#451 Swimming Skittles

Quite a journey…

Mike is an adult living with 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, everyone, and welcome to Episode 451 of the Juicebox Podcast.

So sometimes I struggle to describe the episodes here in the beginning. And when I do, it's mostly because so much happened, that I don't know how to encapsulate it. This is going to be one of them. You're about to hear Mike, Mike's an adult. He is a father, he's a husband, he has type one diabetes. And the best I can say is, this is a story of him growing up and living with type one. I think it's incredibly interesting and valuable. I do not know how to put it into a sentence. Please remember, while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan are becoming bold with insulin.

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

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

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

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

Mike Sasser 2:05
I am 3838.

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 2:49
Okay, sounds good. So

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 3:17
Yeah.

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 3:31
like

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 4:35
It's funny.

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

Unknown Speaker 4:49
raise resume,

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

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

Unknown Speaker 5:01
That's exactly right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 5:55
It's possible Oh,

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 7:42
Would that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Sasser 12:41
is pretty bad.

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

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

Unknown Speaker 13:46
I have a couple

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

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

Unknown Speaker 14:09
No, because

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 16:59
It's crazy. But

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 19:19
And then,

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

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

Unknown Speaker 20:21
Yeah,

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

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

Unknown Speaker 21:15
my,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 29:40
no.

Unknown Speaker 29:42
You know, I mean,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 34:39
I guess, you know,

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

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

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

Scott Benner 39:08
screw it up

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 43:34
Yep, yep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 50:31
helped

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

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

Unknown Speaker 52:54
we gotta

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 56:17
Right? Yeah. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 58:15
yeah. And that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:12:23
Oh, man,

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:12:35
I appreciate it.

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:14:37
know. And

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:20:19
Yeah. Oh,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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#450 After Dark: Psychedelics

ADULT TOPIC WARNING. Psychedelic Drug use and Type 1 Diabetes

Psychedelic Drug use and Type 1 Diabetes

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 4:05
Yeah,

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 4:37
opinion? Oh no, I

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

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

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

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

Ashlyn 5:26
2008 I think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 6:57
Um,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 8:22
yeah, make sure

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

Unknown Speaker 8:50
And

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 10:41
moment.

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

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

Unknown Speaker 11:02
Wow. And yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 12:09
bunch of barriers and everything on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 16:42
Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 17:42
So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 19:23
No, no,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 21:21
And this helps with that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 24:01
Oh, yeah.

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 25:12
Oh, yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 27:04
No, they're not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashlyn 30:11
I could never I

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 32:06
you already know

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

Unknown Speaker 32:19
No,

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 35:53
have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 44:45
So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 55:58
No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:02:38
No,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:07:20
No, I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:15:36
Yeah, newsflash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 1:28:55
probably booked. She

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

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

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

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

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

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#449 Diabetes Pro Tip: Postpartum

Baby is here, now what?

Scott and Jenny Smith, CDE share insights on type 1 diabetes care

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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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 0:11
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 449 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is the 22nd installment in the diabetes pro tip series. The pro tip episodes began way back at Episode 210. And obviously have happened 21 times prior to this one. If you'd like to see all of those episodes in one place, you can actually go to diabetes pro tip comm they're all right there. Or at Juicebox Podcast comm you scroll down a little bit to where it says pro tip episodes, and you can scroll through them there. The episodes of course are also available in any podcast player that you listen to. Now, each one of these episodes has one thing in common. My friend, Jenny Smith, Jenny is a CDE, who has had Type One Diabetes for over 30 years. She holds a bachelor's degree in human nutrition and biology from the University of Wisconsin. Jenny is a registered and licensed dietitian, a certified diabetes educator and a certified trainer on most makes and models of insulin pumps, and continuous glucose monitoring systems. She is also pretty much the only person I asked diabetes questions to and I love her in these episodes. At the end of this episode, which by the way, if you're a person who's like, Oh, I'm never gonna have a baby or I'm a boy, or whatever it is, you're thinking right now postpartum doesn't apply to me. These diabetes pro tip episodes are, I think terrific. And I think they all go together. There's a lot to learn from listening to this episode, because at its essence, it's dealing with huge variables, which is what you'll find after you've had a baby. So doesn't apply. But it does. You'll see at the end of this episode, I'll tell you where you can find Jenny, I'll tell you where the rest of the pro tip episodes are and what the topics are. And anyway, I think you should listen to this one whether you're going to have a baby or not. Please remember while you listen that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. And last thing, this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, go to my Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box to get yourself a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod or to see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash ui 30 days free. You heard me my Omni pod comm forward slash juice box go check it out. The podcast is also sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. The most easy to use, easy to carry accurate meter that my daughter has ever held, owned or used. Contour Next One forward slash juicebox. Get yourself that Contour. Next One. All right, well, that took three minutes, which is probably two minutes longer than it took mostly to get pregnant. So here's Jenny bump. As time passes, I'm becoming more and more aware of a lot of pregnant women or women who want to get pregnant who have type one diabetes who are listening to the show. And who are enjoying that there's a series back in the show with Samantha where I interviewed her every three months like during her pregnancy.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:38
Yeah, I remember you mentioning her and

Scott Benner 3:40
that apparently is making the rounds on the on the internet and the way people listen to things. And I just get a number of emails and I'm sure you do as well that are either that start off with like, I can't, I'm never gonna be able to get pregnant because I can't get myself together. And then they go I can't believe I did it or I'm doing it you know, like that kind of a thing. But then there's that. The rest of it that I guess we stopped thinking about because the baby's out. And I don't know that's that's weird. So a person in my mind, being a person who's never been pregnant and doesn't have type one. That journey seems painfully taxing to me from going from not thinking you'll be ever, ever be able to have a baby to figuring it out to then doing it having these insanely great a onesies while you're pregnant. And I don't know it just feels like it would be super simple to just not abandon it but lose sight of it after you have the baby because of all the things that happened after that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:45
And I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that the good majority of women really think that they're just going to just give it all like all the work that I've put in over the past, you know, nine to maybe 12 months if they really did a lot of really good preconception management to kind of get there and managed, it could have been a long haul of, you know, nine to 18 months, let's call it of trying to really strategically nail things down. But, and I don't think that if you've done that, or even if you've come into pregnancy, maybe not where you wanted, but you really did an awesome job of mastering things and getting things taken care of through the pregnancy. By the end of pregnancy, most women are like, Oh, I'm just gonna, like throw it all in the basket, everything I learned how to do. But there is a big piece postpartum that, especially as a first time mother, is completely 100%. New. Yeah, it's I mean, it is it's like being thrown into like, a new job. In a country where you don't speak the language, they're like, Here you go, it's all yours to like, figure

Scott Benner 5:52
it out. And by the way, the job will die if you drop it or remove it,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:57
or you're gonna kill a million people, if you don't do it exactly the right way. That's

Scott Benner 6:00
how it feels, isn't it?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:02
That's kind of what it is postpartum. I think a lot of the a lot of the Up, Down comes in, because you're trying to manage something 100% new, or the hormones that shift and change after you deliver can be a roller coaster of effect. And for me, I usually say, in a general sense, the first three months post delivery, is going to be kind of a roller coaster up and down. Mainly because especially if you're nursing or pumping to feed your child, the shift in hormones, and the shift in how much you're nursing how much you're pumping, can drive things, the opposite way that you would think that they might, which makes it very difficult to establish, I would have usually like over Bolus for this or I would have usually been really aggressive to nail down this now climbing blood sugar, but I'm going to nurse in the next 15 minutes. So I really can't do this strategy, because otherwise I'm going to take so there's a lot that changes postpartum.

Scott Benner 7:22
Okay, so not only. So there are some people who enter a pregnancy and already have that agency that they need. But But despite that, whether you're a person who had to get there, or you were there already, once you're pregnant, your insulin needs, they drastically change. I know it's not like trimester to trimester Exactly. Right. But there are times when you don't need as much as you think and times you need so much more that it's hard to imagine how much more you need. Right? Right. So now you have that in your head, you've been pregnant, you're having breakfast that prior to pregnancy, took three units during pregnancy took 12 units, and now you've you're holding the baby, you're thinking is this 12 units? Is it three units? Why does the weight of the world feel like it's on my shoulders? Like you know, am I nursing? All this stuff comes together? And how do you do that? It's so you started by saying the hormones, and I only want to spend a second on this. But you know, I'm older. And growing up, it doesn't happen much anymore, like society has really shifted, you know, in the way people are towards each other. And that might be harder for like somebody in their mid 20s to believe but when 30 years ago, you know, stuff that you think of as a joke now is actually how people would think about women sometimes like oh, you know, she gets upset, or you know what time of the month it is, or that kind of thing, not giving any, like, credence to the idea that when your hormones are jumping on, it's really difficult to deal with. And you're right and, and that women are in a particularly vulnerable situation because of that. So how you feel from a hormonal shift could be physically, it also could mean your your clarity. And I think what you said is just really important to remember, especially for first time mothers, when you have a baby and they give it to you, it does genuinely feel like someone just told you that the fate of the world rests in your hands. And you don't understand what to do. But if you mess it up for certain the universe won't exist anymore. It really feels like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:32
And some people have really awesome babies that are like the easiest. They just they sleep when you'd expect that they nurse beautifully. They sleep again, like they don't have any like, major poop problem. Like you know, you just have this like what you would call like, I have no trouble with my perfect baby, blah, blah, blah. And then there are women who just don't like some kids are just not type of an infant as a newborn, and I think when you have diabetes to then it brings in management again of something that's completely new. I don't know, should I do this? Should I try this is the doctor right? You know, am I gonna do this wrong to my child, blah, blah, blah. And then there's diabetes in the picture, and the timing of insulin, and the timing of adjusting and remembering to change your pump site or to actually take your basal insulin injection. I mean, there's a world of scheduling difference that comes into the picture postpartum.

Scott Benner 10:34
And I would imagine, too, and this is just me imagining but if you live for nine months within a one seat, and like the low fives, there's got to be a part of you as a type one is just like, wow, I want this for the rest of my life to wait. And now you feel like if it's going away, now, it's another failure on top of, I don't understand why this baby throws up all the time. Or, you know, like, I, I'm sure people are like, Oh, yeah, like I've everyone's heard the joke about like, the baby peed on me one time. Yeah, that's fine. My son couldn't hold down food for months, until we figured out what to give him. And, and the culmination of it was, quite honestly, Kelly holding him at her grandfather's funeral. When basically it felt like somebody took a half a gallon of spoiled milk and dumped it on Kelly, because it just came out of him like that at a funeral. And she had only been a mom for a little time. And it's hard. And it's so it's fun to talk about, like, oh, the baby peed on me. It throws up all the time. But sometimes it throws up at a funeral. And you're hormonal, and your grandfather's bed.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:40
Now your CGM is going off because your blood sugar is skyrocketing. Because you're stressed out about said incident.

Scott Benner 11:46
Yep. And I was gonna say my wife didn't have type one diabetes. So then all that other stuff that goes on top of it. So what do you so is it similar? Like, could you sit down and make a flowchart? Is it similar for people at at least at some core level? Or is it going to be different for every woman?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:05
There are similarities as you know, we talk about in our in my pregnancy book that I co wrote, it's, there's enough similarity, just like in pregnancy, I mean, everybody's going to have some shifts and changes that are a little bit different, very specific to you. Just like diabetes is very specific person to person, but postpartum Yes, I mean, the transition typically, as soon as you have delivered and the placenta has been delivered as well. It's, it's like the placenta, which is the major like functional hormonal unit. Once that's gone, and baby is out, the hormone shift. It's like a drop off a cliff. It's like, it's gone fast, which is the reason that we usually say, based on where you were, at this point in pregnancy, just before delivery in terms of insulin use, if you didn't know where you were pre pregnancy, so you could see how much things shifted up by the end of pregnancy, then we usually recommend adjusting basil rates down by about 50% Wow, okay, that's the that's expected, it could be a little less, it could be a little bit more person to person, again, may differ. But that's a baseline adjustment. So if you've never been told what to do, and nobody's directing very well expect that postpartum you should cut your bezels by 50%. Another really good idea is to most women know when their due date is. If you're using an insulin pump, especially set up a profile, that's called postpartum, okay, because as soon as you deliver, all you have to enable to do is enable that.

Scott Benner 13:39
Wow, that's that was gonna be my question. Like you're saying, like, placenta comes out, you take a deep breath, and go, I need my pump right now. And and that's it. 50% less

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:48
50% less. Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:50
So that placenta is please forgive me if this is ham fisted, but it's the it's the equivalent of a giant sausage cheese pizza sitting in your stomach that somebody just reaches in and takes out all the sudden and now you don't have that impact anymore. Correct. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if anybody's ever seen a placenta but it is very close to a cheese pizza. When you look at it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:12
They're very interesting. organs. I mean, they're, and the cool thing is that your body creates it for one purpose. And then it's gone. It's not like your heart which is like, you know, it's always there for your whole entire life. It's like your body makes this thing just like it makes the baby and then oh, it's all done it's only got this like nine month life

Scott Benner 14:35
that's it. I was just thinking this I it's funny. You said that because I was just thinking the same thing. Like why can't we just tell our body to make another heart? Yeah, like I mean, if we can do that, it could at least you know, vacuum or something, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:47
at least also make another pancreas man.

Scott Benner 14:51
I mean, why not? I'm not a doctor, but somebody should get on that.

Unknown Speaker 14:56
I entirely agree.

Scott Benner 15:00
Imagine if you just had a panel on your back and you flip the switch and then nine months later your body just spit out an organ. There you go. Have a little slot on your side. I don't know why this isn't possible, probably because of science, but never. Okay, so baby comes out. We're all like, ooh, and and on taking those weird bloody pictures that people take in the beginning and everything and then I change my basil rate. What am I going to see next, my budget? Does the body begin making milk at birth? Or does it even start prior to that?

So you've decided that you want an insulin pump, you've decided that you don't want it to be tubed. Now you're gonna get yourself an omni pod. I think that's a good move. But there's more that can help you make your decision to things can happen when you go to my Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box, you can ask on a pod to send you a free, no obligation non working demo of the Omni pod that's called a pod experience kit, they'll send you out a pod that you can wear to see how you feel about it. But you can also check on your eligibility for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash system. Right? This is an actual usage trial, you can use the Omnipod dash for 30 days, if you're eligible for this, and you'll be able to find out about your eligibility or asked for your pod experience kit at my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box, it is super simple to do will only take you a couple of moments. And the next thing you know whether you're a type one or type two, using insulin, you're going to be able to find out what it's like to have that on the pot, the insulin pump that my daughter has been using since she was four years old. And then a couple of months. She's going to be 17. for 13 years, Arden has been wearing it on the pod every day. And I promise you it has been a friend in this journey, like no other. So why don't you find out if tubeless insulin pumping is for you. My Omni pod.com forward slash juice box there are links in your show notes right there in your podcast player. Or at Juicebox podcast.com. When you use my link, you're supporting the show Miami pod comm forward slash juicebox give it a try. There's literally nothing to lose. There's no downside to this, have that no obligation demo pod sent to you. Or check into that 30 day free trial the dash see if you're eligible. Here's one more no brainer for you. The Contour Next One blood glucose meter Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. I clicked it on there myself just now clicked it on there. That was my fancy word for typing. I just brought up the website. Geez, sorry, I just brought up that link right now Contour Next One comm forward slash juice box. Because there's so much here that's good for you. I can't remember it all when I'm making this ad you get there, there's a list of their products. They have resources, like the contour diabetes app, and a blood sugar log book for downloading. But there's also the possibility that you can get a Contour Next One meter for free, you go to meters and strip savings, and you click on free Contour Next One meter to see if you're eligible. They have test strip saving programs, it's it's also there under that tab. And it's incredibly possible that a Contour Next One meter could be cheaper out of pocket than you're paying now through insurance for another meter. Now maybe it won't be maybe it's gonna be better for you to go through insurance, maybe not. But there's that possibility. And you can check into it at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. Why am I telling you to do this? Because this meter is the most accurate meter Arden has ever used. It has Second Chance test strips meaning you can touch the blood not get enough, go back get the right amount without wasting a test trip and you still get that accurate test. That's just amazing Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. In the past I never thought about the meter Arden had but now I do. Not only do you deserve one that's accurate and easy to use and easy to carry that has a bright light. But your management will thank you because having accurate data is the best way to make good decisions.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:36
The way that it should happen again, everybody's a little different and what happens. But what should happen is a first milk is created. It's called colostrum. And essentially that's very short lived in production before milk comes in. It could be a short lived, you know, few days it could be 24 hours before your milk comes in. But that milk is a very like, it's very simple form of nutrition for the baby, it's kind of what the baby is in need of right here and now, and there's not much of it. So it's not like, if you were to pump it, you're gonna get like six ounces of it. That's just that what you would get, right? So but in that simple form, and with the loss of the pregnancy hormones, now you have this sensitized system that was resistant, leading up to this point. And so there and also lies some mental shift, the shift of, you know, nearing the end of pregnancy coming, you know, Pre-Bolus isn't 15 minutes, it's sometimes 45 minutes by the end of pregnancy, in order to have good flat after meal blood sugars, well, now you have to completely flip that switch, and it's back to maybe I need 10 minutes, maybe I need no Pre-Bolus in the early couple of weeks post delivery. So not only is it that your bezel shifts, but it's also that your ratios, shift your insulin to carb, your correction factor your Pre-Bolus time. So there's, there's a major transition,

Scott Benner 21:18
right? You just become a completely different person with Type One Diabetes, just like that. Right? And so is it similar to, but more drastic to getting your period like being that, like, there's that, you know, what I mean, I don't know if it works for everybody. But Arden's three sometime now that she's on birth control, she's more like two different people during the month. But and, and it can be, it's drastic for us, you know, she can go from a unit an hour to two units an hour, basil, depending on what time of the month it is. And it does, but it doesn't flip like a switch. It's not like, but I can see it happen, happens over hours and maybe a day, but it doesn't happen. It's not like at three o'clock. She's like, I just got my period and everything changes immediately. Why is it that just blown up? Much more? Because I mean, what are you really talking about? So for people who don't know, like, I go into pregnancy, I just said, I go into print, let's just say, Alright, I'm pregnant. I have type one diabetes, if

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:22
you're a lady with long curly hair, I'm

Scott Benner 22:24
a lady. I have type one diabetes, I get pregnant, my basal rate is 1.5 an hour in the first trimester, is it? How much does it go up?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:35
A lot in the early weeks. Typically, we a good round estimate is if you know the percent of increase you've had in the days before your cycle starts. If you've taken enough notice, and you have arrived and you offset it by a percent of Temp Basal or an extra basil dose or whatnot, you can expect those early weeks of pregnancy, typically up to about 678 weeks, that you're going to have an increase in insulin need. That's pretty similar. It might be more dramatic than that. It may be less, but you're going to have a ramp as your body is increasing. Its production of now pregnancy hormones to sustain the pregnancy in furthering along.

Scott Benner 23:17
Okay, so I should have said, my my Bolus was ones that we can keep track, right? It say I'm one usually when I get my period, I'm too. So then we're gonna say in the first six to eight weeks of pregnancy, I'm probably going to be more like two more like I have my period, correct? Yes. And they're right. And then from there it goes, it goes up again.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:38
So end of first trimester, most women notice either a plateau, okay? Or they notice a bit of a dip off in their insulin needs. For just that end of the first trimester, usually, we say on average, it's about it starts at about eight weeks, goes through about 12, maybe even 1414 weeks, which is that vertel very early second trimester start time period of sensitivity, you may have needed to back off of your Pre-Bolus time again a little bit, you may have gone down slightly in your baseline basil needs just more sensitivity around meal boluses and kind of almost feeling like things have sort of stabilized like you have a little bit more wiggle room like I can eat three chips in between and not actually Bolus for it because it doesn't seem to do anything. Right, right or right. And then second trimester again, a little bit of a nudge up potentially in early second trimester. But a little bit more stability up until about 18 weeks 18 to 20 weeks. We kind of refer to it as the the slow roller coaster climb. So if you imagine you're at the bottom of the roller coaster to begin with, and now around 18 to 20 weeks you start that slow like click click click the roller coaster Hill and that kind of progresses you Increase in resistance along the way all the way up until about 3536 ish weeks just

Scott Benner 25:07
a steady climb.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:09
It's a steady climb. And initially in the second trimester, it's on average, expect to make some tweaks to things about every two weeks give or take in Basal as well as insulin to carb ratio as well as the Pre-Bolus, time continues to lengthen, your correction factor may need to get more aggressive. But usually by the beginning of the third trimester, that's the most resistant time, okay. And often through like 34 to 36 weeks, as you're

Scott Benner 25:38
talking, I'm literally have a piece of paper in front of me, and I'm just kind of moving a pen, as you're talking, like trying to make a graph of what to understand. And especially now it's going to grow up every two weeks. So I know this isn't mathematical. And I'm not telling anybody that if you started with one unit, the day before you got pregnant, but where can somebody end up who started at one unit an hour, where could they end up at 35 weeks.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:01
So insulin needs, on average, double or triple from pre pregnancy to the end of pregnancy, or what we would consider just pre delivery time, which is about by 36 weeks, by 36 weeks, we reach again, this sort of like plateau place where again, some sensitivity can start to come back, some women's Basal needs start to dip off just slightly shouldn't be aggressive or heavy. And in fact, it's a time period that if you are having aggressive changes in your insulin in terms of like drops in need, it's a time to check in with your provider. Some of it can be relevant to placental failure. And so it's a time again, if things changed drastically that you would check in. But otherwise, it's expected a little bit of a nudge down a little bit of increase in sensitivity kind of creep back in before you actually deliver. But on average, you know, how much to adjust. Like I said, most women either double or triple their needs from three to about that 36 weak point.

Scott Benner 27:04
And so I now you have the baby. And you could be going from this mindset on three units an hour. back to why Yeah, back to one all of a sudden, exactly. And on top of that all the sensitivity around meals has changed. And and you're telling me nursing is going to drop the blood sugar

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:24
nursing for most women who have good milk supply, and are able to, you know, pump or nurse completely without you know, most women experience especially in the early weeks, usually about the first eight to 12 ish weeks post a delivery, notice some shifts down in glucose. After nursing, during or after, if your child nurses for a lengthy period of time, you could notice it during the nursing session itself. Some women notice it only at certain times of day versus the whole day, you know, having to consistently pay attention every nursing session they're eating, you know, like to glucose tablets, or having half a juice box or something like that. I mean, our recommendations are once you once you are a few weeks out from delivery, kind of baby by that point has some typical sleep wake poop kind of patterns, you're probably still nursing about every three ish hours, maybe a little lengthier overnight, as long as your baby's nursing well during the day, or feeding well during the day. But you know, most often if you're going to nurse in the aftermath of a meal, a good recommendation is to take the bolus dose down or count carbs, but under dose by you know 25%.

Scott Benner 28:47
So it's dramatic enough that if I eat, I keep saying I if the lady eats before nursing, that meal won't need as much insulin because you're going to need some of that meal. So that means if you're not planning on eating, and you're going to nurse, you need to eat something going into the nursing,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:03
typically going into nursing or during the nursing session to prevent a low. Yes, and it could be anywhere. It could be simple. It could be five grams of carb, it could be as much as 15 grams of carb. It just depends. And that's where you know, looking at things like insulin on board. Yeah, you might not be bolusing and nursing directly after but if it's still like within two or three hours after you Bolus, you still have some active insulin from that Bolus. And we tell people I at least I say and I know I feel like you agree with having active insulin while you're exercising is a pretty sure way to make yourself low. But and so I'd want to avoid active insulin during nursing as well or plan for it.

Scott Benner 29:48
And the other thing is there too. If you can go negative insulin and get through exercise without dropping you can't do that with nursing this nursing more taxing on your body then some forms of exercise. Is that fair? Like, is there a correlation to think about it in? There are no,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:07
I guess there's some relation to think about it. I think, like, I was thinking of overnight, right? Where for the most part, moms, dads, they're tired at night with a newborn, many people are. And if that's the case, you're likely going to bed at like nine o'clock like nursery child and you're like, Okay, go into sleep, because I'm going to be up again at like midnight, one o'clock to do this all over again. You may have eaten dinner at like, seven o'clock, you're going to bed Well, you're well into basil insulin by let's call it 11pm. Right. So any time you're going to nurse after that, and you're only on basil. And I experienced this myself for both my kids, Basil overnight, if I even if I had it at all, am I of basil. While I was nursing kids overnight, in those early months, it was like near nothing. My basil was like, point 2.25 overnight, it was already down to almost nothing. And if I nursed and didn't still have something minimal, like I actually made these, what are called like lactation cookies. They're made with like oats and flax and peanut butter and stuff that helps with lactation, blah, blah, blah, but I made them so they were each about five grams of carb. But they were nice, because I could eat it, it had some stability to it, it wasn't just pure glucose. So it had some stability. And so I've usually eat it as soon as I started nursing, or something like trail mix some nuts and seeds with a little bit of like dried fruit in it, something that was no more than about five or 10 grams of carb. And that helped with the stability component with rather than the bank I

Scott Benner 31:46
was dying. And so this is another time, you know, where the the food choices you make are going to make things easier for you to get you can and you know, so it's gonna, you're gonna have a different scenario going into nursing, if you're like, Hey, I know what to do. I'll have a handful of this and a little bit of that, and that's gonna work out perfectly. But on Thursday, when you're like, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna have ice cream before I nurse there's gonna be all everything about ice cream still exist there and your diabetes. Okay,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:15
in fact, those kinds of things, you know, as we know, ice cream, typically should cause a bit of a rise possibly later fat, depending on how much have you ate, you know, two spoonfuls, probably Yeah. But like the whole point of it, probably.

Scott Benner 32:29
You're telling me that there's a way that I can get I can have ice cream far enough out in the future ahead of my nursing where I could balance that fat rise against the nursing. You know, there are some lunatics that listen to this podcast are gonna try that I saw somebody online this morning, who's trying to stay 100% in range till they get to their endos appointment and they're doing it. That's awesome. Oh, my God.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:51
That's a lot of

Scott Benner 32:54
meat. Yeah, I don't know. I don't do that. So I for Arden, I think they just get there. They got a little like, I just want to say

Unknown Speaker 33:04
to them, that's what I want

Scott Benner 33:06
to tell people too. I know it sounds difficult in the beginning to have a baby. But if you want to know how good you will get at it at some point. Here's a great example. About two minutes ago, there was a bang in Jenny's house that was so loud. I thought the world was coming to end. He didn't flinch. She didn't stop talking. It was that's what happens. You eventually you just become a steely eyed missile man. She just did not move. She's just

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:33
because there are beings all day in my house. I mean, when you work, you know from your own home office, and you have children in your home. I'm sure there will be more bangs. I don't know what they're doing upstairs. But they are having fun. It was so

Scott Benner 33:45
it was just a great example of how you do become really great at parenting after you've had kids for I swear to you, you did Oh, yes. I don't need it. It's almost like you didn't hear it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:56
Don't pay attention. Sometimes. Oh, yep. Sometimes like that. Like I have a big sign that my husband made for me. And it's outside my office door. And one side says quiet zone mommy is working. And the other side is mommy is done. You may enter and be loud is what it says. Well, you know, when I'm working, it's still always in the quiet zone. Well, you know, with an EIGHT and a four year old. They know what the sign says. But that doesn't always still click into place.

Scott Benner 34:28
So yeah, does not overwhelm what they want in their hearts at that moment. That's for sure. I listen artists. It's funny. Arden's gonna be 17 in a couple of months. Wow. Isn't that crazy? And I saw her go into where my wife was working the other day. She looked at me like she was six like, Hey, watch this. slides into Kelly's chair sits on top of Legos. Mom, can you rub my head? Kelly's like, you know, reaching around for the keyboard and everything. So it will it will you won't always feel overwhelmed. How many people do you? I don't I'm not sure gonna say how many people but I mean, do you see women generally able to stick to their diabetes goals after pregnancy? Or should they expect it's going to get out of whack? And they're going to have to do some work to get it back? Like how does that usually go?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:18
I, I see that you should expect that there's going to be fluctuation that you will have to learn to adjust to, I myself, I had to learn to adjust. Because, you know, as much as I know, clinically, and professionally, the experience itself speaks volumes about what you need to transition through. And so I think every woman postpartum should expect that things are going to be a little bit wonky here for a bit of time. And I mean, some things that I think, helped me transition where I prepped some meals and froze them prior to baby coming, you know, and whether you have diabetes or not, that can be really, really helpful. You know, some of those kinds of things I also had snacks planned I had, meanwhile, you end up sometimes nursing your child wherever is comfortable, you know, planned places, you know, in the baby's room, in your bedroom, and a comfy chair in the living room, just some things that were like easily reachable, that I didn't have to like, call to somebody to bring me and I just had glucose tablets, and some juice boxes, like trail mix, and that kind of stuff sort of set multiple places around. So I mean, there's some planning that you can do ahead of time. But the diabetes management piece of it, it kind of learned as you go, I mean, I'd say that about the women that I work with through pregnancy, if I had to estimate, I'd say about 50% of them end up sort of sticking with me a little bit longer postpartum, just because especially then the new moms, you know, ones that already have one or two kids. They're like, Ah, yeah, I think I got this, you know?

Scott Benner 37:09
So does being pregnant with type one, give you an advanced. So what do I want to say here? There are so many times when I'm making this podcast, that it occurs to me that success with diabetes hinges, a good deal on your desire to be successful, and your ability to feed that desire with effort. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And so you, you get pregnant. And then it becomes like this thing we were talking about, in the beginning like this, I have this feeling that you are in charge of the universe all of a sudden, and I will tell you to, and I mentioned it sometimes when I talk to adults who didn't have particularly well managed, like, teen years or whatever, a lot of them have a through line, they started to care more about themselves, where they started caring more about another person, like they want and then they wanted to be healthy or because they wanted to be in this relationship or because they wanted to go to do something or, and the baby falls in that category to me like I want to, I'm going to do this so that the baby can be healthy, and that the number of women I've talked to who were living really unmanaged lives with type one diabetes, and then all of a sudden, 4.8 a one sees, you know, they mean an eating like, a lot because they're growing a baby. It happens. I just see it a lot. And so I always kind of think personally, as a person who's never going to have a baby and hopefully never have type one diabetes. There's something about that motivation in there. That I guess the fight in postpartum is to not, I don't know if it's something you can stop, but for all these things that are going to happen to you postpartum to try to still whittle out a little bit of your energy or effort to devote to your blood sugar.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:05
Absolutely. And I think a good reason there too, in terms of diabetes postpartum is glucose management still translates into that time period for the sake of the child even though they're no longer growing in you. And your blood sugars aren't as direct have an impact, postpartum if you are nursing and you are not managing your glucose, as optimally as you know would be helpful. Those higher glucose levels are going to impair your ability to make enough milk. Okay, if left high, your ability will be decreased. You will also be more dehydrated as you nurse it takes fluid out of you if you're not putting it back and glucose levels are also trending high. That in and of itself is a I'm going to make your glucose management more difficult.

Scott Benner 40:03
Does it change the milk itself?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:05
To a degree? I mean years ago, we don't we don't talk about this really much anymore. Although I have heard some women who've asked me Should I just, you know, pump when I'm really, really high and then dump it because I've been told that that I sugar, milk is really bad for my baby, I mean, overall, increment of right now my blood sugar is high, because I ate something and didn't really have the right carb count, and I'm knocking it down Should I not feed my hungry child right now, absolutely not, go ahead and feed your child nurse your child, pump, whatever, don't get rid of the milk, your body works really hard to make that milk don't get rid of. But the goal is to have more sustained levels that are still in target to so you're able to continue to make milk and that the amount of milk sugar that's in that that breast milk is stable, right? That it's stable, and at the level that it's supposed to be protein fact, carb content of milk changes as the milk as the baby's kind of needs change through the growth cycle. So you want that amount of natural carbon there to be appropriate. If you're sustaining blood sugars, you know, well above 180, you can guarantee that your milk is richer in carb, not by like loads and gallons. But overall, you're supplying your child with bits more carb, and in a tiny growing body. A little bit can be a lot.

Scott Benner 41:36
Okay, that's it just occurred to me like we talked about undiagnosed people can, their urine can smell sweet, or their breath can smell sweet. I was like, I wonder if it could happen to the milk through that makes sense. So much like most of this about diabetes, sustaining low variability is always just very important. No bouncing around, you know, that kind of thing. But if you just threw, like, say you were a person who had the Weber's like, boom, I'm going back to my nine a one see that milk would be tainted in some way? Not Yes. Yeah. It's not perfect as what we're saying.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:11
It's not perfect, right? I mean, it is enabled, perfect. I don't know. But I mean, if you're sustained if you're sustaining these really elevated glucose levels, that's not a benefit. And you're going to I mean, for the most part, you're going to have difficulty maintaining no production.

Scott Benner 42:29
You are, it made me wonder when you were talking about long term? What about people who I know sometimes you see people like nursing a two year old? So it for people who do that? Should they expect that? That hit like your body never gets used to that, right? Like, you're gonna get that thing? Yeah, that blood sugar hits gonna come forever? If you? No, not

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:47
really? No, actually, no. In fact, after about three to four months postpartum, there's a stable enough nature to the milk supply into what your body or your baby is demanding. That for the most part, things stabilize, wow, a lot easier after about three to four months. In fact, I nursed my kids while after they were a year old. And in fact, I think they were both almost two. I mean, it wasn't all day, it was like, for bedtime, and for nap time by the end. So it wasn't really that they were probably even getting very much, but usually post a year, you're typically not going to see that hit. And the big reason, especially after about six months to a year is because now your baby is starting to eat. Okay, while milk supply is still considered the main nutrient up to a year of age, some kids start eating really, really well, after 678 months. And so you may see a decrease in the amount of nursing that goes on as the baby becomes more interested in food and takes in less, especially the overnight many women, you know, might have a really great child who just sleeps all night. And so they might only nurse once or twice maybe or on eat, you know, some women nurse on need during the day. But those, those sessions are not typically going to cause the drop in blood sugar that the early three months will cause

Scott Benner 44:15
I want to make sure I didn't misunderstand something. So there is a balance between you might not be using as much and your body's becoming very good at making it or is the like At first I thought you were saying like the same lady's body that can make an organ knows that can figure out how to make milk without it being like a tax on the system. Like is there some of that and some of the not being

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:36
back? I think it's a mix. Yeah, honestly, because for the most part, like I said about at three to four month mark. I would say the women that I get to work with well past the immediate postpartum time period, they find a lot more stability in their glucose even though they continue to nurse beyond that point. Then the lactation or the nursing sessions, don't Have the hit that they do initially.

Scott Benner 45:02
Okay, thank you. It's a quick little parable. Why are I asked you to think of there's anything that we haven't talked about, let me tell you that I was interviewing somebody recently who said that they were listening that I interviewed this person I was I talking to them doesn't matter. I was conversing with a person who said that they're pregnant now. They're listening to episodes of the podcast about pregnancy with you in them, while reading the book that you wrote, and did not connect that you were the person from the podcast, they didn't realize the person that wrote in the book was the person talking in the pocket, and all of a sudden, it hit them one day. And she's like, Oh, my gosh, it's the same Jenny. That's awesome. That was really cute. I want to tell you about that. I almost just texted her. And I'm like, I'm gonna tell her that while we're recording the postpartum episode instead? That's awesome. Yeah, it was really cool. Anything we didn't say that we should have? Oh, I'm

Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:56
trying to think, Mmm hmm. You know, the only other thing that we didn't really touch on, while it should be considered is, depending on how you're feeling postpartum. I mean, most women have like this, I give you restrictions up until about six weeks post delivery, when you're going to have your check in with your ob and blah, blah, blah, and make sure everything's healing well, and you're okay. And then they kind of like, check you off. And you can drive again, or you know, if you've had a C section, or you can get out and start running again, or whatever. And I think that's a piece to consider in the mix with diabetes, because, you know, we know what exercise. Now you not only have exercise coming into the mix, but you've also got nursing coming into the mix, and all these insulin changes that you're trying to make. So one of the big things that sort of fits here is if you have maternity time, not all women do. But if you do have maternity time, use your maternity time to try to establish sort of a route, like a routine or a schedule. And some of that's going to be dictated by the baby, obviously. But even regular for you trying to get your nutrition in timely through the course of the day. You know, once nursing is a little bit more regular the baby's wake in nursing times or more you can fit it in or around the meals and exercise is a big one of that. If you're going to start exercising, try it at a similar time of the day to kind of get a feel for how does this work? You know, what can I get away with? What's too much? What's too little? Because I think that just brings in the whole, like, I feel good enough to go and you know, take a three mile run. But what's this gonna do? I don't know. Let's try.

Scott Benner 47:44
I hear you. So it's not dissimilar to it is interesting, as you're talking about it, it really feels like postpartum is a lot like just being diagnosed but having way more information about diabetes, right? Like Like, what if, what if somehow magically, I knew the things I knew, but never had to put it into practice. And then all of a sudden, there was a newly diagnosed person here, I'd be able to roll with the variables much better because I have better tools. And so you're going to go from having diabetes, maybe not doing it, as well, learning how to do it really well, or already knowing how to do it well, and then it's gonna feel like you're diagnosed again, and you're taking care of a baby at the same time. And all your variables changed again, I'll tell you, this is giving me a different feeling for first episode of season seven 2021 was with a woman named Jill, who was diagnosed as she got pregnant. So she was pregnant for the first time and had Type One Diabetes the first time and I am now talking to you thinking I had a lot of empathy for I might not have had enough like, like hearing about us.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:57
That's a whirlwind of change. Not only is she pregnant, but now she's pregnant with something she has no background to managing. And she's got to learn how to manage it through the variables of pregnancy as they shift and change. I would imagine that postpartum was probably a lot more difficult for her than pregnancy was

Scott Benner 49:17
I wonder she's she's active on the Facebook page. She looks like she's doing terrific. She actually also was Miss diagnosed type two diagnosed type one. It's a fascinating story. You have to go listen to it if you haven't heard it. Let me know

Unknown Speaker 49:32
which episode is it.

Scott Benner 49:33
I'm actually going to look right now because I don't know. I've I think I'm at the point now where this I've done so many of these.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:42
I know you're like

Scott Benner 49:45
hold on let me look real quick. It is called wait on i thought was January only 21. I'm looking. Why do I not see it. It would it would be helpful if I knew what year it was. Now that I know what year it is, I'm getting down. It's called wine beans, babies and cue. It's episode come up with these names. It's Episode 425. Well, she was misdiagnosed as type two. So you know, she still went on a wine vacation with our friends. Beans, I forget babies because she was pregnant. Because she was told she could go she could. She was told she could get pregnant by a person who told her she had type two diabetes. And then she got pregnant as she found out she had type one diabetes, and a doctor with the last initial of Q set her straight. That's where all that comes from. And that's you just made I can't remember what the beans were Damn it is a good episode. She's really lovely. Yeah, but I know her because she reached out right in that moment. Like she found the podcast and she's like, I don't know what to do. I just found out I'm pregnant. I have a baby coming in. I have type one. So I was like, Well, after you figured this all out and had that baby, you got to come on the podcast. Yeah, tell the story. Anyway, she's terrific. And, and so are you. We've covered this pretty well. I like this a lot. We did a little like personal chatting at the beginning. So we didn't get to do one of the things I wanted to do. But I'll just put that on my list for now.

Unknown Speaker 51:18
Okay.

Scott Benner 51:19
I thank you very much. I somehow find it delightful that your kids were much noisier than normal. While we were talking about having

Unknown Speaker 51:27
this was one child.

Unknown Speaker 51:29
Oh, really? That was just,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:30
this is just the four year old. The other ones that

Unknown Speaker 51:32
school? Oh, I can

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:35
imagine he is. So my mom came my mom came this past weekend to visit for my birthday. And she brought them a ring toss game, which has like it's like a wooden base. And then it's got you know the things to like, throw the rings over. And I'm expecting that either the whole thing was lifted up and dropped on the floor. Or the ring toss was being thrown from a larger distance and maybe all the rings at one time were being thrown? How much

Scott Benner 52:03
of this do you think is the part of the country you live in? Is your mother prepping them for beer pong later is do you think that what this could be? I swear to you, it felt like two adults lifted up your dining room table and dropped it for about eight inches.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:19
And the funny thing is, it was like like you said I didn't flinch. Because it was like a background like I don't it's just a background noise.

Scott Benner 52:26
I thought I thought off the Bleep myself out because here was the thought in my head. I thought did she not hear that? Cuz you didn't blink. It was fascinating. Anyway, ladies, have a baby get through all this and one day you'll either be as good at this as Jenny or is numb as Jenny is I'm not sure how to put it.

Unknown Speaker 52:48
Yes, it's

Scott Benner 53:00
a huge thanks to the Contour Next One blood glucose meter and Omni pod for sponsoring this episode of the Juicebox Podcast. You can get your free no obligation demo of the Omni pod or find out if you're eligible for the free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash at my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. And of course get yourself a meter that just flat out works get the Contour Next One blood glucose meter at Contour Next One comm forward slash juice box. In just one second, I'm going to tell you how to reach Jenny, and where the rest of those diabetes pro tips are at.

Jenny Smith works at integrated diabetes.com that's all you have to do go to integrated diabetes.com Jenny does this for a living. She could actually help you in your personal life. All right now there's diabetes pro tip episodes. They're right here in your podcast player. Like I said at the beginning, they begin at Episode 210. But I've also made a list of them and put a player at diabetes pro tip.com. So at diabetes pro tip comm you scroll down a little bit, and there's tons of links there to different podcast players that you can click on and keep in mind you should never pay for a podcast player. There are plenty of good options that are free. Where you can listen right there on the website. There's a player embedded and has all the episodes in a row from 210 all the way to this one. Now 210 is called newly diagnosed or starting over I think these episodes are made to listen to an order and kind of together they coalesce very nicely. And there's Episode 211 to 12 to 17 to 18 about MDI insulin Pre-Bolus ng and Temp Basal and then there's to 19 to 24 to 25 to 26 to 31 insulin pumping, mastering your CGM bumping and nudging making the perfect Bolus and variables from there. We talked about setting basal insulin exercising with Type One Diabetes, the rise that your blood sugar may experience from fat and protein, how to handle illness injury and surgery, glucagon and low blood sugars, emergency room and hospital protocols. Talking about your long term health, revisiting the bumping and nudging episode. pregnancy is in Episode 364. We have one at 371 that explains Type One Diabetes to others. So if you've got a babysitter or a mother in law, who doesn't seem to get it, just send them Episode 371. Episode 379 is about the glycemic index and the glycemic load of food which is incredibly, incredibly important whether you know it or not. And then of course, this episode, diabetes, pro tip, postpartum, I think you're going to love this series. If this is your first one, go back and check out the rest. There's a little description at the top of the page. And there's even some reviews from listeners who've already listened to the pro tip series. Don't forget, it's 100% free. And you're not on anyone else's schedule. You don't have to be in a program with a guy you found on Instagram. You don't have to be at a certain place at Tuesday night at eight o'clock, you can listen to these at your leisure. And over and over again, if there's something that you didn't understand. They're there for you. And I hope they help. I don't think you should have to pay someone to understand how to be healthy. And that is just one of the reasons why I've put together this diabetes pro tip series. You can shut this off now. Or you can hang out for a second while I read you a couple of the reviews from the site. type one Tara said through an apple podcast review. This podcast has changed my life. I had a desire to lower my agency and manage my blood sugar's better, but was going at it blindly finding this podcast put everything into a tangible and practical management approach that has taken my agency from 8.3 to 6.3 in less than six months. And that's just right now it's going to keep coming down. It's been 1971 again, through Apple podcasts. My son was diagnosed type one about five months ago. I've learned so much from just the pro tip shows. And we'll be listening to all of the episodes. This podcast is amazing, both for the information and for the shared experiences from Scott and his guests that make you feel less like you just got hit in the face with a shovel. And more like you can find ways of keeping your loved ones happy and healthy. And finally, Marty said, I saw a mention of this podcast and one of the Dexcom groups I follow on Facebook. The pro tip series is filled with such great information. Thank you. For someone who has been living with diabetes for 30 plus years. I wish I had been more proactive in finding this information sooner. I'm going to recommend this to my end. Oh, I want to thank you so much for listening for sharing the show with others. And of course, for subscribing in a podcast app. Please please please hit subscribe in your podcast player. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Take care

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