that people would understand what you're talking about?

Ashlyn 58:14
I actually, yeah, that is, if I had a psychedelic of choice. It's definitely acid. Mushrooms kind of make my stomach hurt. Yeah, they kind of make my stomach hurt. And I've always just preferred acid. It's just a cleaner cut high, in my opinion, especially if I'm, you know, going to be doing 30 miles that day of walking and dancing and craziness.

Scott Benner 58:44
Tell me something. Have you ever gone to an EDM concert without being high? Yep. Does the music suck?

Ashlyn 58:50
No, I but I enjoy the music sober.

Scott Benner 58:54
That's what I was. Like. I'm wondering, is it like not i'm not making a judgment about EDM. I'm like, hold on a second almost died. Sorry about that. I am. I'm genuinely asking like, do you need the drugs to make the music palatable? But you like the music? No. So then it so for a person like me, if you said to me, Scott, I'm going to take you out of yourself for the next six hours. I would, I would genuinely not want that. So what what comes from it for you? Do you not I mean, like, what, what's the reasoning behind doing it? I'm not asking you to, to not ask you to talk me into why it's okay. I'm not saying it's not okay. I'm asking what you get from it, and why it's important.

Ashlyn 59:42
So for me, I'm among the group of people that see psychedelics as like a mental refresh button. It just kind of shakes up my perspective and gets me out of the same old rut that my brain is in sometimes and It's not something that I do all the time. I, you know, I, I haven't done it in maybe a year and a half now, since quarantine happened just because I'm not gonna sit at home and do that, you know, there's no point I'm not. I don't need it, you know, it's just when it's worth it, it's worth it. And if I'm going to go out to a club or go out and dance, then yeah, I'll probably take some but

Scott Benner 1:00:25
so I wouldn't see this any differently than a person who just says, Look, I've worked a long week, and I'm going to drink on Friday night and shut my brain off for a while and wake up Saturday morning and start over again.

Ashlyn 1:00:38
Yeah, but yeah, pretty much and I mean, I, the sad thing is, is that my body works better. You know, taking psychedelics or weed than having two beers, having two beers will mess me up for quite some time.

Scott Benner 1:00:53
Yeah, I don't get drinking. Just Personally, I don't

Unknown Speaker 1:00:58
know, I don't like that.

Scott Benner 1:01:01
But I, I also have never, I've never had the feeling that I wanted to reset. Like, I'm like, my life's become, you know, almost unmanageable at times, you know, there's outside influences people. And I grew up in a place where we didn't have any money. There's been things that as I look back, I think, well, if I was gonna forget something, that would have been a great thing to forget, where that would have been a perfect day not to remember, but I've never, I've never had anything that's wanted to push me over to doing something about it. And I've had plenty of opportunities to it's just never, ever occurred to me to actually follow through with it.

Ashlyn 1:01:41
Yeah, but that that's your choice. And, you know, honestly, psychedelics are not a one size fits all solution. Yeah, you know that that's something you have to decide for yourself. And I'm somebody who struggles with depression and feeling. You know, like, I need to change sometimes. It's just again, this is a really personal choice. And that's what I want to stress. I'm not glorifying this, I don't want people to feel like Oh, you got to do this. No, no, no, if this is something people are going to do this, whether you know the information on how to do it is there or not, and I mainly want to do this just for harm reduction purposes and to say you can do it, but make sure that you're being smart and taking care of yourself and that's your priority at the end of the day.

Scott Benner 1:02:24
At the end of this I want you to go over kind of all the things someone should do to be safe, but I have more questions. Do you think a Walton do you think are you using any pharmaceutical drugs for depression or anxiety?

Unknown Speaker 1:02:38
No,

Scott Benner 1:02:38
do you think you would be if you didn't smoke weed?

Ashlyn 1:02:41
No, I tried SSRIs when I was maybe 1516 I just really didn't like how they made me feel. And I don't think that it worked for me but at the same time my depression and anxiety isn't debilitating to the point where I can't manage my life right?

Scott Benner 1:03:01
So a sign of the the side effects of an SSRI that you experienced without the weed would you need them but be unwilling or unable to take them?

Ashlyn 1:03:12
No, no, I don't think so. At all. I you know, smoking weed is not like a must have for me. You know, I I don't think that anything would be different. If I wasn't smoking weed, I just would be a little bit more bored.

Scott Benner 1:03:28
I just wasn't sure if you were managing your health with it.

Ashlyn 1:03:33
No, I don't I don't see it like that. And I know a lot of people are pushing for medicinal marijuana and in the way that I see it. It's really good for physical stuff. Like if you have glaucoma or Parkinson's or whatever, but I really don't think that people should be using it for mental health disorders. I don't think that the studying and has been done and I don't think there's enough evidence for that. And I've seen it personally be negative for some people, and I don't think that people should be pushing it for mental health especially.

Scott Benner 1:04:05
Yeah. Hey, quick question. How did your grandmother like acid?

Ashlyn 1:04:10
Oh, she she hasn't done it.

Scott Benner 1:04:16
I'm sorry. I didn't think she did. I was teasing. You're, you're just you're just calm enough that that I can't tell if my sarcasm is coming through to you or if it's just coming through on a delay, like I'm not certain, but

Ashlyn 1:04:29
Oh, that that's me that I'm super monotone level. Jefferson. I can't tell

Scott Benner 1:04:35
if you're chill or if you're monotone like that was the but Are you high now?

Ashlyn 1:04:39
No, I I'm going to go to work after this.

Scott Benner 1:04:42
Um, what are you doing for can you say?

Ashlyn 1:04:44
Yeah, yeah, right now I'm doing a e commerce listing for goodwill. I like to call it budget antique roadshow.

Scott Benner 1:04:54
And you said at one point you were working at a weed farm.

Ashlyn 1:04:57
Yeah, I actually had to leave when all All of this stuff started happening with the diabetes. We were working out in like farms like 40 miles from the nearest hospital. And it just, I can't dig trenches and, you know, have basil issues,

Scott Benner 1:05:13
your blood sugar's work. Yeah, no kidding. Is that getting worked out? Or you're?

Ashlyn 1:05:19
Whoa, we'll see you on Tuesday. I really hope when I get the pump, it just makes things a little easier, because I just hate that I'm tied to this basil rate for 24 hours. You know, there's some times where like, last night, I, I, my blood sugar was just stuck at 90. And normally, my correction factor is really, or my insulin to carb ratio is really low right now. I thought I was at one to eight. And it seems to be like that during the morning. Like I just right now I had like some toast and stuff. And I i dose for and it went well. But last night, I was stuck at 80. And I ended up eating like, I want to say 40 grams of carbs. And I had like glucose shell I had a banana and the Dexcom never even gave me like one arrow up.

Scott Benner 1:06:08
That's super interesting. So you were clearly going to get lower. Because if you put that much food in and you weren't going up at that number, but are you comfortable at 80 or 90 when you're stable?

Ashlyn 1:06:19
Oh, yeah, I'm comfortable dosing it 80 or 90 for smaller meals. I just want all of this happened. You know, before this, my day, I had like a whole playbook. I was really comfortable. I was confident in using insulin. You know, I, I was really good. But now my confidence in the medication is kind of faltered. And I need to rebuild all of that. And that's kind of where I'm at right now. I've been trying to when all of this started, I was eating maybe 10 grams of carbs a day for months.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:50
No, I now I'm not. I'm sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:54
Oh, no, you're good? No, I

Scott Benner 1:06:55
think you put that really well. That idea of like when the confidence is gone. It's impossible to make a decision all of a sudden, because you can trust it. Because it works a certain way I use this much insulin this happens. This much this happens if I get low I do this, I get high do this. You suddenly leave one place go to another place. And you can't feed a low enough. That's frightening like that.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:20
No, I

Ashlyn 1:07:22
want all of this started. I was I remember, I was working and I went to go take the garbage out. And you know, just to stay level. At that point. I was eating a glucose tab every five minutes. And at first I thought there was something wrong with the lantis I was taking. Because it happened and it happened overnight. Yeah. And I went to go take the garbage out if my blood sugar went from 130 to 55. After like lifting two bags of garbage.

Scott Benner 1:07:50
How much? How much have you reduced your Lantus since you've been there?

Ashlyn 1:07:57
The land I actually switched off of lantis, because I was noticing that during the day, it would just tank me like that. And then overnight, it would give up. And so during the day, I would be feeding, feeding the insulin feeding the insulin and then overnight, it would just stop working,

Scott Benner 1:08:12
you're gonna like having a pump.

Ashlyn 1:08:14
I ended up switching over to receba. I had done that. And it had better results in the past. And I just figured it would last a little bit longer and not just leave me with no coverage overnight. Now, and I switched from 20 units of lantis to 15 units of receba.

Scott Benner 1:08:31
Is that still too much? Are you still feeding insulin?

Ashlyn 1:08:35
I'm feeding insulin at night, it seems like during the morning. It's perfect. You know, I was this morning, I woke up at 140. And I ate some toast did like a unit and a half and it states like went down to 120 and then went up to 141. So it's hold. It's held there this whole time. So I can't say that. The basil is off right now. But it seems like as soon as I get home from work

Scott Benner 1:09:05
that it wants to just,

Ashlyn 1:09:08
it just falls and then I I try to catch it. But then it's just like I'm trying to nudge and then it gets down to like 90 and then I'm like okay, well now I'm going to have to start force feeding.

Scott Benner 1:09:20
Can I ask you something that's not in my business? Do you take birth control?

Ashlyn 1:09:24
Yeah, I do. And I kind of cut that out because I've noticed that on the days that I like do take it it's causes more insulin resistance. And during this time, I've just kind of cut it out because it's just a variable that I don't want to account for.

Scott Benner 1:09:40
Yeah, because I was thinking like there's part of me was thinking like maybe a birth control pill would cost them insulin resistance, which I you know, it's not really I shouldn't say that way. I don't think of it as causing insulin resistance. I think of it as causing a hormonal shift that makes your blood sugar want to go up and

Ashlyn 1:09:55
I know I've I've definitely noticed that But my thing is that right now, one unit of insulin is dropping me maybe 90 points.

Scott Benner 1:10:05
Wow, how much do you what can I ask you? i? Yeah, I

Ashlyn 1:10:08
feel like 124. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:11
Yeah, that's crazy.

Ashlyn 1:10:13
Yep. And so for small corrections in the morning, like, I laughed when you were talking about like pediatric dosing and you're not even pulling the syringe because that's that true.

Scott Benner 1:10:22
I am right now that that's cholera. Apparently, it's Colorado dosing. Isn't it funny that this conversation is partly about you getting high and partly about you not being able to stay high. This whole thing's about elevation. Yeah. Can I ask you, as we cop on an hour? Is there anything that we haven't talked about? Because I'm, you have the blind leading the sighted right now, because I really don't know what I should be asking you about? Is there something we haven't talked about?

Ashlyn 1:10:53
Um, no, I really wanted to do this, just because when I started, you know, dabbling in that kind of stuff, there really wasn't any kind of resource for people with diabetes, and people are gonna do this, whether the information is out there or not. And I just, you know, harm reduction.

Scott Benner 1:11:11
That's why I agree with that. 1,000,000%. I think, I think if you're raising, like, if you're a parent right now, and you've got like, a little like, eight year old, I go, you know, Jenny, I don't know, I said, Jenny. Oh, actually, I'm recording with Johnny tomorrow. That's why I think it's just in my head. You know, little Jenny, she's terrific. She's never gonna do anything wrong. And sometimes, you know, she won't, right? She'll just grow up and go on her way. And sometimes your kid's gonna grow up and drink or, you know, smoke or get high or do Do you know, LSD, I know, that doesn't seem like something you think's gonna happen. But here's Ashlyn telling you, she loves it. So, um, you know, could happen. And to pretend that it will never end do not speak of it out loud, is a mistake, because you feel like, well, if I don't talk about it, it won't happen, which is, you know, crazy, because you've never talked to your kids once about having sex, and guess what? You know, so you can't stop it by not talking about it. But you can be certain that if you don't have a situation where people feel like they can communicate that when they do do something like this, or like anything that they're not comfortable talking to you about, you're never gonna find out about it. And then you're not gonna have any ability to help them. And I think as a parent, you can't always think of helping as making them stop, you have to think of helping is giving them enough information that they can do it, whatever it is, without ending up with the you know, a terrible outcome or gonorrhea. So you see, got a, you got to talk about stuff like this. Okay, so let's take this last couple of minutes here. And you give me your playbook for how to do this safely.

Ashlyn 1:12:54
Okay, so the main things that I would stress is, you know, definitely go out and buy a test kit. Right now I have a test kit for anything that I have, you know, I have one for acid, and you can buy them off of Amazon for $15. I have these strips that like you can dip it in whatever you're going to take in, it'll tell you if there's fentanyl in them. You know, you want to protect yourself and somebody wants, I like to remember Somebody once told me that if you know, celebrities are dying from bad drugs, why? Why can't you? Why are you comfortable getting drugs from somebody and not testing them?

Scott Benner 1:13:35
So there are test kits that I can buy? That will tell me if what I'm taking is pure. Is that right?

Ashlyn 1:13:42
Yep. It's called a reagent. The one for acid is called like the Arabic reagent. And you just cut a small piece of whatever you're taking off, or, you know, you put it you drop them on. And then over the course of 15 seconds, it'll either turn purple if it's like, what you want, or it'll turn a different color based on what's actually in there. And I've, you know, I'm glad that I've had them because I've bought stuff and then brought it home tested it and I'm like, well, that's not good.

Scott Benner 1:14:15
And so people cut drugs with other stuff, I guess to make it

Ashlyn 1:14:19
it's it's called like a research chemical. A lot of people do it because it's a lot cheaper to produce and, you know, handout instead of having a $5 manufacturing cost, you have a $2 manufacturing cost and that's profit to these people. And you're just you're just a number.

Scott Benner 1:14:37
Yeah. Gotcha. And so they put stuff in it that cuts it so they have more to sell, and then you go home and makes you separate.

Ashlyn 1:14:44
It might be something completely different. And I've been in situations where you know, I I'm saying this for a reason. I've taken stuff to where, oh, this was supposed to last 12 hours. It's two days now.

Scott Benner 1:15:00
It's Thursday now and I'm still high. And what about? Do? Do narcotics ever end up in it? Or they're just people who are nefarious and just want to screw with people? So they put stuff in it that just doesn't belong there?

Ashlyn 1:15:15
Well, I really couldn't tell you why they do what they do. And I just all I'm saying is you got to protect yourself against it. I don't know. I don't know why anybody would do that. That's not something that you know, makes sense to me. So,

Scott Benner 1:15:30
so yeah, so basically, like your friendly neighborhood drug dealer might not be a great person. They might just have

Unknown Speaker 1:15:36
Yeah, newsflash.

Scott Benner 1:15:39
So I, because I'm imagining and i, you are so like, of this generation, like, You're not even willing to, like, Wonder out loud about what a drug dealer might do? That is nefarious. I really do like that about your generation. I'll do it for you then. So imagine that your drug dealer is a bad guy, and you're buying some mushrooms from him, but he really wishes you were buying heroin from him. Maybe he puts a little something in whatever he's selling you to get you going in a different direction. You come back to him, What are you looking for? And he goes,

Ashlyn 1:16:07
Oh, that that's extreme? Of course it is.

Scott Benner 1:16:10
But you understand that right now there is a 32 year old woman listening to this, who thinks that's exactly what's going to happen to Johnny when he tries mushrooms, right?

Ashlyn 1:16:21
That's a stretch, but you all you can do is really be one step ahead of them. And these tests to protect yourself. Yeah. And like I said, the website that I sent you a link to it's called dance safe. They, they show up at like any major Dance Festival in the US, and they have a little tent. And it's it's basically like no harm, no foul, you show up there with whatever you're taking. And they'll test it for you and give it back to you right on the spot. It just harm reduction. They usually have like a little tent or something. And I see people all the time go over there to get their stuff tested. Because they just they're trying to make sure that you the paramedics have less to deal with that day.

Scott Benner 1:17:06
Yeah, that's such a it really is a I've been through the website twice. And she sent it to me, dance safe.org and it's an organization that just does exactly what national just said. It's really lovely. Actually. Do people use it? Like when you're at the events? Do you see people lined up doing this?

Ashlyn 1:17:26
Oh, yeah. And they're, they're super friendly. I go over there just to talk sometimes. You know, they're, they're people with really good like knowledge base. They sometimes they'll have like the booklets where it's like if you buy like pressed pills or whatever, like look for the yellow school bus that you have, like on there, and it'll tell you if it's real or fake or whatever. And they're no judgement.

Scott Benner 1:17:50
Yeah, look at this cocaine test kits, LSD test kits, MDMA. I really do have something for everything.

Ashlyn 1:17:58
And you know, if it's $15 to save you from a hospital bill or a really bad experience, just do it. Why, especially if you're diabetic.

Scott Benner 1:18:11
You know, I'm gonna sound like a, like a rube for a second. But what is spent in on why do I not want it in my body?

Ashlyn 1:18:18
fentanyl is something that they that drug dealers, it's like, it's basically like super heroin. Oh, it's, yeah, it's they people cut like pressed pills or cocaine or anything like that with fentanyl. It's, it's been linked to like a bunch of people's deaths like Mac Miller, who's like a rapper?

Scott Benner 1:18:40
Yeah. died on that plane, right? No, who am I? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 1:18:44
I don't. Yeah,

Ashlyn 1:18:46
I don't think he died on a plane. He just I can't remember if it was Xanax or what? But he had gotten some kind of pill and they had mixed it with fentanyl. And if you look it up, the lethal dose for fentanyl is not. It's like not even like your fingernail. Okay, it's it's a crazy small amount. And so if anybody mixes that in you're, you're pretty much toast.

Scott Benner 1:19:11
You know, for some reason, I was thinking of juice world.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:13
Juice. Well, how

Scott Benner 1:19:15
did I do that? I don't know. I'm 50. You were like rap? And I was like, I know where I'm at I juice. Well.

Ashlyn 1:19:23
I forget that he died. Yeah. Or he? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:19:26
he's the one I'm thinking of. May I have this right? He was on a plane with a bunch of drugs, and they got rated and his idea to get rid of them was to take them. I believe that's what happened. You'd have to Google that to make sure that I'm attributing the right person. But yeah, apparently. That's not a great idea. either case, you're looking for other bad ideas. Hey, can you put people at rest or maybe you won't? Do you do any drugs that people will think of is hard, like cocaine, or?

Ashlyn 1:19:56
Yeah, I have in the past. It's Something that, you know, I'm just out here doing. But I have done it. And honestly, the saddest part is once again, alcohol is worse on my system. Your I have an easier time doing harder drugs than alcohol.

Scott Benner 1:20:17
House. Can I ask you I know you're young. And and you are you probably don't realize that because you're as old as you've ever been right now. So it doesn't feel that way. But do you? Do you have any, like mentors that are much older than you? who have been through a lifestyle like the one you've kind of describe today? Because I'm wondering like, is this? How sustainable is this? over decades, not just a year or two? Do you know what I mean? Like,

Ashlyn 1:20:45
oh, I, at my level with not having an addictive personality and using it as like an anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas kind of thing. I really don't see myself having a problem as long as you take those precautions. I do know people who are older and I do have some family that have struggled with drug addiction, drug abuse. But they're still kicking.

Scott Benner 1:21:12
I genuinely from my perspective, and keeping in mind my perspective as a person that doesn't drink or get high. I don't see the difference between what you just said, and me making the point that I know some people who have a wine with dinner three times a week, and I know people who are alcoholics. Like I don't see the difference between that I think there are some people who do things in moderation. And there are some people who don't. And I imagine you can apply that aesthetic to just about anything in life, not just

Ashlyn 1:21:45
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, my sometimes when I, when I feel bad about being diabetic, it's gonna sound horrible, but I'll put on my 600 pound life.

Scott Benner 1:21:56
And you're just like, Oh look, because it's just other problems that aren't mine.

Ashlyn 1:22:00
Well, that's complete sugar addiction. And that looks so much worse than anything I experienced in my day to day life with type one. They can't even go take a shower, because they're so addicted to food and sugar. And like, that's not even technically a drug in the society. I mean, now people are starting to realize, okay, yeah, sugar may be as addictive as cocaine. But for some people, you know, I watch people at my job have three cans of coke in a six hour period. And I'm just like, Oh, God,

Scott Benner 1:22:35
I have no pain. Yeah, soda freaks me out. That is actually one of the funny like, that's one of those things. I would never drink soda. Like that has like, a massively crazy day for me would be if I had like a Diet Mountain Dew, and it would be like a 12 ounce can like like, Oh my God, I've done something insane today.

Ashlyn 1:22:57
I see people like I like last week, I saw one of my co workers go and get like one of those large ICS from like the 711. And just drink the whole thing. And I was like, wow, must be nice, huh?

Scott Benner 1:23:11
I listen, I have a hard time disagreeing with you. I think if I drank one of those, my brain would explode. And my heart would start racing. And I think I'm talking myself out of ever believing I should try drugs, because that might really might really, if he's gonna get me,

Ashlyn 1:23:27
honestly, at this point where I'm at mentally, and this is gonna probably sound insane. I judge people a little bit more for stuff like that versus like, Hey, I do psychedelics, maybe three times a year?

Scott Benner 1:23:40
Well, there you go. That is perspective. I mean, that's a perfect place to stop actually, that really is perspective. Because there's somebody right now, who listened to you and thought this was great. I'm glad she did this. I know what to look for. There's somebody who listened to us and just thought, oh, squirrels out of control. And they're literally standing there thinking that with their hand, like halfway down a potato chip bag drink. That's

Ashlyn 1:24:00
what I definitely didn't want to hear. I don't want to be that person who's, you know, drugs are cool. Okay. Hey, that's not what I'm trying to do. No,

Scott Benner 1:24:10
no, I think you've done a great thing. Like I really do. I think that the way you described it earlier, that people are going to do what people are going to do and information is power, and that they need to have it.

Ashlyn 1:24:21
Right. If this saves 117 year old kid from you know, going to the hospital because he took something that he shouldn't have. Yeah, then I'm happy.

Scott Benner 1:24:32
Yeah, I have to tell you that. To me, these episodes feel the same way as talking about diabetes aimia, which is there are people who tell you like don't talk about it, because you'll teach people how to use their insulin or not use their insulin to have to facilitate this eating disorder. Right. And I think, boy, that makes sense. Like, it really does like is there someone out there right now who doesn't know what it is and you explain it to them and then they go do it because now they have the explanation. I guess that's a, it's an argument that could be made. But I just think that the greater good is served by people having knowledge.

Ashlyn 1:25:10
No, I'm 100% there with you. I mean, I feel like if the, if the knowledge was more readily available, I would have saved myself so many weird, bad times, you know, and I just, I want to save people some time by saying, you know, this is possible. But let's make sure that we have everything in place. And that if something does happen, you can say, you know, I got this, even if I don't feel right, right now, I have the tools and I'm capable.

Scott Benner 1:25:41
Alright. Well, I appreciate you doing this. I really do. Because I know that I know that I probably to some people, they probably think that I'm full of crap, right that like, you know, why would Why would a person who's doesn't drink doesn't get high? doesn't smoke, have people talking about stuff like this on a podcast, I can see people who would just think that I'm saying I don't do those things. And I do. But I really don't like I just never have and, but I do really see the value in other people understanding and I have long believed that overarching Lee, in the diabetes community, what I've seen is people talking about very kind of surface things that in the end don't end up being super valuable to people. And I just always wanted to bring them information that I thought would be really valuable. So it was very cool that you reached out to do this. And and I just I can't thank you enough because it was it was it was brave of you to say that even though you're 100 you're 100% telling me like I do this once in a while, a couple times a year. But you know, you know, not everybody's gonna hear it that way. So I really appreciate this. Thank you.

Ashlyn 1:26:54
Yeah, no problem. I mean, if if people want to feel that way, and want to be judgmental that's on them, but I don't I don't live in that space. You know, I'm very active and open about what I have going on. And I feel no shame whatsoever. It's made me who I am today, and I can't think it enough. Honestly,

Scott Benner 1:27:12
it's beautiful. It really is. I want to wish you a ton of luck with your pump. I think you're gonna like it a lot. And I really hope that you would doesn't have to be a podcast. But if you could let me know if the pumps able to get ahead of the the altitude thing, or if the altitude thing seems to change. You live there longer, though. I can't imagine. I mean, that just seems strange to me. But I'd love to know how that resolves. Actually,

Ashlyn 1:27:37
yeah, me too. I mean, I really can't find any information about this online at all. I honestly thought I was going crazy at the beginning,

Scott Benner 1:27:46
the best I can tell you is that I've had more people than I can count, reach out and tell me they've gone to Colorado and required significantly less insulin. And the higher they go, the worse it gets. But I've never been able to come up with any real explanations for it. Oh, wow. So I'm sorry.

Ashlyn 1:28:04
Yo, no, it honestly this happened in September. And honestly, it's been six months of just re building confidence and trying to remake a playbook to something.

Scott Benner 1:28:16
Yeah, no, I I seriously want to wish you luck. Even if you just think to send me an email six months from now. I'd love to know how it worked out for you.

Ashlyn 1:28:24
Yep, I definitely will. I actually also scheduled an appointment with integrated diabetes. And that's tomorrow. Oh, so I'm gonna have like a pre pump. I guess consult with them and then go see my actual endo in person on Tuesday to do this

Scott Benner 1:28:41
very cool. Who you're doing it with it? integrated?

Ashlyn 1:28:44
It's not Jenny.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:45
It's some.

Ashlyn 1:28:46
It's another lady.

Scott Benner 1:28:48
I think I might have made Jenny a very popular person. So

Ashlyn 1:28:52
I figured as much I didn't request her specifically because I'm like, she's

Unknown Speaker 1:28:55
probably booked. She

Scott Benner 1:28:56
is I'm starting to have trouble getting her. So she's definitely doing well. I wish you luck. I think that's really smart. It's interesting. You're literally doing the same thing with your pumping that you did with your mushroom and you're like, let me just do a test run first before I get right into this. Your person? No, I'm

Ashlyn 1:29:14
a big preparer. That's why I logged on 10 minutes early. Cuz I gotta I gotta be ready.

Scott Benner 1:29:20
That's insane. That's exactly right. Like, I jumped on this. People wouldn't know that. Like I jumped on this really early, hoping that no one's ever early. But I was like, oh, it would help me today. If it was earlier. So in there you are. So I like your pre planning. It's, it's, it's exactly why you I think you thought to reach out about this topic. So very apropos.

Ashlyn 1:29:41
Mm hmm. All right, for sure. Thank you so much.

Scott Benner 1:29:43
Thank you. First, I want to genuinely thank Ashlyn for coming on and sharing her story. It takes a lot to tell people Hey, I do something that You might think is weird, or strange or questionable, but I think is completely normal. So judgments aside, because that's what I like, I like not judging people. You know, honestly, I don't see this any different than the how we eat episodes, right? Somebody wants to eat pescatarian What do I care, low carb, cool, whatever. I'm just interested in people's stories and what they do feel like that helps everyone who's listening. So anyway, thanks so much Ashlyn for coming on the show. Thank you on the pod Dexcom and dancing for diabetes for sponsoring this episode. You can check out that free no obligation demo of the Omni pod or look into the free 30 day trial the Omni pod dash at my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box, get yourself a Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor@dexcom.com forward slash juice box both of these products are perfect for anyone using insulin. And of course, touched by type one is doing amazing things for people living with type one diabetes, and you should check them out on Facebook, Instagram, or at touched by type one.org. Can't remember those links. They're all at Juicebox Podcast comm or right there in the show notes of the podcast player that you're listening in right now. And if you'd like to find the rest of the afterdark series, go to Juicebox podcast.com. Scroll down scrolling and there it is afterdark audio diabetes topics that no one else talks about. They're all right there. And if you think you have a story that would work for the afterdark series, send me an email and let's find out. Lastly, I hope you enjoyed the episode. I really appreciate your listening and the support you guys give the show. When listeners share the show with others it is how it grows. And it's how we get these great stories. Thank you so much. Hope you have a great day. I'll talk to you soon.

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