#488 Say That One More Time

Sarah is pregnant and has type 1 diabetes

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 488 of the Juicebox Podcast.

On this episode of the podcast, we're gonna be talking with Sarah, she recorded this while she was pregnant. She has since had the baby. And I'll tell you a little update about that at the end of the episode. This one's interesting because I recorded it twice, you'll, you'll see what I mean. I'll explain the whole thing in a second. Sarah is terrific. You're going to love this. Let's just get started. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast. This is something you should remember. By the way, please remember, let's say it like that. Let's say please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan are becoming bold with insulin.

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. The show is also sponsored by touched by type one, check them out at touched by type one.org. And by the Omni pod. Now you can go to Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox. To find out if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash. It's pretty cool. Head over, take a look. links in the show notes, links at Juicebox Podcast comm or you just go to omnipod.com forward slash juicebox. Let's start here by saying that you are one of the few people who I've interviewed and then somehow screwed over your file just didn't work. So we're doing this again. But you have big news since we talked last time. So we're just going to just talk over and the great news for you is I speak to so many people. I fundamentally don't know what we spoke about the first time so this is going to just be like brand new to me.

Sarah 2:45
It sounds good. Do you want to turn off video or you want to keep it on?

Scott Benner 2:48
If you're alright with I can keep it on? I just don't have a lot of light in here. So I like

Unknown Speaker 2:51
it because then I don't interrupt you.

Scott Benner 2:53
Oh cool. Well, let me see if I can just turn it on.

Sarah 2:56
I can see you. I'm gonna mute myself go to blow my nose because that's rude.

Scott Benner 3:03
Sarah is now blowing her nose. She is finished.

Unknown Speaker 3:07
Oh, I didn't realize you were recording.

Scott Benner 3:09
Oh, no, I've been recording the entire time. So Introduce yourself.

Sarah 3:17
So my name is Sarah. I live in Denver area of Colorado. I'm 27 and change. I'm a graduate student at a university in Colorado. I'm a type one diabetic, sort of. And I am 25 weeks pregnant. Whoo.

Scott Benner 3:35
Congratulations. With a baby. I'm assuming we're going to name Scott. Is that right?

Sarah 3:41
It's a human. I do not know the sex.

Scott Benner 3:44
But listen, I don't know what Scott is works. I think it's a gender neutral name.

Sarah 3:52
Yeah, that's awesome names picked out but

Unknown Speaker 3:55
not Scott.

Unknown Speaker 3:57
No.

Scott Benner 3:59
But of course you won't. It's like it's such a short kind of Curt name doesn't feel I don't love it as a first name. So anyway, and I don't expect you to name your baby after

Sarah 4:17
playing with family names,

Scott Benner 4:19
are you so you are related to people who are worthy of their names moving into the future?

Sarah 4:26
Just the first letter so my mother in law has brain cancer. So the middle names for both sexes that we've come up with start with the first letter of her first name.

Scott Benner 4:35
That's very nice of you. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. So tell me something you just said I have type one diabetes, sort of what does that mean?

Sarah 4:42
So I was technically diagnosed with Lada latent autoimmune diabetes in adults when I was 26, so last March. I identify as a type one but I know that the medical community has issues with that occasionally.

Scott Benner 4:58
really well. Do You Do you know why?

Sarah 5:02
Um, yeah. So I think it stems from the origins of Type One Diabetes being juvenile diabetes, which in all honesty didn't make any sense anyway, because juvenile people grow up.

Scott Benner 5:16
Yeah, that's the goal. Right? So yeah, you know, it's funny that how many things we say or do because that's just the way it is, or something like that. So you have you actually bumped into somebody who's like, like, been like, Oh, that's not good usage, because you were diagnosed later.

Sarah 5:35
Yeah. So I mean, on all my charts, I'm a type one I identify as a type one. It's just my initial diagnosis was Lata. But people sometimes think it's part of type two, which it's, have you done your pro episode with Jenny about it yet?

Scott Benner 5:51
Not yet? No.

Sarah 5:52
Okay. Yeah. So my understanding, I'm not a doctor, but I feel like we all should have honorary endod degrees, to be honest. But my understanding is that it's a slower progressing form of type one. So it's still an autoimmune that attacks your pancreas. It's just slower than say, Arden, or children who have it pretty rapidly. onset

Scott Benner 6:15
just comes on pretty quickly. And and you have it, so it's not exactly like a long honeymoon. Where they don't about it that way, I think

Sarah 6:23
can be when you just depending on when you diagnose it.

Scott Benner 6:28
Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, how did it how early Do you think you caught it? And what was your I mean, forget what people say, what was your experience?

Sarah 6:36
Yeah, mine is a little funny. So when I was 15, I swear I'm gonna answer your question. But when I was 15, I had stomach issues. So I saw stomach Doctor Who thought I just had acid reflux, and for four years I was on a marathon or whatever it's called Nexium, whatever. And I felt horrible. So I finally decided to do something about it and went gluten free and felt way better. So then I saw different stomach Doctor Who diagnosed me with celiac. And then after my mother in law was diagnosed with brain cancer, I was stressed and traumatized and x y&z and I was diagnosed with hashimotos. This was when I was how old was I 25? Maybe. And then I went to an endocrinologist who ran antibody tests. And one of the antibody tests you ran was the GA d 65. If you're familiar,

Scott Benner 7:31
I'm not keep going.

Sarah 7:33
So that's one of the I don't clinically I can't tell you what that means. But I know that in layman's terms, it's if you come up positive, it means you're positive for type one of some sort. So we can test the antibodies through trial net, right? I think there's five of them. Yep. So jd 65 is a different one. I think. Don't quote me on that. But

Unknown Speaker 7:54
you're totally anybody. But I understand that you might not know for sure.

Sarah 7:57
No, I know. I'm not a doctor. But this podcast has no medical advice anyway. But anyway, I was really positive for jd 65. I think it's like under five is negative, and I was in the 1000s. And at the time, this was in California, she told me, you might develop type one later in life, just watch your agency. And I remember it being in the mid to high fives which was not diabetic, per se, but it was pre diabetic at points. And I've always been active and vegetarian and gluten free and it just didn't make sense. Anyway, fast forward, I moved to Colorado. I established a new endo for my hashimotos she was looking at my bloodwork and she goes you know you're type one, right? I said, Excuse me.

Scott Benner 8:43
Did you say do you know you have no bedside manner whatsoever? Right?

Unknown Speaker 8:47
I was like, what does that mean?

Sarah 8:50
So she stuck a libri on me for two weeks. I came back and they diagnosed me with Lada because I wasn't, you know in the 600 500 400 300 daily, but I would spike to the 250s occasionally, so that end up ended up being a dingdong. So I ended up switching to a new center, the Barbara Davis center in Denver, which is phenomenal. Yeah, I've heard they're phenomenal. And I walked in three months post diagnosis on a Dexcom no insulin, because the first endo refused to put me on insulin unless I was over 200 for three days straight.

Scott Benner 9:26
Really? Yeah. You wouldn't be over 200 for three days straight or you couldn't have any insulin.

Sarah 9:31
That was her textbook diagnosis. Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:34
this is the dodo you're saying? That ding dong, ding dong, ding dong. Ding Dong Dodo. Nice. Yeah. What's the difference? Well, what's, how was hashimotos explained to you? Like, why is that not hypothyroidism? Or like, I don't know all of you. You want to read together as

Sarah 9:54
well. So I know that it's one of the same. It's just one is the autoimmune so hashimotos means that my body attacks my thyroid. And they diagnosed it with antibodies to be a bloodwork and then an ultrasound to check for nodules, aka mini tumors, which I didn't have but one side of my thyroid was like double the size of the other something.

Scott Benner 10:14
So what I'm seeing here is inflammation of the thyroid causes a leak resulting in excess thyroid hormone, which puts you hyper over time the inflammation prevents the thyroid from producing enough hormone. hypo symptoms include fatigue and unexplained weight gain. It's funny that it says unexplained weight gain. Of course, it is explained by the hashimotos. A weird choice.

Sarah 10:38
Yeah, unexplained by lifestyle factors explained by the thyroid.

Scott Benner 10:42
Yeah, like you're just eating all normal and everything and gaining weight and you can't stop. Did any of that happened to you?

Sarah 10:48
Yeah. So, I mean, I was in the hospital, not for myself for my mother in law pretty frequently. So I wasn't totally taking care of myself. And I actually went to the ER, which with heart with chest pains, which now I know is a sign of high blood sugar for me. So I felt absolutely horrible. And nobody checked my blood sugar. It was all about the heart, my heart was fine. I'm assuming if someone had actually checked my blood sugar would have had a high blood sugar. So this was six months before the positive god 65. And then, like a year and change before my actual diagnosis,

Scott Benner 11:28
one time Arden's as she got bigger, so she was on Synthroid at the time, and she grew. And it just never occurred to us that as she got bigger, she'd need more Synthroid. And so she started having these incredibly low blood pressures. like she'd like, sit at the kitchen counter with her head down, just lay there, you know. And they jump, even though people knew she doctors knew she had hypothyroidism. They jumped right to like heart issues. And they put her through all these heart tests that she just flat out didn't need. And I kept saying, you know, after a couple of doctor's appointments, I was like, could this just be your thyroid, you know, and people are like, Oh, it's too severe and blah, blah, and like, so one day I just said to Kelly, I'm like, I'm just gonna give her more of it. I just I am it because if it works, we'll know soon. And if it doesn't work well, and she just like, she was like a flat. You ever seen a flower just like, not get enough water? And yeah, it's not dead. But you're like, this thing's gonna die in like two days, you know that you put water in it like the next day, you come out like, oh my god. Yep, that's exactly what happened to her. She just popped right back up again. I was like, That's amazing. And then I call the doctor. I was like, Well, guess what? I gave her more. And this work. Now you might want to be more specific about how much more she wants, because I just was like, and half a pill because I didn't. I kind of did it the way I do. And so I'm like, let's see if more helps. You know, it's a fascinating issue. All I knew was Oh, sorry. No, no God,

Sarah 13:01
when you procreate, the second you have a positive pregnancy tests, they increase your Synthroid or levothyroxine or whatever pill you're on. No

Scott Benner 13:09
kidding. Because Do you know why?

Sarah 13:14
not medically, but I know that it has something to do with the baby. I'm gonna

Scott Benner 13:17
find out find out when I do the thyroid episode, I'll make sure I ask.

Sarah 13:21
Yeah, that's like, one of the first things I did was increased my legal thyroxin or Synthroid okay.

Scott Benner 13:28
Yeah, that I ardent uses to dissent now, only because through the process of making sure we were doing the exact right thing for as best as we could. We found that tiersen doesn't have any fillers whatsoever. So not that, you know, but it didn't change anything. Like we went from Synthroid to tears. And it's not like she was suddenly like, I feel so much better. It just, this works just as well as the other and she's using it now. So but we've tried everything, we tried switching her insulin, to make sure she didn't have a sensitivity to like fillers in a pager, which she ended up not having. And because moving too fast, didn't change anything. Actually, it changed a lot about how insulin worked, which was really interesting, but I'm going to do another episode about that somewhere else. But um, but it didn't change anything. You know, when you're just sort of like you did it like you were like, I'll eat gluten free now and see what that does. So are you a vegetarian or vegan? Or how do you eat?

Sarah 14:22
lifelong vegetarian,

Scott Benner 14:23
vegetarian? Okay. Did your family raise you that way?

Sarah 14:27
Yeah, sort of my parents are both physicists. So we had a nanny growing up. And she was vegetarian.

Scott Benner 14:34
Which made you a vegetarian? Yeah. It's like, it's like when you hear somebody say, I watched Dancing with the Stars because my wife watches Dancing with the Stars. So I love it too. Because

Sarah 14:48
I'm married to a six Ford German guy, so he eats enough meat for the both of us.

Scott Benner 14:52
So do you not have there's no moral issue with you? It's just an eating style.

Sarah 14:59
No I love animals a lot. So like a lot a lot. I don't know why but I do. So I don't like the smell of it especially pregnant. I really don't like the smell of it.

Scott Benner 15:09
Okay with that protein and the kind of blood base that's in red meat especially yet not a pet you don't sit across from your husband going, you mother doing Thank you don't spend the whole time he's eating his cheeseburger wondering out loud what the cow would be doing with its life right now. If it wasn't for him, it isn't. It doesn't hate you like that?

Sarah 15:31
No Are my philosophies if they don't get mad at me for being vegetarian or tease me with me, then I won't do the same.

Scott Benner 15:39
I have a theory that everyone doesn't care so much about what other people do as much as the internet makes it feel like people care. You know? So yeah, I just think that if you if you if you feel that way, I think that's amazing. You know, if you were like, Look, I'm not gonna eat meat, because animals and I love them too much. And I can't do it. I think that makes 1,000,000% sense. And I think if you think I want a cheeseburger, I've grown up this way. And this is how I eat. I think that makes sense, too. So it's interesting that you guys are blended like that. Does he ever touch your vegetables?

Sarah 16:15
Actually, I don't cook my husband cooks.

Unknown Speaker 16:18
Oh, so you can't complain at all.

Sarah 16:20
So well, pregnant, you eat weird things anyway, but so when we moved to Colorado, he decided that our kitchen would be gluten free, which was really generous of him. Because I've celiac. Yeah. So he eats completely gluten free in the house. And then if he goes out not so much with COVID, but he'll eat gluten. But we just finished our basement so and we have like a fridge and a toaster oven down there. And that will be the gluten kitchen.

Scott Benner 16:49
Well, that's interesting. So a person who has no sensitivity to gluten at all, can not eat it. And he probably doesn't experience anything different than when he does eat it.

Sarah 16:58
No, but you know, we did 23andme because I'm from an egg donor, which is unrelated to all this. But anyway, I wanted to see if I could find any half siblings, which I did not. But um, oh, he has one of the two celiac genes and I have the other so the kids screwed.

Scott Benner 17:16
Hey, good. Can the baby hear me? Good news, buddy.

Sarah 17:20
Yeah, they're I think they're asleep. Right now. They were awake earlier.

Scott Benner 17:23
Oh, wait, hold on a second. You say they?

Unknown Speaker 17:27
Yeah.

Scott Benner 17:28
Like, is there like 12 of them in there? Oh,

Sarah 17:31
it's gender neutral.

Scott Benner 17:33
Oh, I was like, I wasn't sure if you were going with with pronoun there. Or if it was like, literally like two and I think I didn't think she was having twins. Okay. Yeah, you'd probably be bigger by now. You're in a super pale of super pale origin, too. So yeah, it's your hair red.

Sarah 17:52
Yeah, it's just Yeah, it is.

Scott Benner 17:54
Yeah. So are you more like Irish English, that kind of vibe.

Sarah 17:59
Um, so I'm from my father. And then I'm, I have a twin and then we're from an egg donor. And I did the 23andme. And I made my father do it to see what came up is and I know you're adopted. So yeah, it's actually might be interested. Interesting. But, um, I've concluded that the egg donor was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, which does not actually mean anything ethnicity wise, but I've narrowed it down to that she was from Germany. But thank goodness and not really to my husband, because I was quite nervous.

Scott Benner 18:30
What do you think you would have done if it came back? And you were like, really close in line? Would you have been like, Look, you can stay as the cook, but we're not having sex anymore?

Sarah 18:38
I don't know. I don't know. I didn't want to think about it. Because it's a little scary.

Scott Benner 18:42
Creepy. Hey, the good news is if you stay married a little longer, you're not gonna have sex anymore anyway, so don't worry about

Sarah 18:48
Yeah, that's what I've heard.

Scott Benner 18:51
It won't matter. You'll just be like, I mean, he's a great cook. And I like him. He's nice to that kid. So it'll be fun. No,

Sarah 18:58
he's a really nice guy. I got really lucky.

Scott Benner 19:00
Yeah, good for you. That's excellent. I'm noticing I have more and more listeners in the Denver area. They're popping up more frequently. I don't know what's happening over there. But you people gotta you got to stop getting hype on TV. So much of Utah, Denver are like way on the rise for the for the show. It's interesting. I

Sarah 19:21
maybe it's because of Barbara Davis center is such a phenomenal.

Scott Benner 19:25
I think it's a share center. It's that people start sharing the podcast, and it grows that way. I don't think it has anything to do with people having diabetes in certain areas. Yeah, if I had that kind of power, then I'd be like, if someone gets diabetes, they just immediately listen to the podcast. That would be that's another level, then you would actually hear ego from me. Just so you know. I'd be like, I'm all powerful, but no, I just think some nice people are passing the show around. So you haven't had diabetes for very long at all. How long? Tell me again, how long you had a thyroid issue? When was that diagnosed again? You're

Sarah 20:02
about a year before the diabetes, so about two and a half years,

Scott Benner 20:05
but you live for four years thinking you had reflux

Sarah 20:09
15 to 19, aged 15 to 19. I, I didn't think I had reflux because the next team did nothing but someone diagnosed me with bird. Okay, gastrointest something's going on like

Scott Benner 20:19
that, that those medications, even the over counter ones for reflux can block your ability to take up iron. Did you know that?

Sarah 20:28
I know. So I was severely anemic when I was finally diagnosed with celiac, which could have been either the celiac or the Nexium or both,

Scott Benner 20:36
you realize that some people listening right now are think you're anemic? Because you don't eat any meat, right? So we're not, you're not gonna make any more. Sorry, you're not any make any more, right?

Unknown Speaker 20:47
No, no, no, no.

Scott Benner 20:49
So I really think that might have something to do with it. Honestly, that those, those those medications block the uptake of iron and you don't need very much iron at all. But when you don't have it, it's, you know, it plays hell on you. Like I've been fighting through that for like, two years now I finally feel better, but it's horrible. It just it feels like you've been awake for your whole life. And sleeping doesn't do much for you and you know, etc. This whole body thing to fine tune instrument. And when you when you off tune it a little bit things start going haywire. So tell me

Sarah 21:27
that, actually, oh, sorry. It actually sounds like hashimotos. Like you sleep forever and ever and ever, and you still are exhausted.

Scott Benner 21:34
So many of these problems result in the same kind of like that. That's why you have so much trouble figuring out stuff for Arden because she also her iron was low as well, like so she got her pitch started getting her period. And it just, you know, every time it took us forever, I should say, like, you'd look at her and think, let me start over. So she had the issue where she grew and this and the Synthroid wasn't enough. So she got super tired and her blood pressure went low. And then as her iron depleted, it looks exactly the same. Yeah, so then the doctors were like, now we know what this is. So they were giving her more thyroid, but it was she was anemic. But if you jack someone's thyroid up, you can make their little you can make them hyper, which can mask your symptoms. So then the symptoms got masked, but of course that didn't last forever. And we were at our like the end of our rope. We were like that's it she Why don't we just like, like, we were thinking about maybe pushing her like in a hole or leaving or something like that, like it was getting tough. You know what I mean? And one day, I figured out my iron thing. And once I got the iron back, me and my brain turned back on. And my wife and I could talk about it like reasonably. I said to Kelly, I'm like, hey, do you think Arden's iron could be low as like it's perfectly mimic it? You know, now that I stopped and think about it, and we took her in. And her iron was incredibly low. Incredibly, yeah.

So she got a couple of infusions. And then she was okay after that.

Sarah 23:13
She on iron supplements currently. No,

Scott Benner 23:15
it's holding up now. So that's good. Yeah, I don't I don't know. She'll get tested again. That poor kid gives a lot of blood, but she'll get tested again soon to find out. And we're actually going this week to get her thyroid levels because we're the doctor still adjusting her thyroid. I'll tell you that's the thing to understand about thyroid is it's if you think you're going to do one blood test, take a pill, and a year later try it again. That is not the way to figure it out. It really isn't.

Sarah 23:43
hashimotos is actually my easiest. autoimmune. celiac is my favorite and diabetes is my least favorite.

Scott Benner 23:51
I didn't know you had them on. You had them read it. And not even on the actual same scale, by the way. Easiest, that one's over their favorite because I'm guessing you like the way you eat. And then how do you like eating? And what is it like to eat gluten free? What are your go twos.

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Sarah 27:13
Oh, that's an interesting question. So pre pregnancy I was pretty low carb just easier to manage the blood sugar. But in pregnancy you're supposed to eat like 180 grams of carbs a day because carbs equals energy energy extol equals growing baby. So I've really had to change my diet. So like for breakfast, I had granola and fruit and yogurt which I would have never eaten before

Scott Benner 27:36
because of the carbs.

Sarah 27:38
Yeah, a lot of carbs a lot of fat sugars. So I don't know you know, I don't notice it. For me. It's normal to eat gluten free. Yeah, just a lot of normally gluten free stuff. Rice, brown rice, if I need it, polenta, spaghetti squash, things like that,

Scott Benner 27:55
I think I'm coming to the conclusion that for me personally. Flour, whether it is in a cookie or bread is is probably the bane of my existence. Like, like my in my because I can, I don't know about you, but I could get like a fresh loaf of bread and, you know, just eat it over three days and not eat anything else and be perfectly happy. And it's I know, it's not good for me. It's funny, as you're talking, I'm preparing two days from now to record with a with a doctor who promotes a complete carnivore diet. Like just the opposite way. So I've been doing this thing like, like, I've been recording with people like how they eat. So you know, talking to gluten free low carb. Now we're gonna have a carnivore, I want to have a vegan, like, I just want to talk to everybody. Because there's so many different ways of eating. I'd like everybody to be able to like explain it. I have no, you know, I have no skin in the game. I don't care how anyone eats and you know, you listen, I really don't, I don't think twice about that everybody who has type one diabetes is going to use insulin. It just depends on how much and when. But I think understanding how to use it impacts everybody's eating. So I just thought you know what it's not, it's not me saying this is the right thing to do, or that's the right thing to do. Because I didn't I genuinely don't have a feeling about that. But I think it's I think it's kind of important to talk about, I want somebody to have the nerve to come on and say I've just a standard American diet. I eat a lot of processed food. I have meat, I have vegetables once in a while I drink soda. Like I want someone to come on and talk about that as well. So but this guy is gonna, you know, he's going to talk about you know, that that that side of the theory that you know a long time ago people just ate meat and

Unknown Speaker 29:45
oh paleo

Scott Benner 29:46
Yeah, well, it but even more so like, I don't understand the difference even so they call it carnivores. It'll be interesting to find out the whole reason I reached to him as a doctor instead of just a person with type one diabetes. To eat that way, is because I thought he could speak very specifically to fat and protein and how it makes your blood sugar go up because he's not type one, but he wears a CGM. So I thought, why don't we see what it looks like in a regular person who's also a doctor and can kind of explain it. So that's my, that's my roll call about having him on. I think that should be interesting, for sure. And then he can talk about how he eats too. Anyway. So how are you finding having diabetes? You manage with pens, needles, pumps, what do you do?

Sarah 30:31
Um, I will say diabetes is annoying. Very annoying. So in the beginning, I was definitely still honeymooning. So I was just on receba once a day, usually, I didn't even Bolus for meals unless it was like Thai food. So I felt like a baby diabetic, but a great intro into this world. And then, a couple months before pregnancy, I noticed I had to start bolusing for meals, so I was on humulus Jr. Because you can do half units. actually really liked it. I still have some pens in my fridge. And then a couple months, I knew I was gonna start trying to get pregnant. So then I asked my endo for a pump. And I know you promote Omnipod. But I chose the tandem t slim.

Scott Benner 31:14
I know people that love the T slim.

Sarah 31:16
I love my T slim. And she kind of was like, well, we need to fudge the numbers a little bit because you're only using you know, 10 units a day. But if you think it'll be helpful for your management, and I know you want to get pregnant. So now I'm on Dexcom and the T slim. And I'm in sleep mode 24 seven on control IQ. And I love it. My agency is phenomenal for pregnancy, and I feel pretty good. And I wake up in range every day.

Scott Benner 31:44
I was gonna say what is your range? Which What are you shooting for?

Sarah 31:48
Yeah, so that's an interesting thing with control IQ. So pregnancy, the textbook is they want you under 100 or under 90 fasted. And then under 120. Post meal not over 140 ever. Let's be real, that's impossible, especially with insulin resistance. So I shoot for an agency under six. And however I manage that is however I get it.

Scott Benner 32:10
Yeah. That's interesting about the resistance. So how much did you You said you're using like less than 10 units a day. But how much are you really using now that you're pregnant?

Sarah 32:19
So I'm 25 weeks, so I'm almost in third trimester and yesterday I use 65 units. Hey,

Unknown Speaker 32:24
so

Unknown Speaker 32:26
real diabetic.

Unknown Speaker 32:29
You're in the game now. You went from

Unknown Speaker 32:32
stressful?

Unknown Speaker 32:34
What is stressful,

Sarah 32:36
just managing it's like, especially the guilts that I feel carrying another human's life. And when I'm over 140, and they try to scare you. I'm not going to repeat the scary stuff. But anyone who's thought about getting pregnant with type one knows that they try to scare the heck out of you.

Scott Benner 32:52
Yeah. Well, there have been enough people on here who, who have been pregnant and not known it. And it a miscarriage comes pretty quickly if your blood sugar's high like that I just interviewed. I just interviewed a girl last night, who is a recovering heroin addict. And her diagnosis story is so folded in heroin use that she didn't see her her diabetes right away either. And she was pregnant in there and lost her baby. I that last night I came out of here. And my wife's like, you were in there for two hours. I was like, that was the most fascinating conversation I've ever had in my life. Because there was so much about her life that I just had no context for, you know, I'm like, I don't even drink and she's talking about, you know, oxy cotton. And you know how it moves into other things. And and by the way, I'll I don't know if this means anything? I think it does. You could not look at her. And think I'm looking at a person that used heroin for 10 years. Just you couldn't, you couldn't see it. I don't know what that means. But, you know, we're doesn't mean but i just i never in a million years would have guessed if you lined her up with a bunch of people and made me pick. It just wouldn't have been hard. It's It was kind of fascinating. But But back to your insulin resistance. I'm gonna start talking more about this. Because I'm fascinated with leaps in insulin use and how people's minds can't wrap around it right? Because it's always doubled. You always hear people online say I made it 100% more and it still didn't work. So, so that must not be it. You know, like and they'll do it like for like little kids or for adults. Like you know somebody who's basil, I don't know, point five an hour, they'll be like I made it one. My blood sugar still 250 What else do you think could be wrong? And I'm like that you limited yourself by doubling your basil and thinking that there's something about that. The percentage I've moved, there's it's the 100 it's just you know what I mean by that like, it's just I made it 100 2% more. That's an in their mind that's like, that's as far as I could go. You don't? I mean, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find a way to talk about that more, because I see that with so many people as a limiting problem for them. But how do you how do you make the leap? How do you get to like 65? You just see the need and just meet it with insulin.

Sarah 35:21
Yeah, it was scary in the beginning, because pre pregnancy if I bought those two units, I would have been scared of lows just because I didn't really need that my pancreas was still producing some insulin for me. Yeah. So I just, you know, my endo at the beginning, I love her. She said, pregnancy is going to make your insulin go psycho, one way or the other, you're going to go low, you're gonna go high, you're gonna use a ton, you're gonna use nothing. She said, Do not think about the number. Think about, it's helping you grow your baby. And that's it. So I try not to look at the number. Occasionally I'll go in and look at the totals. And then if it's really wonky, like one day, I had 85 units that before bed, I mean, before dinner, and I changed my infusion set turned up who was kinked. So that's how you use it. But I try not to get in my head about it. I think, as diabetics, we already have so many numbers running around, and it's really a platform for an eating disorder. So that was my thing with pregnancies. I'm not counting carbs, I'm not looking at my weight. I'm focusing solely on the diabetic numbers. And that's it. And that was my boundary with the doctors.

Scott Benner 36:27
What do you think that is? About the idea that a lot more insulin feels wrong to people?

Sarah 36:36
Um, I think it might be shameful because we've grown up in a society where type twos make up the majority of the diabetic population and being on insulin is sort of a shameful thing.

Scott Benner 36:49
And so if you can get away with a little bit of it, that's okay. But once So, I have I sneak a cigarette after dinner, but I don't smoke all the time. Like that kind of thing. That feeling of if I do enough of it. See, it's funny, because I don't have type one, I can't wrap my head around it. You know what I mean? And I've always just been very just used as much insulin as the situation requires mindset. But I do I do understand what you're saying. And and I've heard it echoed by a ton of people, honestly, you know, which is why I wanted to talk about it as well with you and and with, you know, somebody else in the future because it's it. It doesn't make any rational sense that it feels like a failure to use three units for a meal instead of one unit for a meal. But it's but it totally is how people feel sometimes.

Sarah 37:45
I think for me, it was more fear, because pregnancy lows are way worse than normal lows for me. So the couple times I've been like really low for me, it was horrible. And so I think it was more the fear of like last night I Bolus 11 units for dinner, which had you told me that pre pregnancy I would have laughed at you. I'd have to eat like handfuls of cotton candy. Um, so I think it's just the fear of miscalculating and going extremely low. It's there's no shame in my numbers for me personally, but I understand the stigma. And I had a family member. We were on FaceTime recently while I was pregnant, and my pump was beeping, whatever. And they said oh why are you using insulin? Can you just take a pill? You know, my family member was had diabetes during pregnancy like you gestational is not like me, she just took a pill. Why can't you just take a pill, you know, you need less insulin. And I was like we're getting off the phone now. I'm gonna send you an email with academic articles about how wrong that is. So I think that's just the stigma in a lot of communities in America unfortunately.

Scott Benner 38:53
Look who thinks they know something

Sarah 38:56
like gestational I wish

Scott Benner 38:59
I would buy that get I would pay money to switch to gestational Is there a switch? I can throw it? I mean, I understand that. Listen, I understand a person having a different experience, not understanding your situation. And voicing the experience. I don't get the doubling down and the being nasty about a part. That's strange to me, but very, very human. For some reason everybody thinks they have the better answer. And it isn't enough to just share it with you. They want you to accept it. You know, like I do you think do you think she thought she was saving you? Or do you think she felt like I know better than you and you're not listening? I wonder what that is? Not that you would know either. But I'm fascinated by that.

Sarah 39:44
I think it's an ageist thing as well. Oh really? Like they know better because I'm in my mid 20s

Scott Benner 39:50
Oh, you're young you couldn't possibly understand this. Like,

Sarah 39:53
yeah, but I'm type one.

Scott Benner 39:55
How can I have it? You don't but even Yeah, no That's that that translates, right? Because we talked about it earlier, right? The way people eat, you know, you have a, you seem to have a what I consider a reasonable idea like I am, you know, I eat vegetarian, and you can if you want to or not, and whatever, and not, you know, I'm gonna spend my entire life screaming as loud as I can at everybody who doesn't understand and believe what I believe. But it really does happen a lot, doesn't it? So what did we talk about last time that we haven't gotten to yet that your brain is going? I can't believe he hasn't asked me about this, because I know there's got to be something.

Sarah 40:35
So last time, we talked, I was still on injections. I wasn't on the pump, yet. I was barely using insulin. So you really talked about or you asked me questions, I think about how it was being a slow onset diabetic and how that feels. And being integrated in a type one community when you're still sort of a baby diabetic, per se.

Scott Benner 41:00
So you were trying all aspects? Yeah, you were trying and you're involved online a little bit, right?

Sarah 41:05
Yeah, occasionally, yeah.

Scott Benner 41:07
Yeah. Did you just feel like an outsider, like, I don't really have the same diabetes they have.

Sarah 41:12
So I did not feel that way. I don't judge people in their management of anything, medical or not. But people judged me, which was hard. And not just me, but like the identity of Lada or slow onset type one.

Unknown Speaker 41:28
Okay. So that was, I mean,

Sarah 41:30
I'm a type one I just managed differently at the beginning of another type ones.

Scott Benner 41:34
So is the is the larger issue, you show up in a space, your life's been turned upside down, you have diabetes, but you show up and these people don't think your diabetes is, I don't know, as diabetes as their diabetes. And so you're not the same. And you get shunned away for that, like, you're not allowed to be part of this group.

Sarah 41:56
I wouldn't say shunned but I would say almost laughed at like I went. So there's a phenomenal adult type one Meetup group in Denver. Not during COVID,

Scott Benner 42:08
pre COVID. Like how everybody has to say that I wear a mask, don't worry.

Unknown Speaker 42:14
Like, okay, I believe it. But go ahead during COVID, of course, but pre pre COVID

Sarah 42:20
I remember going to my first meetup and being brand new. And you know, I was still on interesting, but I just wasn't on very much homologue and identified as a type one, because that's what my medical records say. And it doesn't matter anyway. I remember someone being like, you haven't been in the 300. yet. You're not a real diabetic. It was like shaming me for having a half working pancreas. It was really odd.

Scott Benner 42:41
Yeah. Well, you would think that people would say, hey, that's great. You want to know what's going to happen later? You know, cuz I could tell you because it's happening to me right now. And I wonder if that just is from the people who are there onsets very quick, and they never got to experience what they probably seems like a, you know, the classic definition of honeymoon, which is, you know, a whimsical, free time, you know, and maybe they're jealous. That didn't happen for them that way. I don't know. Doesn't make sense to me. You're at a meetup group, you'd think these would be the people? Excuse me? Who would be like, let me explain more to you. I tell you I don't Are you in my facebook group?

Sarah 43:24
Yeah, yeah, actually, I accidentally said or didn't and arcimoto is a new correct.

Scott Benner 43:29
Okay, so I think that is the most inclusive space I've seen so far. I don't see people arbitrarily being you know, snippy with each other, I think is probably the best way to put it, like just wanting to infer my diabetes is worse than yours, or, you know, like that kind of I don't see that in there. I mean, I haven't, it just hasn't been a problem. I keep crossing my fingers that it keeps going that way. Because I don't understand that. I mean, I guess there's a psychological understanding, but I just don't know what it is.

Sarah 44:04
I did have a couple people when I shared my story at these initial meetups. That said, That's amazing. Keep your beta cells as long as you can. So there are people that are supportive and understand honeymooning and things like that. So these sort of negative folks are one off, but I think changing my identity to type one as opposed to a lot of helped a lot.

Scott Benner 44:26
Yeah, especially because I've now spoken to so many people who have or had been lotta, and they can't really define it. Do you know the mean? Like, are you okay? What's How? I'm

Sarah 44:39
just 143 I sorry,

Unknown Speaker 44:42
I'm gonna pull this I were bolusing

Sarah 44:45
pregnancy they. It's like, every second I have an alarm.

Unknown Speaker 44:50
You're bumping and nudging a lot are you?

Unknown Speaker 44:53
Oh my goodness.

Sarah 44:56
Have you seen the T slim Connect app the new app

Scott Benner 44:59
I saw picture of it. I haven't seen it like up close. Do you

Sarah 45:03
want to see on the video and we can explain it? Let me see. Let me pull it up. It's actually pretty cool. It's helpful for me. So it mimics your it's going to take a second I just bought but it mimics your Dexcom and then it can show you what your number when you bolused Cinema 143 and it told me I'm alarmed. Oh, yep. When I just gave three units extended. Okay, but you can scroll. How far

Scott Benner 45:30
Oh, like sugar, mate. You can roll backwards. I like that.

Unknown Speaker 45:34
Yeah, you can see like, I stack the stack to stack yesterday.

Scott Benner 45:38
It's not stacking if you need it, sir.

Sarah 45:42
Yeah, but I just couldn't come down below. And again, I know my control is way tighter in pregnancy, but I just you can see I was barely under

Scott Benner 45:48
1.0. That's really amazing. That's a good app. I like that. Oh,

Sarah 45:52
it's phenomenal. And you can see you can't Bolus from it yet or anything. But you can see like, what my Basal rate is what my carb ratio is the time I started my Dexcom

Scott Benner 46:01
What's the functionality then you alarm? Did you pick your phone up? Or did you pick your pump up?

Sarah 46:07
My pump vibrated because it's set at 140 for pregnancy and post.

Scott Benner 46:12
Listen Ardennes is set at 124. Because I like to. I like to react sooner to avoid those sorts of things. We just made a pretty large Bolus before I started recording with you. And she's like, I didn't get an alarm. And I said no, my phone set lower than yours.

Sarah 46:30
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, my decks comes at 120. So that's why I was looking at my watch because my watch was alarming me. But yeah, I had a bunch of insulin on board. So I wasn't correcting it.

Scott Benner 46:38
I hear I have an alarm that's 10 points lower than hers for her high. So that, you know sometimes we're not together, right? Sometimes it takes, you know, communication time. So I'm always about knowing what I'm doing in time to make it a valuable decision. You know, I don't want to hear like I don't want to hear 130 because the way Arden's blood sugar's work. 130 is going to be 150. But 120 I can stop 150 is sort of the idea. And I do want to move it down. I do want I would rather my alarm go off at 110 and hers go off at 120. But we're getting to that. So we'll see. I'm just trying to put her in a mindset.

Sarah 47:24
Think that's another interesting part of being diagnosed as an adult. My parents were not involved in my management. They never will be

Scott Benner 47:29
Yeah, ever.

Unknown Speaker 47:31
Ever. Yeah.

Scott Benner 47:34
You're like, no, for sure. They're definitely not. You should get that. Sorry, get that and to help you. Or whoever she was. I'm sorry. You

Sarah 47:43
have a gestational. I made the mistake of putting my mom on my Dexcom really early on. That wasn't no mistake. So yeah, it's interesting as an adult because, like my parents couldn't ever do this. And they never did. That's the thing.

Scott Benner 48:01
Yeah. No, it would take it would probably take you him you don't live with them. It would take you years to explain to them and and so they had it meaningfully. Let them listen to podcasts. They want to understand it better. And they'll be up here but they'll be like Sarah, we don't want to do we were listening to Episode 214. And give me like, leave me alone.

Sarah 48:21
It's interesting because for labor a lot of the hospitals make you go on an insulin drip. Have you heard this? Uh huh. Yeah, I have. So I'm refusing unless I'm like in a coma because one control like you smarter than I am about my diabetes. So why would I give up control? But also standard is they put you on an insulin drip, check your blood sugar by finger prick once an hour, and then adjust once an hour.

Scott Benner 48:46
You've seen that you've seen the other side. You're not going to do that. You heard Samantha talk about it right about her delivery. On the show.

Unknown Speaker 48:52
Um,

Scott Benner 48:53
I think I listened to the first episode of hers. Okay. Yeah, she, she came on and talked about it. She was you know, had had her baby already. And he's very cute. And, and she talked about the delivery and how she managed, she said her husband up so that if something happened, he could keep doing it. They managed straight through on their own. Everything was great. And then after the baby, of course, her insulin needs like, immediately went back down. She talked a little bit about and we're going to talk more about this with some other people who've been pregnant the how she how striking it was that after the baby was there, how they treated her like a standard hospitalized diabetic again, it was like I think she said it was kind of shocking the difference. Because the you know, the people, I don't think people really think about it in a hospital setting. You go into a hospital to have a baby. The people in that room are part of a team that work with the doctor. You've had that whole conversation with them. I'm gonna manage my blood sugar, blah, blah, that's all great. And then the baby comes out and now you're in the hands of complete Different people who you've never had that conversation with once. And now they're just like, this is how we handle people with diabetes, you're gonna get a finger stick every hour, this is going to happen. And you're, you're having this. She said, I think, if I'm remembering correctly in this moment where she was trying to just, you know, convalesce and enjoy your family. Suddenly, she was in this kind of hellscape of being treated, the way people treat you with diabetes. I know that Dexcom has been on recently talking about how COVID has allowed them to get CGM sensors into hospitals. And it's not going to be in time for you know, your birth, but hopefully they'll understand how to use them better in the future. I think it's a really good first step. So

Sarah 50:43
well, it doesn't matter because I'm signing any form that says, I'm controlling my own diabetes. They're not, they're not welcome to. Unless I'm in a coma, they are not welcome to give or any insulin dexterous. I think my husband knows how to use it. I have a diet bestie, who's going to be on call during labor for my husband and call her with anyhow?

Scott Benner 51:01
Yeah. Let me say this, and I'll talk around just a little bit. But it's possible that when Arden had her laparoscopic, to take out the cyst that I might have forgotten to turn the loop off when she went into the operating room, it just I forgot. And that was fine. Turned out that loop work great. Even when she was having her little surgery for 45 minutes. It's, there's no reason to think it's not going to work the same. Because that you know of that. And I showed that look, I showed them how to like, I'm like you can disable this right here. Like if you want to shut her her insulin off completely. I was like, do this. And it'll be off, you know, and then you can manage it any way you want. If there's a problem while she's in there, I didn't put her into a situation, but they were just like, we don't want this thing to make decisions while she's under it. I'm like, Yeah, you do. You just don't know it.

Sarah 51:56
Right? Why isn't l&d nurse know more about my diabetes than control IQ that's been watching my patterns for at that point nine months, right?

Scott Benner 52:03
I told the story on here. But as you know, we've had the initial conversation with the doctor doing the procedure. And she's like, yeah, that's fine. But then when the first nurse came into proper, she didn't have that conversation. She's like, No, you can't use this and have a nurse not walked in eventually, because I just kept retelling my story to anybody I made face contact with. One of the one of the nurses came in and she's like, Oh, my friends a type one. Let me see. And she goes, Oh, I've seen this before. And because she was there was nothing medical about it. She had some sort of like knowledge of like, I've seen a Dexcom screen before. Oh, yeah, sure. Go ahead. I was like, that's it. That's how we make decisions around here. Okay.

Sarah 52:41
What I had shoulder surgery in December, my third shoulder surgery but but my first is a diabetic. Yeah. And I went in with a Dexcom. I was on injections then. And I gave the actual what he called the receiver. I don't use it anymore. The anesthesiologist, and I remember him being like, Oh my god, am I gonna be responsible for this? What if it doesn't work? What happens?

Scott Benner 53:03
Worried about what's what could go wrong? Instead of focusing on all the things that are going to go right from this and by the way, you know how to handle it when when people don't have it? So just write it out and see what happens. You just said something that reminded me like we talked about that the first time like, Why do you have so many so have you had so many shoulder surgeries? You just love them? You're addicted?

Sarah 53:24
Sure, no, um, I was a serious rock climber in high school and I tore my labrum rotator cuff and bicep in Yosemite and it just kept. Now my shoulder works you can see in the video, but it's pretty amazing. So my first surgery was libram rotator cuff. Part of my collarbone second surgery, they cut my pec minor because I Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, I sent you that link. Make sure I didn't didn't have it. And then the third one in December when I wasn't diabetic was a bicep to desus which means they took my biceps long head anger out of its home and reattach it somewhere else. So I've a bunch of scars.

Scott Benner 54:02
Wow, that's a lot. I have also had rotator cuff surgery and I'm excited to put my arm over my head just like you did it. Mine's a little stiff still. You have a little stiffness.

Sarah 54:14
You know this last surgery this surgeon was phenomenal. I was so nervous going into it because the first two didn't help but ya know, it's the only limitation I have is weight bearing and that's why I did it because I could have because my bicep was torn. I couldn't hold a baby, hypothetically, but now I can't. But I have to

Scott Benner 54:32
say that's gonna come in handy. I I had a motorcycle accident when I was like 20 and I got thrown from a motorcycle and I came down on my head and my shoulder. So I hit like this and the shoulder hit the ground. I was like up and down. And I was broke. I have settled on here million times I grew up really broke. I wasn't riding a motorcycle for fun. I was riding a motorcycle because they were affordable transportation and To my shoulder, like, I still have like a lump here. Yeah, I see, right? There's like a, like a thing that sticks up. And they're like, you have to go the hospitals like you're not taking me to the hospital. It's like, I can't afford that. So I went home, and I laid there while my shoulder was, you know, really busted up inside. And for years, it just it I didn't notice like, it was okay. Like, once it healed, I was okay. But my God, like, I'm gonna say about five years ago now. I it just it got worse and worse and worse, I couldn't throw with my son anymore. And one day, I had a water bottle in my hand, we were actually at a thing my son was working out for college, trying to get recruited. And I couldn't walk around and hold the water bottle in my hand because it hurt too much. And I was like, I gotta go see a surgeon. So my, my bones had reformed. Like when they when I went in, and I got the initial X ray. The doctor said, I'll bleep this out. He goes, I wish you were a doctor. So you could look at this and see if your shoulder is then really understand it. And I was like, really, he goes, he goes, this broke, and it's all calcified over and it regrew, and he goes, and there's a spot where your rotator cuff like, goes like it runs through it moves. And he goes, and there's this lump there and the lumps been cutting your rotator cuff tendon your whole life, and it finally just snapped, has like you. And then he started showing me and I was like, Oh, that's like, and then he started showing me one from a book. I was like, oh my god. So they went in and they cleaned that bone up and reattach the ligament and everything but the recoveries not it's not quick. And it's not pleasant. So I should have went to the hospital that day and just had a bill I couldn't pay.

Sarah 56:47
I had to teach my husband had a braid my hair, because when you're in a sling, you can't do your hair.

Unknown Speaker 56:52
Yeah. Oh, the so the sleeping after the surgery was terrible.

Sarah 56:55
Oh, for anyone who's gonna get any shoulder surgery, you have to invest in the Lazy Boy, that is the only way you can sleep after shoulder surgery. And I've had three to be up

Scott Benner 57:05
Kelly would pile pillows around me at night and like, and I was up like this, and it worked for the most part, but man, it was bad. And I tried really hard to not use the pain medication to so they gave me the first one. I remember coming home. And Kelly's like, you know, they want you to take a pill now, like as I was coming out of the surgery has an I'll be alright. And the nurse like the main she's like, like just nodding her head like you're an idiot, you know? And so she finally spoke up and I said something incredibly inappropriate coming out of the anesthesia. So I think she was already like, what am I doing here with this moron, you know, but so when I started being a person again, she's like, seriously, she goes, just shut up and take the pill. And I was like, okay, so that first prescription I took. And then when it ended, I was like, I don't need more, but then I realized I did. And I said to the doctor, I'm like, you gotta give me something that's not as, like, harsh as this thing. So we kind of like stepped down from there. And I didn't finish that bottle. There was a day where I was just like, I don't need this anymore. I'm okay. Probably like two weeks into it, I think. But yeah, I mean, I'm thrilled I did it now, but it's kind of scary.

Sarah 58:15
Interesting thing for me after my surgery was I was still honeymooning, I was still mostly just under Seba, and my immune system for the next month healing focused on my shoulder instead of attacking my pancreas. And I swear I was not diabetic for a month.

Scott Benner 58:29
Now you think you think all the white blood cells ran somewhere else? They were busy with something else.

Sarah 58:34
I mean, I took off my Dexcom I had a Dexcom break for a month my agency came back lower than it was before. It was actually really astonishing. I was like I should have more surgeries it'll cure this.

Scott Benner 58:44
I don't want anyone listening to start cutting tendons in their arms to make their blood sugar's go down. I don't think that's going to work that might have been an anecdotal thing that she's

Sarah 58:54
a joke I make is my diversity and I we tried ever since. I've even talked about ever since on your podcast,

Scott Benner 59:00
the implantable CGM,

Sarah 59:02
the dumbest decision I've ever made in my entire life. Tell me why. What I can show you because we're on video. But ever since scar is bigger than nine out of 1211 out of 12 have my shoulder surgery scars. It's massive. And it was painful, even though they inject Medicaid, and it was inaccurate. And I live in Colorado and I'm active where it's sunny and any time I was in the sun, the stupid thing red over 300 even though I was well within range just because the sun affected the I don't know, it was the dumbest decision I've ever made to get that stupid thing.

Scott Benner 59:38
Ever since CGM sensing technology the dumbest decision I've ever made.

Unknown Speaker 59:43
Oh my gosh, it was a horrible device.

Scott Benner 59:46
Are they still making it? It went out of business didn't it? Didn't COVID pushed out of business.

Unknown Speaker 59:50
I hope so.

Sarah 59:53
But there's I have a diversity Sara. We're like doppelgangers. It's kind of crazy. But we met online in the online diabetic. community and we've tried ever since around the same time, and that's how we became friends.

Scott Benner 1:00:03
No kidding. Well, they, they still have hope you became friends because you hated it.

Sarah 1:00:09
Yeah, she posted on Instagram about how much she hated it. And I was like, wait, I hate it too.

Scott Benner 1:00:16
Well, it's they're still they still have a website. So I guess they're still in business. But I had heard. I felt like I heard towards the beginning of COVID that they couldn't ship product or something I forget now, I really don't know. Honestly, I'm just saying things I could be completely wrong about. But I feel like that's something I heard. Yeah, I think they're, it seems like they're still chugging along here. But I'm sure what it makes me feel like is, imagine you put on a Dexcom sensor that wasn't working really well. And you couldn't just take it off and put on another one because it was under your skin. That would be that seems like an issue to me.

Sarah 1:00:56
But I worry about that ever since in the Dexcom for two weeks together at the end of the ever since I only worked for two months. And then I called him I said get this stupid thing out of me. Right. Anyway, it was so incorrect. It made my management worse. was horrible.

Scott Benner 1:01:12
Jeez, well, that's a ringing endorsement.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:15
I love that song.

Scott Benner 1:01:18
Did we set this up? Tell people we did not set this up. Because I heard you say earlier I know it's in people's heads when they know the show. Like you're like, like I asked about your pump. And you're like, Well, I know you're promote on the pod but I have at least one. I don't. I don't think of it as promoting Omni pod. I think Arden uses an omni pod. I love it. And I can speak about it from her experience. She loves it. She could speak about it from her experience. And they buy ads on the podcast. Like I don't think that's the I don't know, like it might be a distinguishment my head that's unimportant. But like, I'm happy to talk about your T slim pump. And I don't think I don't think Omnipod thinks people don't believe there are other insulin pumps, you know. So

Sarah 1:01:58
I think once they come out with horizon or whatever, they renamed it, it'll be a game changer. But for me, I couldn't give up the control IQ.

Scott Benner 1:02:06
You want to. Yeah, yeah, on the part five, I think they're gonna call it. I think it's on the pod five with horizon. But I'm not. I'm not even certain but it does sound fancier like that. Yeah, yeah. I've talked to some people who were in trials, and they're not supposed to talk about it. And I definitely, and I definitely can't tell you what they told me. But it sounds like it's going well to me.

Sarah 1:02:29
So it's anything like control IQ. It'll be a game changer. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:02:33
No, it's I think it'll be I mean, lupus stunningly amazing. So I think these algorithms are for anybody who wants them. Just once you get the settings, right. And you sort of just understand how it works. You know what I mean? And you can, and you can play in the sandbox. It is an algorithm and with some comfort, it's, it's amazing. I, I'm astonished by it. It's um, and when we first started doing it, Arden would say, why are we doing this when we're so much better at it than this is? And I said, well, sweetie, I agree with you. I was like, but I have slept a little more. So let's try to keep going and see what happens because I'm almost 50 and I don't know how much longer I can get up once a night every night of my life. I was like, it's okay once in a while. Like she was a little high last night. And I people will probably laugh at me like I didn't go to sleep until like two o'clock last night because Arden's blood sugar was stuck at like 145 sure, most people were like, You're an idiot, you should have went to sleep, but I was like, I can fix this. So like, I fixed it. I got her back to 90. And then I was kind of then I started a TV show. So I was like, I'll just finish my show. And then I went to sleep but I guess I had the Netflix thing not been in the mix. I would have been asleep like one o'clock, which, you know, but I just didn't want her to be 150 overnight.

Sarah 1:03:56
So is she not looping right now?

Scott Benner 1:03:58
She is it just wasn't? Oh, I think I what I'm thinking because I just she made basil changes this morning. I think our basil was a little low. I think this sedentary zoom lifestyle is starting to catch up with her a little bit. So

Sarah 1:04:14
yeah, you know, I'm a graduate student and I teach on zoom on remote and I sit on my behind all day.

Scott Benner 1:04:21
What do you think of teaching online? Do you think it's committed to being in person or no?

Sarah 1:04:26
You know, I love it selfishly. But I know my students are really struggling with being engaged in learning.

Scott Benner 1:04:34
And my son is talking about he's incense sometimes he's just like, I'm, I'm teaching myself. It's like this guy's making a speaking about one of his professors like he makes these videos. And then he chats during class. And then you have to go back and watch these like, it's almost like you're in two different classes, first of all, and he's like, you don't have the ability to look up and just say, hey, you just said something here. It didn't make sense to me. You know, you have to make a note and you have to go office hours and, and give you a lot of thought, you know, he's like sometimes people's office hours or during other classes. And I can't do that there's no kids to walk out of the room with and look at and go, Hey, did you understand, like all that little those pieces and he's taken take some pretty tough courses. So it's a it's been a it's been like a struggle for him. He's a really good student and it's been a struggle for him. Arden seems to love it. I don't think if you tend to art and she'd never had to go back to high school, she'd be like, Alright,

Sarah 1:05:33
I agree. We can eat during class, we don't have to worry about packing snacks.

Scott Benner 1:05:38
She's in her bed right now. Like, up against the wall with their knees up in her laptop. And he just got like a bottle of water over here. And, you know, she's just she seems pretty hot. But you know, she's not moving around as much as she needs to be. I think that's clear from her firmer insulin use. And I don't know, she's just she's a social person with her circle. But she's not looking to meet every person that goes to that school. Like, she's not like, Oh, no, I'm missing out on the dance or like, she doesn't have those thoughts. And she's like, she just doesn't care. But anyway, so is it easier for you to teach on zoom or learn on zoom?

Sarah 1:06:19
Oh, you know, both. I was so nervous about this sounds ridiculous. But I was I live in Colorado I was nervous about in December 8, eight months pregnant, waddling around an icy campus. I don't have that worry anymore because I just waddle from my toilet to here and my bed.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:35
What's yours from the toilet to here to my bed? The life of a pregnant person.

Sarah 1:06:42
And the fridge that to

Scott Benner 1:06:44
Arden probably wouldn't want me to tell you that she took her computer into the bathroom once. And she's like, the teacher called on me.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:56
Her video was on

Scott Benner 1:06:57
no no she she did that. Oh, they show like the you know the top of the head thing that they all like just they don't the videos on but you don't show them anything. So she muted her video, walked in, just you know, sat in there. And then she got called on. So she turned the video back on just show the top of her head answered and then shut it back off again. But she's like that I'm just taking it.

Sarah 1:07:18
See my students to get full attendance. They have to be present. Full Face view in the camera dressed not in pajamas. They can't be moving around because it makes me nauseous. Yeah. You have to be like you're in class.

Scott Benner 1:07:32
I'd rather be in pajamas than move around. Just so you know.

Sarah 1:07:35
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That makes me so nauseous. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:38
she's dressed and it really she gets up and she gets ready. And you know, all that. She's just like, you know, I thought I could get away with it. And I was like, yeah, you should have known that wasn't going to work. You should just say look, I gotta i'll i'll be back, you know? But she's like, I didn't want to miss anything. And I was like, Yeah, I hear what you're saying. That doesn't work out. Usually.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:55
That's funny.

Scott Benner 1:07:56
She got pinched.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:57
It's comical. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:58
it was a good time. What are we not saying that we should be saying? Anything? This is a nice conversation. I just don't know what we talked about a

Sarah 1:08:09
lot, a little bit. We talked about how she modos? I think so last time we talked about the last time with the recording. Yeah, that got deleted. We talked about the trauma and autoimmune. And my area of study was another topic, which isn't that important. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:08:26
I was not pregnant. I was about to ask to remind me what your your advanced degree isn't.

Sarah 1:08:33
So I studied communication singular, which means I study human based theory. And my area of research is twofold. The first is sexual violence on college campuses, how we communicate about it or really not. And then, because of my recent diagnosis, I've also switched into how we communicate about disability, specifically invisible disabilities, such as Type One Diabetes.

Scott Benner 1:08:59
And did you get into that, that practice because of a personal situation?

Sarah 1:09:05
Yeah. So that's what we talked about last time was my experience as a sexual assault survivor, and how that's really fed my interest in this area of research. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:17
I do. Remember now. It's hard to ask about twice the first time the first time, it's sort of like, hey, so how that happened, and you trip into it? And you're like, Well, I was, you know, and then I'm like, Okay, now we're talking about it. But now when I know what the answers are gonna be, it's hard for me to want to ask you that. That's a really I'm experiencing a very strange feeling of but that really is a that's an insight into me, in case you're wondering, like I wasn't, I had no trouble with it the first time we did it, because I didn't know what was going to come up. And now that I understand the direction that the conversation would go, I don't have it in me to ask you about it.

Sarah 1:09:54
You don't have to. It's I mean, I'm happy to talk about it because it's public knowledge but I also recommend Is that it's a content warning for a lot of folks.

Scott Benner 1:10:02
I don't listen, that's not the part I mind. I just I really like I. I don't know what maybe it's because I can see you this time too. I don't, I don't know, I'm trying to because I was just thinking before it came up, you are really a tremendous communicator. And so it makes it makes you seriously you speak measured, you don't speed up or slow down, you laugh appropriately so that it doesn't overwhelm my conversation. You're waiting for my cues. I'm, you know, all that you're a great communicator. And I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me that now that I see you and you're younger, and I'm I all that, like, do you know what I mean? Like when it's just the voice? I can, I can just put you I don't know why it's very strange for me. But would you mind telling the story?

Sarah 1:10:54
No. So I will give a content warning for folks who may feel triggered by sexual violence, I'm not going to go into detail at all, because that's personal. But long story short, in my undergrad, I transferred from NYU to a school in Colorado. I liked New York City, but I liked rock climbing more. In my first year in Colorado, undergrad, I made friends with someone in a rock climbing group. And long story short, again, content warning. He got me incredibly intoxicated, I was 19 incredibly intoxicated and took advantage of me in his apartment. And I reported the and I'm not gonna use the word because I think it's quite triggering for folks. But the university call it non consensual sexual intercourse, which we all know what that really means. Yeah. Um, but anyway, I reported this incident to the university and to the police, because he was a member of the university. And I'm not sure if you're familiar, but most people signed codes of conduct or something similar for universities. One of them is, I won't steal from the dining halls, I won't harass people, I won't commit violence against people. It's a different level of proof. So through the university, he was found guilty, per se, through the code of conduct for a couple of things, including what I just said, had was kicked off campus. And then I went through the police system, which we know is very hard to find a conviction. And he wasn't convicted because it was just him. And I he said she said, but I was able to get a restraining order or protection order, which was the benefit of the police investigation. Anyway, long story short, the University didn't handle it, right, because they were going to allow my assailant back on campus semester after he committed the violence. And I was furious. So I ended up. I'm gonna say this very nonchalantly, but I ended up filing a title nine complaint against my university in Colorado with the government, because I was really mad at how they mishandled it. So now my researches in title nine and how policies around sexual violence on college campuses don't meet the practices, even though they may sound phenomenal on paper in their policies. The practices don't really line up because they want to cover their behind

Scott Benner 1:13:06
is that is that the crux of it right there. It's just about not being liable. It's about the college not wanting to open itself up to you suing them because they hired this person. Is that do you think, at its core, why it's not prosecuted differently? Or why he wasn't kicked off forever? Or do they mean like,

Sarah 1:13:26
Yeah, so the laws have changed recently. Partially for politics, but I will say so. Universities are afraid of getting sued on either side, and I threatened to sue them, we settled out of court. This is all public knowledge, some big bad secret. So you can do for Title Nine, you can do to a couple things. One is report internally to the university, I did that to the title nine office, you can go to the Office for Civil rights to the Department of Education and report an entire University at Whole, which I did. And then you can also sue them and or threaten to sue them for monetary settlement out side of the university, which I also did. But I think that they're afraid that if they expel an assailant, the saillant will sue them. So it's kind of goes back to find a middle ground where they meet the survivors needs but also they're not afraid of getting sued by the assailant.

Scott Benner 1:14:24
It'd be funny like if you're going to get sued by somebody why would that be the person you give the preferential side of the treatment to that's it but I I'm trying to as you're talking trying to put myself in that position like I'm making myself a college and trying to wonder about all the the avenues that we could take hits from if I was in this situation. I'm also thinking that sexual assault on a college campus is going to happen, right it's it's faded completed. It's going to happen like colleges don't not have that happen. Right?

Sarah 1:15:00
So my argument, and this is what I try to show in my research is that I think it stems from communication at a young age. So you know how, hopefully you didn't do this, but I'm not judging if you did, but you know, when you have toddlers, and you're tickling them, and they're laughing, and the thing stopstopstop, and you keep tickling them, you're breaking their consent to my own research based philosophy is that we need to teach what consent means from a very young age pre sexual consent. So that when we get to the age where there is sexual consent, people know what consent looks like, does it look like feels like doesn't feel like? So there's no ambiguity in the situation? If that makes sense?

Scott Benner 1:15:35
It does. No, it makes a lot of sense, and how you could carry that into adulthood. It could show you, like, everybody knows a person who doesn't want to be touched, if they don't know what's going to happen, or, you know, you can't just walk up to them and give them a hug or a kiss. And some people just really don't care. You know, it's a, it's a very personal thing. And it's not just personality, it definitely comes from something in their past, you know, something that happened to them, or was just a norm in their home that didn't jive with who they were, or something as horrible as this, you know,

Sarah 1:16:08
90% of college sex assaults are acquaintances. So it's not the typical story you hear of in a back alley behind a dumpster guy grabs girl off the street, it's most of them are acquaintances that they know and are familiar with. And typically, there's a lot of substance abuse involved alcohol or drugs or whatnot. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:16:30
That sounds about right. Yeah, I know how to end on an up note, don't I, sir?

Sarah 1:16:36
Well, you know, we talked about this at the beginning. Last time, you're like, wow, I did not expect us to Yeah, talk about this.

Scott Benner 1:16:42
I just didn't, I didn't want to it's it's important. And I didn't want to let it go. So I just didn't know I was gonna have so much trouble bringing it up. The second time, it was really crazy. Because I've had so for clarity for people before we before we say goodbye. I had to change computer systems. And when I migrated, Sara's file didn't migrate the way I thought it did. It migrated as an empty shell. And I sat on my old computer system for months, but I'm so recorded out in the future, that by the time I got to wanting to put your episode up, and I found an empty shell of a file, the computer that I'd saved, I got rid of it. It was just taking up space and I blanked it out and I got rid it was it was junky do I actually that's a lie. I gave it to my mom. She's 78 She just needs the internet and stuff, you know, so I blanked it out and gave it to her. And then I actually got her if you can try to imagine I got my 78 year old mother on the phone. I was like, I need you to search my computer for Sara and let me spell the last name and then she's like, search on like the Spyglass mom, click on a Spyglass just like I was like, ah, but she did a good job. And she searched the computer. And it wasn't there, which I didn't expect it to be it was my last ditch effort. And then I had to do the difficult thing of contacting you and saying, Hey, I was about to put your episode out. And it turns out, I messed up. So I really appreciate you coming back on and talking about all this again. But we got the extra bonus of you being pregnant. What do you do? You said you're 25 weeks now. Um,

Sarah 1:18:13
so technically February 3, but they induce diabetics between 37 and 39. So

Scott Benner 1:18:20
yeah, excited. Are you nervous?

Sarah 1:18:23
Um, I'm absolutely thrilled. I think I've wanted a baby my entire life. I was just getting my husband on board. So we're gonna do some baby classes next month, he's gonna do a daddy bootcamp. Good for him.

Scott Benner 1:18:37
So he's getting on board was that being like we can afford it? We can do it, like laying out all the the intricacies of how you're going to? What are you going to do with the baby like, like, you just like put it like a like a crate when you go to work? Or you think you leave it with a person? Or how do you think you'll handle that?

Sarah 1:18:54
So I'm taking a year off graduate school medical leave to be a mom. Okay. And then I also we talked about this last time, too. I manage a website design company on the side. So I hired an assistant who will take over during my three month maternity and then keep doing that remote.

Scott Benner 1:19:11
Well

Sarah 1:19:11
sustained my Dexcom bills.

Scott Benner 1:19:14
That's it was that hard to like, bring an X an outside person into your like, one man business?

Sarah 1:19:21
No, it's not a one man business. I run someone else's website design business. So it's owned by a female entrepreneur. And then we have I think, at this point seven contractors underneath me that I manage,

Scott Benner 1:19:33
wow, oh, that's really cool. I just, there's times where I feel like I need help with this. And then I'm like, I don't want anybody else to be involved. Like, they just don't know my aesthetic, like how would I teach my aesthetic to somebody? How would I teach like, like when I'm editing How would I say to somebody like I would leave that so I don't take content out when I edit I take out noise but there's some breathing ice is gonna sound crazy, but there's some breathing noises that are distracting. And there are some breathing noises that tell your brain that person's continuing their thought and it makes it not feel broken. And I don't know, I just as I'm editing, I hear it right away. I'm like, I don't want somebody this will be distracting this needs to be here. I don't know how I would teach that to somebody, you know, but I don't know, maybe maybe I'm more of a control freak than I thought I was.

Sarah 1:20:23
That's okay, because it's your, your brand, but it's your it's you yet this podcast is us. So that makes sense.

Scott Benner 1:20:29
I have that feeling like it. Like if somebody started editing it up, it would just sound like they were, you know, like, it would sound like sound bites of me chopped together instead of how I think the conversation should go. Like I put one up this weekend. That was kind of unlike other ones, in that I just got on with somebody who I thought was really smart, who understood this one topic. And it's something that makes me upset. And we just talked it through and at times, railed on it. And at times tried to imagine fixes for it. And there's a flow to that conversation. That I think is right. And when I listened back to it, I thought some people aren't gonna like this at all, and some people are, but I think it's important to go out this way. And I didn't know like, so I rolled the dice, and I put it out. And I got one comment from somebody online who's like, you've talked way too much in that episode. That seems to bother people. And I'm like, okay, but then I got back tenfold from people were like, this is really important. I'm glad you spoke about this. I really enjoyed it. I was like, Okay, I can't make everybody happy. But I think if I would have done with that one comment asked, because I heard it too, when I was listening to like, I'm talking too much in this. But if I, if I chopped it up, it just wouldn't. I don't think it would have felt the same. And I thought the feeling was more important than the flow of it. So I don't know how I would teach that to somebody, I guess. I don't think I could,

Sarah 1:21:54
you'd have to find a good fit creatively.

Scott Benner 1:21:56
Yeah. Did I have to pay them? No, I don't have that much money. You know, like, where would I get that money from? You imagine if I had an employee? I'll tell you what, if I ever have in a podcast as an employee one day, I'm going to declaratively say out loud. I've succeeded at this, because that does not seem like a thing to me. I know somebody that has an editor for their show. And I'm like, wow, how did you do that? It's pretty crazy. You know? Anyway,

Sarah 1:22:22
can I give one shout out? Please do your old podcast folks.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:25
You know, we got

Sarah 1:22:27
Um, I don't know her personally. But my favorite episode you've done is I can't remember her name, which is horrible. But the lady whose type one son died in the car accident, her story. Even before the pregnancy hormones, I just cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. And her story is just amazing. And I just if she's listening, I just want to learn know that the community has her back even though her type one son isn't with us anymore.

Scott Benner 1:22:52
That's That's very nice of you to say, I have to tell you that there are so many times that I have conversations. On this podcast, I said it like I told you earlier I I interviewed someone last night, who's you know, at the end of the hopeful end of a heroin addiction, a lifelong heroin addiction almost. And as we're talking, I said to her, I'm like, I never thought this podcast would lead me to have conversations like this, you know, and I started thinking about all the after dark episodes and it Donnie, you know, Donnie is an interesting one. Because the first time I recorded I had a problem with his two, it sounds like I'm a mess. But trust me, I've recorded like 500 of these I've messed up like four of them. So everybody calm down. But Donnie came on. I think his is called after dark trauma and addiction. And we had an amazing conversation. And he never once meant once mentioned. And then we had to re record it. And the conversation went in a slightly different way. And I think he was more comfortable the second time and he told me that his neighbors had raped him for years as a child, and that he felt his family knew about it. And I was like, holy crap. Like, as that's being said, All I can think is like, how I did not expect to be in this position having these kind of like really important conversations. And I'm really grateful for them. This podcast is is enriched my life like a ton, actually. But yeah, I just, you know, here's another example. Like I just people say things I'm like, Wow, you're so honest. Does it feel freeing to just say it out loud? When you have issues like that? Um,

Sarah 1:24:34
I separate the personal from the academic. So I give talks and write about in research about my identity as a survivor, so I think I've separated it

Unknown Speaker 1:24:45
quite a bit.

Sarah 1:24:46
So freeing, supposedly, but I also not telling you like the intimate details that would be more traumatic for me.

Scott Benner 1:24:52
Yeah, I wouldn't want you to either know, like, I don't see how any of that would be useful at all. But so Michelle's episode was called Jessie was here. And yeah,

Sarah 1:25:02
so one where she was driving to like an endo appointment over the mountains.

Scott Benner 1:25:05
Oh no, you're thinking of a different one you're thinking of do is this podcast is one big bummer. Okay, so now you're thinking of do hard things.

Sarah 1:25:16
Yeah, yeah, the word, excuse me, two of her sons passed away in the car accident.

Scott Benner 1:25:20
Yeah, they were on their way to an endo appointment on an icy road. And yes, she had an accident. And when she woke up her sons weren't there. And, yeah, that's a that's a crazy story, because she sent me an email, a significant amount of time after her son had passed away, like yours, I think, and to tell me that she still listens to the podcast,

Sarah 1:25:46
to feel connected to him, right, because of the

Scott Benner 1:25:48
diabetes. And and I was just like, I got that email. And I showed it to my wife. I'm like, What do I like? What do I do about this? You know, you want to respond back and go, Hey, thanks for being a listener. Like, it's like, there's no way. Like, I have to have like, a real conversation with her. And at the end of it, I just said, um, I was like, Look, if you, I can't imagine, I think I said, I can't imagine you would want to, but if you ever want to come on and talk about this, you know, I would do it with you. And she was, it had to have been six months later. And I got another note from her. And she's like, I would like to come on the podcast. And I, Jesus, she's talking and I'm trying not to cry so that I can stay in the conversation and everything. And I don't know, this is a I mean, I joke sometimes, like when people are like, what do you do? And I'm like, I have a podcast. And you know, I joke that it's weird, because I'm older and stuff. But you know, in all honesty has been one of the greatest things I've ever done. So

Sarah 1:26:45
story really touched me. She's a phenomenal mom. And you can tell through the podcast Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:26:50
I'm glad I'm really it's nice you to say I had she'll hear this. So thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:55
So I want to be her friend.

Scott Benner 1:26:57
Thank you live in reasonably the same area. So she just ran outside and started yelling your name, you might find her off? Are you gonna get before you get out of breath? Or have to pee? Probably not.

Sarah 1:27:07
So. Oh, my goodness. I get out of breath walking up the stairs for good reason. This baby's healthy. So that's good. Good for you.

Scott Benner 1:27:14
I'm excited. Alright, so let me know. When I tell you what, it's October now. When the baby's born, you send me an email. Tell me all about the baby. And at the end of this episode, I'll read your email. Oh, okay. Yeah, me like, we had this. You know what I mean? When we go from A to whatever, he or she, yeah, all that stuff. Let me know. I have a feeling

Sarah 1:27:39
but I'm waiting till birth for the sex.

Scott Benner 1:27:42
You want to say your feeling here. So it's recorded?

Sarah 1:27:45
Sure. So I think that her sex identity is female. Because I think that she, she moves when I say the name that we've picked out for female and I also dream about having a female child. So I'm curious if I'm correct.

Scott Benner 1:28:01
Now I'm curious. Excellent. All right now I'm definitely I sit on this one till I get your email and then this one goes up. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:07
Sure. All right,

Scott Benner 1:28:08
have a great birth. Congratulations, please tell your husband, you know, he'll get used to the idea. The baby only cries for like the first like handful of months. And then it really is just smooth. I'm lying. It's terrible.

Sarah 1:28:23
three dogs so we we've done babyhood just through dogs instead of humans.

Scott Benner 1:28:28
Yeah, get a saddle for one of those dogs to see if you can teach the kid to ride it that really would make my day if you can figure that out.

Sarah 1:28:34
actually really hurts the dog's backs. It's not.

Scott Benner 1:28:37
Nothing's fun anymore. There the world used to be free when you didn't have to worry about other people. Like the 70s. I know you don't know about it. I mean, it was great for the people didn't care and the people who did care, really terrible as I'm looking back now, but I used to get bullied by this kid. When I was little, and nobody thought anything of it. Just there was Nope, no one stepped in. My parents were like, yeah, figure it out. toughen up, you know, that kind of thing. Now this kid would be arrested. He used to hold us underwater in a pool.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:08
But that's assault.

Scott Benner 1:29:11
Yeah, back then. It was they call it a life experience. It was it was a How do you turn yourself into the person that that crazy person doesn't want to drown? That was pretty much my summer that year. like you'd want to go to the pool because it was hot. But you're like this kid Craig is gonna hold me underwater. You know, if you're listening, Craig wasn't fun. Just so you know.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:34
Yeah. That was mean, Craig.

Scott Benner 1:29:35
Yeah, no kidding. Although I have to say, I did develop a lot of personal skills. Like you know how to, like, make people like you and you know, do a little song and dance to keep things from, I don't know, maybe the podcast would suck if Craig didn't try to tell me what I was. And don't give him all right. I'm with you. He didn't do anything.

Sarah 1:29:57
My husband taught one of the Aussies to jump up on the nightstand into crib so it can soothe the baby so that we don't get.

Scott Benner 1:30:04
So your play here let me make sure I understand this we're finishing up your husband's your husband's idea was if the baby should get uncomfortable at night needs some soothing. You've taught the small smaller dog how to go up on a nightstand and into the crib so it can cuddle with the child.

Sarah 1:30:21
Yeah, we've too many Aussies so he taught the smarter of the Aussie how to, which is not safe. I acknowledged this but maybe when the kids bigger

Unknown Speaker 1:30:30
screw all that if you do that. I want that on video. I know I

Sarah 1:30:35
can send you one of the dog doing it without a baby 30 knows how to get in and out of the crib bites.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:39
Oh, seriously. Alright, yeah, he

Unknown Speaker 1:30:41
taught us how to do

Scott Benner 1:30:44
that to me too. Okay, here's the problem with you and I we could talk forever. So we're gonna stop now. Thank you. You're very welcome. Have a great day. I really appreciate you giving your time twice like this. And I will I will double save this put on an external hard drive a thumb drive and, and I'll I'll remember the entire conversation so I can reenact it if I

Unknown Speaker 1:31:04
sounds good.

Scott Benner 1:31:10
A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. Je Vogue glucagon, find out more about chivo Kibo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com Ford slash juice box, you spell that GVOKEGL Uc ag o n.com. forward slash juice box. I'd also like to thank the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, check out Omni pod.com forward slash juice box to learn more to find out if you're eligible for that free 30 day trial, or to just get started on the pod.com forward slash juice box.

And now let's have a little update from Sarah. Hey, Scott baby came at 36 weeks due to complications and is now three and a half months and healthy. I went from 150 units of insulin in my last week of pregnancy to using humor log a couple of times a week while breastfeeding. postpartum kicked me back into honeymoon. So I'm enjoying it while I can. pregnancy and diabetes is really hard, but it's well worth it. I encourage anyone interested in becoming pregnant to find an entire medical team to work with that they fully trust. Baby girl wouldn't be here without the knowledge of the MFM that I worked with. And surprise. The baby girl's name is Scott. Alright, it's not really Scott. But I mean, one day one of you is going to name a baby after me. just takes one. I think I have a dog right now named after me. But that's not. I mean, it's nice. Don't get me wrong, but I'm looking for a human being. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of the Juicebox Podcast.

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#487 From Russia With Sarcasm

Sophia is my favorite listener.

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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 487 of the Juicebox Podcast.

If by the time this episode is over, you have not fallen in love with Sophia. There may be something wrong with you. big challenge, but just I, I love this episode so much. I just had the greatest time talking to Sophia, I'm so excited, I just want to get to it. So nothing here on the Juicebox Podcast will be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Whether you hear this, you are going to have such a good this is going to be the best. I don't know how long this one is, but however long it is, it's gonna be the best part of your day. And if it's not your money back, what do you think of that in money back guarantee on today's episode

when I rush through all that there's so much music left. We're not really getting to it any quicker. I messed that up. Oh, here comes this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. And by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Learn more about dexcom@dexcom.com forward slash juice box you can get started with the G six or learn more at that address. And to find out about the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, you need to go to Contour Next one.com Ford slash juice box it is the best meter I've ever used. That's it there's I could say a lot of other things about it and I will in the ad later. But for now best meter ever used contour next comm forward slash juicebox Okay, so the recordings running to see you know are you by yourself? Are you Is there a parent with you? Or What's the situation?

Sophia 2:24
I'm by myself but the parent is in the house.

Scott Benner 2:27
Okay. Well, I'm really excited to do this with you. Are you nervous?

Sophia 2:33
A little. And that's certainly reflected in my blood sugar's today, but I think I'm calmer now that we've started Good,

Scott Benner 2:41
good. Well, there's no reason to be nervous. We're just gonna talk that won't be trouble. But what happened to your Well, I'll ask you in a second. Introduce yourself first. You can tell them just tell me your name.

Sophia 2:53
Hello, my name is Sofia. I'm from Russia and I was diagnosed in 2018 2018.

Scott Benner 2:59
So how old are you now?

Sophia 3:01
I'm 14.

Scott Benner 3:02
were you diagnosed? And you were 11? Yes. Okay. And you're in Russia right now. That's where you live? That's where you were born? Yes. Okay. How did you find the podcast?

Sophia 3:14
I, I joined a lot of groups. When I was first diagnosed, I looked at Reddit and beyond type one. And I saw a lot of people mentioned it, but it took me like a year and a half to actually find it. I go, I searched it on YouTube. But some other podcasts kind of showed up. And I just gave up after their first dry. Oh, I'm

Scott Benner 3:37
sorry. I don't do a very good job with YouTube. Should I try harder? Do you think?

Sophia 3:42
I think it was the only social media I was really acquainted with. So that's the only place I knew where to search.

Scott Benner 3:49
Gotcha. All right. Well, maybe I'll put some more effort into YouTube one day, we'll see. Okay, so you're diagnosed? Do you know anyone? Like who has type one diabetes besides you?

Sophia 4:03
I didn't know that existed in that's funny, because I had the person who sat next to me in class for a year and a half was type one. But I didn't know that they were type one. They just had this weird device on them constantly that beeped and nobody knew what it was because they didn't tell anybody.

Scott Benner 4:26
No kidding. So Oh, so you you don't feel like you know anybody in the world with type one. But the kid who sits next to you in class has it but doesn't tell anybody that they have it.

Sophia 4:35
Exactly. And I watched like accidentally six videos a year before I was diagnosed with people with type one and they said it but I never paid attention to it

Scott Benner 4:45
because you didn't know what it was and had never heard of it before. Yeah, that's interesting. And strange. What was it? Well, I never got back to my original question. I'm gonna forget it. If I don't ask Hold on a second. I might have forgotten it. We were talking, and I wanted to ask you if it'll come back up. I lost my question already. Darn it.

Sophia 5:06
I think it was about today's blood sugar's Oh my god,

Scott Benner 5:09
Sophia. You should host this podcast instead of me. Okay, let's start over again. Where were your blood sugar's? Because it's afternoon for you, right? Like it's like five o'clock your time?

Sophia 5:24
Yes.

Scott Benner 5:24
Okay. And for me it's 10 o'clock in the morning, Arden's actually taking her sh t right now. And oh, I'm kind of watching it with my, the corner of my eye, making sure that her blood sugar doesn't get out of hand, but it's doing really well. Anyway, um, so you have you eaten dinner already today? Or have you not done that yet?

Sophia 5:43
No, I kind of wait usually.

Scott Benner 5:45
Okay, so where was your blood sugar? And then when did you start getting nervous and what happened to it?

Sophia 5:52
So when I woke up, I did everything I usually do I Pre-Bolus a the same lower glycemic index food. But where usually would have gone to 131 20 maybe I saw my first 220 and like, a few months. That's my father's interesting.

Scott Benner 6:12
So Oh, so your whole day? You've been thinking about this?

Sophia 6:15
Yeah, I actually I think like a few weeks.

Scott Benner 6:19
Oh my gosh, I'm

Unknown Speaker 6:20
so well, I'm

Scott Benner 6:21
sorry. I messed up your blood sugar. Is that coming back down now?

Sophia 6:24
Is 112 right now. So yeah,

Scott Benner 6:27
doing good. Okay, ours is actually 115. Right now she was 99 for a while in the like for the first 90 minutes of the test. And then it started to move. And so I texted her and had her make a couple of changes. And it looks like it's gonna hold here at 115 while she which is terrific while she's taking her LSAT. But okay, so well, first of all, I'm sorry, if you were nervous, like there's genuinely nothing to be nervous about. But I do have a lot of questions. I don't get a lot of emails from 14 year olds.

Unknown Speaker 6:59
So yeah.

Sophia 7:02
Well, I saw I actually listened to I think most of your episodes, and the ones I was most interested about were with people around my age. And I saw that from your 400 and something episodes, you only had 25. Maybe if that with people in the teens. And I thought that maybe it will be interesting to add on to that.

Scott Benner 7:28
Well, it definitely would be and I'm grateful it is I feel a little critiqued. Are you saying I don't do enough with kids?

Sophia 7:34
I don't think you should. I'm not particularly targeted at kids, because most of the controlling of the tape one is done by parents.

Scott Benner 7:45
You are incredibly mature. Why is that?

Sophia 7:48
I think it has something to do with the type one. I did everything practically myself because I wanted to.

Scott Benner 7:57
But in general, are you kind of a more? Have you always been like this like, like a little more mature than your age?

Sophia 8:05
I don't think I can say that. But I think I don't know. Probably not. I was kind of a weird child.

Unknown Speaker 8:17
Why were you weird.

Sophia 8:19
I was the kid in the back corner of the class. Kind of drawing on the desk instead of paying attention and throwing paper notes to people in the front.

Scott Benner 8:33
I'm just telling you that we've only been talking for a few minutes, but you feel like you're like 25 years old to me. Actually, I interviewed a 24 year old the other day, you're way more mature than she was. So I think that's it's just very interesting that you you know found something you're managing this yourself your parents don't help you with your blood sugar's it's mostly you.

Sophia 8:56
My mom actually has during the night because I will not wake up at all from anything other than probably an earthquake. Other than that, I just sleep through everything. Except if my blood sugars are higher than 200 then I will not get any sleep at all. For some reason.

Scott Benner 9:16
I have to tell you before Arden had diabetes, I could sleep through anything too. I'm not as good at it. Now. Although as I'm getting older, it's getting harder to wake up at night. So I understand how you feel about not wanting to wake up. Tell your mom I know. I know what she's going through being awake during the night but how are you? I

Sophia 9:33
feel bad. I feel bad about that since I can totally do it by myself. Except for that I don't wake up in seven nights. She doesn't get a lot of sleep because of that. And I do I always get it laughs

Scott Benner 9:46
you're still fresh in the morning and she's looks like she's gonna fall over.

Unknown Speaker 9:49
Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:51
well, what um, I guess let's try to figure out a little bit first about being diagnosed. So how did you first notice that If something was wrong,

Sophia 10:02
we didn't until the day when the doctor said I was an hour or two away from a coma. Oh,

Scott Benner 10:10
he took it right to the end. Hmm. So you wrote

Sophia 10:14
in an ambulance barely being able to read.

Scott Benner 10:17
While you were How do you know what your blood sugar was? Did they ever tell you?

Sophia 10:21
It was not that bad. Interestingly enough, it was 450 I think. But, um, I was laying in bed for a whole day I couldn't get up except for the one time I asked my mom for some water. And she brought me a sugary likes. I think it was soda. And for some reason, I just didn't want to drink that sugary soda. So I, for the first time, that day, got up and got myself a glass of water.

Scott Benner 10:51
The desire not to drink the sugary drink was the only thing that could get you out of bed. Yes. I wonder about that. I guess very few people will know about it. But that, that drive to drink water. When you're in DK a, it sounds really powerful. You know, it's just the everyone's description of it is always like they're just, they'll do anything to get water. And so yeah, so you're, you're basically just about dead, and then your parents figure it out and call an ambulance.

Sophia 11:25
Well, looking back, I actually had symptoms for a year and a half or so years, I would drink maybe three or four liters of water. And interestingly enough, I was so nauseous. Every time after drinking regular water, the only thing I could drink was carbonated water. And well, that was hard to get rid of to get a hold off. Sorry. And I just didn't drink Sundays because I was nauseous from water. But I was very thirsty.

Scott Benner 11:56
And the bubbly water is hard to find where you live?

Sophia 12:01
No, it's not. It's just once I drink it all, which was twice as fast as we thought we had to go to the store and get up more potent. We always underestimated how much how fast I can drink.

Scott Benner 12:13
I understand it was always difficult to find because you had already drank it. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. And for a year or so. And so what were early symptoms, like did you lose weight? Were you like, what was happening during that time?

Sophia 12:27
I think it was so slow to develop that we didn't notice I had lost any weight. But it turned out I had lost around four kilograms or five, which is quite a lot.

Scott Benner 12:40
I would have to take your word for it because I didn't learn the metric system. But hold on. What's

Sophia 12:44
that? I'm not sure how many pounds that is sorry.

Scott Benner 12:47
Don't worry. I'm gonna find out right now. In pounds. I'll just ask the magic machine. Well, you lost almost nine pounds. Yeah. And how much did you weigh at that point? Do you remember?

Sophia 12:59
I don't know in bounds, but it was 28 kilograms. 29 kilograms. All right. I

Scott Benner 13:06
have the thing up now. It's you. Oh, wow. So you weighed 63 and lost 824. That's a big person. I'm

Sophia 13:14
sorry. Um, no, at the end point. I was.

Scott Benner 13:19
Oh, okay. I see. So you were 29 you came down from like, 37 kilograms. Yes,

Sophia 13:27
I didn't weigh myself so often. So that's probably it, but I'm not 100% Sure. Okay. Yeah, don't

Scott Benner 13:33
worry. You're not on trial. You don't have to answer exactly right. If you're wrong about something. No one's gonna come get you don't worry. I'm, uh, I won't show up at your house and be like, you know, when you're on the podcast, you said you wait 37 kilograms last eight, but it was really 39. And now I'm upset. Nothing like that. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 13:49
I hope not. All right. Could

Scott Benner 13:50
you imagine if that's what I wasted my first trip to Russia on?

Sophia 13:54
Yeah, there's so much to see not in the winter.

Scott Benner 13:57
Not in the winter. Is it a really harsh place in the winter?

Sophia 14:01
Well, this winter was really weird. It was almost minus 30 degrees Celsius, which is more than it was last year. And I stayed indoors the whole time. I would

Scott Benner 14:13
say so we have what's it like to go outside when it's that cold? Like, are you in like a giant jacket with a hood That only leaves like a little hole by your eyes? Or how do you do that?

Sophia 14:22
Well, I underestimated the weather. And so I didn't. I wore my regular jacket. And actually my own call failed after I came back inside. And once when I took it off, there were there was so much blood. And the only thing that changed was me going outside into the very cold weather.

Scott Benner 14:45
They had to test it at minus 30 your sign for you? How did you how did you how did you get a hold of the Omnipod in Russia?

Sophia 14:53
Oh, well. Give me for start for diagnosis. It's all kind of an open pill battle for sure. Let's,

Scott Benner 15:01
let's take your fight together. All right, I see you don't like the way I jumped around. That's fine. We'll start there.

Sophia 15:06
No, it's not that it's just there's there's a series of events leading up to that moment.

Scott Benner 15:11
I definitely want to hear them. Okay, so you ride the ambulance, you get to the hospital. What happens next?

Sophia 15:17
Oh, before I wrote in the ambulance, my mom was about to, like, make me go to bed. But she had her friend over. And her friends like saw me walking into the kitchen. And she said, This isn't normal. I think you should go to the hospital. You're not breathing enough. I was hyperventilating. So I couldn't take a regular breath. And all I remember was being Gary to the ambulance and then waking up in a cold hospital. Oh, my gosh, that sucks. Arden was panting to at the end right before we took her to the hospital. Like I've never heard anyone, like, except me had doing that before diagnosis. And that's interesting.

Scott Benner 15:58
Yeah, she was she was panting in her sleep. And like she was asleep and like, like, like a puppy. Almost. And there is an answer for why that happens. It's your body tries

Sophia 16:09
not enough oxygen to the brain. Right?

Scott Benner 16:12
Yeah, yeah. And your body's just trying, like desperately to like it's trying to stay alive. So you get to the hospital. And how long were you there?

Sophia 16:22
in the emergency room, I think it was 22 hours. And then I wrote in the ambulance to a regular Children's Hospital and they stayed there for 10 days, I

Scott Benner 16:35
think they figured out pretty quickly at the emergency room. What was wrong?

Sophia 16:39
Oh, then you immediately when they came over, they said, Alright, let's test your blood sugar really quick. And they tested it and was like 450? And they said, Yeah, you're going to the emergency room? No. So they did that very quickly, actually.

Scott Benner 16:54
So did you feel much better by the time they moved to the children's hospital or not yet.

Sophia 17:02
I was kind of in a state where I just laid in bed. And the first few days, I just passed so quickly, I was just sitting in bed not doing anything. But I have company. So the way the hospitals here work, they're just large rooms, and with six or seven patients in them. So they're like six or seven beds in one room. And there was an annoying seven year old, constantly ran around, trying to make friends with everybody. And then there were a couple of older kids there too.

Scott Benner 17:40
No kidding. Do you remember what any of them? Were there? Four or no?

Sophia 17:44
Um, all of them. Were there for type one other than one who was there for I think, a high blood pressure.

Scott Benner 17:54
Oh, wow. So you and a number of other children were all diagnosed kind of on the same day?

Sophia 17:58
Well, it was the end, it was the endocrinal logical floors. So the only undue issues there

Scott Benner 18:09
right now. But still, that's kind of crazy. I remember being taught how to count carbs at the hospital with eight other families that whose children were all diagnosed in that that couple of day period that Arden was,

Sophia 18:22
that's the same way. It was. They had diabetes school like they call them. And so with four or five days, it was held in one room, and like two or three hours long, and all of the parents would go and spend that time and write notes. And it was all pretty basic stuff. And they had a really weird way of teaching that I demanded to be in the room to, for them to also teach me and they had such a weird way of teaching carb counting

Scott Benner 18:57
didn't make sense to you.

Sophia 18:59
They didn't count carbs, they counted bread units, if I'm translating correctly. So every 12 carbs was one bread unit or something.

Unknown Speaker 19:11
Right unit. Now

Scott Benner 19:11
I am going to tell you that I can't completely remember where but I've heard that phrase before. Yeah, and I don't

Sophia 19:22
think nobody has ever heard it before.

Scott Benner 19:24
I feel like oh, it's part of the glycaemic. So how much bread Can I wait? I'm internetting 2013 somebody got a presentation bread exchange unit, a guide for diabetics. Ready. People who suffer from diabetes and therefore require insulin can use this measurement unit to compare the blood sugar effective effectiveness of carbohydrates and different foods. But this is why the podcast is popular because when people write about diabetes, they make it very confused. Using IKEA according to a German dietary regulation, one bread exchange unit, or one b e u corresponds to a quantity of food that contains 12 grams of digestible and then therefore blood sugar effective carbs, that's what they thought you.

Sophia 20:16
Yes. And it was so confusing, it was more confusing than using regular carbohydrates. And also they said, Every six spoons of porridge translates to 40 grams of carbs. And that's the way we did things. There are the people who brought their own scales and measured their food, which, and they had much better blood sugars.

Scott Benner 20:41
Well, yeah, because this is convoluted. And I just read it. And I, if you ask me right now, like under penalty of death, if you said to me, Scott, you have to explain to me what you just read. I don't know that I would understand that enough to say it. There's some I

Sophia 20:57
mean, me and my mom immediately threw that idea out and started counting carbs. Yeah, because he read a lot about it. And he figured out that that's probably not the best way to do things. Good. So

Scott Benner 21:09
your mom helped. So do you get insulin pens? Do you get needles? How do you manage in the beginning?

Sophia 21:19
You have a choice? Well, in the later times, when I visited my underwear, I had a choice. But first, they gave me a noble rapid pen, and to learn to spin.

Scott Benner 21:31
So you were just you were MDI, you were just shooting some lantis and covering your meals? Did you correct blood sugars? Or did you just give yourself insulin at mealtimes?

Sophia 21:41
And in the hospital, or after

Scott Benner 21:43
just moving forward? Like as you got home and got settled?

Sophia 21:48
Well, nobody explained to me the concept of correcting highs. And also, not lows. So my mom thought that, since regular people's blood sugar went down to 60, sometimes thought that is completely normal for boys also. And so I didn't correct to loans to 60 or 555.

Scott Benner 22:16
How did that? Did? Did you feel okay at that number or no? Not mentioned to your mom, you thought she might be wrong.

Sophia 22:26
I said, I said, Are you sure this is the way this works? And she said, Well, no, that's honest.

Scott Benner 22:35
I would take an honest answer, you know. So you guys figured out that was a little too low. And where did you start correcting?

Sophia 22:43
We asked the endo. And she said that's so not the way to do things. No. And

Scott Benner 22:51
she started telling you about bread units again.

Sophia 22:54
She didn't even know they taught us regular carbs. She just took all of my insulin carb ratios and basil rates. And she just said, Okay, well, you seem to be doing fine. Go on.

Scott Benner 23:10
Good luck. Oh, that's, well, it sounds like your mom was trying to figure things out in the beginning. And she's using the internet, which was ended up being helpful, I guess, overall. In that first year. What were your a onesies? Like?

Sophia 23:25
I think since I was not correcting the lows. Mine was 6.5. But it was not because of good control. I was still having high blood sugars regularly is just because a lot of the time I was low and didn't do anything about it.

Scott Benner 23:42
How did you know that? That's like, did you learn that from the podcast?

Sophia 23:48
No, I just kind of I knew that they would see is the average blood sugar of three months. Right? So I kind of thought that well, since I was having a lot of lows. That's probably why Sophia,

Scott Benner 24:02
let's Are you really smart? Like forget that you drew on the desk in school. Do you understand math?

Sophia 24:10
I would say yes. But don't follow up with my teachers. Okay, well, listen,

Scott Benner 24:15
I had a problem in school as well. I did not like school very much. But I was uh, I was okay smart. I just didn't like what was going on. The reason I ask is because you you I just assumed you heard on the podcast that variable blood sugars weren't good for you Even if you got a lower a one c but you figured that out by yourself. When I talked to a lot of adults who just tell me well the a one c 6.5 were good and I'm like no Look, you're like 350 here for an hour or two and then you know your your crash down to, you know, to 60 and you said you were 60 for an hour. You're just you're you're just confusing the test. You're not you know you don't need you do have to say 6.5 but you didn't come to it kind of authentically. And it's definitely not good for your for your overall health. But you just figure that out when you were 11

Sophia 25:09
Oh, probably. Well, I was diagnosed a month before I turned 12. So 12

Scott Benner 25:17
so I'll say it again. So you finished that you figured that out when you were 12?

Sophia 25:20
Oh, me and my endocrine No. So I told her I was having a lot of lows. And she said, What are you when she seems good? But I said, what I'm having a lot of lows. She said, Well, don't sorry.

Scott Benner 25:35
So So via your your endo didn't really get it. But you got it. And you just made this change in Iran. So how do you make a change like that when you're completely by yourself? Like, how do you figure out how to stop high blood sugars and, and not have rebound lows and things like that? What did you do?

Sophia 25:51
Well, when I was an MD, I thought everything was great. I thought EA my blood sugar is so good. I met I'm measuring it three times, and C is really good. I guess I'm doing a great job. But two weeks after I came from the hospital, my mom surprised me with a freestyle Libra. And now looking back on the graphs, I was at a roller coaster, it was okay, you from a period of two hours for me to go from 260 to 50, to an urgent low to 100. And up and down and up and down. And there was also a thing where once I asked my mom, after I was diagnosed, how many carbs Can I eat without insulin? She said, Hmm, I don't know. 10. And so I started eating 10 carbs regularly without taking any insulin. And my blood sugars are going up because of that. And it was very confusing.

Scott Benner 26:55
Sophia, I mean this in a really good way. So I don't want this to get lost in translation at all. But right now people are listening to this adults. And they're thinking, Oh my God, this kid figured all this out when she was 12 years old. And I'm over here struggling. You're making people are just like, Ah, what am I doing? I can hear you all thinking right now, by the way, just the the like, how did this kid just get but you're you're not what it's fascinating. Like, it really is fascinating listening to you talk about seeing something that can appear to be so complicated to people. But maybe because of your age, you just looked at it in a simple way. Like you you sit. Is that why you like the podcast? Like because I'm, you know, I'm 50? Right? And I live in another country and I'm talking about something I don't have that you have. But you like this show enough to listen to every episode of it. So what is it? Well, hey, hey, listen, there's no reason to tell people that just say you listen to ramp. Yeah, we'll try again. So you listen to every episode, say Yes, I did. Yes. Exactly. Sophia, thank you. And but my point is, what is there about? I want to understand what it is about how I'm talking about diabetes that resonates with you. And and and jives with how you think about it, because I'm trying to figure out how you think about it because you're very clear minded about it.

Sophia 28:23
Oh, so obviously because of your charming personality. And okay, so

Scott Benner 28:32
don't be sorry. lean into that. sarcasm. I'm good with it. Don't worry about it.

Sophia 28:38
I think it just because something made sense. Finally. Nothing made sense. Previously to that in diabetes also, always second. I when I was in school, I would just know. Okay, I have a sandwich for lunch. Let's just Bolus to units. Oh no, I have 300. Mom says t Bolus, another three units that make sense. We just move on. And finally something made sense or maybe just Bolus a little bit earlier. Maybe don't eat sugar and not Bolus for it because it's under 10 carbs.

Scott Benner 29:18
So the common sense stuff just started to resonate a little bit and the timing idea. And you think of that now on your own like you Pre-Bolus I imagine but what is your Awan see now?

Sophia 29:30
I will we haven't measured it since August. It was 5.7. But I my clarity says it'll, it's probably around 6.6 right now because I hit a big Grossberg and my blood sugar's Well, I had to adapt really quickly because I needed twice the amount of basil and way more insulin and I was still being high. So that was a little hard. But other than that, I think I know the basic The principles of it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:01
well, so when that's how long did it take you to recognize that you needed a significant amount more?

Sophia 30:09
Probably since one one day my blood sugar's were perfectly stable with 15 units of basil. And the next I needed a seven extra correction bonuses and I thought that this is normal. Let's do a Temp Basal. Next day that Temp Basal didn't work. Let's do another Temp Basal. And at some point, I realized, yeah, this is not going to go away should probably just change the regular Basal.

Scott Benner 30:37
I'm so happy for you.

And I'm happy for you as well, because you're about to find out about the best Darren diabetes told that I've ever seen in my life. That's right. I said best on the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. Why don't you have one? Why have you not at least looked into it? I mean, it shows the blood sugar. Constantly. Speed, direction. And number. That's live. Look, understand. I'm saying like you are looking like, never hear that. On the news. They're like you're looking live over but you're looking live over your blood sugar. It's 117 and stable. That's Arden's blood sugar right now, two and a half hours after Chinese food. Actually, it's about to update again. Hold on a second. Let's see if it changed. And it has 115 which doesn't surprise me. Why doesn't it surprise me? Because let's see, about 20 minutes ago, I noticed that the blood sugar looked a little sticky, meaning I didn't think it was gonna break off that line it was at around the 121 117 mark. So I asked Arden send a little text and I said I think we have to Bolus a little more for this food. And she did. And now we're starting to see it move. Now I know the number only move to from 117 to 115. But I can see on the graph that it's beginning to trend down, I can see the Bolus working. It's fascinating. And it's available to everyone who has a Dexcom g six, find out more@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. And don't overlook that I'm looking at don't overlook that I'm looking Don't think like that. Let's try again, don't overlook that I can see Arden's blood sugar on my iPhone, and you can to where your Android phone. As a matter of fact, 10 people can 10 people of your choosing can follow blood sugars, if that's what you want. And if that's not what you want, don't do that. Just keep the data for yourself. dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. links in the show notes links at Juicebox Podcast comm get started right now. What do you think the most overlooked diabetes item is like the thing that you just don't take that seriously, that seriously is wrong word, the thing that you don't pay close enough attention to when you're purchasing. Right? In my opinion, it's your blood glucose meter. A lot of people just take the one the doctor gives you where your endo writes a script for one or your nurse practitioners like here, there's one in the drawer take this one, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How often do we actually look like would you buy a car that way? No. Would you buy a house that way? No. Would you rent an apartment that way? You would not? Would you even buy of avocado without squeezing it first? Yeah, wouldn't. But for some reason, he just took the meter they gave and you're like I guess this is good. But you know what could be better. The Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Right? It's a ripe avocado in a world full of lemons. Contour Next one.com forward slash Juicebox. Podcast, incredibly accurate meter. I'm sorry, my voice just broke an incredibly accurate meter with second chance test trips, meaning you can touch some blood not get enough, go back get more without messing up the test or ruining the strip. It's got a super bright light for nighttime viewing as well as a nice big, visible screen. Except you know what the meter is not that big fish in your pocket, your purse, your bag, wherever you carry your gear. It won't be in your way. It'll just do what you need it to do. Contour. Next One is the meter we use. It's fantastic. It is the most accurate one I've ever seen. Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. It may even be cheaper than you imagine. Go check it out. I really am that. I don't know you well enough to tell you. I'm proud of you. But I felt proud while you were saying that like it is absolutely astonishing that you figured all of that out. And I think again that my astonishment comes from the number Have adults who I've spoken to who can't be that intellectually agile when something's happening, they get so stuck in the baseless 15 it Okay, maybe it needs to go up, but I'll try 16 that didn't work? Well, we'll try that for a week and see what happens. Like you just pushed it up seven, you went from, from 15 to 22 a day.

Sophia 35:26
Yeah, but it wasn't in the course of a couple of months. So it wasn't

Scott Benner 35:30
immediately. So it took me a couple of months to I understand, by the way, that's it's a huge jump, it's 50% more. And so, but you did it by yourself, you made that decision.

Sophia 35:42
I, my mom knows a lot about my diabetes, and she helps me a lot. I do most of the I do a lot, all of the meals and corrections by myself. But like once a week who I will tell her my problems, then she'll say, well just adjust this. And so then that makes sense. I love it.

Scott Benner 36:03
I love how simplified in a simplified way you think about the whole thing,

Sophia 36:07
I get very stuck in an idea that my insulin to carb ratio was always this, I can't change it now because it was always this. And then when I tell my mom a week later the problem she said, Well, obviously you need to change it. It's not working.

Scott Benner 36:22
That's amazing. I'm so happy. I really am like this is I you understand the beyond the short email correspondence that we had, like in my mind, I'm sitting down this morning to talk to a 14 year old, I don't know who you're going to be like, I don't know how this conversation is going to go when we start talking. And it took me a couple of minutes in the beginning to adjust myself because I feel like I'm talking to like a younger, less experienced version of Jenny right now. Not like I'm talking to a 14. Do you know Jenny? Do you listen to the episodes with her?

Sophia 36:58
Yeah, I listened to all of them. See you were getting so good at this pregnancy ones.

Scott Benner 37:04
Really? Do you ever think you'll have kids?

Sophia 37:07
I don't want to think about that right now. But it was interesting to see how people are just in new situations.

Scott Benner 37:14
You are my favorite listener, Sophia, if there was a T shirt that said favorite listener, I would send it to you there is not one. But if there was you'd get it. That is I'd even make an award up. And then if you one day, we're not my favorite listener anymore. I'd have to make you mail it to somebody else. But let's not get involved in all that awards things. But you're seriously my favorite person. So but I don't want to take you off your path because you wanted to talk about things like that. So you came out of the hospital with your MDI and and how did that go? What happened next?

Sophia 37:45
Well, my mom got me the freestyle Libra. And I thought, well, why doesn't it tell me when my blood sugar goes low? I don't want to keep checking. So I started Googling what else is out there. And I saw that Dexcom exists and people like it. And I started telling Mom, I need to Dexcom. Mom, let's find a way to get it. And we found a store online that sells them. And there's a way to get it. It's not covered here. But we found a way to get it delivered. And I got the G five then I started doing more research and I saw that there are things that make you not inject seven times a day. And that was interesting to me because the because the Omni pod seem so much better than other pumps, because I don't like being tied to something. And I have a cat. And that's probably something that played a major factor. The cat said, Yeah, she likes to chew stuff and she loves playing with strings. So the obvious conclusion was this set a good idea.

Scott Benner 39:03
I'm thinking Are you gonna be like Ilan musk one day or something like that? Well, you remember me when you're famous and rich, please, Sophia.

Sophia 39:12
Yes, send your check and remind I

Scott Benner 39:14
don't need to hold. Well, listen, I don't want to say no to the check. But I I just meant like, just, you know, throw me an email like, you know, when you're banging around the world doing amazing things. Like I want to be able to say like, Oh, I know Sofia, because I was I'm trying to imagine myself at 14 years old. I think I was just like a like a barely alive idiot. Do you know what I mean? Like just barely moving around like a blob. Basically.

Sophia 39:47
Who you ask my teachers will agree with you.

Scott Benner 39:49
Oh, really? Well, they don't get to hear you talk about this. Are you? Are you saying that when I was 14 that was something I might have been good at, but nobody bothered to find out.

Unknown Speaker 39:59
Exactly.

Scott Benner 40:00
I'm gonna accept that from you. Also, you might be my therapist now, too. So. So you're just Are you good at diabetes? Because it's coming naturally to you? Where is it because you're trying to take care of

Sophia 40:15
yourselves and come naturally at all. It took a lot of work to reroute my ideas since my endo and the hospital was telling me one thing, I check every two hours, if you're high Bolus check in two hours again, adjust basil, if it's three days in a row, the same thing. And it was they make it sound like such an exact science. But there's so many factors that play into it. If I know that I'm having a stressful day, the next day, I need to make it Temp Basal, but they won't tell me to do that since they will be scared that I will go low because I'm not 100% sure that they're my blood sugar's will go up. And I had to reroute a lot, and my mom, and make my mom listen to your podcast,

Scott Benner 41:04
as well. So you had to that's interesting. So you found that a side of her, started figuring out things you wanted to do. And then you said to your mom, this must be interesting. You went to your mom, a Russian woman and said, there's a guy in America with a podcast, and I want you to listen to it so we can learn how to take care of my blood sugar better, and then she grounded you what happened next?

Sophia 41:29
No, I said, there's a guy with no medical degree that's telling me he knows better than my endocrinologist. I spent a lot of years in medical school, and I'm gonna listen to him. No.

Unknown Speaker 41:43
And this one, okay with your mom?

Sophia 41:47
She said, Yeah, sure. If that makes you happy.

Scott Benner 41:53
I don't know why I just I love everything about this conversation. It's absolutely fascinating. So she's like, she didn't ask, she didn't say like, Well, I'd like to listen to it before you do that.

Sophia 42:04
Oh, no, she listened to it. She said, Well, he sounds like he really knows what he's talking about.

Scott Benner 42:10
You tell her I'm very good at pretending that I know what I'm talking. Just tell her my confidence comes from. I don't know where? Well, that's not true around diabetes, my confidence comes from experience and seeing it happen over and over again. And being able to break free of kind of old ideas about that management of diabetes, kind of like you were talking about, like, you know, there's this one thing that you wouldn't know, because you're young, and you haven't been involved in the space. But people used to say all the time that you know, your diabetes may vary, you know, like, it's what happened

Sophia 42:48
to him in the hospital.

Scott Benner 42:50
Right? Right. What so what happens to you, Sophia, won't happen to my daughter or won't happen to a 50 year old guy who's listening right now who has type one. And I understood the kind of overarching sentiment, which was, variables are different for you than they are to somebody else. And so it's going to be different, but I just kept thinking, if you boil it down far enough, it is all happening the same way for everybody, right? Like, like, let's find common ground for everybody with Type One Diabetes. And to me that common ground is that if you have the right amount of insulin, and you put it in the right place, that you can keep your blood sugar stable and low. Now, it's not as simple as that as as that makes it sound. But it is true, then there are a couple of outliers, right? There are some people, for instance, who have gastroparesis. You know, they have a stomach emptying problem. So they can't kind of count on when their blood their foods going to be digested. But taking those sort of outliers outside out of the equation, everyone else using insulin is, is experiencing the same core experiences, right? And if you're basil is right, and if you Pre-Bolus meals, meaning if you line up the, you know, the action of the insulin with the impact of the carbs that you're eating, you won't have spikes at meal times. It just it's just true. Like, there's no, there's no scenario where if you do it, right, your blood sugar will spike as

Sophia 44:29
well, except for the case where you're very stressed, or you had too much exercise and didn't account for that.

Scott Benner 44:39
Right? No 100% there's going to be variables that impact your blood sugar. But if you go back to what I said, even if you're very stressed, or you had exercise that you didn't account for that was going to make your blood sugar go up. The truth is, and this would be difficult to do but if you knew the stress was coming, and you Bolus for it, or if you knew you could to impact it like it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. But Arden's blood sugar right now during the, the sap testing is a good example of that, you know, leading into the test, I assume that test was going to be at least burdensome may be stressful, I wasn't sure. So we increased the power of Arden's insulin going into the test, so that she wouldn't spike. And, and so had she magically not experienced any kind of like outside influence, we could have just taken that insulin away. But we we looked at it and got ahead of it. And I think at that core, whether it's you, Sophia, 14 years old, freezing your butt off in Russia, or, you know, some guy named Bill living in Florida right now, like, that is the truth for everybody. And I can I feel very comfortable standing behind that. So I'm just super happy that you that you found this and that it's been so helpful for you so far. So okay, so you've

Sophia 46:07
also got a problem? Yeah, moving on. Right?

Unknown Speaker 46:09
Yeah, please.

Sophia 46:11
Be on the board. For some reason, my mom thought that pumps don't work, and that they always inject more than you want them to inject and they are bad, for there is just the stereotype of pumps being bad in your head. So it was very, very hard to convince my mom.

Scott Benner 46:34
So what does she hear like a new story where someone's insulin pump, like went crazy and wrap the cord around their neck and choke them or killed him? Yeah.

Sophia 46:45
And maybe it's I'm not sure how older pumps were. But now they seem just very stable. Yeah.

Scott Benner 46:53
No, I agree with you. It would be like hearing. There was this news story once, where they said somebody's brakes didn't work. And they just like, drove off a cliff. And if you heard that news story, and then said, Okay, well, then we can't drive cars anymore. Right? Like, it's, you know, yeah, so it's a weird leap to make, but I understand it as well. Like, I understand her if she heard that. And thought that was true, then I would, I would understand her being concerned about so how did you talk her into that?

Sophia 47:25
I took me going to the Enzo, and making viendo tell my mom that pumps are perfectly safe.

Scott Benner 47:33
You put the endo in charge of it? Yeah.

Sophia 47:36
So and also, there's the bonus, if anything went wrong, we could always blame the endo.

Scott Benner 47:42
Get you setting up ways to get out of this scenario if you need to? Like, are you good at manipulating your mother and other parts of life? I know she's gonna hear this. And you might not want to give up your best secrets, but you have her doing things that she doesn't realize she's doing?

Unknown Speaker 48:00
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 48:01
You don't want to admit to them out loud.

Unknown Speaker 48:03
No. Good for you. Yeah,

Scott Benner 48:05
keep keep your game going. Don't Don't give it up for me. But that's really even that's a next level idea. to like, you know, my mom has a problem with this. I'll end around her to the endocrinologist explain this, the endocrinologist get her on my side. And so she can impact my mom, my mama, listen to the endo, where she might not listen to me. Serious. Yeah.

Sophia 48:26
And the endo after hearing us talk about pumps told us if you want a free pump, go on this waiting list that usually takes around three years for people to get a pump. And the pump is a couple of years old. And it was the very old Medtronic pumps, I think. And then she gave us a manual in case we wanted to buy your own pump. But the pumps were all Medtronic pumps and also very old. So I said, Yeah, that's not going to work. And I'm going to, and then I went and I did research and on the site where we bought the Dexcom. The Avenue board was there. And I decided this looks way better than my cat chewing through a tube or me not being able to shower without disconnecting everything. Right.

Scott Benner 49:20
Sophia, you promise me something? If I asked you nicely. When you mature to a full adult, please don't use your superpowers for evil. Okay. I want you to use them for good, because you found out how to get like an insulin pump in a Dexcom into a country where they're not sold. So I get emails all the time. A lot of them from Saudi Arabia actually, where people want to buy stuff like that and can't find it anywhere. I know a gentleman Oh,

Sophia 49:50
it was so it was a very quick google search.

Scott Benner 49:55
You tell me old old heads don't know how to use the internet.

Sophia 50:00
I wouldn't say that directly to your face.

Scott Benner 50:03
But you mean it? I understand. Yeah, yeah, I actually, I believe I know a family who flies from the Middle East to America to buy supplies and goes back with them.

Sophia 50:13
Just interesting. Yeah. Why wouldn't they like, find a friend who lives in that place? Make the friend buy it and ship it with MIT to their post office and save money on a plane ticket.

Scott Benner 50:27
Sofia, what would you think if a couple of times a year I took life questions from the audience, and just got you on to answer their problems for them? We'll call it common sense with Sophia. And they'll ask big long convoluted questions, and you'll just give them one sentence. You could be my child, I think, the way you think about the diabetes and everything, and and even, like, just kind of like life stuff. Are your parents similar to you in thought? Or do you find yourself thinking differently than them?

Sophia 51:04
Um, well, I think I think I kind of took something from the both of them. My dad has a very logical brain. My mom is very artistic. And I love art. And I did music for a long time. But I also love math. And I want to become a biophysicist. I think that's happening. What is your

Scott Benner 51:33
looselay? Not I got my asking where he works. But what kind of work does your dad do? Is he an engineer?

Sophia 51:40
I'm not currently but he does something with logic.

Scott Benner 51:46
Yeah, something was said something you can't say, Sofia, do you realize that I only understand Russia through movies that are made in America.

Sophia 51:55
All the movies are either Russia's drinking vodka in some apartment, or them being a mass murderers, or these mafia leaders, which is very not true.

Scott Benner 52:13
So you're telling me that you're not wearing a giant, like mink hat right now with big earflaps.

Sophia 52:22
We have one of those. And because it is very warm in the winter,

Scott Benner 52:28
can I tell you something? I have one. I'm such a baby when it comes to the cold that if I go outside, I have one I wear for like shoveling snow or doing stuff like that. And it is the it's I think mines made out of rabbit if I'm not mistaken. If you put it on in the house and don't immediately go out in the cold, you start to overheat. Like it's so warm, it's

Sophia 52:54
warm, and it's practical. Like you don't have to wear a hood, then wear another hat. You can just put that on. It's ugly, and

Scott Benner 53:02
it looks terrible on me. It looks like my head is trapped in a fuzzy box. But but it's so warm. I would never make fun of it. But in my mind, like you're wearing one of those right now with the front of it folded up. And when you said it was minus 30 degrees outside, I didn't even want to tell you but if you told me I had to go outside it was minus 30 degrees. I would cry. Just please not

Sophia 53:26
minus 30 currently, but it was a month or two ago.

Scott Benner 53:31
Well, if you if I was there with you that day, and you said we have to go outside, I would probably just cry a little bit like you'd see a tear in my eye and you'd be like, Oh my god, that guy's 50 and he's crying. And

Sophia 53:40
the snow was up to my shoulders, I think really? Well because it was well, I think part of it was shovel to be that way. So the past will clear up but the sentiment is still there.

Scott Benner 53:53
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. So you're so this is not what's going on right now. You are not No, no, you don't make extra money. But you don't make extra money by like, taking apart declassified nuclear materials and selling them on the black market. Like that's not your after school job or anything like that.

Sophia 54:13
No, definitely not.

Scott Benner 54:16
Sophia, I love how long you pause. And then we're sarcastic. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Where did you learn English? so well? Is that just something you do in school?

Sophia 54:27
It is something Did you know that we do in school, but I think mostly because my mom made me since I was a baby learner as a second language. Does she really want she thinks that it is the only language that is close to being universal? And she wanted me to have that skill.

Scott Benner 54:47
That's really cool. And Does your mom speak it or did she have to teach?

Sophia 54:51
Oh, she does. She does and my brother doesn't my father does.

Scott Benner 54:54
Oh, you have a you have siblings that is there any other autoimmune stuff going on in your family? anybody's thyroid Weird have celiac disease, anything like that?

Sophia 55:02
No, I'm the first one. As far as I know that you have any problems. Wow,

Scott Benner 55:09
wow, you're doing such an amazing job. Like, are you aware of how well you're doing?

Sophia 55:14
Um, well, my blood sugar started going out. So that means I'm still nervous. But I think he's going down. No.

Scott Benner 55:25
Well, I don't mean doing well now on the podcast, but you are doing well now on the podcast. But I mean, in general, like, in your life with diabetes, like are you aware that you're doing well for yourself?

Sophia 55:36
I'm, I'm really hoping that I will prevent any complications, because I already have to wear glasses since birth. So I do not want any other problems.

Scott Benner 55:50
Like I don't need another thing to wear. So in your mind, controlling your blood sugar's keeping them stable, keeping them within a reasonable range. That's about longevity. For you. That's about living well.

Sophia 56:07
Well, yes. Because the only thing I knew about diabetics was type two diabetics had their toes cut off.

Unknown Speaker 56:15
Did you know is the first

Sophia 56:16
thing I thought of when they said diabetes? Really? Yeah. And so I, that was kind of that's still in the back of my mind somewhere, even though I know it's irrational. I still think about that. And I think that fuels my anger,

Scott Benner 56:35
holding on to your toes keeps you motivated. Yes, it's a pretty good motivation. I have to be honest, if somebody told me right, now they were gonna cut off my toes. If I didn't vacuum the carpet, I'd get that carpet really clean. So I don't know if there's a real correlation. But it's interesting, because you were younger. And that's that was your scope of understanding for diabetes, like you had heard somewhere that people with diabetes can lose their toes. And that's how it struck you when somebody told you I type one diabetes? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. Okay, so you somehow like, I don't know how to say this. I want to try to be delicate, but financially, your family's okay. Right? Like, this isn't cheap to get these devices for you.

Sophia 57:19
It's not in there was a factor to consider. But we thought that it would be way better for my health. Because whilst I couldn't correct ties, because my insulin correction ratio is not that big for me to Bolus a unit at 180. So I and I did have the pen that was half a unit. But it just, it barely worked. For some reason. I think I got a broken one. So we just considered it and we thought that, well, this is we're saving money on further complications and treatments. It's kind of pays off.

Scott Benner 58:03
That's it, and your parents are able to do it. So is it a Is it a bit of a struggle for them financially? Or is it just like art? Is the house made of gold? And it's not a big deal?

Sophia 58:13
I it's probably a struggle. I it's one of the factors that I hadn't really thought about that much. I probably should have

Scott Benner 58:24
no, I don't want you to please let me I want you to understand why I asked. I didn't ask because of you. I asked for the podcast I wanted. I don't want it. I don't want people I want people to understand, because not everybody can afford this stuff. Like Is this something that your mom and dad said to themselves? Alright, this is going to be a bit of a burden for us, but there's a lot of value in it. So we're going to cut back in other places.

Sophia 58:49
I think that's kind of more in the direction leading into the direction that happened because it was my insulin correction ratio. I know I'm probably not supposed to say numbers, because it's different for everybody.

Scott Benner 59:05
You just say numbers

Sophia 59:08
is surround one unit to 100 for you.

Scott Benner 59:12
Yeah. Okay. And so you were trying to correct numbers that the pen wasn't allowing you to do properly. And your parents decided, you know, your long term health is, is a priority, and so they're going to eliminate so your brother's not wearing shoes right now. And you evidence on that, right?

Sophia 59:32
Yeah, we just go barefoot in the snow, but worth it. Well, I

Scott Benner 59:36
mean, honestly, you can't go outside anyway, so who cares?

Sophia 59:40
I'm homeschooled. So that helps.

Scott Benner 59:42
Are you homeschool? Because that's what you are because of COVID.

Sophia 59:46
Um, I think that's what I prefer. Okay. Yeah,

Scott Benner 59:51
can I ask it has COVID been a big deal in Russia? How are you guys? Yeah,

Sophia 59:55
actually, yeah. Everything close down, and well, we had to announce us going to the store.

Scott Benner 1:00:06
You have to tell somebody you're leaving the house to go somewhere.

Sophia 1:00:09
Yeah, and I only one person I thought who was allowed some. But it kind of cooled down. And I think there's no system everybody wears masks, holds in there coughs and everything's okay.

Scott Benner 1:00:25
You know if you cough or sneeze in public now people look at you like you set fire to a school bus. They look at you

Sophia 1:00:34
when I was outside once, and I forgot my mask. So I stood very far away from everybody at the ENTER, like, had the front of the store while my mom was checking out, and an old lady came and she yelled at me for not having a mask. And she brought the people who work there. And she made such a big deal. But I was standing in the corner near the exit. Not near everybody. That's that was very mad.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
Were you was it upsetting?

Sophia 1:01:11
Well, it was kind of scary. Because I'm a real biter. I don't like to do anything wrong. I that type of person. So I think it was a bit uncomfortable.

Scott Benner 1:01:25
Yeah. You can't use like, you might be a tough kid.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:30
Well,

Scott Benner 1:01:31
I mean, in your, at least in your mind. Do you agree? Like are you mentally tough?

Sophia 1:01:38
Um, I think I told myself I had to be when I just was just diagnosed.

Scott Benner 1:01:43
Okay. Do you miss it? Can I ask you a question? I don't want to make you sad. But do you miss not having diabetes,

Sophia 1:01:50
I think I would have been much healthier if I hadn't. Because now, I kind of, since I'm homeschooled, I don't have a reason to go outside. So I push exercising to the back of my to do list. And I probably would have considered exercising more often, if I didn't have type one. But I tried to put it into the regular routine now.

Scott Benner 1:02:18
Because why? Because your blood sugar goes up when you exercise.

Sophia 1:02:22
No, it goes down goes down. And if I do anything, if I if I eat 15 carbs, it goes down Still, if I 20 carbs, it goes up. If I turn down basil beforehand, it goes down and then it goes to 300. And that was very, very hard to get a routine down. So I just said, Well, this isn't the most important thing right now. So I think I was just not

Scott Benner 1:02:48
gonna try to figure it, you should be able to figure it out, though. So if you're Temp Basal linkback working out getting low and then getting high later. Then your Temp Basal is happening too late, prior to the exercise

Sophia 1:03:07
thought so I started doing it a half hour earlier, only a half hour. But then I started going up very quickly. So me during the exercise,

Scott Benner 1:03:19
so maybe, so let's just make up numbers for a second. Okay. Let's pretend that you were doing a Temp Basal decrease an hour before you worked out. And you were then getting low and then getting high. I would try doing it two hours before you work out, but only for an hour. So four o'clock Temp Basal to five o'clock. And then work out at six o'clock. So that does that make sense? So that

Sophia 1:03:52
Yeah, I didn't think about that. I didn't know makes a lot of sense.

Scott Benner 1:03:57
So have you ever heard me talk about creating like a like a black hole with basil?

Unknown Speaker 1:04:03
Yeah, I think I

Scott Benner 1:04:07
didn't, it's hard to it's a weird, it's a weird concept because it's there's a little bit of time traveling and it feels like but but if you take away your basil from four to five, that won't really go into effect until maybe six. Yeah. And so if you take it away from four to five and then work out, then the workout overwhelms the still active basil and you get low. And then just as you get low, you hit that black hole of basil and the workout and then your blood sugar jumps up. So if you just shift the basil back farther, then you can put the workout in the black hole so that as the workouts trying to drive your blood sugar down, there's no insulin there to help it. It should stay stable. And by the time you get to the impact part where blood sugar goes back up again, the Basal should have been back on and re engaged. Does that make sense? Because that's pretty cool.

Sophia 1:05:06
I will try that you do

Scott Benner 1:05:09
that and make that work. I'm going to make you a T shirt that says best listener insanity. That's all I'm saying. Okay, although I probably cost $9,000 to ship something to Russia, so don't hold me to this.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:22
Okay, okay.

Scott Benner 1:05:23
Plus, how would you even get to you think on, like the back of us, like a sled dog or something like that? or

Sophia 1:05:29
What does everybody think we lived in some kind of under some kind of rock?

Scott Benner 1:05:38
You have everything. You got a PlayStation? I don't like video games. You could have one if you wanted one.

Sophia 1:05:46
I mean, they are available here, I think. Right? Because I'm not into that

Scott Benner 1:05:52
yet into it. I understand. Okay. So you would say that besides a bunch of snow, there's no difference between living in Russia and living in New Jersey?

Sophia 1:06:02
Um, well, in New Jersey, I guess you can go straight to the hospital when Russia you would know which hospital to go to. So you need to call beforehand since? No, nobody just goes to the hospital. There's it's not a custom here. every hospital is designed for a different thing. Like one hospital is only for endocrinal logical issues. The other one is only for surgery surgery.

Scott Benner 1:06:29
I got you. So I got a call ahead and say hey, here's what's going on with me. I think this is where I need to go. Is that right? And then they'll tell me if I can go there or not.

Sophia 1:06:36
No, you just need to wait for the ambulance and we'll take you there. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:06:41
you get a ride. Yeah, that's not bad. Just to pay for the ride.

Sophia 1:06:45
No, there's free health care.

Scott Benner 1:06:48
Wait, stop for a second. It's all free. Like you went to the hospital. You don't have to pay anything.

Sophia 1:06:52
No. And they give insulin for free. And you have pens and they gave me a meter and they give me test strips and lancets and everything but they don't

Scott Benner 1:07:02
do tax coms are on the pods, but that's only because they don't. They're not for sale there. So you could have gotten a Medtronic pump, but there's a waiting list for that. Yeah, gotcha. And Medtronic saints like old junky pumps to Russia. They By the way, Medtronic send more pumps. What are you doing? Right?

Sophia 1:07:20
Oh, they have the 670 but if you want a free pump, they're not going to give me the 670

Scott Benner 1:07:27
Thank you so cheap my Gianna, come on. Right. Don't you want to help Sophia? Sophie, you don't want that Medtronic though you like?

Sophia 1:07:34
I like the Omnipod Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:36
I gotcha. So you went on the pod to sell on the pods in Russia is what you want.

Sophia 1:07:40
That would be way more convenient. Yeah. Do you

Scott Benner 1:07:42
want me to send this to somebody in on the pod? I can do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:46
Um, you want

Scott Benner 1:07:47
to tell them? Oh, have important this is too. Sure. Go at Dalam

Sophia 1:07:56
please, children are dying.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:00
Yeah, but Sophia. You made me chuckle I was like are you usually this sarcastic? Are you just doing this for me?

Sophia 1:08:08
I think that's just my personality.

Scott Benner 1:08:11
You really could be my Russian child. Do you think your parents would mind if I adopted you?

Sophia 1:08:19
I think they'd be grateful.

Scott Benner 1:08:24
Oh, Sofia, I am so happy that you reached seriously. This is lovely. Okay, um, is there anything about your story that we haven't gone over yet? I imagine there is.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:36
Um, I skydive.

Scott Benner 1:08:39
You skydive recently.

Sophia 1:08:41
I yeah. I think it was last last summer.

Scott Benner 1:08:47
I'm sorry. I I'm you made me laugh so hard. I snorted ice up in my nose. And now it's

Sophia 1:08:54
a couple things actually. I'm good to bring dairy free. I guess I sky down and I had a couple of bad lows

Unknown Speaker 1:09:08
during skydiving?

Sophia 1:09:10
No. Okay. Yes, yes.

Scott Benner 1:09:14
Right. Let's pick through it for a second. Why do you eat gluten free if you're not celiac, but you just don't want the gluten.

Sophia 1:09:19
Um, I had really bad stomach issues for such a long time. They thought I had appendicitis once but I didn't. And my mom thought okay, let's try eating gluten free and since then I don't have any stomach issues

Scott Benner 1:09:37
they ever give you a celiac test.

Sophia 1:09:39
No I mean yes, they gave gave me the test but I didn't don't have celiac. So it's weird. I mean, it was on the higher end but it wasn't like anything that they said he definitely have it.

Scott Benner 1:09:52
So they call it like a like a gluten intolerance or something like that. Yeah,

Sophia 1:09:56
yeah. Also dairy free because I could never stomach dairy since my childhood, I was always very nauseous.

Scott Benner 1:10:05
Do you mean you fart?

Sophia 1:10:07
No, it just made my stomach hurt and very nauseous.

Scott Benner 1:10:10
Made you wish you could fart? I understand. So Alright, so we don't do gluten and we don't do dairy, Ali pod index calm and a couple of bad lows. So you have bad lows back on MDI or recently. How did that happen?

Sophia 1:10:25
Um, yeah, I never passed out before. But I boast for my morning oatmeal, and I started cooking it. And I forgot that I bolused and 40 minutes passed, and I see 72 hours down. I remember I boast I tried to eat the oatmeal, but I can't because I'm very nauseous. At the end my own just out at around 40 I couldn't because I couldn't eat a drink. So many units worth of juice. So we just gave me a bit of glucagon. And I laid in bed the rest of the day.

Scott Benner 1:11:08
Got the day off, huh? Yeah, the problem in that situation is the oatmeal just doesn't hit you like besides you being nauseous, because you're low the oatmeal is just not going to work fast enough at that point. You just you Pre-Bolus too long, which you know, but Tim, what are you doing that you got? You remember what got you sidetracked?

Sophia 1:11:28
I was listening to your podcast while making

Scott Benner 1:11:31
made you high today and low that day.

Sophia 1:11:35
I wouldn't blame it directly on you.

Scott Benner 1:11:37
Thank you. That's important not to blame it on me.

Sophia 1:11:40
Of course, because nothing here in the Juicebox Podcast is considered medical advice or otherwise,

Scott Benner 1:11:46
Sophia, you know, you're coming back on the show, like a year from now, right? Like I love.

Sophia 1:11:50
So I'm having a lot of fun. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:11:52
my God, I'm having a lot of fun. I don't even care if people like this or not. This is fantastic. This is the best episode we've ever made. You are just you're lovely. You really are. I am having such a good time talking to you. I really appreciate that you came on and told me all of this and told everyone all this. Because it's very hopeful to me that someone your age could be diagnosed, absorb the gravity of diabetes, find out what to do, even when they get kind of bad information, figure it out on their own, put it into practice and do such a good job of taking care of themselves in such a short period of time is really inspirational. And I don't I mean, you listen to the show. I don't use that word very often. So what you've done here is really amazing. I'm really excited for you. And I can't wait to see you figure it out when you like are you getting your period yet?

Sophia 1:12:55
Oh, yeah. A year already?

Scott Benner 1:12:58
Is it a pain with your blood sugar's Have you figured that out to

Unknown Speaker 1:13:01
such?

Unknown Speaker 1:13:04
But you've got

Sophia 1:13:05
no pattern at all? None. None? Well, not that I can see. Some weeks I'm just constantly how you week before and during then other times I'm normal, then I'm very low for some reason. And it's there's no pattern at all.

Scott Benner 1:13:23
But you're still keeping your Awan see where you are. So the will say you figured out the up your basil. And now you've got things back together again. So now you got to figure out how to be flexible. When these changes happen. Like you can't, I know it's hard for people to understand. But when you're managing a girl who's getting hit with hormones like this, you have to be able to on a day to day basis, look and say today is more basil. Doesn't matter why it just is this is the graph is telling me more basil here today or the graph is telling me to be more aggressive with meals. And you have to just do it. And as quickly as you turn it on. You have to be ready to a day later turn it off again, and just go Okay, let's go back to where we were or go halfway back. It's um, it takes a little while to get used to.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:16
Yeah, wow.

Scott Benner 1:14:17
I bet you didn't think we talked about your period, right?

Sophia 1:14:20
I mean, I listened to one episode with I think some other girl and I I was expecting it. Okay, boy. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:14:33
Can I ask a weird question when the girl was on from Czech Republic? Did you think like that's close to me.

Sophia 1:14:40
Um, she made it sound. So not like life here.

Scott Benner 1:14:46
Oh, it's different than you've been. you experience it?

Sophia 1:14:48
Yeah, it's I don't see anything really weird about I mean, maybe I'm just brainwashed. But

Unknown Speaker 1:14:57
I don't think you're brainwashed

Sophia 1:14:58
that we have Everything here I think,

Scott Benner 1:15:02
like I've got a light in my room and everything.

Sophia 1:15:06
Yeah, I have a chair and the desk.

Scott Benner 1:15:09
kit you fancy with your chair? Do you have any? You have a killer cat? That's nice.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:17
I have two killer cat. But

Scott Benner 1:15:18
it's not a Siberian tiger. It's just a regular house cat, right?

Sophia 1:15:21
Oh, no. She's a Panther. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:15:25
I didn't recognize them. Well, you, you know, I'm just trying to figure things out. I don't leave this country. So I don't know anything in my mind. You know, Canadians ride moose, and you're just

Sophia 1:15:37
drink vodka since

Scott Benner 1:15:38
I just, I just assume you're training to be like an assassin. That's all?

Sophia 1:15:43
Well, I didn't say I wasn't training to be an assassin.

Scott Benner 1:15:46
Well, that would be a weird thing to say. All right, well, so then, should we just call your episode Black Widow? Or what do you think we should do?

Sophia 1:15:58
Um, mafia leader sounds more. You just,

Scott Benner 1:16:04
you don't want me to draw attention to you like, because there is a Russian mob, right?

Sophia 1:16:11
I don't know. You're 14.

Scott Benner 1:16:14
And look at you. Even if you did know, you would say you didn't know.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:18
or would I? Wow.

Scott Benner 1:16:19
You're very cagey. Okay, Sophia. We're gonna stop here. Because I'm afraid that it's possible that a 49 year old guy and a 14 year old girl in Russia might become best friends if we talk much longer. So I'm going to and I don't know what we'd eventually would talk about. But I'm gonna say to you that I definitely want you to come back on sometime, like maybe a year or so from now. Like, I think I want to know what a 16 year old Sofia sounds like. So let's, let's, let's let's set up goals right now. Let's just let the advertisers know right now the show's got to go at least two or three more years. Because we got to figure out what happened

Sophia 1:16:55
in a couple of months, so maybe only a year. Ah, Sophia,

Scott Benner 1:16:59
please pay attention to what I'm doing here. Okay.

Sophia 1:17:02
Oh, yeah. The show has to go on for at least another 10 years. And I also want my future children to be on it.

Scott Benner 1:17:14
Don't want Have you tried to adopt Sophia. I have Dibs. If she ever needs adoption. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I not kidding. I want to keep this podcast going forever, just so I can talk to that girl over and over again. I want to thank Sophia so much for coming on the show and being amazing. I want to thank the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor for being amazing. And for being available dexcom.com forward slash juice box. I'd also like to thank the most accurate blood glucose meter that I've ever touched with these hands, the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Find out more at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. It is an amazing website. There's a ton of information there, go check it out. There are links to the sponsors and all the sponsors in the show notes of your podcast player, or Juicebox podcast.com. We support the sponsors. You're supporting the show. Thank you very much. Continue to share the show with others. Download as many episodes as you can listen to them with your ears. And enjoy. I'll keep making them. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of the Juicebox Podcast. Sophie, if you're still listening, I want to make sure you understand without sarcasm that I so totally enjoyed talking to you on the podcast. I think you're terrific. And I really would like to speak with you again someday. I'm wishing you a lot of luck from over here in America. You made my day.

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#486 How We Eat: FODMAP

A D-mom talks about parenting with a FODMAP diet.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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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 486 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today's episode of features Meredith, and she's here to talk about being the mother of a child with type one, and about understanding, creating and cooking for a fodmap diet. That's a funny word, right? fodmap it's not actually a word, it's an acronym.

This episode is going to be ad free Memorial Day celebration, no ads. But it is part of the how we eat series. Now if you're not familiar with that, I'm going to spend 20 seconds explaining it before the episode starts. But it's going to happen after I tell you that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. All right, let the music finish up. I'll spend this couple of seconds talking about how we eat and then we get right into the episode with murder, by the way, is a super fan of the show. And I'm sure right now is shaking in our pants listening.

The how we eat series is building up a nice little repertoire. Is that the word I mean? It doesn't matter. So right now we have Episode 373. Vegan cat, which is not about a cat. Episode 400 carnivore. Episode 405 plant based Episode 439 gluten free Episode 453 low carb episode, episode in boy ready here we go again, Episode 480, Dr. Bernstein, and today's episode 486 fodmap. And there are many more coming. This has become a favorite for people. And I'm very much enjoying having these conversations. I hope you enjoy this one with Meredith, check out the others.

Meredith 2:21
Hi, my name is Meredith and I am a mom of three children, one of whom is a type one diabetic.

Scott Benner 2:28
Cool. And you're on today to talk about an eating style. Is that right?

Meredith 2:35
I am we have a lot of interesting food issues. The reason that I'm here is to talk about the low fodmap diet. But we actually eat not just low fodmap My daughter has lots of food allergies, as well. So that also interacts with diabetes and and low fodmap.

Scott Benner 3:00
Okay, so I assume that first you present with a food allergy? And then how does that how does that present itself the first time it happens

Unknown Speaker 3:11
with food allergy? Yeah,

Scott Benner 3:12
like what's the first like, what's the remembrance you have of like, Hey, does anybody notice she turns purple when we let us or something like that, like whatever happened, you

Meredith 3:20
know? Well, you know, it goes back for us. Before that my daughter that's diabetic is my second child. And so the food allergies go back to my first child. So really, we were prepared for so with my first daughter, my oldest is I've got a girl girl boy. And the oldest, was just presented with food allergies when she was two months old and had eczema and was fussy all the time. And so that was just from sort of, essentially birth. And we figured it out through what beyond is nursing and what I was eating. And then as we were introducing them I had to eliminate foods from my diet. And as we were introducing foods to her diet. She had some full blown reactions. By the time my second daughter who was like the type one diabetic by the time she was born, we were like assuming she had allergies we didn't know and it was also the way they treated allergies then is very different than what they do now. That's a whole it's changed a lot over the years now they introduce peanuts to kids practically from birth at like four months old. They want to give them peanut powder and based on the whole study in actually started in Israel but where they give kids bomba which is like this peanut snack anyway, and they found that kids had fewer peanut allergies. But when my kids were sort of in that sweet spot where they were preaching total avoidance, and they've since changed some of the recommendations but at any rate, when Eve was born, we ended up testing her for A lot of foods and avoiding a lot of foods initially, and she tested positive for a lot of food allergies. So some of a lot of her allergies are to things that she actually never even ate. So we didn't know for sure that how she would react. And then later, we would go to the food out, we'd go to the allergist yearly and have blood and skin tests. And she either had like a cache a couple of accidental exposures, but they were kind of minor because we were so careful all the time. So I never thankfully had really a full blown turning purple when she really horrible reactions, but I carry it with me all the time and, and everything else. But she did have several food challenges in the office, which is my kids laugh at this beam. But essentially, you go to the food, they go to the allergist office, and they give you a little bit of the food that you they think you might have outgrown, and then a little more and then a little more and then a little more and hope that you don't go back and turn purple and whatever anyway, and she had some that were successful, and some that were not. And some of those ended with epi pens. And yeah,

Scott Benner 6:19
well, let me let me go all the way back to your to your first child, and you're breastfeeding. So you figure out she has allergies to something, and you eliminate it from your diet. Yep, that's kind of fun. Like so what did you have to eliminate with your first daughter? Oh, wow.

Unknown Speaker 6:35
Well remember,

Meredith 6:36
when I was nursing, I eliminated dairy eggs, not sweet. Soy? I don't remember she's 19. Now,

Scott Benner 6:48
what were you eating? Would you just like styrofoam assault? or What did you have, by the, by the time you've learned everything?

Meredith 6:54
Well, there's, you know, we do a lot of meat and potatoes in our house. Um, and chicken and rice and a lot of race, which is, um, causes interaction of all of the fit issues, is I think one of the hardest things around with diabetes, too, because then, as each each condition sort of builds on the other. And then it becomes, because my daughter also has stomach issues. She's always had stomach aches, and even her allergies, which some of some of the things we didn't know, she would get a lot of stomach aches, and we didn't know whether she was alert, she said, you know, she didn't feel well after she ate things. And that's actually why it turns out, she's eating a low fodmap diet, which is something that is usually it's a treatment for IBS. And she didn't know whether she was allergic to every single thing she was eating, she kept getting these stomach eggs. And it turns out that she had to avoid foods for for that reason. And it turns out, like so then there were things that were good for her to eat on them, like to avoid for the low fodmap diet, but aren't good to eat. Because of her allergies or and then late then she was diagnosed with diabetes. But it's like, well, that's, you know, you should have these low carb things. And there's a whole list of low carb things. And she's allergic to half of them. You know, it's just, you know, we sort of had to like, look at the list and say, Well, she can't she can't, she can't have this and you just cross off half the thing. Wow.

Scott Benner 8:38
So there's basically three different things to consider.

Meredith 8:42
Oh, by the way, we keep kosher.

Scott Benner 8:44
Yeah, so four different things to keep considers you know, we're not just I mean, I mean, honestly, how many things could be left, right? So you remove the Well, okay, I saw I understand all that. What is fodmap stand for?

Meredith 8:58
Okay, so fodmap, which is a crazy diet when, um, fodmaps are and I'll read you this that I took off the internet. fodmaps are a collection of short chain carbohydrates, which are sugars that aren't absorbed properly in the gut, and can trigger symptoms in people with IBS. And they're naturally found in many foods and food additives. And there are four times and they're hard to pronounce, so I'll do my best but they're illegal saccharides, STI saccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. And so when we were advised by your doctor to avoid to go on the low fodmap diet, I said, Okay, you know, sure I can do this. I've done food allergies. All three of my kids and my husband have multiple food allergies. I said, I can do this. I've done this for years and like cook and all these crazy ways and they aren't all allergic to the same things. So I said sure. Tell me what she has to avoid. And then they gave me like the list. And it's not a category. It's like, some fruits are high in fodmaps, and some are low in fodmaps. And some are percentages, like with food allergies. If you can't have eggs, you can't have eggs. Like, that's it, and just a little bit can kill you, if you can't have peanuts, you know, it'll kill you, you know? Yeah, so I'm used to that. In with fodmaps, one of the things that you can have, depending they're also some people can tolerate certain amounts of certain things. But for example, um, what peaches, which is, you know, a favorite fruit of my daughter's, um, she could have like one peach or one nectarine, or if she had that a nectarine or a peach, today or tomorrow, she couldn't have a, you know, watermelon The next day, because then it would just it builds and it sort of the too much too many fodmaps together, will then affect her her stomach. So you can have things that impact not quite as hard. But if you stack them up too close to each other day after day, it's the same impact as having something that strikes her that hard. Exactly. And so what you usually do at the beginning is you do a total elimination diet. And then you add in a food from each of the different four categories or some of the foods from each that the four categories separately, and you add them back into your diet to see whether it's one of the categories or two or three that are affecting you. So for example, the all the illegal saccharides are fructans, and GLS, which are in foods like wheat, rye, onions, garlic, and Legos. So onion and garlic are completely out of our diet. Now, my husband always used to joke that I put black pepper and garlic salt on everything, you know, I made, that was just sort of our staple. And I now don't use all although, oddly, you can in a low fodmap diet, you can flavor things with garlic, you can flavor the oil with garlic, but apparently the garlic doesn't get absorbed into the actual oil. So you can infuse garlic with oil, and then remove the actual garlic. There are all these really weird tricks. And then like the scallions, you can use the green part of the skeleton but not the white part of the scallion. There's a whole Australian University called Monash that's devoted to this. I don't know if they're devoted to it. But they have a unit or division that focuses on fodmap. And they're really detailed and they have an app and everything that's talks all about low fodmap. And it's fascinating because this is very scientific. It sounds like complete Voodoo to me when I was reading the list. Like for example for the monosaccharides are fructose. So this is there's a lot of overlap. It's really interesting when you're talking about diabetes and how you eat and carbs. And when you were talking about the when I was listening to the episode on glycemic index, there's a lot that sort of overlaps. It's it's different. But it sort of comes in it comes at it from a different angle. But there's a lot of kind of overlapping interesting things. And so would it be a surprise, I'll just just tell you the fridge just as one so it's in honey and apples. And like she can't tell honey apples or high fructose corn syrup. But she can have maple syrup, for example.

Scott Benner 13:49
Okay. Do you know why? I guess there's no way to By the way, this sounds exhausting. It is no point to just like, oh god, I'm going to leave them at the mall. And that'll be the end of this because we're just like Mommy's going out and just never come back. And you guys are gonna have to fart your whole lives because I'm not doing this. Like what is it? You know? I mean, seriously, like, just so just thinking about an elimination diet. First of all to get your answers about what it is that you can and can't eat or should or shouldn't be eating. How do you start an elimination diet? Is it like with a piece of chicken that you boil, and then everyone eats it in horror? Terrible.

Meredith 14:32
And here's honestly like, I mean, that's the thing is it? It starts with total paralysis is what it starts with. Okay, um, and you kind of go, oh my god, what am I gonna feed the family, which is actually kind of the way I started with diabetes to like, Oh my god, how am I gonna feed my daughter? Um, but then slowly I did what I did with food allergies too, and I went to the internet and I looked for Facebook groups, I looked for recipes and I looked for resources. And essentially, I started with brand new recipes and I just looked, you know, you Google, you go to Pinterest, you go wherever and you find low fodmap recipes. And then what I would do is, I would modify them, because inevitably, it would have something in it that my kids were allergic to. And then or something they didn't like, or something that was an ingredient that, you know, I couldn't gather or whatever, but I tend to make a lot of different meals, which

Unknown Speaker 15:37
is,

Meredith 15:38
you know, one of the things that, um, you know, they say, Oh, you know, if your kids don't want your main meal that you make for dinner, like, just tell them they can have cereal tonight. When everybody's allergic to different things, and everyone has special diets, it's not really fair at some point to say, Well, too bad.

Scott Benner 15:56
Yeah. Wow, what's the reaction of I mean, you the children, everybody in the family, when you realize that this is the way you're gonna eat, I realized it was probably different for you because of the food allergy thing. But, but what I'm trying to imagine if I went to Arden tomorrow, and I said, Hey, we're going to eliminate everything from your diet to figure out why something happens, she probably would kill me in my sleep. So I'm trying to figure like, seriously, and or at least put up one hell of a fight about it, I can actually, I can envision her saying I'd rather my stomach hurt than do this. So

Meredith 16:31
I think that there are a couple of issues that you're there. As far as the food allergies, I actually think it was easier because my kids were diagnosed with them really from the get go. So they don't know what it's like to eat, whatever my oldest is, has now outgrown all her nut allergies. And the craziest thing is that she now eats, like, all Oh, nuts. I mean, it's just blows my mind when she's peanuts, and cashews and walnuts and talks about the differences. And, you know, I just is totally crazy. I'm used to thinking of them as poison. Um, but so they, they didn't know what it was like, they didn't know what they were missing. That's something that was almost easy. It was harder when they went to school and more of a social component, and going out with their friends and going to restaurants. And those kinds of things were the most difficult for the low fodmap diet, which came well. Diabetes came in, in the tween, and then the low fodmap diet came after. So in terms of timing, um, so with diabetes, we don't, we don't eat differently, really, for diabetes, there was only a very short period of time. When it was first diagnosed that they she was she didn't have one of those horrible diagnosis stories where she was admitted she wasn't NDK. Um, she had a whole variety of health issues for about a year where we were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with her, which included a lot of stomach issues, which actually had been going on for much of her life, she'd had a lot of stomach discomfort, and went to one doctor for a second opinion, who did a whole battery of blood tests. And I got a call the next day and I was like, Where's your daughter? And I'm like, Well, she's at school. Like her blood sugar is really high. You need to come get her and redo her blood test. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to pick her up for was actually some other tests for something else. Because like I said, she was having all these other issues. And I'm gonna get her in a couple hours and take her to the doctor for something. They're like, No, no, you need to go now. And I'm like, I don't like I don't know anything about blood. I don't know anything about diabetes. And I don't know what they're talking.

Scott Benner 19:00
We don't eat sugar in my house. There's no sugar in her blood.

Meredith 19:08
literally about to get on the subway. I'll talk to you later. And I got off the subway like three stops later. And the phone rang, like my cell phone rang and they're like, it's the doctor like, where are you? And I'm like, Oh,

Unknown Speaker 19:22
yeah, you're not getting it. Give me a sec order. And you need to

Meredith 19:27
have this checked. But anyway, I lost my train of thought and why I was.

Scott Benner 19:32
Well, while you're finding your train of thought I'm taking off my headphones to take off a sweatshirt home. how incredibly unprofessional of me was it to do that right in the middle of the episode. I would never forgive myself if I was you. But since we're taking the break, have you heard about the diabetes pro tip series that begins at Episode 210. If you haven't seen it, you can check it out at Juicebox Podcast comm where diabetes pro tip calm or just go back in your app. To Episode 210, I'd also like to recommend, as I said earlier, the how we eat series. If you're interested in algorithm based pumping, there's a whole series about that. We have defining diabetes, which I'm very proud of its terms about type one diabetes, that are explained, but not in a dry way. There are short episodes with Jenny Smith and I, we explained the term and then put it into some context for you. So sort of like, imagine if you saw a hammer didn't know what a hammer was. And someone just said, it's a hammer, you use it to strike a nail, that would be not very helpful. But if you said it's a hammer, you use it to strike a nail, and then explained what a nail was, and why you might want to use a nail, well, then that would be useful information. To me, that's what the finding diabetes is. I'm just gonna take this moment to let you know about another series that's coming up also with Jenny Smith, it's going to be called variables. super interesting. We had Lehman on like, it's super interesting, you now either have to believe me, or you don't talk to you went to the Facebook page, the private Facebook page for the podcast and asked for people to make a list of things that impacted their life with diabetes, and a list came back, I think over 150 things long. Jenny and I are going to do these very short kind of burst episodes, about variables. So you'll start seeing them soon. Here, that's where you're gonna start seeing them soon. That is so much better.

Meredith 21:28
Okay, good. Um, anyway, so she, um, so she then was diagnosed, and basically what they told us, so then we were, we had like, two days where she, they knew her blood sugar was high, we had an appointment The next day, one day, and they had an appointment the next day at the diabetes clinic, the goddess and right away, but they told us, we could go home, and then we, we went back in for training, like outpatient. And we came in, like two or three days in a row, for hours long sessions, to learn to use insulin and count carbs and all this stuff. But they basically told us for, you know, two or three days, like, just eat really low carb, like, don't eat any carbs for the next two days, was essentially what they told us. Um, so while while we went home, I mean, because their blood sugar wasn't crazy high, but they're like, you know, just, you know, have have protein and don't have any, any carbs. While while we're doing that you're

Scott Benner 22:24
like, just give me a list. I know how to eliminate things from a diet, this won't be any trouble whatsoever.

Meredith 22:30
Right. So so that was so in that case. So that was just a couple of like, days where we really ate very, like, she had a lot of cucumbers, and, and then, um, and then in general, with diabetes, we don't, we don't eliminate food from our diet all that often. Except for you know, sometimes, like, she had an important test. And I was like, you know, let's not have dessert tonight, let's try to have a really low, like a low carb dinner tonight. Or, you know, let's see what's going to not impact your blood sugar. Um, a lot. Um, she's a junior in high school. Yeah. Um, you know, those kinds of things. So, in that respect, I think about her diet with their diabetes, but I don't otherwise say you can't eat X, Y, or Z because of the diabetes. Although, when we had to figure then we had some big changes when we moved to low fodmap. Because for the elimination diet, it's not that you can't eat any foods. It's more that there, you pull a lot of things out of the diet, but it was one of the initial things was, well, she can't add apples. So one of the things she had she just was a staple for low blood sugars was apple juice. Okay, so I was like, oh, man, like, she has apple juice all the time. Right? Like, okay, well, what are we going to do now? So now we do grape juice, but like excited to get grape juice boxes? I think I still have juice boxes of apple juice somewhere in my back of my cabin. I

Unknown Speaker 24:05
don't know what to do with expired.

Meredith 24:05
I gotta, you know,

Unknown Speaker 24:07
what were

Scott Benner 24:08
what were the symptoms we're talking about, like, you know, because I'm obviously I'm looking online too. And cramping, diarrhea, constipation, stomach, bloating, gas and flash ones. Is that basically or is it just you're in pain? Is it hard to put the word

Meredith 24:23
stomach pain for years and years and years? And I think she's a, I think, well, let's leave it at that.

Scott Benner 24:32
Wait, that was fascinating. You started to say something and then you stopped yourself. And now I'm gonna wonder for the rest of my life. What you were going to say? You don't have to say, you know what, forget it. Say it. I'll bleep it out for you. What were you gonna say?

Unknown Speaker 24:47
I think we're gonna leave it at that.

Scott Benner 24:49
All right. Okay, so she had stomach pains for a long time.

Meredith 24:53
Yeah, I mean, really since she was since she was little and we see in lots of doctors and dentists. things and chess, you know, checked and well, there might be various medicines and this is one of the things that is has helped. And it does help. And unfortunately, it's doesn't help all the way for her. Okay, um, but it does help. And so when you say Is she willing to do it? Well? Yeah, because it helps, right? Um, but no, it's sometimes really socks. So she wants to eat things. I mean, like, licorice is like something she likes and she you know it has the Twizzlers have wheat in them and she now is on a gluten free diet. Well, as you know from other things, the gall the gluten free stuff has stays in your system longer and has probably has like a higher glycemic load. It's, it's, um, you know, has other other issues. Um, and cauliflower, you know, you could do a nice cauliflower pizza crust, well, she can't have dairy. So that's a whole other issue. But, you know, cauliflower instead of pasta, say, rice, cauliflower or something? Well, that's, that is a, that's high fodmap. So she could have caught cauliflower, but only in a small quantity. So there are a lot of interactions between the foods that cause problems, or, you know, it's just a balance. Yeah. between what you know, what do you want to what do you want to choose? You want to so she ends up often with higher carb choices that impact her blood sugar, and that we then have to figure out how to how to deal with

Unknown Speaker 26:46
Yeah, when did she when we should diagnosed how old again?

Meredith 26:49
She was diagnosed when she was almost 12 when she was 11. She was diagnosed in Yeah, in 2015. Right? November Actually, this is her anniversary mark.

Scott Benner 27:03
Come on. No kidding. We're here. Do you know all this off the top of your head? Like if I if I came to your house and I had a big bag of food, and I sat your daughter next to me and I started reaching out or with a banana would you know that's okay, or Oh my god, stop no banana? Like, Are there times when you have to stop yourself and say, I don't even know how to eat this. And I like when does it? You know,

Meredith 27:27
I can tell you which foods everybody in my house is allergic to? Well, I am. It's actually really funny. I have a joke that I want to make like a Venn diagram. Like a piece of art. It's a Venn diagram with like, was alerted to what and like sell them to people. But like, I just think it's funny that maybe I'm the only person in the world that thinks it's funny. But anyway,

Scott Benner 27:48
you realize now that you said that everyone listening who doesn't think it's funny is thinking in their head? Yeah. That was not funny. Although someone's laughing their head. Oh, my joke

Unknown Speaker 27:57
in my house. Yeah.

Scott Benner 28:01
You're screwed. So,

Meredith 28:03
um, for the fodmaps. It's interesting, I guess. You've started that when she was a little older. And also, it's so complicated. I know. We're on video, nobody else's. But this is a list of like, some of the low fodmap food. And like I said, brand categories. I have to look. I mean, I don't remember. And then there's this app. I mentioned the app I like literally go on the app and look. So I know a lot of them. But like for example, she can have as many strawberries as she wants, I think but not as many raspberries. So when I say it's arbitrary, like it's really arbitrary. Yeah, like, you know, she, you know, berries are mostly okay, but like strawberries are better than raspberries. And like really? I'm,

Scott Benner 28:53
I'm I'm fascinated by the way that your other daughter just magically is not allergic to nuts anymore.

Unknown Speaker 28:57
She's not magically Well, you

Scott Benner 28:59
don't I mean, you did something though. Like you introduce them slowly. Is that

Unknown Speaker 29:02
very Yeah.

Meredith 29:04
And you have a lot of food challenges and we spent years going to the doctor and having Yeah, crazy and actually, um, we've got some food challenges scheduled will and have been canceled given due to the pandemic Yes, canceled a couple times for Eve. So she actually has outgrown she out. She did outgrow almonds, she can have almonds, and she can have pecans and pine nuts. Of course, almonds are not low fodmap. And she has a couple food challenges scheduled but until she tries his foods in the office, we won't know for sure. So there are a few foods that she could potentially have outgrown. But we don't know for sure. And it's not safe to try them at home because there's really, unfortunately no way to know for sure Unless you eat the food, whether you really are grown it, because even though they do blood tests and skin tests, they're not foolproof. And there's really no real way to know. So yeah,

Scott Benner 30:10
until you know, I'm not I'm imagining the heart that would come if I my entire life, I wasn't allowed to have an almond. And then one day someone says, Oh, great, you're gonna have almonds again. But this intersects poorly with your other things. So you can't have on this or by the way, I pop an almond in my mouth, and I go, I don't like almonds. He's such a downer.

Meredith 30:31
When my oldest daughter had her peanut challenge. We I was really excited about it. And we get to the office, and she's got peanut butter in front of her. And it's on a spoon. And I'm like, okay, like, go for it. And she literally it was like a magnet repelling it from her mouth. She could not put it in her mouth. I mean, I understand because actually, I've literally been telling her was poisoned her whole life. But she was so it was like, she couldn't get it in her mouth. And finally she did. And then she was like, Oh, I like this. And the other ones were easier, but and then she was fine. It turned out but it was, she was understandably terrified. I mean, it wasn't even, it wasn't even terror. It was almost just like, an inability

Unknown Speaker 31:18
to put it in.

Scott Benner 31:20
Yeah, this would be perfect for me, I have to tell you, because I don't love food for some reason. Like, I don't that I can't think of one thing that I eat. I'm like, Oh, this is the thing I should eat every day for the rest of my life. I don't I'm so happy because I'm meeting whatever this is. I have never felt like that in my life. And as you know, I had Paul Saladino on a couple of weeks ago, and I prepped by not like basically eating very low carb more protein. The week leading up to him so I kind of would like have something to talk about with him if in case like it didn't go well, but and he ended up being terrific, but but I lost like seven pounds by the time I spoke to him. And now it's got to be like a week and a half later, like 13 pounds lighter. I'm not even hungry anymore. I just get over. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just get up in the morning. I'm like food. Not really necessary, I guess. Yeah, you know, so I'll, I'll eat, I'll still have protein. Like yesterday, I had, I don't know, I had a piece of chicken. And a couple of fried eggs. At one point, I think my son had bacon lifestyle, like two pieces of bacon from him. And by nine o'clock last night, we were watching election returns, and everybody was like snacking, and I was just like, I'm not hungry. I just I'm not hungry anymore. Assuming that most of my hunger comes from, like, the interaction of carbs in my body, and I have a carb and then my body is like guilt. It's probably like crack to it. It's like, oh my god eat more of that, you know. But I've eliminated so much for now. Like, I think if you gave me four foods to eat, I could probably go on for quite some time like that.

Meredith 32:54
But I wish that were the case. For you, you know, there's always chocolate.

Scott Benner 33:03
Oh, you know what, I should be completely honest. The way I get through all this, is I take a small bag of Jordan, Ellie's chocolate chips, and I pick it them once or twice a day, I'll take like five or six chips, and I'll be like, there we go. And that as long as I kind of like whatever the sweet monster is as long as I give the sweet monster that but it has to be really good chocolate. Like if I had a Hershey's Kiss. It would make me nauseous. So there's something about like, like, like, quality. No, I'm actually not joking, because I've tried it because I'm cheap. I wanted to just do it with a Hershey Kiss. Because this bag of chips are like $3 I am really cheap. The bag of chips are like $3 and like that's very expensive. But that's that's how I've gotten through and there are days I don't go to the chocolate chip bag but but that's really it's fast. Like yesterday was one of those days I was just not hungry. I should I it never occurred to me to eat. I only ate this morning because I started getting tired. I was like, Am I shutting off so and I'm gonna eat something when I'm done speaking with you, but I it's fascinating what happens to me when you take away carbs, although that's not what you're doing. You're just it means that list you showed me is crazy. You know?

Unknown Speaker 34:21
Oh, it really is you have how

Scott Benner 34:24
many things that this so and it's it's funny when you say fodmap it obviously and you explained it earlier but there's so many big words that I just want to roll over it one more time again, right it's it's it's fodmap stands for fermentable all IG Sacra dotties whatever, doesn't

Meredith 34:43
amigo saccharine okay.

Unknown Speaker 34:45
decid char

Meredith 34:47
nice dry saccharine.

Scott Benner 34:49
I saccharides monosaccharides Look at me. I'm fallen boy, you're not gonna let me try the fourth one.

Unknown Speaker 34:55
Oh, yeah, go for it. polyols Yeah, go

Unknown Speaker 34:57
for it.

Scott Benner 34:58
Yeah.

What's your shortcut? carbohydrates, you shouldn't use that all that but, but the point is, is that when I heard fodmap in the past, I always just associated it with you have to eliminate things from your diet for some reason. I always thought of it is like, what am I trying to say? Not as a specific thing, but an idea. But it's a it's a specific idea. Incredibly specific, actually.

Meredith 35:25
It's very specific. And it's based in scientific, like the examination of the you know, the scientific like molecule like I can't think of the right word of the elements that are there make up the food, and it's really I don't know how you analyze it, but you they've got scientists breaking apart. What's in a watermelon and what's in a chick pea.

Scott Benner 35:57
Oh my god, it's so funny. You said that my daughter's friend a baby two years ago. They're like they couldn't find her everybody's like we're sorry, I can't find Sasha haven't heard from Sandra cup we so they're texting her texts. And finally, she's like, I'm in the hospital chick p incident. And she was doing an adding, like, they were re adding things. You know, she had some allergies too. And they've been having a lot of success. And I think somehow the the counting got off with the chickpeas and she just had too many chickpeas trying to and the whole time I'm hearing the story. I'm like, just don't eat chickpeas. Like who was it?

Unknown Speaker 36:36
Was this a fun number? This

Unknown Speaker 36:37
was an allergy. It was an allergy. And they were my my,

Meredith 36:40
my kids are allergic to chickpeas also. Okay,

Scott Benner 36:43
so listen, what's going on here? Did you marry your brother or something like that? How come? How come nobody can eat anything in here? Is it just is it in the extended family at all?

Meredith 36:53
Good allergies in the extended family. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Actually, both sides of the family have allergies. I like to think that we gave them a lot of other benefits and really great genes in other ways. But no, the the allergies were pretty much a perfect storm. Well.

Scott Benner 37:09
So here's a question. I've been dying to know, the whole time everybody's weight average. Like this eating like this lead to a slenderness is I guess my question?

Meredith 37:20
Um, yeah, I mean, pretty much. We're, I mean, I'm eating Ed was really skinny before she was diagnosed. Um,

Scott Benner 37:30
but, um, you consider them to be like, average, but like, you are like, average bill. Like, I'm trying to decide like this eating like this make me super skinny. Or not necessarily, or even like with that gluten free stuff. I've seen people put weight on with gluten free because

Unknown Speaker 37:46
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Meredith 37:48
No, I think that it's actually very easy to, um, it's actually easy to overeat and to eat too much or the wrong things. Because you end up I mean, anyone can justify eating too much, except for you. Because you don't like food.

Scott Benner 38:07
Oh, no, I can definitely eat too much. But you have to give, like I said, it's got to be crack. It's got to be like, oh, cookie, and then my brain goes cookie.

Unknown Speaker 38:15
And then I'm done.

Meredith 38:16
I think sometimes, if you can't choose what you want, exactly. You might eat too much of something else. Because it's available or because I mean, I've seen my kids, like, eat things that are like, they got a dessert. They don't they you know, and they don't know if they're gonna get it again. Or there's, you know, some and so they'll they'll want you know, it's special. But they'll you know, it's sort of this like, Oh my god, I got this amazing cake. And who knows if I'll ever get this cool, amazing cake again, because it's really hard to get and then they'll want to eat more than you would otherwise. But No, they're not. They're not overweight and underweight. They're pretty much

Scott Benner 38:56
you understand your kids basically have a depression mentality about about Yeah, I see. Okay.

Meredith 39:03
And I don't know that they have it. I just think that that I've seen I've seen it. I mean, when it was interesting when my my oldest was little she had no snack, you know, no snacks. She had no treats, she had no anything. And then when I found things she could have that like I didn't make myself that were store bought that were safe for her. And now there are so many allergy friendly, available treats, and even low fodmap treats you find there's no like low fodmap logo that you can find on some foods now. But anyway, but now you find things in this guy would find something in the store and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can buy a store bought packaged cupcake or whatever it is. And I'm like, wow, and then I would of course buy it because it exists. Yeah. Right. Like, not because we needed it. But I'm like, Oh my God, we have to try it.

Scott Benner 39:53
Oh sure. I understand that. Like, nobody wants a cupcake but it says fodmap on it. Just take it

Unknown Speaker 40:01
Is it an expensive way

Meredith 40:01
to have free, dairy free, nut free? How can we not get it?

Scott Benner 40:06
How is by the way? Is it flavor free? Or do they know? How did they figure that out? Problem?

Meredith 40:12
You guys?

Scott Benner 40:13
I'm wondering

Meredith 40:14
that no, we make really delicious food.

Scott Benner 40:18
Cool. That's excellent. How do you say you just, you just kind of, I was gonna say pepper it but you, you, you, um, you just use different spices that you're able to use?

Meredith 40:29
Yeah. And And honestly, what I really tried to do is I really tried to make food that everyone in my house can eat, for the most part. So that's the thing about I think, I think low fodmap for us was actually kind of the, the death knell to that a little bit, if you will, with the allergies, I mostly am able to do that. Like even for example, like my husband is allergic to wheat. So he was eating not not exclusively gluten free, but allergic to just wheat. So if, for example, I made spaghetti and meat sauce or whatever, I'd make two pots of pasta. So that was one thing that I would do separately, like I'd make him gluten free pasta, and I would make everybody else wheat pasta. Yeah, um, and I mean, now Eve also is gluten free pasta for because of fodmap. But for most other things, I would try to make a main course and most of the food that everybody would eat. with some exceptions, I think the low fodmap somehow has, there are some things that I do that way and a lot of things that I do that way. But I do tend to make a little bit more, I'll make two things or, or I'll make, like, I'll make two main courses where it's the same main course but I'll separate it out where half of it doesn't have garlic and half of it does cause but there's all kinds of other spices that i've you know, started to use as alternatives that I make spice mixtures, I just make a new I make I make a mix up my own spices. So I mix now, you know I didn't used to, but I'll mix up curry powder without garlic, or onion, and I'll mix up a taco seasoning that doesn't have garlic and onion ended and I mix up. And you can find, you know, recipes for all these things online. But you know, they're all kinds of different spice mixtures that I'll just make. And I use a lot of oregano and basil and I use a ton of tumeric and, you know, Indian type spices, a lot of them don't even, you know necessarily call for garlic or if they do I just leave it out. Right? Wow.

Scott Benner 42:37
I i Geez, you're so at ease with it and comfortable, which is comforting. And no, seriously, like, because I easily could have come on here and been like, Oh, we have to eat like this. Scott, it's a drudgery. Every day we consider ending it. You know what I mean? But you're just you're you don't feel that way. I'm assuming it's because you can make a lot of different things. And you put some effort into figuring out what those things are and people have been amenable. But I guess it's hard not to be amenable if you're allergic to something. Yeah, but did you ever run into fights with the kids? Like, did they ever tell you like, Look, I don't care what you say I'm meeting this or does that you just got them at the right age.

Meredith 43:18
I don't think that's ever been an issue. I think it's more that they won't. They might not like something that I make. So I get I get into a lot of like, I don't want to eat that. Or I get a lot of dinner fatigue. And whether the dinner fatigue is coming from me or from them is not always consistent. Yeah. But I mean, I'm sick of making dinner because sometimes because either I feel like I'll make something that people don't want to eat. You know, I it's not it, you know, there's that, oh, you I went to all this trouble, and I made this elaborate thing. And then people don't eat it. There's that a little bit, but it's even just like, I don't care when I make I'll make anything, right, just tell me what it is that you'll all eat. So, um, there's a little bit of that my son eats you know, meat and rice, like, you know, sauteed meat, you know, just that plain grounding and rice for you know, it's default for like most meals and he's very happy. And then I'll go through this phase where I'm like, that's really just not okay, like, I

Unknown Speaker 44:22
have to do some

Meredith 44:23
diet. Yeah. And, and then he's not happy and then I'm frustrated. I'm happy. It's not that bad.

Scott Benner 44:30
Yeah. How old is he? He's 12 Oh, yeah. By placement Cole was 12 I gave him chicken every day. So wonder we can't fly and lay an egg. I have to be honest, I've gone through it took me years not to have my feelings hurt when I made a meal and everybody's like, it's fine. I'm like, fine. Like you like

Unknown Speaker 44:53
I've been in the kitchen since 230. What do you mean It's fine. It's amazing. And if it's not you shut up and eat it and smile and then just like Hey, Dad don't make that again. But while I'm still hot, Don't tell me it's not. Like I'm standing here. I'm like, Alright, here you go. What is this on it? Yes, sons, the

Meredith 45:14
best thing I did actually is I made a Google Doc, where I wrote down like I listed the title of, of different recipes with the link to where I found them. And then I made a couple of notes. So because the problem is I was saving things and that people were like, Oh, I really liked that chili you made. And I knew that if I made it, I either printed or saved it in printers or saved it somewhere or whatever. But I was like, which chili? Cuz I tried two or three. And they're like, you know, the one we had whenever? And I'm like, so then I'll make the chili that I think it is. And they're like, that one. That one was gross. And I'm like, I don't know which chili it was and I can't figure it out.

Scott Benner 45:58
I am so horrible. I know. I know I that that happens to they're like make this again. It was good. He make it you know, I got that wasn't the right recipe. Apparently. It really so you must hate cooking shows, right? Because it's just the view of things you can't do.

Unknown Speaker 46:13
Yeah, I don't watch cooking.

Scott Benner 46:15
The whole time. I was like, there's no way Meredith watches cooking shows they must be

Meredith 46:19
home decorating shows. And that's just aspirational. Yeah, it doesn't look like any of them.

Scott Benner 46:24
I so like, I like I said, I haven't had anything except protein. And you know, for I gotta be coming up on like, three weeks now. But on Sunday, I got Hey, Dad, can you make that pizza again? And so it's like homemade pizza like, so I'm going to make the dough from scratch. I'm going to do the whole thing, right? And I'm like, Am I really not going to have pizza? seems unlikely. You know, it seems unlikely. But I'm worried I'm worried that my body's gonna not be like, Oh, why are you having flour? Like, what are you doing? You? We haven't had that in four weeks by the time I eat it. And there'll be some sort of revolt? But I don't know.

Meredith 47:07
We don't do is sort of like, I don't I guess we eat all these specialized diets. But I don't do like a no, you know, no flour? No, whatever. I guess I do. I

mean, I do know gluten for some of the people I know. But it doesn't I don't, there's a pretty wide mixture of

Scott Benner 47:26
concepts in your eating style. It's just

Meredith 47:28
there's so many things. We don't eat that I feel like I can't restrict

Unknown Speaker 47:31
other things, right. So

Meredith 47:32
like, for example, a lot of what we eat, for at least for two of the kids overlaps with vegan, but there's no way we're vegans, because we eat so much meat, but they don't. But my daughter's don't eat are allergic to dairy and eggs. So I don't have any eggs in the house. Literally, they are not in the house. I have not ever had an egg in the house. And there's been no product that has eggs in it in the house. Which is of course a great low carb food.

Scott Benner 48:05
Yeah, well, so how does this all? Alright, I'll tell you what, I want to know how this intersects with type one. But I want to take a detour for a second first. And you don't have to talk too much about this if you don't want to, but you are helping me with something. And I want to thank you where other people can hear me. Thank you. Oh, seriously. So I mean, everybody who listens knows that. I like I just got done editing a show that's gonna go up tomorrow. And at one point in the show, the guy said FOMO, and he was hiking, and he went on this trail somewhere. And I'm gonna call the episode hiking the FOMO trail, which has almost nothing to do with anything that we spoke about, right. And then I'm gonna write a two sentence description that says, This guy has type one diabetes was was diagnosed as an adult, and teaches overseas. That's what I'm gonna write because by the time I found him, booked him, interviewed him, edited it, put it back together, I've got seven, eight hours into his episode. And I'm gone. Like at that point, like, I can't sit down and like, you'd be surprised that I just got done editing his show. And if you asked me to write a synopsis about it, I don't 100% know that I could, because I'm not listening to it for that as much during the editing process. And during the conversation. I'm just trying to keep the conversation moving. I'm trying to listen and ask questions that I imagine people want to know the answers to. So I'm never in conversation. The way human being is, while I'm making this podcast, right? So people complain to me a lot about there and the more popular the podcast gets, the more frequently I get complaints. They're always very kind complaints like Oh, I wish there was a better description of this show. And I always See that somewhere and think, yeah, I wish there was two, but I'm only one person. So this is pretty much what I have. And it was I on the private Facebook page, it came up again, pretty recently. And I just said, like, Look, if you guys want to do this, that'd be terrific. And you really took like control of it. And you were you were you were very nice about it, you weren't, you were eating soup, and you're like, I'll handle this I was, you were like, I can be a little helpful. I think I messaged you privately. And I'm like, just do this, if you want to do it, like just, but leave me the hell out of it. Like I can't, I can't really think about it too much. And, and you guys are doing like you put together like a group, right? There's 1516 people

Meredith 50:42
a great group of I think it's about 16 people. And, um, everyone is really, really invested and have great ideas about how to tag the episodes and summarize the episodes and give them different, you know, information that's will be helpful and more searchable for so that if people are looking for something specific that they can, and will still have all of your great fun titles, and people that want to listen from the beginning like I did, we'll do that. But if you have a kid that is going through puberty, and you really want to find something about that, or you're really struggling right now with your cow, you know, basil, Basil testing, and you want to look for that and not just find the defining diabetes episode about it, but you want to hear other people talking about it, you'll be able to search for that

Scott Benner 51:48
is very, I am genuinely excited. I used you the sample synopsis of Alyssa Wyler Stein's episode and I use the I

Unknown Speaker 51:56
did not know your cello and and

Scott Benner 51:59
I loved it. And so when I put it up, I was like, This is what these should look like. I found myself fairly disappointed in myself as I use it. I was like, Yeah, I should have been doing this. But at the same time, it's hard to it's a nice in my mind, it's a really, it's not just a nice have. It's an amazing have. But I know how well the podcast is doing. And it did that well without descriptions of the episodes too. So I'm not like, you know,

Meredith 52:25
I think the reason that it's so necessary, is because the podcast has done so well. And there are so many episodes now. Yeah, I think the more episodes there are, the more necessary it is. Because when there were only 20 or 50 or 80 or even 100, then it's fun to find out the Terry lives on a boat. But when they're 400 or 600, or hopefully 1000. Maybe you kind of want to search for something specific. And I think that the people that are interested in doing this LP Scott, are really interested because we've all found your podcasts so helpful for us. And it's a way for us to first of all, make it even more user friendly for us and other people, but also to say thanks cuz, you know, it's been great for us and for our kids. And for all the people that you've been helping,

Scott Benner 53:21
I really I very much appreciate that I seriously do it. This is and it's a pretty big departure for me because I was just like I met Meredith like, I listen, I know, as many of you as I can through like avatars and you know, things people say like, I can't really keep up with everybody, obviously. But you're, I remember your avatar, and I associate your avatar with reasonable things being said, Isn't that amazing? Like, that's how my brain works, right? And so you jumped in, I'm like, oh, reasonable lady with the curly hair in the picture, once the help. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 53:59
So

Scott Benner 54:00
I'm like, that makes sense to me. Because there are crazy people I can think of, and if they would have popped in, I would have been like, oh, stay quiet and pretend you don't see that. So I would have handled it a different way. But it really is amazing. You guys developed a list, like like basically, this form to fill out while somebody listens back to an episode and fills the form out so that the information can be put in. And I tried to I tried to give to the to the whole project on my end as much as I could to and I, I somebody donated some money through the blog. I use the money to pay for a service to do transcripts of the podcasts. And so very slowly, I've added transcripts online. I haven't told anybody yet they're there. If you find them, they're there, but I'm just I don't, I don't. I'm not correcting them. Meaning like I don't do a transcript and then go through and go we've made juicebox two words, you know Basil is with an eye like, you know, you'll get the idea if you're reading. But I've been adding them slowly because that is another thing people ask for that. They don't ask for a lot, but I'm like, Okay, well, that seems reasonable to do. So I've been doing that it's a ton of work. I swear to you, as I started doing it, I was like eight episodes into it. I was like, why did I do this? Should I continue to ignore people's desire for a transcript? But, but I am doing that. And I and I have heard back from a couple of people who found them on their own. I was like, Hey, I just read Episode 11. And I'm like, wow. And you have to understand that, from my perspective, I love the podcast, like I could listen to the podcast on my own. But it's still when you hear somebody say they read a transcript of a 45 minute conversation you had. It's, it's overwhelming to hear somebody say that, you know, they mean, you're just like, no, come on. Because I start talking in the kitchen. And halfway through my sentence, my wife walks out and I'm like, Oh, my God, like she, I like, sometimes I'll be like the other, like, a lot of people waiting to hear what I have to say. And she's like, I'm not one of them. And she like rolls out of the room. Like, Oh, Jesus, that was harsh, you know. But But anyway, my

Meredith 56:07
family's pretty sick of you, too. I talked about you a little too much.

Scott Benner 56:10
You tell them to screw off too. I don't care. If they are not careful. I'll feed them a blueberry.

Meredith 56:17
I think blueberries are okay, but only in maybe limited quantities.

Scott Benner 56:22
I did my best to guess. Like I have an app on my phone here. I can tell you right now, if

Meredith 56:29
you do, I'm gonna tell you, I think you can actually blueberries in almost in in a lot. We're gonna see if I can figure it out, anyway.

Scott Benner 56:39
Well, anyway, I really appreciate that you took the lead on this. I appreciate everyone who's doing it. I am trying to I'm figuring something out to say thank you to you all with because the truth is, is that once you get through the backlog of 400 of them, I'm going to need you to keep going because because a new ones gonna come out and then where are we gonna be?

Meredith 56:59
I think there are people there. We'll keep going. Troy nice to have a cup of them.

Scott Benner 57:05
A couple of blueberries.

Meredith 57:07
A cup of blueberries are green, I think well, they have fructans. They're green for fructose and lactose and Amazon service, all NGOs. But they're, they have fructans in them. So I know, okay, they're low in the quarter cup. But then they're yellow at a third of a cup. And they're red. If you have,

Scott Benner 57:30
oh, I see like severity. A whole cup of a quarter

Meredith 57:34
cup, you can have a quarter cup with no problem. And it starts to get problematic,

Scott Benner 57:40
then that sounds like something I did when I was younger.

Unknown Speaker 57:43
See, there you go.

Scott Benner 57:44
Yeah. Anyway, thank you very much. I really I genuinely appreciate it. It's it's been it's a very, like you guys, you obviously keep me in the loop. And it's like a very professional undertaking. I feel like a project manager. When I get it. I'm like, Wow, my people are working well together.

Unknown Speaker 58:00
They're good people. They're good people. I

Scott Benner 58:02
genuinely believe that everyone listening to this podcast is good. And I'll tell you that I come to that from that private Facebook group, because I because once it got to 7000 people, when it's still such a kind, gentle, lovely place to be. I was like, wow, there's something about this podcast that that you must pull in people like this or something, but it's just I don't know, I don't know how to quantify it, but it's absolutely It's lovely. So, alright, so before we finish like to finish up, I'd like to understand somebody is having an allergic reaction or a physical reaction, they can't figure out what it is they're pretty sure it's food. They try a fodmap diet, which is basic is very simply broken down is a three step process, stop eating high fodmap foods, slowly reintroduce them to see which ones are troublesome, once you identify them, that that cause symptoms you can avoid or limit them while enjoying everything else where you're free, unless you're your family, which is

Meredith 59:02
and you're really supposed to do with a dietitian for fodmaps I'd really recommend you do that with a dietitian but yes, get

Scott Benner 59:06
a doctor. And and so so that's the process. But what happens when you're low fodmap and type one, is it a more insulin situation? Or not? So

Meredith 59:19
not specifically really you eat the same way you otherwise would eat but there are certain things that we switched a little bit So for us it was just I know I looked at the low fodmap list and then I said okay, these are things that are issues for us because of diabetes. So for example, um, like I said, we were using apple juice for Lowe's, we switched to grape juice. Honey was a sweetener that we were using. I don't know whether that's really for diabetes, but whatever we switched to maple syrup. Artificial sweeteners are not good on a fodmap diet so that's, that's an issue. So, um, because artificial sweeteners are better if you're diabetic than using, you know, too much. Um,

Scott Benner 1:00:10
yeah. So that's just something less than death to think about, you know, what the, you know, the argument around artificial sweeteners are is they make you hungry, so you don't eat sugar, but you eat something else, and it might be a toss up anyway.

Meredith 1:00:23
Right, but in terms of just like drinking and stuff, so you don't want to have like one of those, you know, some kind of a drink with an artificial sweetener, or whatever else, you actually need sugar, but then you're going to have to dose for that or whatever. Um, you can't have high fructose corn syrup. That's something a lot. So lots of candies, and things don't work for for low. So a lot of it was really like, what are we going to use for Lowe's? more immediate,

Scott Benner 1:00:50
right? Like, like, when you need something to work right away, your brain goes to simple sugar. So what do you do in a panic situation?

Meredith 1:00:57
So that's so that that was the issue that was I was really interested in the question, the index thing was saying that, like, um, fructose, like the I was, I was listening to that, and some of the things that work faster are actually high and fodmap. So maybe that's why some of our things don't work as well. But we use grape juice, or it uses chocolate, which doesn't work as fast, but that just happens to be something that she uses. So she has allergy friendly chocolate bars that she keeps with her. And she's a bad she does use glucose tabs, um, now, but she didn't use too. Um, and then other things that were sort of relevant, that's not really low fodmap so much, but um, is sort of goes along with stomach issues, a lot of you really shouldn't have too much ibuprofen, so she was taking Tylenol, and she has migraines too, so. So Tylenol then would affect the G five. Now at least she's on the Dexcom g six, so she can have more Tylenol, but not too much Tylenol, because energy six will still go wonky if you get too much. So that's an issue. Um, gluten free pasta is something that you need to have are gluten free, and you know, you eat gluten free on the low fodmap diet. So that's higher carb than some of the other grains. So that's kind of an issue and a lot of the low carb foods also don't work with low fodmap because insulin in them, okay, um, which is a problem. So there's just this like, interaction of things, and I would say that that low fodmap interacts fine with diabetes. I think you just make some substitutions, I think and I would say you especially make substitutions for Lowe's. I would say the hardest thing is really probably the allergies and the diabetes because a lot of the low carb things that would be great go twos are things that my daughter's allergic to but that doesn't mean that everyone's allergic to sure um Wow Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:03:15
Well you you may if you're not tired then I don't be tired

Unknown Speaker 1:03:22
Are you allergic to anything?

Meredith 1:03:24
I I don't eat soy because it gives me migraines. But ironically you know my everyone else in the house can eat soy. But no, I'm just allergic to like dogs and cats and environmental stuff but

Unknown Speaker 1:03:37
don't choose Wow, Jesus Alright,

Meredith 1:03:41
but it won't kill me. You know,

Scott Benner 1:03:42
are your children gonna disclose this during dating? I think I think if they do they're limiting themselves they shouldn't they should keep it free

Meredith 1:03:51
my kids are real catches on just

Scott Benner 1:03:54
Hey, you know if we get married you won't be able to eat you know anything. I hope you enjoy fish and rice

Unknown Speaker 1:04:04
no fish sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
Actually,

Meredith 1:04:08
the girl is gonna fish my son Camembert attention to who? You know you got to think about like crack me up No

Unknown Speaker 1:04:16
no no.

Scott Benner 1:04:18
Anyway, I'm sure they have other I just I'm telling them just that they want to be earners. You know what I mean? Like, like wage earners, like so people are like, you know, we can only eat five things, but she makes a good living.

Meredith 1:04:31
Works, you know? Yeah, they do. They need to make a good living because they really like steak. steak and potatoes. No kidding.

Scott Benner 1:04:37
Yeah, I was gonna ask you. Is it more expensive to eat this way? Probably.

Meredith 1:04:40
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, our food bells are like nuts.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:45
Well, no, well, no pun intended.

Scott Benner 1:04:49
Our food bills are like nuts. Well, I'm just glad that you ate the nuts slowly to get rid of the nut allergies and didn't rub them on you because I was like, as you were saying, and I'm like, is Murdock gonna say we had to rub nuts on our kids then she didn't. And I was like, thank god anywho you were really kind of do this. I am trying really hard to get all people's styles of eating included in the podcast. I had been having Paul on recently talking about carnivore, I only got one half, like kind of sideways pushback online from somebody was like that's, you know, I forget what they said that fad eating and I was like, Listen, it's fat. He Call it whatever you want. I was like, the guy's got one of the most popular podcasts on Apple like it can't because it's a fad. Like, it must be because a lot of people are doing it. I don't know if it's right or wrong or not. I'm not I'm not making a judgement about it. I'm just trying to find out how other people eat and talk about it. So I really appreciate you doing this one because this one's specific. And you jumped right up and you're like, I can talk about fodmap. And I was like,

Meredith 1:05:54
get out of here. All right. And then you know how many people it'll it'll will be relevant for but I you know, I think it'll be

Oh, and I want to say one thing though. I did not cover is with all of our crazy eating things on. A one C is now down. The last time we had an appointment was down to 5.1. Wow.

Scott Benner 1:06:17
Well, that's because of me though. Yeah, I'm just I was joking. Stop.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:23
You know, let me make the joke, though. It is? Absolutely.

Scott Benner 1:06:27
That's very cool. Good for you. I'm, any of the other kids have markers for type one.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:33
The yellow one does,

Scott Benner 1:06:34
yeah, do we? Do we tell which one it is? Or we just tell them? It's one of you.

Meredith 1:06:38
I know at the end and my child knows. But I don't need to

Scott Benner 1:06:41
know I wouldn't ask you to tell everybody else. I was just wondering if you were like, hey, if you got on both tests, and you said, Hey, one of us got it. But I'm not gonna tell you which one?

Meredith 1:06:48
No, I don't think I would do that the child does No.

Scott Benner 1:06:51
Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad you know, how long good you look. Did you use trial that

Meredith 1:06:56
did trial net, and it was fairly soon after diagnosis.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:03
So a couple years ago? Well, and follow you something to look forward to?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:09
We're not. Thanks, God.

Scott Benner 1:07:12
Berta. Thank you very, very much. So that was Meredith and this was another episode of how we eat here on the Juicebox Podcast. Look, for more coming soon. I'm gonna ask you, what am I gonna say to you? Yeah, there's nothing to say. There's no ads. I'll tell you what, though. If you've been thinking about checking out the T one D exchange, because you've heard me talking about it. I'm gonna just put the information right here after the music. And if you haven't been thinking about doing that, just let me remind you that the show grows, when you share with others. Please subscribe in your podcast player, we're following your podcast player. If you're not listening in a podcast player, consider it. And that's it. I really appreciate your listening, the show's doing fantastic. It's all because you guys and I couldn't be more grateful. Last thing, the T one D exchange. The T one D exchange is looking for adult type ones and caregivers of type ones who are us residents to participate in a quick survey that can be completed in just a few minutes from your computer, or your phone. Right from your home. Like on your sofa, you could do it. After you finish the questions. I took the let's say I did it in about seven or eight minutes. I didn't find the questions to be deeply probing. They were actually kind of basic questions about type one diabetes, but they need the data. They need the answers to these questions from many, many people. So I was happy to throw into them. Anyway, when you're done, that's it. You're done. You know, it's 100% anonymous, it's HIPAA compliant. You don't have to go to a doctor or a remote site. And you're still helping people think you might get an email from them like once a year where they'll be like, hey, there's another opportunity here for you. And if you are interested, you do it. And if not, don't do it. It's just you. Putting your answers into a registry that allows them to take that data and make decisions. They influence things that happen in the world for people to type ones. For example, test trip coverage, Medicare coverage for CGM ada guidelines for pediatric a one c goals, that kind of stuff. They've impacted, even labeling for CGM to include fingerstick replacements that data helped with that. This is super simple to do an incredibly valuable T one d exchange.org. forward slash juice box you get there. Click on join our registry now, answer the simple survey and you're done. If you do it, you're helping other people with type one diabetes and you're helping the podcast. I hope you check it out. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox

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