#1067 Börk Börk Börk
Geoff is the father of a child living with type 1 diabetes.
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 1067 of the Juicebox Podcast.
Today I'm speaking with Jeff he is the father of a child with type one diabetes. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, but has spent the last 25 years living in Sweden. And because I am mostly devoid of any culture, I've called this episode, bork, bork Bork. While you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan, or becoming bold with insulin. If you'd like to get a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs, you can with your first order at drink ag one.com/juicebox podcast you can save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com When you use the offer code juice box at checkout. And you can really help me by subscribing to the show in whatever audio app you're listening in Apple podcasts, Spotify iHeartRadio doesn't matter. If you're listening. Please subscribe or follow and set up your auto downloads so you never miss an episode. Last thing, definitely check out the private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. We're approaching 44,000 members, all we're missing is you. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Get the most accurate meter I've ever held at contour next one.com/juicebox podcast is also sponsored today. Buy Omni pod Omni pod.com/juicebox Learn more about the Omni pod dash and the Omni pod five. There are links in the show notes and links at juicebox podcast.com to Omni pod, the contour next gen and all of the sponsors.
Geoff 2:06
My name is Jeff. I'm born and raised in Seattle, Washington. I've lived in wheaton for just over half of my life. I have three kids. My son is 19. My daughter is 16 Excuse me, my son is 20. My daughter is six. My oldest daughter is 16 and my youngest daughter who's T one is seven and a half and her name is Madeline. We call her Maddie
Scott Benner 2:33
2016 Seven and a half. Maddie has type one, seven and a half. How long have you lived in Sweden?
Geoff 2:42
Just about 25 plus years. I've been here about half my life.
Scott Benner 2:47
Wow. What made you move?
Geoff 2:50
What made me move here? Yeah. Well, when I was a senior in high school, there was a Swedish exchange student at the school that year and we became friends we eventually dated. And she moved, obviously back to Sweden after her year. And a year later, I came to Sweden as an exchange student to live with her and her family. Our relationship continued to develop. We ended up getting engaged. I ended up getting married a couple years afterwards. Live back in the US for four years to get qualifications, and then moved here to permanently in 96. So I've lived here since then,
Scott Benner 3:36
you and she are no longer together or you are she's
Geoff 3:40
my first strike
you know you because your son played baseball, you know all of that. Oh, the baseball terms. I get three strikes. I'm out. Oh, I don't do that stuff anymore.
Scott Benner 3:57
Jeff, you've been divorced three times.
Geoff 4:00
Hey, yeah, I'm like, you know, like a celebrity pro at it. I think I'm probably better at assigning divorce papers than most people are signing most other documents. So yeah.
Scott Benner 4:15
Are all three of these children from one of these ladies? Are they spread out?
Geoff 4:20
No. They're two from Strike Two and one from strike three.
Scott Benner 4:27
We're just gonna make a note here. I don't know. Any other way to do it. I'm gonna put number two and number three next to the children on my notes. case it comes up for autoimmune stuff. Okay, well, three lucky girls. So have they formed yet? By the way the three of them are?
Geoff 4:52
Not that I know of, but there could be a Facebook group
Scott Benner 4:55
there. Definitely a Facebook group with three people and just Just caught. I escaped Jeff, there's three
Geoff 5:08
Yeah, it's, it's what it is. It's not really something I'm obviously not something I'm proud of, but you know, life throws you curveballs and all kinds of stuff. So it's just the way it is. Yeah. Jeff.
Scott Benner 5:20
One, when those curveballs come out, you're supposed to move when those curveballs you got to stop letting them keep hitting you in the leg, you know?
Geoff 5:32
So, two, two of the strikes, were not my initiative, and one of the strikes was my initiative. So I don't take credit for all of it.
Scott Benner 5:42
I was just the passenger a couple of times. All right. That's right. So okay, so you, you're Maddie, seven and a half? How old was she when she was diagnosed?
Geoff 5:52
So it was in February of last year. So February 22. So she was six and a half months, she was diagnosed, oh, we're just the just over a year and about 15 months. And
Scott Benner 6:04
I was gonna say it's not long at all. Just for context, were you married to her mom at that time? Or? No?
Geoff 6:12
No, no, no. Strike three and was about just over three years ago.
Scott Benner 6:16
I see. All right. Yeah. What was? So I think the reason that I was so excited for you to be on the podcast is because the type one is fairly prevalent in your part of the world. Is that right?
Geoff 6:33
That's absolutely correct. So Finland has the highest rate of new cases of Type one. Birth 1000 under the age of 18. You see that? I say that right from the right logical order. And I think if I remember right, I'm going to try and like regurgitate some, some numbers here. I think the number is like 5.6 per 1000. Us. And Sweden is number two, with like, 5.4. I'm not exactly sure on those numbers, but because it was about a year ago that I got them. But I don't think they changed too much over time. So Sweden and Finland are number one and number two.
Scott Benner 7:16
Okay. In the I'm just, I'm doing some looking right now, in my stats, I'm just gonna go back to like the beginning of 2022, I guess, just to give a little bit of a sample size here. And if I go back to January 2022, and just run my downloads 1234. Sweden is the sixth most downloaded country that listens to the show. It lags behind the top, the top four are the chunk of my downloads. But but then Ireland, Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, are the next. So it's just interesting.
Geoff 8:01
Is Finland in your top 10 Or your top 15?
Scott Benner 8:04
Me Look. I'll read through it. I'm
Geoff 8:08
just curious because they're the Finnish language is just like a different, completely different language group. And it's not related at all English. So there's my personal experiences that bins aren't as good at English as Swedes are. Well, that makes sense. While I'm a little bit curious,
Scott Benner 8:24
let me look US, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. Israel, Norway, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, France, Mexico, Egypt. I'm doing. Yeah, I'm heading into the 21. Netherlands, Bulgaria, India, Italy, Hong Kong, Romania, Portugal, Belgium, Singapore, China. Now it's in the first 30. I don't see it. I'm jumping ahead now.
Geoff 8:54
Yeah, but Finland and Estonia and Hungary are in the same language group. And that's actually a very different language group than, like, the Western European
Scott Benner 9:06
languages. So if I speak Finnish, do you think I'd be huge in diabetes?
Geoff 9:10
I do. I actually I do. Yeah. Because they're very like digitalized. Like we are here in Sweden. Lots of people listen to podcasts. There's everybody has like, super high tech. Like Finland, Sweden and Norway are very similar. And I think it's interesting that I think Norway is the third ranked country after Finland and Sweden, or at least is in the top five in terms of new cases. In Sweden. Swedish and Norwegian are basically mutually intelligible languages. So it doesn't doesn't surprise me that Norway is up there. In the top 20x.
Scott Benner 9:48
That's really something. Yeah. So your child is. I mean, how do you think of it your, your axis Swedish, I'm assuming?
Geoff 9:59
Yes, that's right. Matty's Mama's Swedish. Okay,
Scott Benner 10:02
so is there any autoimmune on her side or your side? My daughter Arden has been wearing an omni pod since she was four years old. And she is now 19. That is every day wearing an omni pod for the last 15 years. I think what we love most about Omni pod is that it doesn't have any tubing. But I don't know is that the thing you love most about it? You don't have to take it off to swim or bave you can leave it on for activity and exercise. It's small. I don't eat. I mean, it's so easy to put on. Right to fill it and to put it on. It's just it takes us no time at all. Yeah, I guess it's hard to figure out what my favorite thing about Omnipod is. I guess I'll just say that my daughter loves it. It's easy, and it's worked for her. For so many years. It's just such a friend at all this Omni pod.com forward slash juice box you can check your coverage there for your insurance. Or take a test drive right? Would you like a free trial of the Omni pod? You can do that there as well. Then you can just get started on the pod.com forward slash juicebox. Now you have a decision to make. Do you want the Omni pod dash, which is an insulin pump where you make all the decisions? Or do you want the Omni pod five now the Omni pod five is the first and only tubeless automated insulin delivery system to integrate with the Dexcom G six. And it's available for people with type one diabetes ages two years and older. It features smarter just technology, and it's gonna help you to protect against highs and lows both day and night. That's an algorithm based system making decisions about insulin given it and taking it away. It's pretty damn cool. Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. When you use those links, you're supporting the production of the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful. As you heard earlier, this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. But when you get a contour meter, what you're really getting is their test strips. Contour next test strips feature remarkable accuracy as part of the contour next blood glucose monitoring system. They're the number one brand and over the counter test strips. And they of course have Second Chance sampling. Second Chance sampling can help you to avoid wasted strips, contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. Near the top of the page, you'll see a Buy Now button it's bright yellow. When you click on that, you'll get eight options of places online to buy contour meters and test strips walmart.com Amazon Walgreens CVS pharmacy, Meijer, Kroger target Rite Aid. These are all links you'll find at my link linking D link links blink blink blink link. I'm just getting head over there. Now, won't you please listen, the contour meters are incredibly accurate. They are simple to use. They're easy to hold, easy to read, and they have a bright light for nighttime testing. Part of me wants to say that the second chance sampling is the biggest deal. But honestly, it's the accuracy. These meters are accurate. And I know a lot of people like to think well I have a CGM. I don't need a meter. You do. You need a meter. You need to be accurate. You deserve it to be accurate contour and x.com forward slash juicebox. Take a look at the contour next gen and the other meters available from contour. We use my links you're supporting the production of the show and helping to keep it free and plentiful.
Geoff 13:37
Well, this is kind of interesting. And I wanted to this is one of the things that I wanted to share. Maddie is mom has a son who's Nine, eight years older than Maddie. Okay, and he also has type one. That voice bothers family has no has no autoimmune. My family has no autoimmune. The autoimmune or the type one needs to come from the mom. But she doesn't. Well doesn't need to but like you would think it would. So half siblings have type one. There is no other type one in the mom's family. But there's some other autoimmune issues. Do
Scott Benner 14:23
you know what they are though?
Geoff 14:24
But yeah, bipolar. That's the one that I'm like, definitely aware of. I don't know a lot of the other medical histories of the family. But there's another thing that came up in diabetes, like some posing that I was asked the other day that I thought was really interesting kind of had to do with this. So to kind of run some numbers for Sweden what T one community is like you're the population of sweetness 10 and a half million. There are 8000 youths with type one in Sweden. So not a lot up, but still quite a few are the size of the population. In the city that I live in, there's a population of 160,000 people that are 240 type one children. And when I say children, I mean under the age of 18, in the city that I live in, where have mandolin and her brother are one of five sibling pairs in the community in the city here. Wow. So pretty uncommon to have siblings. Yeah. Take it into the big, big picture.
Scott Benner 15:33
Well, does a lot of the population get diagnosed after 18?
Geoff 15:38
I don't know. You know, I wish I knew more about the adult pipeline community here, but I don't really have any connection to it. I don't know any, any adults who have type one. I know a guy who has type two, but I mean, that's confirmed is not the same thing. He is insulin dependent, however, uses insulin with his breakfast. But that's it. I don't know anybody. When Madeline's half brother was diagnosed eight years ago, the doctors talked about a surge that summer, they had more new cases confirmed cases of Type one that summer than any other time period prior to that. This is after like a four? No, this is before COVID. This was back in 2000, or eight years ago, well, without being 1516, something like that.
Scott Benner 16:32
I'm looking here online. It says type one diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases that affect children in Sweden, the majority are diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 14, the number of children among children, excuse me, the number of diagnosis among children is increasing. And the percentage is among the highest in the world. Sweden is second after Finland. That's right. I mean, do you have any idea why that is?
Geoff 16:57
Well, so I went about a month ago, not even a month ago, two and a half weeks ago. So I went to this annual diabetes symposium here in the city that I live in. They hadn't done it for a couple of years because of COVID. And so this was the first time back so it was well visited. And one of the things that they talked about was one of the things that I've spoken with my daughter's doctors about as well they endo is that, like, what is this from and they don't know, the only thing that they can kind of like stretch it to is the idea of lack of sunlight. So like too little Vitamin E is what it is, right? So when my older kids were newborns up until they were I think two years old, we would give them vitamin drops every day. They were called ag drops, the vitamin A and vitamin D drops. They've been researching this whole thing with the cause of type one, the high cause of type one has been for a long time and one of the things that they think might be a contributing factor is the lack of sunlight.
Scott Benner 18:06
Or these vitamin drops very common for children. All children
Geoff 18:10
take them here. Yeah. Yeah, all do. So it wasn't I wasn't like picked out for some reason. But it's that's just standard procedure. All kids get it here. Wow.
Scott Benner 18:20
When they're little. Alright, I have to tell you something funny. Before we move on Jeff. I googled Sweden type one diabetes just to see what I could find. Someone misspelled the word sweet in their Google thing. So it says Can diabetics? Can diabetics eat sweets? And that came up as part of the search.
Geoff 18:48
In the zombie apocalypse, they will well know
Scott Benner 18:50
if you read all the information about it. Obviously it just meant sweets, but it's kind of funny. Oh no, wait, I know Excuse me. I'm wrong. Swedes are a vegetable. how crazy it look. We're learning together. Jeff Swede plays plays the role of white potatoes but does not have as many carbohydrates that break down simple sugars. A sweet is a Get the hell out of here. Homeless second, I'm sorry. Swede. Rutabaga comes up. Oh, rutabaga. Rutabaga. Root, rutabaga or a sweet is a root vegetable. How about that? Oh, I
Geoff 19:33
think I've heard about that.
Scott Benner 19:36
Like turnips.
Geoff 19:38
Yeah, something like that.
Scott Benner 19:41
Unbelievable. I just thought it was a typo. Now we've all learned something. Swedes are rutabaga. rutabagas the root none of us are eaten. Imagine there's a whole crops of these things being made and brought to grocery stores all over the world and people are like, what is that? What am I making? I'm sorry, just one more step Jeff, what are we making?
Geoff 20:08
Can I just go to the candy department and get my Swedish Fish?
Scott Benner 20:13
Rutabaga recipes, roasted rutabaga recipes. 1313 best ways to cook with rutabaga. There you go. It's like still, you can make noodles out of it. Hash. Or Groton, mashed rutabaga with sour cream and dill. Sweet magnet. Wait. Sweet nutmeg cake with brown butter frosting. Rutabaga soup, no one's eating this. If I get one
Geoff 20:43
eat something weekend is save recipe.
Scott Benner 20:46
You know what I could do? Here's french fries with them. All right. I don't find any of this. If I get one email that someone's like, I regularly cook with rutabagas. I'll be amazed. Well,
Geoff 20:57
you have you have your have your your Nordic grouping stuff in Minnesota there. Maybe maybe you'll get something from there.
Scott Benner 21:05
I'm waiting. So what are the signs that Maddie has? Science when she was diagnosed? Yeah. What did you see that made you think?
Geoff 21:15
Yeah, so that's also one thing I really wanted to share. Because, I mean, I've obviously listened to most of your episodes. And I haven't quite heard a diagnosis story quite like Madeline come close a couple of times, where people catch it early. But not quite as early as we caught hers. So I just kind of wanted to share that a little bit. So in the fall of 21, Madeline got a urinary tract infection. She got penicillin important. We didn't think that much of it. I mean, her mom's had lots of those, though, we just don't pick on us on and on you go. I'm a skier, alpine skier, I spend my winters in the mountain skiing. And I have a small little camper that I put up at a ski area every year. And so Madeline and I would spend our weekends in the camper scheme. And I mean, you can imagine they're pretty close quarters, they're small. And we have it, there's a little like, porta Potti thing in there. I don't know what you call it. And so she would do her business in there. And like you don't open the latch. You keep the latch closed until you're done. And then you open the latch. And he runs down into this holder thing underneath the camper. And so we're there one weekend, and I'm like, hey, you know, he just smells strong. And so we had gone up on Thursday, we were coming home on Sunday. And for some reason, I can't remember why. But I was supposed to leave Madeline with her mom that Sunday evening. So I left her bedroom mom's and I said, I said hey, can you just take her by the local clinic and run a urine test on her? Because I think she might be getting an infection again. He was like, Yeah, you know, that's no problem. So Monday, they went in, they left a urine sample came back negative. And the nurses were like, well, that's kind of weird, wait 48 hours, and, you know, do it again. So they went back on Wednesday, did it again. And it also came back negative. So they that sets like that kicks in a protocol and a couple other tests they do. Were one of them was that they they do a stick your finger and they actually take a urine sample and send it away to have it tested. So he came back in and her blood sugar was elevated, or that fingerstick blood sugar was elevated. So you're gonna have to you might have to get your calculator out. I only know the Swedish number systems or the European system, I guess. All right, I'm ready we have. So four to 10 is our target range here, right, which I guess is like 70 to 180 for you. But she came back the blood sugar thing came back with 11 in her finger. We all know from listening to your podcasts that you know you can eat a pizza and drink two liters of coke. And you can get your blood sugar to go up but then it comes back again. So we thought well, maybe it's just that. But when when that happened then because she was elevated, the doctors wanted to come back again in a couple of days and again in a couple of days. So it actually took them a couple of days to like really start to get the idea that she might have diabetes. But they weren't sure. In fact, the other day, I was looking through her journal and it says in a journal like unlikely to have diabetes. And that's actually a doctor's comment in there was so early, even
Scott Benner 24:41
though they didn't even though her brother has type one. Yes.
Geoff 24:45
And it's actually noted in all the posts in her journal, brother half brother has type one. But the doctors just were like, No, we don't know we can't confirm this yet.
Scott Benner 24:58
That seems misguided. I have To be honest, I mean 11 blood sugars is 200. It's, you know, it's high, it's high, it's higher than you should be able to get your blood sugar if your pancreas is, is, is working properly.
Geoff 25:12
Yeah, yeah. So then like they went into some other clinics, like we're just doing this out on like the local community, doctor's office where we're at, and they then they send them into the clinics here in town, which are like, they have a lot more advanced equipment and stuff. So they started and then they did anyone see test on her? And you're gonna have to help me on this as well. I have no idea like, numbers are in in sure the American equivalent, but 43 I think it's a 6.1. Was her a one C on February 8. She had and that's basically she was checked into the hospital
Scott Benner 25:52
with a 40 drops or a 43. A one C? Yeah. Man, my, my, my calculator doesn't go that high.
Geoff 26:02
So no, no, no, no, but I mean, like this, the Swedish equivalent of like, we use a different scale for the A onesies here. And I I've only found one thing on the internet that converted? I can't find any other thing. Yeah. So what I found the conversion to be as a 6.1, I think, or a one C was February, it was 6.1. Gotcha. And 11 days later, her agency was 6.6. I don't know, maybe you can tell me? Should there be room for variation like Canon a one seed read wrong when they test it? You have any experience with that? Have you heard anything about that,
Scott Benner 26:42
but genuinely says that an AE one c is an average of three months, but it's heavily weighted towards the time closest to when you're taking the test. So I mean, could she have had a whole week of like normal blood sugars that would have made it go down a little bit? That That doesn't seem unreasonable?
Geoff 27:03
Well, between that. So in those other days, it went up from 6.1 to six months,
Scott Benner 27:09
I'm sorry, or vice, but actually, you know, like, she could have had less help from her pancreas for a week, and then it could have ranged up. That's it?
Geoff 27:18
Yeah. Because then it did go down again. Three weeks later, it was actually lower. But then we had started administering insulin.
Scott Benner 27:29
It just sounds like so an average honeymoon of there's some help than there isn't, then there is.
Geoff 27:34
Yeah. So and this is also something that I wanted to share with you because this, like her a one sees over the last well, basically exactly a year, I think are uninteresting scale are interesting to think about in terms of what management gear we had. So when we started when we got the official diagnosis on February 19, that she had a one, or that she had type one. That's when we got the antibodies back. Would they confirm and it took them a while to get that. So we only have one lab here in Sweden, it's way down in the south of Sweden. So any blood tests that are done anywhere in the country, get transported down to this lab at the very, very bottom of the country. That lab is obviously as what you just said it was very high in the world. In terms of new cases, they're brushed with work, they got a lot to do to test all these things. So it took them a couple of days to get it back. Like they couldn't just do it on site or anything. So it took a while. So they started us with a Libra one and pens. When her a ones he was 6.6. And buy exactly two months later. So on the 12th of April, her her Influency was 6.5. So she hadn't really I think she was still hunting winning pretty hard than she was only using 11 units a day. That's both with long acting and the short acting. And then fast forward three, three months to the middle of June, I guess it's only two months, middle of June, then we've switched over to the two. But we got her on a pump on the dash. And so on the middle of June her agency was 6.8. So it had gotten up a little bit more. And then after the summer, going September, she was holding steady at 6.8 than the last reading that we have. So we put on a Dexcom on I think like mid November and on December 8 So what about nine months and my guess 910 months in or agency was 6.9 and this is where everything changed. inched, okay. So the Dexcom and the dash together, like they changed everything for us. And I really want to like, I want to share this because there's so many people who use these things and they get such better results for a one see from December 8 until February 10, which was her one year went from 6.9 to 6.2. Which for me, that's a nice reduction. Yeah. That's a nice downswing. But I was really happy about that. So we have a target. Here in Sweden, they set a target, like what they want people do strive for, are there a one See, and that's 6.5. Like they say, if you can keep a 6.5, then that's good. And they don't they want less than 18% lows. And they want less than 20% highs. But they want you to stay. Like there's Facebook groups here called 5.5. That's where they want your blood sugar to be. Yeah,
Scott Benner 31:04
less than 18%. Lows. I find that to be a high number. Honestly, yeah. Yeah.
Geoff 31:12
Well, they want they want obviously, they want like no extreme lows, but they want it. I mean, that's like they say like, that's what's your max should be like from any given a one seat to the next. I don't have more than 80%.
Scott Benner 31:27
Well, I mean, that's yeah, I would like to, I'd like to see you have fewer lows than 18% of your of your reading speed. Be lows. You don't I mean, it's a little. It seems high to me. But so
Geoff 31:39
at our one year, we did an A one C, and she had less than 4%. Lows. That's great. So yeah, so we were we're doing good. And she had, I think she was 72% in range, no extreme hives. So and obviously, like your Facebook group and your podcast was the one of the biggest contributing factors to this are what I consider to be our success. But I remember so vividly. We would go in for these quarterly meetings or every other month meetings and they would put this graph up, and they'd look okay. And now we're going to adjust her basil here and adjust your basil there. I kept thinking to myself, I want to do that graph. I don't want to wait two months to have to go into the doctor's office to see that graph. And then I listened to your episode, which was at the ninja IQ with Jeremy, where he goes through the AGP report. In three weeks, we got our dial down between 4.5 and seven on our blood sugar. We jumped from about 56% and range to over 70%. And we've stayed there. We've stayed there since then, even though she's even though she's had the stomach flu, which threw her off for three weeks and we had crazy numbers. And two weeks ago, she broke her leg got a spiral fracture in her right way. Which I thought was kind of interesting, because that mess with our numbers, your body. I think your body sends out all kinds of hormones, including loss of adrenaline and stuff when you go through that kind of acute pain. Sure. And so she like for the first time in three months, her blood sugar went up to 18, which is really high number and her mom said I just couldn't get it down. Like I will go down insulin. So she had to just kind of wait and let it float down. Like when the pain subsided. The adrenaline stopped flowing. Yeah. And then our blood sugar would just kind of float down.
Scott Benner 33:39
Here. adrenaline's crazy out it's Yeah. Do you and your ex? Do you guys agree on how to manage? Yes
Geoff 33:49
and no. That's also something I wanted to talk about because we have like we share Madeline 50% of the time. It's kind of weird to share but Madeline is with us 50% So we are on on a seven day rolling schedule. In terms of doing a lot of like the programming of her basil program and stuff and the dash I've done a lot of that myself based on listening to your podcast and asking the doctor endo for help and stuff. She had up until December 8, like our appointment where everything changed there. She had her own basil program. And I remember that when we were there and I said I was gonna leave Madeline whether I said oh don't forget to change the Basal program yours. And the doctor looked at her and the doctor looked at me and he looked back at her he said don't change from Jeff's Basal program. Leave it on her leave it on his and that's the one we've been dialed in on since then. Now that's been working so well for us. And that's solely because I was using the AGP report like every two to four days and I would make this small adjustment. And I'd wait two days, make a small adjustment a few days, you know, just like Jeremy said to do just like you're supposed to do that. And just, it's amazing how well it works. It's really, really great.
Scott Benner 35:10
That's and what a win. By the way, Jeff in the doctor's office finally being told you're right.
Geoff 35:15
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about think about where strike three is coming from. I mean, she's been taking care of her son's diabetes for eight years. I mean, she's pretty routine to us. He knows what she's doing.
Scott Benner 35:28
Well, my next, my next question was going to be has anything that you've done with Madeline made its way to her half brother?
Geoff 35:37
Not that I know of, not directly anyway, because when he was, he's 16. Now when he was 13, he basically took over his own management, okay. And kind of said, you know, Mom and Dad, you don't have to get involved in this. And it's been, I mean, he's, he's not doing too bad, but he's not doing great. In fact, the doctor said to Madeline at the last appointment, he said, you know, Maddie, I want you to go tell your brother that he needs to have as good of a onesie as you do. So,
Scott Benner 36:11
does the half brothers see you as a step parent?
Geoff 36:15
Not anymore. He did for the 10 years that we live together. I was a step that for sure. And that's another thing that I've, you know, been in a Facebook group. And you know, there's when I joined a Facebook group, there was only 23,000 people. Now what, what are the numbers now? 35,000?
Scott Benner 36:33
I don't that's unimportant to brag about these things. is huge. Yeah. We're about to get the 38
Geoff 36:42
Yeah, that's gigantic. Anyway, but you see, you see posts in there a lot about it had dads who don't take care of their, their kids when they're with, you know, weather with them in the monitor all and seem nervous when the kids are with their fathers. And I get that because those fathers in there aren't doing a good job. But there's gotta be fathers out there that are also doing good. Mike. I am
Scott Benner 37:07
Jeremy is a great example to Jeff, you know, I mean, yeah.
Geoff 37:10
And I've seen some other names in there. And I'm like, Wow, you guys know what you're doing. There's a couple other guys that make some really good posts on there. One thing I thought about a couple weeks ago, I was like, I wonder if Scott realizes how biggest hair
Scott Benner 37:25
my weight my wife,
Geoff 37:28
your hair on? Quite the following a women's
Scott Benner 37:33
I've never thought of it that way. I've never once said to my wife be nice to me or I will just go just go to my corner find a lady who would be appreciative of these things that I'm good at.
Geoff 37:48
No, so but kind of bring it back to to when I was a stepdad to Madeline's half brother, his mom didn't really let me get too involved in his care. Sometimes I would go down and check on him at the night and during the nights and you know, I don't hear it, take some take some sugar tablets and fall back asleep. But I I mean, honestly, when Madeline diabetes, I didn't know anything. I really didn't know anything. I didn't know what any one C was. I didn't know the difference between a dash and a pen. I didn't die went on a serious crash board. That's also another thing that I just wanted to share was so kind of a crazy story. So back up to the weeks before Madeline's diagnosis. So I had bought an airline ticket to the States to visit my cousin in California. The day that Madeline's mom called me to tell me that you'd likely as if one were being admitted to the hospital, I was sitting at the gate at the airport to get on my plane to the US. Oh, wow. And I said to her, I said, Do I need to walk away from the gate? And she says, No, it's okay, go. But like program yourself that when you get back, you're going straight to the hospital. So when I came back, home, I went straight straight to the hospital and spent a couple of days there with her just to do all the educating stuff. Because I was green. I didn't know what I was doing was totally green. Yeah.
Scott Benner 39:17
And so even though your steps on for that time had type one, you just weren't that involved in it. Five
Geoff 39:23
years. We lived in the same house and and I say, you know, I wasn't let into his care. I would have been willing to learn more and stuff. But mother was pretty restrictive and and didn't want to. Didn't want to let go of the of the control and the care side of it. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's not easy to have your Be responsible for your kid for a week. And then let him go for a week. And then get him again a week later. That's a that's a That's not a real easy thing to do.
Scott Benner 40:01
Of course not. Plus, I don't think she was that sure about you.
Geoff 40:07
Apparently not.
Scott Benner 40:10
She was still deciding it was only five years. So you mentioned Omni pod and Dexcom are those things that are readily available where you live, or you bind them somewhere else.
Geoff 40:24
So here's another thing that I did. This is also one of the things that I wanted to share. Because I believe that when you when you know up for the go have an alternative, you can like, kind of deal with your own situation a little bit better. But you guys in the US, you have this whole phenomenon of insurance and insurance companies can dictate, you know, what gear you have, or what management tools you have kind of stuff. We have socialized medicine here. So everyone, regardless of age, and everything you need for diabetes is paid for by the Government. Wow. So yeah, I've even seen like on the Facebook group, somebody posted. Yeah, there's the Remove little sachets, you know, that you use to get the glue off your body, like those are on sale on Amazon, go buy them, right, wow, we get we get that for free. We don't pay for anything. I have a whole cabinet of stuff in the kitchen. And I don't have to hoard. Because I don't have to think about my economy, I just go down to the pharmacy and get new ones when I need it. If it's run out if they're if it's done in her. I can't think of the word of it. The word. This is kind of a weird phenomenon with me. You know, I've learned a lot of words in Swedish. And I can't always translate something
Scott Benner 41:52
interesting. I speak to a lot of people who are, you know, don't have English as their first language. And there's, there's, there's always a moment where they go, I can't find the word for this. Yeah, but listen, in fairness, Sweden has a third of the population of Texas. So yeah, it's probably
Geoff 42:10
the size the size of California 10 million in population. And to give an idea of a reference.
Scott Benner 42:18
Is it pretty spread out? Yes.
Geoff 42:20
I wouldn't say when they say like three fourths of the population lives in a third, the southern third of the country?
Scott Benner 42:26
Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. Because it's a that's a quarter of the population of California. So that's pretty interesting. But I mean, still, I don't know if he can, if it works. There's part of me that's like, Why can't somebody scale it? You know, I mean, if it works, yeah.
Geoff 42:42
I've had that discussion a lot with people over the years. Why would you know, would be first the Swedish political system work? And would the socialized medicine work? And I'm just not sure that it would work in a country as big as the US 360 360 million people or something like that? I don't know why I think that might just need to be.
Scott Benner 43:04
What's your tax? Tax Rate?
Geoff 43:07
What do you tax a 33%? Income tax?
Scott Benner 43:10
33%. So that's, that's a percentage that I think here would be, I can look it up. But I think that would be pretty indicative of making hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year to get the 33% here. Yeah, I mean, that's, so that's gonna see you pay a higher tax percentage than we do. Generally speaking,
Geoff 43:32
but you know, we get quite a lot for it. I mean, the socialized medicine is pretty impressive. I actually, I didn't, like I said earlier, I didn't know I don't know any adults with type one. So I actually posted on Swedish Facebook group. For Kids. I said, Hey, to adults pay for any management stuff here in Spain, and they said, like several people immediately wrote back, no, you don't pay for anything. What you do pay for is you pay like a $25 copay. When you go to the doctor for your, for your annual and, or something like that. Yeah,
Scott Benner 44:06
well, the doctor needs peer money. So we have our tax rates ranged from 10% to 37. So it's 1012 20 to 2430 to 3537. So I was kind of close with my guess. But yeah, then that, you know, obviously goes up as you make more and more money, but is it for there and
Geoff 44:28
it does here as well. You can you can go all the way up to things like 48 No,
Scott Benner 44:35
I wouldn't even work. Jeff, if you took 40% of my money. I'd say Oh, I'm homeless. Now you take care of me getting any effort from Scott anymore?
Geoff 44:47
I'm not sure about those numbers. But I mean, it gets it goes up pie but that's a really small percentage of the population. Yeah. There's a lot of people who like say no to raises because they don't want to move up.
Scott Benner 44:58
I don't care how wealthy that person is there banging them to their head right on the wall as we speak right now. 48 all I was talking about
Geoff 45:05
when they I think when they reached a bracket they probably move to another country with for the better tax.
Scott Benner 45:10
Yeah, I gotta go. In here I come my kids, my kids are gonna get diabetes, and you're taking half of my income. Terrific. absolutely terrific. what a what a? What a visitor's guide. It must be come to Sweden. diabetes will take your money. But hey, I
Speaker 2 45:32
really only free it does it doesn't work out? Does it work out just like do you stop and think about the money you put out? And then the money you're saving by not putting it? Is it kind of a wash?
Geoff 45:43
You know, I think we've got it really good here. So you don't have to think about I mean, obviously, I'm like, tunnel vision a little bit? Doesn't my daughter's type one. But I don't I have five weeks paid vacation every year has a minimum. My kids if they want to go to university, they pay like a couple $100 a year. Usually they can get paid to go over the university if they set it up, right. So there's a lot of things that are way different. I hear all the time about how much Americans like how much you spent on your kids. College patients is just astronomical. Some. Yeah, but on the other hand, for the same job, you probably make twice as much money as us. But you need to because your cost of living as a lot higher. Yeah,
Scott Benner 46:31
I'd be embarrassed to tell you what I paid to send my son to school.
Geoff 46:36
It's terrible. It's probably more than what I make in a decade.
Scott Benner 46:41
If we'll talk afterwards, because I want to know, because if that's if that's true, I'm more upset. Like Arctic Ardens is significantly cheaper than coals was, and still flabbergasted by how much money I sent for her. So. So
Geoff 46:57
here's another thing that you if you want to if you want to look at more things in the equation, so what do we get for the money that we pay in taxes? Well, we get 450 days to be home paid with our newborn children. 450 days, Scott, think about that. Yeah, I wouldn't have not 40 to 57 days in a row like you can break it up.
Scott Benner 47:18
I see that. Here's my here's how I'm wired. I want to hear more about this. But if you gave me that much time off, I wouldn't go back to work.
Geoff 47:26
Well, you know, you keep pumping up the kids and you don't have to go back to work.
Scott Benner 47:29
I mean, psychologically, I don't believe I could. I think I'd be like, I can't go do that anymore. I'm accustomed to another lifestyle. Okay, so a lot of days off if I make a baby, what else?
Geoff 47:41
Well, the college education free. For free. Yeah. socialized medicine. We have huge subsidies on all kinds of other stuff as well. Yeah, I mean, I, it's interesting, my strike to right. She's actually Dutch. She moved up here worked for an American guy at the hospital and did research in the field of psychology. He had lived here for at that time, for like 30 years and East. And he was a PhD doctor in psychology working with pain research. That's a huge field internationally, obviously. And he we had dinner with him one evening, and we talked back and forth about you know, why did why do you choose to stay in Sweden when you could go to America and make five times what you're making here? Even maybe six or seven times the amount of money? And he said, Yeah, but you know, I get five weeks of paid vacation every year. I get all the holidays off, I work 40 hours a week. I have money every year. Even though I have all this time off, I make enough money that I can take my family to America and visit their relatives every year. And I I get paid to do that. It's just a different, like work environment. You
Scott Benner 49:00
know, I know my wife works with some people in Europe, generally speaking. And there's times where she's like, well, we can't get this project done for two weeks because they're on holiday. And you know, and it shuts
Geoff 49:13
down. Sweden shuts down for I would say from about June from about the fifth or 10th of July, somewhere in there the second week of July until the second week of August. So that four week block is you don't get along. Yeah, it
Scott Benner 49:31
makes me mental. I haven't had five weeks off in 10 years. Like I just I just literally get up every day and make this podcast and then on the weekends I try to like not die so that I can do it again. Try to try to sleep and
Geoff 49:46
I've heard all about your scratches and he says you need to stay out of your garden. Please
Scott Benner 49:53
I have to cut the lawn later today. I'm scared But no seriously, like we don't take time off like like when my wife He talks about a gap where she's like Cancun seems like it makes people mental here. They're like, you know, I mean, it's work and die. Like that's pretty much what we do. So in
Geoff 50:10
January of this year, so just couple months ago, I was over in visiting my mom and Alaska and was there for my stepfather's memorial service or celebration of life. And I met this gal, and we were talking and she said, Yeah, I was sick. And I missed work for two weeks. And I thought, wow, that way of phrasing it would never go through my head. I would say I was sick for two. These See, there's no reference to work. Like her reference was, I was away from work for two weeks. My reference is I was sick for two weeks. But we she and I could have been saying the exact same thing, like referring to the same thing.
Scott Benner 50:50
Oh, no, for sure. You get sick here. You worry about your job immediately. Yeah.
Geoff 50:54
So it's a different it's a different environment creates a different kind of mentality. Yeah, yeah, I'm not so sure you can you can slide the one towards the other. We like our five weeks vacation. Yeah.
Scott Benner 51:05
So there's no like, the killer be killed. vibe. Doesn't? doesn't live there.
Geoff 51:12
No, no.
Unknown Speaker 51:13
Interesting.
Geoff 51:14
You know, I pay I pay $14 A month insurance. Which is if, if for whatever reason I am to become unemployed, I get 80% of my salary a year. On national insurance policy that cost me $14. That sounds which is nothing. Yeah,
Scott Benner 51:35
that's crazy. My gosh, our health insurance costs hundreds of dollars a month comes out of your check. And then there's another I think, for us, like six or $8,000. That's out of pocket before it starts paying that year. So I probably pay 10 or $12,000 a year to insure my kids and that it's funny, I think of myself as having good insurance. Like no live this morning, my brother asked me about a medication. And he and I'm a medication I'm using and he was thinking of somebody in his family is thinking of using it. And he said, What do you pay for this? And I said, $24. And he goes, Wait, I thought it was like and he gave me a number? And I said, Oh no, that's my insurance cost $24. I have good insurance. It's what I said. And now I realize, well, but the medication is so expensive. Without insurance, this specific medication, if I if I used it without insurance, it would cost I think $2,000 a month. So I guess technically because I'm using my insurance it's paying for for itself. But people who don't use it move, you know, they get Yeah, they get run over. You're paying you're paying just in case, and then something doesn't happen, you know, whatever. But okay, so I'm sorry, my original question. I'm still not sure about though, that was like 20 minutes ago, they sell on the pod and Dexcom are readily available in Sweden. Yes, yes.
Geoff 53:02
So. So there's like, there's kind of a traditional, there's the old school traditional way of starting in with diabetes, they want you so you get hooked up with the Libra one, basically immediately for children. And they want you to do MDI. And at that time, when I knew Madeline's brother had, he had Dexcom and a dash. And I was like, why don't we just start on that right away? The doctors like Well, yeah, you know, we want you for the first thing. There's two uses only 11 units of insulin a day, which is like not enough to justify using the Omni pod. But they wanted us to learn so that we would be able to use them later. And in fact, I'm very thankful for that. Now when I can look back in retrospect, when I mean when she's got a sticky Hi, and I think the site is bad. If it's day three of the pod, I'll pull the pot off and give her an injection. And I wait you know, 45 minutes for for the the numbing thing you put on her arm helped me wait
Scott Benner 54:08
the numbing thing you put it on? I don't. I don't we don't use it numbing thing you put like a cream on.
Geoff 54:14
It's an eye cream. It's like a It's a band aid that has like this numbing stuff in it. You put it on, you put it on where you're going to set the pod and it will like desensitize that area of skin and you leave it on for half an hour and then you put the pot on and you really can't feel the annual going in. Oh she's She's sensitive. So we do that.
Scott Benner 54:36
That's very nice, but I'll use what's actually that's very nice of you when Arden said it hurt when she was little I'm like it'll stop
Geoff 54:44
away. Let me go no so so but I'll always give her an injection like you know, she's floating high and I can't get it down because it's day three. I'll give her an injection and pull the power off and that works really well. And there are there are times when she's at school so her holes school staff, her resources, a school that take care of over, they're all trained with depends as well. Because if she for pod falls off at nine o'clock in the morning, well, I don't want to dish out to work to go fix that. So they need to give us the penance for the day. So it's kind of this thing. And so I'm glad that we have that knowledge and that ability to use it. And she's not afraid of them. Yeah. All this kind of stuff. I find that helpful.
Scott Benner 55:25
I take your point, and I don't discount at all. There's one thing that you said that, that I wanted to respond to was the idea that she was only using 11 units a day. And that would be a waste of the pod. I still don't see it that way. I guess. Like, there's still things you can do with the insulin pump you can't do with MDI. And
Geoff 55:41
I didn't know that until I listened to the ninja IQ up. So but when I learned that, I was like, yeah, no, don't you dare take my pot away from me. Don't take. Don't Don't do that. So like that. It just is. I mean, yeah, yeah, you got to understand that it was just a massive game changer. Like getting the understanding of the AGP report and being able to myself go in and make the micro adjustments and just watch her curve flatten out. I was just like, Man, I did my little my little dance lots of times those weeks. Yeah. I put my little blue cape on, and I did my live with dignity. Damn. I was I was celebrating the successes on twice a week, watching that curve flatten out. I was it was amazing.
Scott Benner 56:26
That's excellent. Hey, Jeff, I know you have a lot on your list to do and we've already been talking for an hour and I don't feel like divorcing you which I found surprising. But I
Geoff 56:38
you know, there's no StrikeForce you have to make up a new sport.
Scott Benner 56:43
It just wanted to make sure we're getting to the things you wanted to talk about.
Geoff 56:49
Last one, you're having fun, I don't want to go.
Scott Benner 56:54
I don't know if you start getting on my nerves or something. You know what I mean, I might have to go.
Geoff 57:00
Well, there's a couple more things that I want to share that I find. Maybe useful. Probably more just interesting. So because of Finland's high rates and Sweden's high rate, and both countries have socialized medicine, which means all kids have gear. And every single time you go into your Endo, you upload everything into this database. Okay, what's it called? diacetyl diacetyl, or something like that. You have something like I've
Scott Benner 57:30
seen that here. Yeah, we don't. We usually go in and they're like, You have anything download? We're fine. Just let's get the prescriptions right and get out of here.
Geoff 57:38
But what's the word I was looking for a little while ago? prescription? Oh, you
Scott Benner 57:41
couldn't find that word. Okay. Did you not have them? Well, how do you get? Yeah, oh,
Geoff 57:45
yeah. Oh, yeah. So the endo writes a prescription puts the whole list of stuff in there. And then when something runs out, we just make a phone call. Hey, can you renew this prescription? Yeah, we'll do it for another year.
Scott Benner 57:57
Wow. A year, it's nice to get lucky if we get three months.
Geoff 58:02
Everything is extended a year? Or based on count? So like, the Remove little sachets things? I'll get like two boxes at a time. I don't know how many there are. But there's hundreds in the box. So yeah, every couple of years, I'll get a new box. Okay. I see. Anyway, so I wanted to go back. So every time a kid goes in for quarterly checkup or biannual checkup, all the data from their PDM, or whatever is uploaded into a database. That database is all the data from Finland and Sweden, to all the kids in Finland, all the kids in Sweden are uploaded into a database. And you can't google search this database, I asked Matty's endo about this, it's not a public thing, because it's really like a secure database needs to be, but all of the management tool companies in the world will ask to get numbers out of this database. So a lot of the statistics that you see in a lot of this data that's used to further develop the gear that we're all using, comes out of the Swedish and Finnish database, which I find really interesting to know. And that is made possible because I believe because of our relatively small populations and our high percentage of management use, though, we're all using electronic devices that save all the data and that can be loaded up into the database. But I think that's, that's just interesting to know. So and sometimes, this is probably one of my cry, like when I think about, you know, Maddies management on my, my daughter's type one, and our efforts to take care of her are not only helping her but in a long kind of long shot way through that. Database, there's lots of kids in the world who have a better day to day life, thanks to the management tools that are available, that are partially developed out of this database. I find that kind of interesting. No, the world is a small place. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:00:15
and not just the kids that are alive now and living with type one, but the stuff that's going to happen moving forward, it's going to happen more quickly, more efficiently, you know, algorithms are going to get better and better. And, you know, all that stuff is, I mean, it's moving, we're at the beginning
Geoff 1:00:34
of, of what's actually going to happen, I think, yeah.
Scott Benner 1:00:38
It's very easy to like, you know, I'll draw a parallel. Maybe I don't need to talk about it. A management company approached me about managing my, me. I don't know, apparently, I'm, I'm very low. Well, I might want to divorce you. I might be, I might be a very low level celebrity. So I was approached by a management company who said, you know, stuff like we think we can grow the podcast, we think we can, you know, get you speaking engagements, like stuff like that, right. And so we were having kind of an introductory conversation. And I said, well, the podcast has been up for nine years. But it really just took off about four years ago. And that's a hard thing to wrap your head around that over half of the time I've been doing this was just preamble, you know, not that it wasn't helping somebody in the first five years. But speaking about scope, and scale, it was just preamble getting to it. Like I don't actually think the podcast is done growing. I think it might just be at a tipping point, now kind of coming up this year, in the next year. And it's funny, when you think about management styles of diabetes, you can look back, you know, and say, Oh, well, they came up with insulin in the 20s. And but yeah, but a lot of that's preamble, right. Like a lot of it is like when you think I mean, how amazing it is that somebody found insulin. I'm not saying otherwise. But you know, it was probably catches catch can for a while. And even now are still people were like, I've been alive with diabetes for this many years. And I've been using insulin since and you can't find a rhyme or reason why it worked out for that person. You know, it's just in the last me my opinion, the last 10 or so years, when CGM came. And now I mean, look at how fast things are moving. You know, 20 years ago, you were still it was still a little like good luck. You know, 30 years ago, they still don't expect you to live very long. And now we're talking about a technology that came out that a pump is attached to, and now people are getting their insulin without having to do it. Crazy. And that's all just in the last decade, you know. So anyway, that inflection point, it's a long lead up a long runway to get to sometimes the good part, so.
Geoff 1:03:04
So yeah. And that's interesting. And that leads me into something that I also wanted to share. So two more things that I want to I want to share. And one of them, I'm probably enough to get my go give me some juice here in a little bit. You're fine. She's slowly drifting down, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Anyway, so I went to this diabetes symposium a couple of weeks ago, and there was a speaker there who is like one of the most prominent researchers in the Taiwan field in Sweden, and in fact, in the world. And he's published science in scientific journals more than 407 years of 470 times seven over 700 articles. He's either an author or co author, too. So this is a like, a central figure in in the research of type one. Obviously, the question is, where are we when's the cure, etc, etc. And he did this long presentation about why he why why where they are in their research, and where he thinks it's going to be in 10 years. And he said, he hopes that they're going to be making some significant breakthroughs in 10 years, and within the next 10 years, and one of those things that he referred to was the autoimmune condition of I think it's called psoriasis or excema, or something that's a skin condition. And he said that they're actually making like real progress in that medical condition. And that they want to try and use some of the ideas that they're doing with that autoimmune illness and put it into the type one diabetes. Okay. And he had this long explanation I thought was interesting about why they think that Diabetes starts in kids. Because his his, like Central Research is with children. And so he, he explained like he had, he explained like where the pancreas is in the body, and why we can't take like tissue samples have it because it's like way down in the in the part of the body, it's like, behind all the other organs, you can't really get to it without messing around with all the other organs on the way in. And he said that if you look at the physiology of it, the biology of it, there's a tube that goes from the pancreas down into the intestine, that tube is connected to the tube from the gallbladder. And those two things together go down into the intestine, where the food leaves the stomach and goes in the first section of the intestine where it's actually really broken down. And then you start to pull the nutrition out of it. And he said that. So one of the things that can happen is that the, all the enzymes and the bacteria and stuff from that section of the intestine can go back the other way on accident. So there's a vowel that's not working really well. And he said, I said, I thought was fascinating. And he said, so you know that people can have their gallbladders taken out. And I was like that, and I was like, wait a minute, Maddies mom had her gallbladder taken out. And when they took it out, there was over 150 stones in her gallbladder, when most of them were the size of peas, or maybe a corn, like a piece of corn, but three of them were the size of marble, like say the andyour thumb like they were you, right? And he said that that is a consequence of like, bacteria and things going where they are not supposed to be. And your body tries to fight them off. They say, Well, what if it doesn't go to the gallbladder and it goes into your pancreas, and your body then has to fight this somehow on the gallbladder. What it does is it it puts up, makes a stone out of whatever gets in there. And in the pancreas, your immune system shoots there, and takes it takes it down. Right? Well then it's also taking down the, the the islets which produce the T cells which produce the insulin, it says in the end, they think they're hypothesizing about that this, they think this might be one of the reasons it starts on I was thinking to myself, Okay, so Madeline's mother has two children with type one and herself taking her gallbladder out. I don't know, this could be a reach big, big, big reach. But I can't stop thinking about it. Like it just something that I chew on a little bit. And the other thing that he said was that when babies are born, their pancreas is the size of your little finger. And when you're an adult is about the size of an average sized banana. He said, so if this kind of thing is happening, where these enzymes or bacteria or whatever going up into the pancreas, when they're babies, then they're affecting a larger percentage of the pancreas than it would in an adult. And he thinks that that might be one of the reasons that it's there's more cases of Type one developing in small children.
Scott Benner 1:08:20
Who's this person or children isn't
Geoff 1:08:22
even as hola Courtney Gilliam as first name is o l l e and his last name is K O R S. GR em. If you go on Google Scholar and and search his name, you can see all the articles at
Scott Benner 1:08:36
least spell the last name again.
Geoff 1:08:39
Kors g r e n.
Scott Benner 1:08:44
Okay, I have. Thank you.
Geoff 1:08:49
It's fascinating that he it went on and on and on. He had graphs and he was talking about, you know, why don't why aren't we working as a society in the medical community? Why aren't we working to prevent the onset of a type one, instead of just treating the symptom of type one? Like, why are we passive? And that's an interesting question. Why are we why are we that and while we're good at it? Not a lot of people, not a lot of kids. No, no children. So far. I know children have died in Sweden from complications related to type one and over 10 years. That's a long time.
Scott Benner 1:09:31
There good. You guys are good at setting it up good at treating it. You make sure people have what they need. And yeah, maybe because of that, you lose, you lose focus on is it possible we could just be stopping this ahead of time? Because we're so good.
Geoff 1:09:47
So he was talking about what he wants to see in the future is like a higher screening. How can we go if there is autoimmune in the family then we can start screening these families. and checking for the antibodies? And how can we then develop ways to avoid more antibodies and specific first? Things like that, I thought it was really interesting. And he actually said, so like this is supposing it's funded by all the management tool company. So Dexcom and Omnipod, they were all there, they all have their tables, handing out brochures, and there was probably another 12 or 15 companies there with all of their gear, and he looked he hooked up in the auditorium, like towards the doors where these people were, I don't think you'll need those people out there, then you're, that's a pretty hefty statement to make there. And then that's how competent he is in what's going on. I don't want to give anybody false hopes. I mean, we just keep working on what you're doing. But the research community is moving forward, for sure.
Scott Benner 1:10:53
That's excellent. Also, I would be remiss not to point out that these people sometimes need donations to keep going and a lot of what they do is sales too. So it's it's tough. You know, like, it's tough to read through it all. It's incredibly interesting. It makes me wonder why if I get a, I see somebody get a pancreas transplant, and then they redevelop type one like that. Like would that be because that valve? You know, that all that process just happened again?
Geoff 1:11:25
Right? Well, it's a biological, I guess, like, mistake, you know, like that valve? doesn't close like it's supposed to? Yeah, are open and close. No, super
Scott Benner 1:11:33
interesting. Guys. Ready? Yeah. Listen, I never, I would never say, you know, no to anything like people. I hope people do all kinds of different research, just thinking about, like, what you just explained from this gentleman, just looking at it a different perspective, like somebody else could see the same thing and think, oh, it's obviously this and then their research starts from there. So you need everybody to kind of follow their heart and, and do the work and, and get funded. So they can do it. It's just it's tough, because I've been around this long enough to see what I what I kind of term research season comes around. And there's suddenly a lot of articles about like, Oh, we got this figured out, I got that figured out, make a donation to me and like, and it's tough, because newer diagnosed, parents get sucked into it really easily. And, you know, and it's tough, because you're like, Well, yeah, let me give them money. And it'll help. And, I mean, there's a lot of people doing research, and you know, most of them are wrong. So like, how do you? How do you know which one is which? But yeah, but you want it all to go forward? Like I said, I think that that's fascinating what he's laid out. Yeah, really interesting.
Geoff 1:12:47
Yeah, it was it was cool to sit there and listen to
Scott Benner 1:12:50
him. I imagine. Yeah. How long did it go? The talk? It was a
Geoff 1:12:53
full day. While this symposium was a full day deal. He spoke for an hour. So I mean, I just touched on it just like maybe getting 20% of everything.
Scott Benner 1:13:03
Yeah, that's really something
Geoff 1:13:04
I could regurgitate a lot more. But I thought this was the most the most interesting and he went in a lot about so that they're the eyelets in the in the pancreas that are shut down by the white blood cells that the body sends there to fight off whatever's happened, the infection that's happened? Well, they think the infection is from the bacteria from the intestine, why? But you said, we don't think that the cells are destroyed. We think that they're just kind of put into hibernation, like, anything. You said that we think we might be able to, we don't know, but we might be able to reactivate them. But until then, we need to start screening. Yeah. All this other stuff about?
Scott Benner 1:13:48
Well, avoiding good luck to him. That's right. Yeah.
Geoff 1:13:51
But I mean, it's, it's, there's some exciting stuff going on. Oh, for sure.
Scott Benner 1:13:55
That's excellent. Yeah. Let's see what else anything else? You said two things. Do you remember the last Yeah.
Geoff 1:14:02
One of the things that I really try and work with that I've taken a lot from the podcast. From obviously from from the Facebook group and stuff is in the beginning, I really struggle with managing my daughter, I felt like down a lot. And obviously in the beginning, things aren't going well and you have to learn and you have to learn but I've gotten to the point now where I realized that the way I think about things, the words I use to describe what I do and and and what Madeline has type one diabetes affects my mind my mindset on a day to day basis. And I've wanted to was like an example is I've chosen not to call type one a disease. I call it a chronic medical condition. And when you Google the word disease, it has a lot of negative connotations, but the word condition doesn't But on a dictionary level, there's not a lot of difference between the words. Like the difference is chronic is something that has to go on longer than a year. And a disease that there are references to like, like some kind of malfunction in the body. So I choose to, and maybe it's thanks to the I mean, I went down a big dark rabbit hole when Madeline got diagnosed, I was, I was with her in the hospital, when I found your podcast, we're talking like day two, after her diagnosis, and just learning more and more and more about it and figuring out how her body works and how to make everything as good as it can be, has made a big difference for my mental health. And, and I remember the doctor saying to me or the the therapist in her in her endo group, self care, take care of yourself, if you can't take care of yourself, if you're not taking care of yourself, then you're not taking care of your daughter as best as you can. I just I want to advocate for that. Because I think it's really important that first you choose the words wisely to just to explain what you're doing for yourself and for others, but also take care of yourself in your relationship with other people in your relationship to yourself. And in your relationship to five one. Yeah, I think it's really important. Well, I
Scott Benner 1:16:27
think the way you talk about it is the way you end up thinking about it. So that's just make sense to use words that are kind of Kinder, it's kind
Geoff 1:16:35
of a Yeah, kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. This is kind of the way I see it. Like, like you use use that expression. What is it something about expecting you get what you expect? Yes, yeah, exactly. And the words you use to describe what you expect is going to affect your mental health. Right.
Scott Benner 1:16:55
And if you so if you say I have a disease, then that's a that feels negative. And it has
Geoff 1:17:02
a negative connotation. And if you say on the other hand, my daughter, like my daughter has a disease, my daughter has a chronic medical condition. That sounds very different. Even if you say it in the same home, you think you have different associations to the word. So I choose like, I've done some posts on my Instagram, right? I talked about like, how I see my daughter's, like one where I talk about the words that I use, I just would like to advocate for people to think about that. And think about what they, what they call it for themselves and in their heads and, and stuff that makes a difference. You can see it in the Facebook group as well. How there's patterns from different people. Well, there's some people who who did. It's definitely the word disease that's used the most in the Facebook group, I hate this disease, this diseases is I'm done with this disease, all these kinds of diseases killing, I started to realize that I myself was being negative, negatively affected by those comments. And so I just I would I would actually, like find myself scrolling over them, like, Okay, I don't I don't want that negativism, I need something else. And then I would see people post about, we're getting this, we're making this work. We've got the upper hand now. And then I realized that that's what I I looked for. And it made me feel better. So you get what you get what you expect. Yeah, like you said,
Scott Benner 1:18:40
Well, I tried to, I try to think of it like this, and that everybody comes in at some different part of the journey. And there are going to be some people who were just like, been doing it for three months, they don't understand it, and they're overwhelmed. They're like, I hate this. And you know, there are going to be people who lived with it for their whole life and don't know don't understand it, yet. They might feel the same way. But if we let all those people together, they'll just reinforce to each other that it's horrible and they can't figure it out, blah, blah, blah. So you need other people there who are like hey, you know, I found out that this works or we've had a lot of success with this or try not calling it a disease and see if it doesn't make you feel like whatever your input is. And I think that's how that's how the community aspect of it is so valuable. You have to have people from every kind of like I said part on the journey. The problem is is that some of them are such neophytes that it feels like what they're saying is so negative sometimes, but it's just because of where they're at in the process. It
Geoff 1:19:48
could be a bad day like I get it oh my god I've I had bad days. I put my almost put my fist through a wall one weekend because I was just freaking out. I couldn't get her blood sugar's where I wanted them to be Be. And you know, that's where that Facebook group is absolutely invaluable. I've put a long post on there. This is all the these are all the factors. This is everything I've done. I'm like three people, I can name them. They're like, pirates. I was like, what? I didn't even think about that. And then two days later, so I upped her basil. Two days later, here comes the green snot. I was like, wow, this is amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:20:29
cuz you're making yourself mental. I mean, you've you've listed out every possible thing in the world. And they just like, Oh, you didn't think of this. It's like, when someone comes,
Geoff 1:20:37
you're looking at me, you're looking at my posts. And they're like, like, I put everything down. Like, my posts are long, like, every single thing I've you can possibly think of. And they're like, Yeah, virus,
Scott Benner 1:20:46
like, like, Oh, thank you. It really is lovely. Like it. It's just, you know, where else you're gonna get that from? You don't
Geoff 1:20:55
know. Exactly. And that's, like, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm a single father, I have my daughter 50% of the time. At two o'clock in the morning, I don't have anybody to call. But that Facebook group is always there. Always. I can't tell you like dozens and dozens of times, where the it has saved my sanity, going into the Facebook group making a posting and question and getting specific answers from specific people. And I'm like, Oh, thank you.
Scott Benner 1:21:26
I am completely proud of that group. It really is. Even when it goes to shouldn't be Oh, thank you, even when it goes through growing pains are there you know, once every once in a while someone comes in, and they're, they're just a mix of like, lost and angry and drunk. And you're like, alright, well, I think he tried to talk them down. You're like, Hey, calm down, like, you know, blah, blah, like just hanging out. Like, you'll see the group's not like this, you'll you know, and most people do like it as much as you think like, oh, I actually had a thought the other day, I said it out loud on the group. I was like, this space is so calm right now. Like, I really think we transcended something like we leveled up or something. It's, it's fascinating how well it's running. And, um, even though like, you know, once in a while, like, even behind the scenes, that there's people who, somebody who helps me moderate the group, and there are people who helped me, you know, they're like, group experts that leave links for people like, Hey, you have a question about this, and might be in this episode, and which is wonderful. Actually, I need more of those people. But, but like, every once in a while, like privately, we'll message each other. And I'd be like, I think this lady's drunk Does she seem drunk Do
you like, Let's get her a break here. I don't think she's having a good day. It's something else, like we went through a whole like we've gone through, we went through a wave where the group got very popular. And some people tried to come into it, and affect it, like they wanted it, I think they saw the power of it. And they wanted their message to be more brightly shown in there, which is even odd to me, because I don't stop anybody from talking about anything. So people are in there talking about all different ways they eat all different ways. They manage, like, you know, I don't care, like, it's all good to me. But it got to the point where it was oppressive. And, you know, we had to put in a rule that you don't tell people how to eat. And then you had to manage that rule. And it took, I'm not gonna lie to you, it took a year. And now it doesn't happen anymore. It's just really fascinating. Like you can, you can keep a space like that valuable and loving. Without it going crazy, you just have to kind of just bump and nudge it once in a while in the right directions.
Geoff 1:23:46
I mean, I, I live in a country with an amazing resources for type one management and care. We a year in or 15 months in whatever we are, we would not be where we are without your podcast. And without that group. That's just, that's just a fact. Thank you.
Scott Benner 1:24:06
That's very nice for you to share with me, I appreciate it. I really, I really do appreciate it. I mean, it's a labor of love at this point. It just really, it takes up all my time. And I don't mind. It's just wonderful.
Geoff 1:24:18
I leave an impressive library of information, are you you are in a process I kind of see it as like the wake from behind the boat, you know, it just keeps getting bigger and wider and wider. Keep going can't stop that kind of thing. It's just going to reach further and further and help more and more people on that's Wow, hat off to you. Thank you for the amazing accomplishment in life. It's not many people who can can pull that off.
Scott Benner 1:24:44
Well, you know, a decade or so ago. I just had. It's longer than that. Now I just had a popular blog, and I tried to get a company to bring it everybody together, because my first thought was all these, like great bloggers are writing. But nobody knows about all of them. They know about one or two of them, we should put them in a centralized location. Like, what if a company came along and just, I don't know, just subsidize the bloggers little bit paid them. And it's like, you know, here, we want to use your content here in this in a hub. And I pitched that idea to a couple people, and they're like, I'm like, you know, trying to try to, you know, they're, they're trying to run a business. I was like, it would be amazing. Like, you'd bring all the great voices together in one place. And, you know, you could put your signage at the bottom, you know, whatever, you know, we support this. Cattle.
Geoff 1:25:37
Yeah, otherwise grow. Yeah. You're trying, yeah, be you know,
Scott Benner 1:25:41
I don't mind your capitalism, if you don't mind us helping people. And nobody, nobody was up for that. And I was like, Alright, so then I moved along, and I watched the space again, everything's still to me, it was too fragmented. I was like, This can't help anybody. Like, it'll help the people who find it. But it can't find enough people. So can't really onScale help anybody. And that's when I thought, well, I could just keep having these conversations. And this will be a centralized location for the information, then, again, I can't take credit for the Facebook thing. Like I knew it was a good idea. I just didn't do it. Like, I mean, any, like marketing 101 for a podcast was how you like, have your own Facebook group. But I just thought I was like, I just don't really want to do that. It just seemed like a lot of work to me at the time. And the truth is, is that most, if I'm being honest, most podcasts that start through on Facebook group, they don't become very popular. And then they're just they languish, they have a couple of 1000 followers and nothing comes of it. It's a place where you post links to your new, you know, podcast episodes, and nobody clicks on. And so I just like, oh, it's gonna go that way. I don't want to be bothered with it. And then enough people came to me and they're like, We really need a place to talk about the podcast as well, this many people are saying it, then there's a real desire, and I'll put it up. It hasn't been up that long. I mean, maybe 2019 is not even write like it. Maybe it was 22. I don't remember how it's not that long ago.
Geoff 1:27:09
That is young.
Scott Benner 1:27:12
And it grows 300 People like every six days. It's exponential. It's actually like their days. Oh, my God, this is insane. Like, I'll put up a post to welcome new people and like, hey, there's 285 new people in here like welcome. And but by the time though, the weekend passes, and I look up again, I'm like, I gotta make another one of those posts. Oh, my gosh. And then, and then I see that as a positive thing, because we're growing the hub. And then someone comes along goes, oh, all these people are being diagnosed. It's so sad. I'm like, don't get me out of this. happy about this. And the truth is, it's not that that many more people are being diagnosed, it's the pages that popular. It's attracting the truth is at 38,000 People were by the time your episode goes up, I mean, maybe 43 44,000 people by the time your episode goes up. It's not enough. It's not nearly enough. Like it's impressive. Compared to other Facebook groups. It's not impressive compared to the amount of people who have diabetes. Like you have no idea like, there's a small part of me that was like, oh, Finnish people can't understand my English. Like, I actually, like, there was 30 seconds where I was like, Can I translate it? Like, what am I missing here? You know, and what am I missing? Yeah. And the truth is, is that someone there is going to have to do it, you know? And then then how's that going to happen? Because it just doesn't work that way. Like, it's a special, unknowable mixture of things that end up working out. And I can no more take credit for them than I could tell you how to duplicate it. So it's, you know,
Geoff 1:28:58
and I mean, I find like everybody says, like, one of the phenomenal strengths of the podcast is the variation in the stories you hear all the time. I love the after dark episode while I do too. I mean, I love listening to them because it makes me think, wow, people that have this messed up lives or backgrounds or whatever, they can actually make this condition work. Like they can get it to work. They've been through really horrible things. Like there's there's stories on there that I was like, I was almost driving off the road like this is crazy, um, are these people going through, but they still make it work. They still move on? Yeah, I appreciate that insanely much like so much but also just I love listening to because of my own situation. I love listening to stories by parents about their kids. I find that's my kind of like, tip of the iceberg of feeling of community in your are huge ocean of podcasts or I'm
Scott Benner 1:30:02
glad I love it when an adult, here's a parent's story and thinks, I gotta call my mom, I didn't realize. But you know, like, I've gotten those notes so many times, like, oh, I called my mom and I thanked her for taking care of me when I had when I was younger. I didn't I just never occurred to me. And it didn't understand. Yeah, no reason it should. I mean, listen, it never stops. I tell people. If you were to sit down to ask me about like my beginning and all this, I tell you how I started the blog. And you know, I'd get a couple notes every month and said, Oh, your blog is really helpful to my family. And now I don't even know how to count them. Because they come in from so many different areas. I just woke up my mother, I got started thinking that you and I were done. And so I woke up my other computer. And my Facebook group is in front of me. And there's a post here that's nine minutes old picture of a little girl. Picture of her agency says my daughter eats anything she wants, whenever she wants. These are our results. What a great surprise. I want to thank blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kids a once here 6.6 A little kid, you know. And the truth is, I could click on this and keep scrolling, and it would just keep happening. And then I could jump over into my messages. I'm helping an adult. No one bugged me. Okay, I'm just sharing this for the podcast. But I'm helping. I'm helping an adult that I don't know, over Instagram messages. And I have brought his care along exponentially the last six months. And just by he was just in a good headspace wanted to help himself I reached out said hey, what do I listen to? I pointed him towards some episodes. And then he said, if I have questions can I ask? And he's like, Sure. And he just kept asking questions. And I kept answering them as often as I could. And I mean, it's life changing. The guy's life has absolutely changed. And I mean, I just I'm scrolling here. It's like, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you just goes on forever.
Geoff 1:32:04
So do you ever? Do you ever just go downstairs and have a blue cape in a closet somewhere that you can put on and around the house with and do a little dance? I mean, can someone get you a cape?
Scott Benner 1:32:18
I don't have time for that. So if I don't live in Sweden, I live in America where I make a bunch of money. Well, that's in a joking aside, like for all the podcasts does, if the podcast doesn't serve advertisers? Well, it'll disappear in five seconds. Absolutely. It'll be like you would have to come along, you would have to come along and say to me, Scott, how much is it gonna cost you to stay alive for the next 20 years and into retirement? I'll write you a check for that. Can you just make the podcast forever? And don't put ads on it? And I'd go, Yeah, sure. That's fine. Like, I'm not trying to get rich, I'm just trying to stay alive, you know. And so I could do that. But if the podcast doesn't make money, then my wife will look at me and immediately say, Listen, Strike one. Yeah. Either either get a job, either get a job or strike one. I believe she already assumes I'm strike one, just that we haven't actually swung the bat, you know. But but but still, by the way, all of your marriage is a strike while you're just hanging in there. So relax as you're judging Jeff.
But, but it's an extra pressure. Because I you know, as I was talking to that management group the other day, yeah, the guy said, you know, well, how many employees do you have? And I was like, what's like, what was it gets me? I'm like, their employee goes, you edit the show? And I go, Yeah, he goes, You don't farm that out? I was like, No. And he goes, I said, Man, I do. I set up the, you know, I set up the recordings. I do the IT work. Like, there was a moment last week where I had trouble with my internet, I walked down and my wife looked her in the face and like, don't talk to me today. And then I disappeared, I went back upstairs and fix my internet problem, because I had to have it fixed for the next day. And I'm the guy. And you know, like, and I don't care, like I love it. I think it works terrific. But there is a part of me, like, I'm not I'm not gonna lie to you. Like, I love the advertising group that I put together. And I'm proud of it. I think it's a good solid group of advertisers. But I mean, I'd like to not have to spend my evenings reading ads and, you know, editing things together that didn't have to be unedited, if I wasn't trying to insert an ad into it, and stuff like that, but it's just how it works. And I'm looking at
Geoff 1:34:39
the same at the same time you have like a feeling you have in Swedish, we call it a stinger top feeling you have a feeling for, for the dialogue for the discussion, and, and it's all in your head, like I know you leave these episodes for a while and then you've edited them and then you put it out but through your work in your solitary work in your office. And now we've all seen pictures in the Facebook group of you sitting in your office and what it all looks like. I mean, I'm not sure you can lift that out, give it to somebody else and get the same product. I really don't know, because everybody's brain works differently. And some people are going to prioritize other things. While this episode was a little bit too long, let's just cut it back. 12 minutes. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:35:23
I don't care about that, like yours as long I don't care. There's some that are short, I don't care. Somebody's gonna like yours. I was approached by a person who said, I don't understand what you put up so much content. And I was like, yeah, like, like, here's, you know, here's a, here's a free bit of like information. everybody's not going to love everything you do. So if you only put something up once a week, you run the risk of running for a full month of something someone didn't enjoy. And if you go that long, they're gonna go find another podcast. So I tried to give people something like, even if I put four up this week, and you like two of them, that's terrific. If you like all four, God bless. That's terrific, though. If you'd like one, that's great. But imagine if I put up those four, and you didn't like any of them, but I spread them out over the next four weeks, you're gone.
Geoff 1:36:14
Be gone? I wouldn't last two weeks?
Scott Benner 1:36:16
Of course you wouldn't. And at the same time, I know, something you don't know as a listener, which is if I can keep you here long enough. Your agency is gonna go on the fives. I'm tricking you into taking better care of yourself, man.
Geoff 1:36:32
Like, yeah. And you know what? I'm expecting you to get my daughter's a one C and a five. Right? I have that expectation from listening to the podcast, like, I know, I can get there.
Scott Benner 1:36:45
Yes, it's the podcast. And it was nice of you to say, it's me. That's fine. But no, it's not at the same time. It's it's repetition. It's hearing different stories told different ways. And sometimes hearing the same story told a different way until one day your brain goes, Oh, I get it. And then then you'll get into that situation where you'll just like, people ask questions. I'm not always right. I'm not saying I am. But people ask questions. I'm like, Well, that's the answer. This is the answer to that. And there are times I don't even answer them online. I'm like, Well, let them get to it. It'll be good for the group that's in the post right now. And I'll check back on it later and make sure it's going in the right direction. And it's just, I don't know, there's, there's a way to teach people without, without letting them know they're being taught. You know, one
Geoff 1:37:30
of the things that I really liked about the podcast, I just want to share this is that, so I looked through the list. Okay, start with the beginning, do the protests, all that kind of stuff. But I was only six months into my daughter's journey, right? I've gone back and read listen to them. And I've gotten more out of the second listening than I did at first. Oh, sure. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:37:52
that's the thing though. I listen, I listen to podcasts, too. And I listen to Radio, I'm a fan of radio, I have been my whole life. I mostly don't want music on when I'm solitary. I want to hear people talking. And there's a way that good radio is delivered. There's a feeling that it has. And as much as you like it, I don't care. One listen doesn't give you everything. I hear this from people, sometimes in the Facebook group where they're like, I don't learn this way. I tried listening, and nothing happened. And you really dig in, they listened to three episodes, and their agency didn't drop three points. And they're like, this doesn't work. I don't learn this way. Now, I don't discount that some people don't learn this way. I'm sure they don't I have trouble learning by reading. So I understand that. But if you just powered through it, and just kept listening, it would stick in your head in ways you wouldn't even expect. I've tried telling the story in the podcast. Jeff, you've maybe heard me tell you, my senior year of high school, I had to take a psychology elective. And it was right after lunch. And I was sleepy at that time of day. So I would go into my psychology class and I'd go to sleep every day. Like every day, I just didn't I never paid attention once to the point where on the last second to last day of the class, there was a final that was like a half year class. It was still halfway through the year, but it was the second to last day. We go in and I'm like oh the final thing the final go to sleep. And my very good friend of mine reaches over and he shakes me and I remember waking up and looking up and he said Don't you think you should at least take the final? And I was like yeah, he's right. So I like I literally sat there like braced myself. I was like, slap I was like dude, stay away do this. And by the way now, fun aside, turns out I think my iron has been low my whole life. So everybody should feel felt bad for me but never not the point. So I woke I woke myself up. And I took the final and the next day we come in. It's our last day of class. And there's this Solid man, a beaten man at the front of the room. He is questioning his existence. I can see it on his face. And we sit down, he says, Hey, I got the final screen. It's almost like you might hear your mother. And, and he goes, he just east mumbling. And he goes, anybody want to guess who got the highest grade? And everybody's like guessing people and everything. I put my hand up. And he's like, Yeah, I'm like me, right? It was me, wasn't it? And he goes, yep, it was you son of a bitch. He put it on my desk. I was so pissed. And, and, and sad. And he should have been by the way, his life is meaningless. That's what this moment is teaching me. He doesn't even need to
Geoff 1:40:39
be there, you know, all the all the effort was in vain. So
Scott Benner 1:40:43
all I'm saying is, I wasn't sound asleep. Some days, I just had my head down. And if you so if you listen to the Pro Tip series, a couple of times you're able to see is gonna go backwards. Because you don't, you'll remember things you don't realize you're remember. And I think that's just and
Geoff 1:41:01
every single time you hear a news story, it's told with a little bit of a different nuance. And eventually, the right nuance is going to hit your brain the right way. And it's going to stick Yeah, instead of instead of it being like Teflon, like it could be in all the other days. Right.
Scott Benner 1:41:17
Jeff, listen to this might feel like an exercise to some people in me explaining why I'm terrific. But it's not. I'm trying to explain to you why I think you should listen to the podcast. And why is it at the end of a long episode, that's also purposeful. If you're still here, you're invested, you might actually listen to me right now. Like, that's why you've never heard me at the beginning of an episode, say, Hey, if you're really enjoying this podcast, leave a five star rating and a review where you listen, because helps other people find the podcast. I say that at the end of the podcast, because I'm now talking to people who care, you know, and so I'm talking to people right now who I think care. Listen to the podcast, you'll get better at taking care of your diabetes, you might not even realize it's happening. And if you can't believe that, I go read the 1000s of reviews that are trying to turn me into one of those little Religious Candles, which is just a private joke between me and Isabel. She's like, they're gonna put you on a candle one day. I'm like, stop it. Do you have those? Via
Geoff 1:42:18
that candle? If you had a blue cape on you just make sure you've got a blue cape on your candle.
Scott Benner 1:42:22
I've always like never say this in front of anybody. It's ridiculous. And she's like, it's you know, but do you know what in the grocery store candles and the religious there's like always, like, just everybody's grocery store have kind of like an ethnic foods section. And in that food section, there's a few candles to burn it meals. And they have pictures of like popes and saints on them and things like that. It's just a thing that only happens here.
Geoff 1:42:43
Yeah, okay, because I don't know what your talk anyway. Anyway,
Scott Benner 1:42:47
she's like, they're going to put an end Isabel's French, and I can hear her French accent when she's typing to me, which is ridiculous. And, and I hear her saying like, they're going to put you on a candle. And I'm like, I'm not doing your accent well at all. But, but anyway, that's not the point is that for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. And some of the things that Jeff's pointed out some of the things I've said, I got a system and it works. So just put your earphones in and I don't know be held here. Yeah, like give it a shot. Like give it a real shot. You know, that Pro Tip series. The other day I thought about I thought about sending it out to have it like, like, corrected like audio corrected because it was older when I made it like I thought about putting it on its own podcast, taking it out of this podcast and putting it somewhere else and people can find it easier. Like it's it's golden. You listen to that you're a one sees not a low sixes then listen to it again. And it will be it will be yeah, that's all. I don't know. All right, Jeff, you're terrific. It's late where you are. I appreciate you doing very much.
Geoff 1:43:51
I just want to say that I've been looking at my daughter's graph for we're going into two hours here, right. Okay. She has been floating between 4.9 and 6.2 for the last two hours for you. Perfect.
Scott Benner 1:44:07
That's wonderful. Perfect.
Geoff 1:44:08
I'm gonna sleep well tonight. Good for you.
Scott Benner 1:44:10
I did that Jeff. I'm just kidding.
Geoff 1:44:15
Well, you did eventually
Scott Benner 1:44:17
get around with the under a little bit, but like, I actually get notes from people and they're like, look what you did. And I'm like you I didn't do that. I was like you did that. That's a lot of hard work understanding diabetes, putting into practice, you know, all that stuff. Like that's your don't give don't give that went away to me. You know, that's a that's a thing you did Jeff. You know, it's really, really something else so good for you. It's well done and in a short amount of time too. So congratulations. Thank you. Of course. Hold on for me one second. Okay. All right.
A huge thanks to Jeff. Omni pod and the car On tour next gen contour next. Contour next.com/juicebox Omni pod.com/juicebox Jeff doesn't have a link. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be Wait a minute. That was too quick. Don't forget to check out the private Facebook group sorry Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. Tell people about the Pro Tip series. Share the show with people. Don't forget to subscribe and follow in your app. Please, please, please turn the automatic downloads on and what else? I hope you have a good holiday. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.
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#1066 External Medicine
Anna has type 1 diabetes and is an Internal Medicine physician.
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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, welcome to episode 1066 of the Juicebox Podcast.
On today's show I'll be speaking with Ana. She's a 38 year old type one who's been living with type one diabetes since she was 19 years old on and wanted to come onto the show to share her experiences at work as the type one. I don't think I'm gonna tell you what she does yet because I found out while I was talking to her, you should find out the same way. Oh, by the way, she also has Hashimotos. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. If you want to help out the show, make sure you're subscribed and following in the audio app you're listening in right now. It really genuinely helps. In Apple podcasts, hit subscribe, and Spotify it's follow and then set up your downloads so they come through especially those of you who have iOS 17 Now, if changed your downloads, go into the settings for the show and mark off download most recent five episodes that would really help.
This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us mid us med.com/juice box get started right now with your free benefits check at us med.com/juice box we're call 888721151. For us med is where Arden gets her diabetes supplies, and you could to the podcast is also sponsored today by ag one you can drink ag one.com/juice box. That's right using my link to drink a G one will get you five free travel packs in a year supply of vitamin D with your first order at drink ag one.com/juice box.
Anna 2:18
Hi, my name is Ana.
Scott Benner 2:20
Ana. Hi, I'm Scott. I've never done that before. I've never done that before. So nice to meet you as well. Isn't that odd? For 1000 times I've never just said back to somebody Hello, I'm Scott. Okay. And I know that you were diagnosed around 90 or 20 years old, and you're how old now?
Anna 2:37
38 years old. Okay.
Scott Benner 2:40
So that was 18 years ago, you almost are at the tipping point. Like you're almost to the I've had diabetes longer than I didn't have diabetes, but yeah, getting there. What do you think of that?
Anna 2:55
Um, I feel like I'm already there. Because, I mean, I don't you know, you don't really remember the first few years of your life. So as much memories I have. It's been more of my life. Oh,
Scott Benner 3:04
you're discounting zero to two. Yes. Oh, interest. That's interesting. You're like, I can't recall a movie I saw when I was two years old. That time doesn't count at all. Exactly. Well, that's pretty. You know, that's true. Do you have kids? I do. Okay, so you so you'll understand what I'm about to say. It's such a memory in your head of your children at that age. And then you tell them something about themselves. And they're just like, I don't know. It's a weird disconnection. Like, you've had this very deep meaningful experience together that only one of you remembers. Exactly. Yeah, it's unpleasant. It's like dating my wife who doesn't remember anything that we ever do together. So I'd be like, you remember the time wasn't that nice? And she goes, but I'm like, Ah, nevermind. So how many kids you have?
Anna 3:58
Just one just four year old
Scott Benner 4:00
are you thinking of making any more is the one good?
Anna 4:02
I hope we're good with one good for you.
Scott Benner 4:05
I agree. There are a lot of work there are a lot oh and money and time I do this thing. Your ears is only for to say girl I'm sorry. That's a little boy for your little boys for you don't know about this. I a little trick. I put my kids education on a credit card before I pay it to get the points. So if you're gonna send somebody a massive amount of money anyway, you might as well grab some points along the way. I don't know if it's smart or not. But I haven't paid for paper towels or whatever it is I buy from Amazon and quite some time. Well, by the way, I just completely paid for it. It just hasn't felt like I've paid for it. I get the check. The box often says use the points and I'm like, Yeah, use the points. But it's it's just fascinating. I wonder if Your son in 14 years, I wonder what people's thought about college will be at that point. If there'll be like, you have to go to college, or if you want to blah, blah, blah, or if it won't feel like that anymore. I think it's gonna be interesting. I'll be Yeah, probably still alive, I'll be able to find out. Okay,
Speaker 2 5:21
did you go to college? I did. And she broke up, got
Anna 5:28
at Michigan. I'm from Michigan originally. And then I did medical school in Michigan as well at Michigan State. And I came out to Colorado for my medical residency. My training you didn't
Scott Benner 5:41
you didn't lead with? I'm Ana, I'm a doctor. That's nice. Kind of physician or Yeah.
Anna 5:49
Internal Medicine. I'm a hospitalist, which means I practice internal medicine, only in the hospital. Like I don't have a clinic that you could come in to see me. I only see you if you get sick enough to be in the hospital.
Scott Benner 6:00
Can I say something that I mean, as a compliment? And other people might hear differently? You're real. You're a real doctor. That like, you know, some of those other ones. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, people you won't talk to at work, you know, I'm saying
Anna 6:18
I get it. Yeah,
Scott Benner 6:19
who do you don't tell me the name but you picture somebody in your head?
Anna 6:23
Maybe a little bit. Okay.
Scott Benner 6:26
How long have you had to go to school for to be an internal medicine doctor.
Anna 6:29
So it was four years of undergrad, I did a post bacc program, which is like a one year program between undergrad and medical school. That was so that was a year, and then four years of medical school and then three years of residency. You're saying
Scott Benner 6:44
a dozen years you were in school?
Anna 6:47
I was in a lot of a lot of school. I didn't I didn't finish all of my training until like two weeks before I turned 30.
Scott Benner 6:55
I didn't know that sentence was going towards an age distinction. I thought you were gonna be like, I didn't get it all done. But yeah, they don't care. So I skipped ears at the end. Crazy, right. So what kind of cases do you see? Generally speaking, I'm in a relationship with ag one. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by them. So I'm going to tell you that I hang out with ag one every morning. A scoop of delicious ag one in my shaker bottle, shake, shake, shake with some water right down. And then we just talked for a couple minutes talking about the day. I don't actually do any of that. I mean, I do all the stuff leading up to the top I don't talk to the Ag one I guess is what I should say. I think about my day while I'm cleaning out the shaker. Anyway, I don't know how that came out of my mouth like that. Since 2010 AG one has improved their formula 52 times in the pursuit of making the best foundational nutritional supplement possible. All that in just one scoop every day, I get the nutrients that gut health support, and I cover my nutritional bases. So if you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with a G one. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com/juice box that drink ag one.com/juice box. Everybody who has diabetes has diabetes supplies, but not everybody gets them from us med the way we do us med.com forward slash juice box or call 888-721-1514 us med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omni pod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies, and fast and free shipping. That's right us med carries everything from insulin pumps to diabetes testing supplies right up to your latest CGM like the FreeStyle Libre two, n three and the Dexcom G six and seven. They even have Omni pod dash and Omnipod five, they have an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and you can reach them at 888-721-1514 or by going to my link us med.com forward slash juicebox. When you contact them, you get your free benefits check and then if they take your insurance, you're often going and US med takes over 800 private insurers and Medicare nationwide. better service and better care is what US med wants to provide for you. Us med.com forward slash juicebox get your diabetes supplies the same way Arden does from us med links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com to us Med and all the sponsors when you use my links you're supporting the show
Anna 10:00
We see we see everything. So I do basically adults that are in the hospital, not because of anything that's not requiring surgery. So let's say I just was on service or just working through Sunday and we had, oh, what do we have? Like liver disease pneumonias, lots of like bad skin infections, heart failure, and weird infections, people with like HIV and syphilis, syphilis, people still get cancer complex. They do. They do. It seems like it's an outbreak. Actually, I was I worked for I did two weeks straight. And we had two cases of it. It was kind of crazy.
Lija Greenseid 10:39
And is that not something easy to avoid? It's
Anna 10:43
actually sort of tricky, because you don't always have symptoms. Oh, and so you can easily pass it to people without knowing that you're infected. And then by the time you figure it out, or you never had symptoms, like the other people get it. Wow. Yeah. That's not great. Keep
Scott Benner 10:57
that in mind. We're just swiping left and right. Right. Yeah. Syphilis, what do we do a big jolt of antibiotic?
Anna 11:04
Well, for most people, if it's simple, yeah, you can just do that. And you don't need to go like you just go to your primary doctor and get that we saw people that had more complicated cases with what we call ocular syphilis. So your optic nerve would actually get infected. And then one case where it was like meningeal, syphilis as well. So like, the covering around your brain and your spinal cord could get infected as well. A little more complicated. Syphilis can do everything. Yeah.
Scott Benner 11:30
Back in the day blindness was very common from syphilis, right. Yeah, exactly.
Anna 11:35
Yeah. So you have to get two weeks of antibiotics to treat that. So we take care of you that was
Scott Benner 11:39
that come from? Your bits being dirty? Or where do you get that? How does that happen? Syphilis? Yeah,
Anna 11:45
yeah, it's a bacteria that gets passed. And usually, through sexual contact, you can get sores that have like bacteria in them. So when you have contact between people,
Scott Benner 11:55
I know how it works. You don't have to show off. We all understand what you're saying. I just I relate syphilis to like, West like the old west. And I thought, Oh, they must have been like, actually, what I thought was they must have been like banging in the dirt. And so that's why is the question. All they needed was a vacuum and this would have gone away. Not crazy. Not quite, not quite. Am I Am I over simplifying syphilis. Alright, so So you see a menagerie of things? Yes,
Anna 12:29
I see all different things, which is what I like, okay.
Scott Benner 12:31
Is the was the path set already to medical school when you were diagnosed with diabetes?
Anna 12:39
It was so I actually got diagnosed, like right after I took the MCAT, which is a big like entrance exam that you have to take. And so like I had already planned and going, I hadn't like obviously got my application yet, because it was that comes later. But I was like, pre med and had done a lot of stuff and took the MCAT and had issues taking the MCAT because I'd have to pee so bad that like I was barely making it to the brakes to like, run out and go pee between the different sections of this like day long test. Yeah. And then two weeks later got went in to my PCP. And that's when I got diagnosed.
Scott Benner 13:11
So so it was pretty new. Yeah, you weren't one of those people was like, I had such great nurses growing up and stuff like that, that I wanted to be it wasn't like that.
Speaker 1 13:18
No, definitely not that for me. I asked
Scott Benner 13:22
prestige or money. What draws people to medicine more?
Anna 13:26
I think both? Both definitely do. I, the people that I work with, I work in a safety net hospital. So it's more people are more not money. We don't make much money compared to other types of positions on
Scott Benner 13:40
another major Hmm. People make more not money.
Anna 13:48
It's different, though. I mean, I also I do academic medicine as well. So my hospitals associated with University of Colorado and I teach medical students. And in academics, it's definitely more of the prestige. You want to be published. You want to have a national reputation. Well, you have to be polish and you have to Kevin national reputation to keep your job. But private medicine, especially subspecialties, there can be a big drop of money.
Scott Benner 14:12
Do you ever think you'll go private and have a practice? Or do you like the setting Aaron?
Anna 14:18
I don't think so. I really like working with underserved communities. That's what I love about my hospital is we serve like the city and county of Denver. And so we will find a way to make sure that you get the care that you need, no matter what your financial circumstances. I also do some work with the criminal justice community. And so I don't think the private sector is not that interested in those populations. Yeah,
Scott Benner 14:40
I see you you see prisoners in?
Anna 14:44
Yeah. So in my hospital, we have a unit that's just for people that are currently incarcerated, getting medical care. And then I do some of the education for medical students and residents around caring for people that are incarcerated or that used to be incarcerated have some
Scott Benner 14:58
history. Why are you such a good person? What's going on?
Anna 15:04
I must be the diabetes. You thanks.
Scott Benner 15:05
So are you nicer since you were 20?
Anna 15:08
I think everybody's nicer since they were 20. When you're 20 you're still kind of a teenager. Yeah.
Scott Benner 15:13
Bit of a dick usually. Yeah. All like I understand everything. And you don't need to tell me and I got it. Exactly. Yeah, that whole thing. Okay, this is interesting. But you skipped over my thing. Are your parents like super decent people? Do you remember being raised like that? Just how you are? What do you think?
Anna 15:32
I think so. Yeah, my mom was a nurse. And so I used to always like, see her, you know, going to work and doing take your daughter to work days. And my dad is a college professor teaches the New Testament in a small Midwest school. But yeah, it's always sort of important value of like giving back in our family and helping
Scott Benner 15:54
so you're seeing people help people. And is there a is there a vein of religion in your upbringing or no, there
Anna 16:01
is for sure. So my my dad teaches the New Testament. He teaches the Bible in school and my grandfather was a pastor. So our family is pretty religious. But I think that not everyone besides my dad, like kind of works out. Not necessarily specific to religion. My I have a younger sister that lives close to us. And she works in kind of like social work type situation. She works with people that have developmental delays, helping them get the resources that they need in the community.
Scott Benner 16:27
Yeah. Awesome. Nice group you got going over there. All right. So you are diagnosed as you're taking my two boys took the MCAT by the way, I remember her leaving my car with a fistful of pencils. And I picked her up like, a day later, it felt like, yeah, that was my experience with that. She's like, hobby back. And I'm like, Okay. Came back. very dizzy. She was like, Oh, my god. That was a lot worse. I guess I want to know that 18 years ago was 2005 ish. So what did you start with? As far as management? What kind of gear Did they give you?
Anna 17:07
I did Lantis and Novolog pens. When I was first diagnosed.
Scott Benner 17:12
Do you use a pump now?
Anna 17:15
I do use a pump. Now. I have a tandem pump now. I actually switched to a pump. Probably three years ago, I switched to a pump in medical school because of my medical school training. Or I was like a medical student rotating on the surgery. And it would be really hard to like know, when I was going to take breaks. And when I was using Lantus, I had to eat more regularly to like, avoid hyperglycemia. And it was like, Well, this is dangerous, but I'm like in surgery. I switched to a pump. So I had more control over my Basal rates. And I think I had a Medtronic pump. Initially, your med
Scott Benner 17:50
student is laying inside of the patient, what's happening?
Anna 17:56
It was a nice excuse if I didn't want to do something and be like, Oh, I gotta go have a snack.
Scott Benner 18:01
Wait, Who pooped themselves? Oh, no, no, no, I'm dizzy. Goodbye.
Unknown Speaker 18:07
Did you ever do that?
Anna 18:09
I definitely got out of things. That surgery when I realized that that was not what I wanted to do.
Scott Benner 18:13
Oh, I see. Maybe like, I have to say it's only twice three times in the whole, like the entire time Arden's had diabetes, but she said to me, can we just say this is diabetes? This one time, can I just can I just get out of this?
Anna 18:28
I was like, just blame it on the diabetes, or
Scott Benner 18:30
this one time, whatever. And she seriously I mean, she had it's not it's not a go to before, but there's been like once or twice where she's like, I can't like and one time she said, you know, now that I said that. I'm just exhausted because I was up all night. It is diabetes. And I was like, there you go. So anyway, when you get married,
Anna 18:51
I got married in 2008. So I'm like my first and second year of medical school. I'm from the Midwest. So I got married pretty young.
Unknown Speaker 19:00
We got to start making babies.
Scott Benner 19:03
Was that your intention to have a family or you just found it was my
Anna 19:07
family thought it was our intention because we didn't have my son until we were married 10 years. So very confusing for people from Michigan to be married for so long. And I have kids. So
Scott Benner 19:18
just a guy you just didn't want to lose. We
Anna 19:22
had been dating for a while we started dating my sophomore year in college, and we didn't get married until like a year after we graduated. But it was also sort of a time where we were freaking out. Like I was figuring out medical school. My husband was trying to figure out going to business school and like having to make decisions about where to apply and where to go. And it was sort of like well, either, we're going to be serious and get married and like figure this out together or we're going to break up and kind of just do this on our own.
Scott Benner 19:50
And so is it working?
Anna 19:53
It is our 15 year anniversary this summer. Wow.
Scott Benner 19:57
That's pretty long. Yeah, congratulate Since it's just interesting, because do you see that? Oh, you're just, there's that moment, right? Like you're too. You're too young to get married. But you found somebody that you're like, I don't want to lose track of this person. And then life's about to happen. And we're going to if we don't do something interesting, interesting, interesting. Interesting. And then you just had we're so busy, like, I'm assuming starting a family is the last thing on your mind.
Anna 20:26
Yeah, I mean, the first year, like, medical school is insane. And then like residency is even worse, or working like 80 hours a week, we spent a year apart because he was finishing business school for a year, my first year of residency. So he was in Michigan finishing school. I was in Colorado, starting my training. Oh,
Scott Benner 20:44
look at you. How did you find the distance thing? Was it testing and taxing? Or was it a thing that build up your relationship? I
Anna 20:54
think some are kind of in between, to be honest, like, I was so busy that even if he lived here with or lived with me at the time, I went to seen him that much. And I mean, I make fun of him for this now. But like business school is not that hard. It's not that busy. And so he was able to come out and visit a lot like he would. He was out until August when he started school. And then he was out for a weekend, Thanksgiving. And then it was out for like four or five weeks at Christmas. Came out lots of weekends. And when he wasn't here, I would be leaving the house at like 5am and getting back between like six and 7pm. Yeah, I mean, work and go into bed.
Scott Benner 21:31
I have thought I have thought you were gonna say like, I was glad he wasn't here. Like that. Like, where would you find the time for a person? You know what I mean? Yeah.
Anna 21:40
I actually my younger sister actually moved with me to Colorado, so she lived with me. So I wasn't all alone. But she would like make my lunch for me, because I would just be like, exhausted the day.
Scott Benner 21:52
How come? I have to ask this question to get to my thoughts. So you listen to the podcast? I do for how long?
Unknown Speaker 22:00
Months? years? No years, I
Anna 22:02
want to say probably three or four years. Okay. How can it kind of goes in waves like being super consistent, and then like taking a break? And then coming back to it? Yeah, I wish I
Scott Benner 22:12
could take a break for myself, too. So my question was, oh, by the way, for anyone listening, if I ever asked you, if you listen to podcasts, you say yes, every day, I listen to three, because we're you know, we're selling here, but I understand that I understand the reality of it. Like question wasn't around like, Hey, do you listen to me? My question was, how come you're not mad at me? If you're a doctor?
Anna 22:32
I mean, I'm going to be honest, at times I am. That was one of the reasons why I reached out and that mad, but I mean, I just I feel defensive. Sometimes when I hear some of the conversation was around physicians, although I get it at the same time, because I see a lot of the same things. And I get to see it from both perspectives of patient and physician.
Scott Benner 22:52
It's hard not to hear, like, so I'll start with this. When you hear criticisms of doctors who don't understand the thing they're helping you with, or don't seem motivated to better your health. You're not that kind of doctor, right? No, why does it why does it hit you hard, then?
Anna 23:12
I'm because it's still my community. And I and I sometimes see it where I think I have an understanding of why doctors may be doing things that looks like we're not trying or we're not listening, but like, we're in reality, maybe just bad at explaining what we're doing and why we're doing it. Okay. No,
Scott Benner 23:33
I believe that as well. I think that there's plenty that's happening that goes on said my mom went in for a blood test the other day, she had a concern. And the doctor ran bloodwork, but didn't run the thing that we were concerned about over and we My brother was with my mom now, like, you know, the same place. So he called me afterwards, he said, Hey, you know, talk to the doctor, they said this, we're gonna do blah, blah, blah, and a couple of weeks at that point, she'll get a blood test. And but he sent her for bloodwork today, but didn't test the value that we were that that has us here. And I was like, why? And my brother goes, I don't know, I didn't ask. And I was like, Well, I mean, is that on purpose? Like, would it not matter if it happened right now? Like there's just no value in doing it right now? Is it an oversight, like, you know, blah, blah, blah, and then we talked it through? And we assumed it's just I mean, she's gonna get this done again, in a couple of weeks. He probably just wanted there to be some space in between. But if you didn't know that, I can see being upset. Like like, well, this is the thing I'm worried about, why would you not look again, and my brother said there was no explanation whatsoever about why you did anything is a matter of fact, the things he said, My brother's like there's only half an explanation here. So I'm really worried about this. Before that, I my brother, and so I said to my brother, why is he really worried about that? And my brother goes, I don't know. And I was like, Why the hell did you ask and he goes, I freeze up in these situations. And so yeah, Oh, yeah. So you get in that scenario where you as the doctor know what you're thinking, and you don't explain it to the person sitting there. And because the person doesn't ask a question, just cruise right past it, that I think that happens a lot, right? Yeah, it happens
Anna 25:14
all the time. And it's one of the things I really like to do is like medical education. So I work with first year medical students, in addition to residence at the hospital, like specifically on communication. And we spend a lot of time trying to do better kind of like with a next generation of medical students and doctors are communicating more clearly. And we also know looking at like medical legal literature that people get upset with their physicians and people sue their physicians more so because of poor communication, rather than even just bad outcomes. And so it's physician kind of a communication problem that we need to improve on.
Scott Benner 25:48
That's very interesting. I think that in the end, like for me, in this position, making the podcast, I can't worry so much about how we got there, I have to worry about where we are when we're talking about like somebody saying, Well, I don't know. You know, I don't know anything about my insulin, nobody's ever explained it to me, I didn't understand fat impacted my blood sugar. When I went back and talked to my doctor, my doctor said, No, they No, it doesn't, it doesn't have carbs in it like, so there's levels of incompetence, right. And, and but in the end, if you're going to ask me to take someone side, I'm almost always going to take the side of the patient, because they're the one that goes home and then lives with the thing. So they get the short end of the syphilis thick, no matter what happens. Right? You know, like, maybe the doctor did it for a good reason. But my brother and my mom, had we not all spoken would have spent the next three weeks worrying about something. Because because of poor communication. So yeah, yeah. And they're and I hear from doctors, like I hear like you, what do they call it doctor bashing, or they call it doctor bash? Yeah. And I've also had, there's a great episode of this podcast, where an endocrinologist comes on here, and talks about how this podcast literally changed the face of the way that she treats people. Because she started out listening and being angry at me, and then found her way to the other side of it. I don't know if you've ever heard that one. But it's really kind of amazing, right? So. So what do I do that? What I do that makes you mad? And what do I do that makes you happy?
Anna 27:25
I mean, the education people, part of it makes me happy. I think I've learned more about like more advanced management of diabetes, who listened to this podcast, then I learned as like a patient and being taught by doctors, like diabetic educators. And it's more close to home. Like when we talk when I hear conversations around, like inpatient management of diabetes, people get hospitalized in the frustrations of dealing with their diabetes in the hospital. I think that's where I kind of want to be like, not necessarily mad at you. But like, I want to explain kind of the back side of it now that it's always done. Right. And there clearly are errors. And it's not always managed to well. I see that with at my hospital, too. It's not always done well. But I think there's kind of background that just isn't explained. Well. Yeah. About why why we approach diabetes different in the hospital than like, what you'd want to do on your day to day. Yeah,
Scott Benner 28:19
yeah. I would love to hear you. Tell me more about that. Go ahead, please.
Anna 28:24
Sure. This is what I talk with. Like when I teach medical students and residents in the hospital, it depends on what your patient is there for, like how closely and how aggressively we manage diabetes. And so I'm an internist. So I see people that are not there for surgery, surgery is kind of a different category for hospitalized patients. But we try to go by evidence in my studies. And so there's a study that's actually called nice sugar. That looked at patients that were hospitalized and categorize them as either really tight control trying to keep blood sugars, and the low one hundreds verse, moderate control, looser control, where their blood sugars could go up to 180. And seeing how outcomes were. And what they found was that there was no benefit to keeping people tighter controlled in the hospital, the only thing that they found that it did was really increased rates of hypoglycemia in the hospital, and so like negative outcomes, and so for hospitalized patients with diabetes, we allow more hyperglycemia we're really not worried about the blood sugar as long as it stays at 180 or less. And then we also know that people eat differently in the hospital because of the food that we have available to them. They tend to be NPO in the hospital, they tend to be less active in the hospital. So blood sugars are going to be different. So we allow more ups and downs, especially the upper part of it. Of course, yeah. And so I think yeah,
Scott Benner 29:47
okay. Why is the food terrible in a hospital? It makes no sense. It feels like
Anna 29:53
I don't know. It is really terrible. Yeah, it
Scott Benner 29:55
would be like if I went to yoga, and they gave me a high ball on the way and I'd be like the These things don't seem like they go together at all. Like, like, What do you mean? Like what health hospital? And then the food is like, and how do they not seem to understand what a diabetic menu is either.
Anna 30:11
It's very, it's all very old school. Yeah. I just say my hospital has really, they're trying to be better the food is not any better, but they're trying to be better about, like specialized diets like for diabetes, where we used to just like put people on a super, super low carb diet, and it's like, you have no choices as all you get. We try not to do that as much anymore. We have amazing diabetic educators who I think are just as good for our patients that need to talk to diabetic educators. But also like in teaching the physicians like the residents and the nurses and like everyone else more as well,
Scott Benner 30:47
our our lower, more stable blood sugar's not more conducive to healing.
Anna 30:51
They are but only with a cut off of 180 really been been lower have been like closer to 101 80 doesn't show that much of a benefit for medical problems. Now, when you look at surgery, patients who have maybe like open wounds that need to heal, there is a benefit to targeting blood sugar's more like 110 rather than 180. So you do have to take care of patients differently. But if you're like in the hospital with pneumonia, there isn't any healing benefit, no mortality or morbidity, meaning like you're not going to have higher rates of death or higher rates of poor outcome. If you target a bunch of group one ad rather than one time. The
Scott Benner 31:26
study that you spoke about, was there any look at what happens to people when they leave? Like what happens when you subconsciously put it into somebody's head that their blood sugar can be 180? And it's okay, do they go home and continue that trend instead of doing what they were doing if they were shooting for lower and having success?
Anna 31:45
So that study, no, it only looked at morbidity and mortality for inpatients. It didn't follow them at home. And I mean, that definitely could happen. And that's where it's like on the providers to be educating their patients to Hey, things are different in the hospital, we're going to do it different. There was another interesting study that came out, I think two years ago now that looked at does it matter if we change insulin in your in the hospital? Once you get discharged? Like Are there benefits to us trying to adjust your insulin to give you with ideally tighter control? And that study showed also that no, but would you go into the hospital and somebody tells you how to change your insulin or to increase your doses? You probably shouldn't listen to them because it didn't make any difference in your control. Once you got home. All it did was increase your rates of hyperglycemia without actually changing your agency at all.
Scott Benner 32:31
Yeah, so I understand the hospital looking at that that small slice. But I think it ignore it ignores a lot of like important issues. First of all, people who end up in the hospital whose blood sugar's are higher to begin with, don't seem to know how to manage their diabetes to begin with, you know, so maybe that's why they're finding themselves in the hospital with frequency. And then, and then you show them a higher number and you say it's okay, and they go, Okay, well, that's okay. And you say, Well, you know, you should educate them, but somebody has already tried to educate them a couple of times, and sort of left them for, I was gonna say, left them for dead. But I don't mean that I meant, like, we kind of left them adrift. You know, like, somebody shows up and says, Hey, here's diabetes, and you're a one C seven and a half or eight, and you go to the doctrine, like that's not bad. It's good. Like, you're doing great. Like now you're like, Oh, well, this is okay. And then you go to the hospital and hospitals like, Oh, it's fine. If it's higher. And by the way, you can have peach cobbler. It's on the diabetic menu, and then you go home and backslide in an amazing way. And then somehow this the survey thing that the hospital just like, oh, works great. So yeah, I just feel like it's bigger picture, like, and I'm relating it to pregnant women who I've spoken to, who will say like, you know, it's interesting, my blood sugar's were. But then I wanted to get pregnant. So boom, I put it in the fives, like it was nothing. And then a lot of them say the minute they have the baby, it goes back again. And so it's easy to say like, because there's an example where the person knows what to do, and, and can do it. And still, when given like the tiniest out, we'll just take it, you know, and I don't know, I think it ignores that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm not and by the way, I didn't just pull peach cobbler out of my butt. My mom had, you know, a significant amount of cancer removed was recuperating in a hospital prediabetes on her chart, and I go into visit her one day and she's got a big piece of pie. And I go Hey, Mom, whoa, we don't want to die. And she was that they brought it in and I said you tell me if die you know diabetes. She goes yeah, they said it's on the diabetic manual allowed to pick one thing from this. I was like, Okay, I got I don't even know what to do. I give up so it's and I get and I but I take your point of the other side of it. There's a lot going on if you can reduce hyperglycemia in the hospital. I mean, amazing. I just that and then there's the last piece of it that I think For the people coming in, who already know how to like, I use my daughter's example if my daughter had to go to the hospital, and somebody suddenly said, Hey, you can keep her blood sugar at 180 all day, I'd be like, That's 100 points higher than we tried to keep her blood sugar. And not only that, but she's 18. And so for the last 16 years, we've been endeavoring to keep her blood sugar, lower and stable. And now I go to a place again, that says health to me, and I get there and they say, Hey, do something unhealthy. And I think that might be the bigger leap for people who are already in better control. So I see the downside of people who are struggling for the people who are struggling, and I see the downside for the people who are within themselves. So I understand how it is, but how should it be, like perfect world, what should be happening, it
Anna 35:49
should be patient dependent, because it's so variable, like people, like you're a doctor, most, I feel like that most type ones have a better understanding of their disease and what they need. And that should be continued. A lot of the people that I take care of have type two diabetes, who just haven't had the education, and don't have as tight control and as kind of aggressive management of their diabetes, where, yeah, that's where we tend to kind of have looser, I think, goals, and we tend to manage it more. And they're just better education. Overall, I remember having my kid in the hospital and I was on an insulin pump at the time, and there was like, sort of panic around like, how long I could wear my insulin pump and what blood sugars were okay. And who was going to manage it. And I end up having a C section and like, when does it come on? When does it go off and I had to have my endocrinologist basically had to like write out like, it's okay to do what she wants. So it was very nerve racking for them. And a see kind of the privilege that I have is also being a physician that I get to do a little bit more of what I want with it, and that not all patients who come in even if they have better control than I do, and understanding than I do don't have that ability to have that kind of control over their health
Scott Benner 37:05
care nerve racking for them because your level of understanding is not the level of understanding they're accustomed to from patients.
Anna 37:11
Yeah, that they were much use much more used to being like, Okay, well, now we're gonna do a C section. So you're gonna go on an insulin drip and a glucose drip, and we're gonna take your pump off, and we're gonna manage your diabetes after that, and I was like, I would rather keep my pump on until I absolutely cannot and then go back onto the pump. And I'd like to keep my ducks come on and manage my blood sugar's that way. Yeah, like, your husband help.
Unknown Speaker 37:34
During the birth.
Anna 37:35
He was there. Yeah.
Scott Benner 37:38
That was he was there.
Anna 37:46
Madison is not his forte. So he was managing himself. You
Scott Benner 37:51
went to so much effort not to go? No, not at all. He did not help me one little bit. So the idea of like, I want to leave it on until I absolutely can't means unless I get unconscious, and then four or just where I just I'm unable somehow, cuz Yeah,
Anna 38:05
cuz that's, that's their concern. That's a concern we have if you get so sick, that you can't manage it yourself. And I was at Omnipod at the time that I gave birth. And my my care team was not familiar with Omnipod. Not a lot of people in my whole system use it. They were just worried like, well, what are we going to do if we don't know what you're doing?
Scott Benner 38:23
You think if I had to put you under in that scenario, the last thing you would have yelled is he's a business major.
Anna 38:32
You would have gotten it my mom, as I mentioned before, is a nurse he would have just been like it my mother in law, which is essentially what he did right after I had my son. Because my son had some hypoglycemia immediately. And then I was hypotensive and not really with it. And he basically told him I need my mother in law here to help please
Scott Benner 38:47
I don't know what to do. I so many vacations don't look to me, please. I just imagined your your measurement for all that. It's just like he was a business major. Okay, I'm sure there are plenty of like very with it. Business majors. And I'm sure your husband is one of them. It's just, I just want to know, I'm in a good mood this week. For some reason. I've been laughing through most of my interviews the last couple of days. Hopefully that won't get irritating to people. I think so. I mean, one lady was from Canada. Oh my god. Fantastic. She told such a scary story. Anyway, I don't want to ruin it for anybody. And the scary story wasn't about living in Canada, there's something about diabetes. Okay, so, so we understand how it works in the hospital. People should people should, you know, I think do what you did, like go in with a plan. Tell them like, you know, here's my intention. Like if it becomes emergent, you have to take it away from me okay, but up until then I want to do it like this. I Arden had an exploratory surgery once that was only like 45 minutes long and they ended up taking out some like a cyst near her ovary or something. But actually, they call it a pocket of fluid went off as assessed. But they were like, hey, just turn the algorithm off while she's in there. And I was like, okay, and I like flipped my finger around on the phone a bunch. And I left the algorithm on and sent her. I was like, That thing is her best chance not to go low while she's in there. And yeah, and so, but they put her like her phone in a bag. They understood the connection between CGM and the pump and the loop in on the phone, they kept the phone near the whole time. And it's a matter of fact, I remotely adjusted her Basal while she was in there. Again, the hospital and I and my wife's like, they said not to do that. And I went, Yeah, it's okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this anyway, they don't care. So they did. They just they just wanted, they said the thing. They're good now, and we're, you know, let's get past this kept her blood sugar super, during the procedure afterwards, the whole thing. But I also get that there are plenty of people who don't know what they're doing. But I kind of want to like, shift for a second to type two, if you don't mind, because of your experience. What is it? Like really like being honest? Like, people can't adjust what like, why can't they do something for themselves? Like, why are there so many people in the hospital where the hospitals just like, listen, they don't seem to know what they're doing. Let's get him out of here for this emergent problem. Like, like, Why? Why isn't it like, what, what's my point? If I came in with like a fractured finger, but that's not why it was there. I was there for something else. And I kept telling you, oh, my finger hurts and you're like other fingers fractured. You wouldn't ignore it, you'd fix my finger. But how come people don't know how to manage their type two diabetes, and we just act like that's the cost of doing business? That makes sense.
Anna 41:53
Yeah, it makes sense. I think it's kind of two parts. I think the biggest reason why we don't intervene in the hospital and try to like, fix that understanding around diabetes and improve outcomes. Probably number one, to be honest, is money, that it costs money to be in the hospital, we need to be reimbursed for what we do, the best thing you could do to intervene would be to educate and spend time educating around like, what the disease is, how do we treat it? Why do we make these adjustments? Like how can they self manage better, and we don't get reimbursed for that. So we don't have time to do that. Can I think that's one of the big Yeah, okay.
Scott Benner 42:31
It's a question based on that. And it's gonna sound argumentative, and it's not. Yeah. Do you think people don't know they shouldn't eat Twinkies as an example, or that they shouldn't not exercise? Or that when someone tells them, they are insulin resistant, that they, you know, couldn't do this? I'm not saying that, you know, there are plenty. There are plenty of people who get type two diabetes for, you know, reasons that aren't about how they eat. I'm not saying that. But for the people who that is the situation. Like, I don't understand what education is going to do for them. Like, I feel like they know the thing already. Like, is it? Is it just, I'm just trying to get to the point of like, somewhere in the back room? Is Doctor going like I could say this, but they're not going to listen to me? Is that a big part of being a doctor, the frustration of being a doctor? Some
Anna 43:20
of it, some of that is very frustrating. And I think there are, I think a lot of people don't understand the intricacies of like, what it actually means, like what a carb is, like, how do you change your diet, what kind of exercise is important, and I see a lot of hits.
Scott Benner 43:35
On I just want to wait for a second, sorry, you're gonna come back
Anna 43:38
and you need to eat healthy, what is healthy mean? Like this, and people are saying, well, I'm eating healthy. But when you talk about diet, maybe they're still having a lot of noodle, they're still having a lot of tortillas or other things that are carb heavy, but in their culture aren't viewed as bad. So that can be one of the issues. Yeah,
Scott Benner 43:56
that's I find that fascinating, too. Like, there's a significant rise in type two and the Indian culture, like on the East Coast, I don't know about the rest I'm aware of around me. And that if you talk to them privately, like the Indian people that I've met, that I've spoken to, they're like, We I know, like, you know, the food we eat is not great for this. And, but this is what we eat, like, okay, like, I don't know, like Jenny and I just got done doing an entire type two series, where we were, you know, I mean, it felt important to us to be respectful that not everybody gets to diabetes through poor diet and no exercise, but it's a big factor. And, and that whole idea of like, well, they need to be educated. That always seems like a way of saying, Look, we'll say it to everybody, but not everybody's gonna get it. It doesn't seem like a cop out. I do actually think it's the right thing to do, but it's so contingent on the person receiving the information then following through and that's how hard, really difficult to do, you know, and I, there's no shade for me on that like it just to like go home one day and decide I'm going to eat differently. And not just for a day or a week or a month, but forever and ever. Like, I don't think that's a very difficult thing to do, especially with how food is produced and packaged and moved around. And you just said something that I find frightening, not that I haven't thought of that before. But there are people eating things that are really bad for them. And they actually think they're having like a healthy meal. It's fascinating, you know, the lack of understanding, I guess, and it could be cultural. I don't know why I'm saying all this just that. It seems. It seems like a very impactful situation that we don't seem to have any luck impacting whatsoever.
Anna 45:49
Yeah, and I think education fails when it's like this prepackaged of here's a handout of the food you should eat and the exercise you should do. And you don't know who you're talking to, and what food they enjoy eating and what their day to day looks like. How do they make those changes if it doesn't actually look like what their life is? And that's where I think we fail where we're like, just just eat healthy. Here's a handout, here's the food, make sure you exercise, you know, 30 minutes a day without actually talking to people to figure out what those barriers are,
Scott Benner 46:19
ya know, Jenny, I have been talking about a lot lately, because I'm going to tell you something that I don't know that'll be in the public for a while, but your episode will come out later. So actually, today was my third injection of weak Ovi. So, three Tuesday's ago I started taking like almost a non therapeutic level of we go V it's the they start you off. Very low point two five milligrams. Micro mg. What's MJ go on?
Anna 46:49
milligrams.
Scott Benner 46:50
Thank you. I had alright. So I would tell you, I think I need to lose 30 pounds. But my body holds all my weight my midsection, like, like, no lie my arms, my legs, like all like, look like I weigh like 175 You know what I mean? Like, I'm I'm five, nine, I look like my arms and legs look like I might my butt too. I'm sorry to say they all look like I met my weight. It's all in. Not even as much in my chest. It's mostly in my stomach. Like there is I don't. Anyway, it's significant. But my eating habits are not terrible. Like my body just doesn't manage. Well, like if I eat anything. I gain weight, like a, like a pregnant lady retaining water. But like No, no lie. It's terrible, like, my whole life. So I went to the doctor, to an integrative endocrinologist and I said, Look, kids are gone now. Like they're ones working once in school, I have a little bit of time to focus on myself. Why? Why does my body do this? She gave me bloodwork, like, like so much, you know, she came back and said, Listen, people would pay for your bloodwork. And I was like, I'm like, Well, that's what like what the fuck, like, that's exactly what I said, I was like, well, then, this doesn't change anything. I've said it a bunch of times in the podcast, I'll say it here. I am the fattest person who doesn't eat much food that you're ever going to meet in your life. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. You know, and it's not like the little bit that I eat is just like a bag of sugar. Or, you know, like, I'm just a piece of chicken, I have an egg, I put it wrap in it. I have a scoop of yogurt once in a while I like a sorbet. Sometimes in the early evening, I make it myself on. Like, like, you know, you mean like I'll eat a banana once in a while. Like it's not. It's not it's not a crazy existence I'm living through. So she says, Well, let's try this. And she goes, you know, your insurance covers it, I think you should try it. So I shoot the week over you on a Tuesday. And by in the first four days, I lose a pound every day. And I'm like, that's gotta be like, I did change my like, like, I was very careful about the fat, right because they kept saying like, you might get nauseous or feel over full and like, I don't want that. But I was just eating like a couple of eggs in the morning with some turkey cut into it or some chicken cut into it or some steak. I started having it with a wrap, you know if something like for lunch and you know, a sensible dinner like you know, just like I'm just going along, eating a pound a day, first four days, the next three days. My weight stays exactly the same. It won't go up and it won't go down. On the second Tuesday, I shoot the we go V I lose a pound for the first four days. Now I'm on the phone with the doctor, she's checking in with me. And I tell her this and she goes that is not normal. Like that doesn't happen to people. And I'm like I'm like okay, like so. Then I get like a scientist or my version of a scientist in my mind right now I'm starting to eat things like what will happen if I eat candy like or it was Easter so I eat more food. And I was like limit nothing. Those three days I did not gain any weight even even one day, like had a big bowl of popcorn at dinner like, you know, etc. Now as this medication ramps up and I get more milligrams, that's going to become less and less possible because for the first three days, I did have that like, overly full feeling in my stomach, which has gone away now, but the feeling is gone away, but I still can't eat very much like if I tried to overeat, it would be difficult. So I'm like, Alright, so I was now excited to inject it today. I was like, get let's get to the next four pounds. Maybe you don't like if this is what's going to happen? I don't know. Like, maybe that won't happen this week. It might have been all very anecdotal. But what I can tell you is not anecdotal, is my appetite. Like I have to remind myself to eat, I feel full sooner when I'm eating. And that's from this medication. Like it's not it's nothing that I've done differently. But had I had I eaten like this for the past two weeks without we go via I would not have lost eight pounds. That I'm I'm very confident of. And I don't know if it's because it's limiting my intake. Or, you know, there are some studies that are preliminary, that say that we go v ozempic. You know, those drugs, direct your body to burn fat instead of muscle when you're in a deficit. And they I don't think that's been substantiated completely to the point where they say it out loud. But it's, I'm hearing those rumblings that that that might be it. Anyway, I'm sharing that because I think that there are a lot of people who we can educate till the end of time and tell them what to do. That's right and point them in the right direction. But in the end, because of the way the food system set up, I don't think they're going to be able to do it. I don't see any reason not to help them along the way. Like, like I'm being helped, because I'm like, as we're talking on it, like, I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of me. But for context, when I went to the endocrinologist, before my initial appointment for this, I stood up and I said, in your mind right now, like, how much do you think I weigh? And I'm like, I'm gonna get on a scale soon. So be perfectly honest, because you can't hurt my feelings. And she looked me up and down and said, I think you weigh about 175 pounds, and I was 233 that day. So I just, it's all in one place. And it's, I hide it well, and like I've broad shoulders, like I think part of that, like kind of just draws people's attention away from it. But for me personally, it stopped me for all those years from looking in the mirror and thinking, Oh, my God, I have to do something. Because I don't look like I have to do something, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, anyway, I don't know how to help these people. But I don't think educating them is gonna help not based on my experience for the last two and a half weeks, like, Well, I
Anna 52:49
would say when I say educate, I don't just mean like diet and exercise education. I think part of the problem is type one diabetics, I think we learn how to manage our diabetes by having more control over like how much insulin to inject, and when and how to use insulin. I don't think type twos are taught that part of it. And so like, when I talk to him about type two diabetics, they don't always understand how the insulin works like, and how it can be related to what you're eating and, and how it might need to be adjusted based on what you're eating and what your activity is. And so like, teaching people to be better advocates for themselves and to take control with other things in medicine, like, if you have hypertension, like we sort of defer that to your provider to like, take your blood sugar and tell you what dose of blood pressure medication you need. But diabetes doesn't do well when it's managed that way. You need that like daily, those daily numbers and knowing your activities, and you need to know how the medications work so you know how to adjust them and how to advocate for yourself to get those adjustments. Neat done. To
Scott Benner 53:51
some degree, my contention to is that it can't kill you right away, type two. And that's why they don't they don't like, like, viciously learn about it in the beginning. Because it's just
Anna 54:02
it's different to like your pancreas like kind of works at first. So you don't need Bolus Basal insulin at first, you can do basil at some point, you're going to need Bolus maybe, like you can use oral medications. It's not as clean cut kind of where it's like, well, now you're in charge, you're on insulin.
Scott Benner 54:19
Yeah, it's a great point, like not everybody's type two is going to be exactly the same. Whereas everyone's type one needs insulin or, or you're you're gonna die. So like, you know, like we have to, but I really do think that's part of it like that feeling in the hospital like Okay, so if I don't give the insulin, the blood sugar goes up coma death. All right, well, I'll do that. And so you never question that ever again. You're like that, that has to happen. And you know, and so with type two, it's like, Well, why don't we try you know, could you go for a walk in the afternoon and like, alright, let's cut out a little bit of this and that we'll see where we are six months from now. Do you think there's the lack of like, I don't know immediacy. See that? That's lost. I do wonder if you weren't told more directly like this is going to lead to a significant health concern. Like I don't even I, you know, I talked about it in the type two series that we made. I met a person who got put on ozempic. And they had type two. And I said, Oh, how was that? Because I hadn't done this yet. And I was just listening to people and person said, it's great. I lost 25 pounds, I had no appetite whatsoever. I was like, Oh, wow, that's great. I'm like, you know, do you expect to lose more? And they said, I stopped taking it. And I said, why? And they said, Well, you know, I wasn't hungry. I like eating. And I thought, why? Like, like, all the good stuff that came for this person's health they weren't concerned with I don't even know that they understood it. Like, if all they saw was I injected this stuff in Yeah, last week, and that part was good. But I'm the kind of person who enjoys blah, blah, blah. And it took all my enjoyment away from my food. So I stopped taking it. Like, wow, like, can you imagine if, like, somebody said to you, like, oh, no, you like, if you stop taking your insulin, you know, you won't die. But, you know, you'll have all these other health implications over the years. And you're like, Yeah, but at least I get to do this now. Like, it was such a strange, but I thought, yeah, telling, like interaction, like, this person was not concerned, as much with their long term success as they were with their short term things. It's, it's very
Anna 56:42
interesting. It's, it's hard to understand, like you don't, you know, a lot of times you don't feel that terrible. And if you don't feel bad, and you think you're just taking his medications, maybe to look better, but that doesn't, that doesn't hold as much value to you. And nobody's talked to you about how uncontrolled diabetes can affect every organ in your body. And this is what you can expect if we don't manage it. And
Scott Benner 57:04
right, right. I mean, from your perspective, that story, it freaks you out as much as it freaked me out, right? Like, because you like, like, a doctor did the thing that got him to do the thing, and it was working. And this person was, I would big, strong person, like, like, big, strong person. And I think that's part of it. Like their identity is like, I'm a big person. That's how people see me, that's how I see myself, like there was so much more to it than just me, because if you would have said to me, Hey, Scott, here's an injection take it you'll lose 25 pounds. By the way, a once he got better, blood sugar's were lower, like, we were having all of the, you know, expected benefits from the ozempic. Not taking insulin, like it was really working for them. And I don't know, I just I didn't know I didn't, I'm a person who interviews people with diabetes for a living. I didn't know what to say after, after they said that. I just I didn't know where to go from there. But um, but I'm looking at also now talking to you today, I'm kind of thinking of it again, because I'm looking at it from your perspective, like, wow, like, look at all the work that doctor put into getting 25 pounds off this person lowering their agency lowering their blood sugar's and they didn't, they just said, I'm not going to do this anymore. Like that must be demoralizing for that person's doctor, I would think
Anna 58:24
it just makes you wonder, like, their understanding as well like was this medication sold to them? As Hey, we're going to help you lose weight and get your agency under control, which maybe the doctor cared more about the the person, or the reason that we're doing this is that we can help you live longer and be healthier in all these other aspects. That's my point. Yeah. And type two diabetes. That's the goal. Like, yeah, we can make your numbers look pretty. But ultimately, I want to treat this so I protect your brain and your heart and your kidneys. And you don't die young and end up on dialysis with only like half a leg left.
Scott Benner 58:57
Yeah. And that's so that's my exam standing in the doctor's office. And she goes, Why are you here? I'm I don't want to die. That was it. Like, I don't have another explanation. Like, why would I be here? I don't want to have a heart attack. Like I'm carrying weight in my front. I can Google that's not good. So like, I want that to go away. So I don't die. Like I don't care what I look like, I don't care what people think of me. I don't none of that. But I don't give a crap about any of that. Like, I just don't want to stand up one day and go hmm, what? Like, I'm not. I don't want to do that. Yeah, I think I need to get this weight off. And I've tried 19 different ways. And my body doesn't want to do it. So like, I'm tired of what I told her was I'm tired of doing things that work or don't work or work a little bit and the outcomes are different. I'm like, Tick Tick, like times ticking away here. Like I'm out of time. Like I like we need to we need to do this right now. And she's cool. She's like, Yeah, right on let's do it. And I was like, okay, cool, right. So, so is it more about how people see Eat. Like I bring this up sometimes. But there are parts of the country we're getting Type Two diabetes, for example is almost like a, it's like a family tradition like, Oh, I got the sugars. You know, it's it's here like I expected it to be. And yeah,
Anna 1:00:14
I think we all think it's inevitable. Like my mom had it, my grandma had it and some of it is genetics that we don't fully understand. So like, yeah, you might not have complete control over it. But if you just see your whole family went through this, and if you and your family and your culture, you guys really value being together and sharing meals together, and why would you value then doing things to lose weight or to change things that might make you not feel as connected with your family? Your culture? Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:00:43
like even understanding that I might get it one day like say, I say it's a that's an inevitability for me. Now I've seen it through my entire family, change it to, hey, everybody in our family catches fire in their 50s Do I just then I don't keep water around. And when the fire comes, I don't like douse myself out. I just go here, this happens, everybody. It's such an odd an odd decision in that moment to me, like like, Oh, I'm having this significant health crisis that is going to poorly color the rest of my I don't like maybe we should be more clear with people, most of the causes of death, right? Like when you die, and they say like, oh, this person died from complications to type two diabetes, but it was a heart attack, or they died of complications that but it was a stroke, or it was like, I think that people need to understand that you don't gracefully die at 96 with type two diabetes, that you're not doing anything about, like they're gonna have like a major catastrophic incident that's going to end your life. And no, maybe they don't know. I'm not sure.
Anna 1:01:49
I don't think people realize that. I mean, I take care of patients that have heart attacks and strokes all the time. And it frequently is news to them that will your diabetes with your agency of nine is one of the big risk factors that led to you having a stroke. Yeah, like, that's something that we need to fix. How does that
Speaker 3 1:02:07
happen, though? How does somebody get diagnosed with something and not be told, my mom got cancer? And the doctor sat down with her and said, Bev, you're gonna die in four months, if we don't do a surgery. He didn't say, oh, tough luck. What do you want to do?
Scott Benner 1:02:24
What do you what are your thoughts on this? Because my mom would have been like, I don't want to do anything. Because that's yeah, I don't know. Like, and it's, I really don't think it's the I don't think the fault lies on the patient. Like, there are plenty of things about life that I don't understand. But they don't try to, they don't try to kill me. So it doesn't matter. But if I walked up live, I'd never seen an alligator before and I started walking towards this enclosure, I'd expect someone who knew better to go, Hey, don't go in there. That's a killing machine. You know, like, good. I don't know what I don't know, like, so there's a disconnect somewhere. Because it seems to me like you get type two diabetes. And the machine writes you off is lost, unless you go home and figure it out for yourself. And then we love to say, oh, when people do the right things, it all works out great for them.
Anna 1:03:13
Yeah, I mean, a lot of that is on doctors, we diagnose people. And I think sometimes we feel free to overwhelm people with so much information, and then it just gets lost. Where? Yeah, you know, my first priority is to like, get this under control now. But my next priority, which I totally forget about is I need to make sure you understand why this is such a priority. Like why do we care so much, that your blood sugar is high and that you're not at goal. And
Lija Greenseid 1:03:40
yeah, and then in fairness, I also think a
Anna 1:03:44
system that isn't set up to manage like diabetes needs intensive monitoring, it needs intensive treatment, and it's the long game, right? It's not like you have diabetes. Now, next year, you're gonna have your heart attack, I mean, you could, but it probably is going to be yours for free of outcomes. But you need to have an established primary care that's, you know, really invested in you and has the time to, like, help make sure everything is managed well, and our health system is it's hard to navigate hard to get consistent care and not great at teaching people about their illnesses and how they can manage themselves. The best one
Scott Benner 1:04:17
of my brothers has type two, and I've been for years, like, trying to, like, educate them slowly, like I don't want to put them off and everything and I think he's finally getting it. But, you know, he didn't know like, he's like he first got and he was like, okay, and then the valley like a year or so later, a doctor like tried to scare him. And that worked on him a little bit, but he still didn't have enough information. Now he was just scared. So he was properly scared that he could die, but didn't know what to do about it. And so I kept saying like, I think you should try this like try this like and he's like, Oh, I did like I you know, and he would for a while like he he like significantly changed his eating habits. He lost some weight is going in the right direction. And then I don't know What happens like, whatever the way people's brains work like why I use this as an example, my father told me when I was a kid, my father told me he started smoking cigarettes when he was like a child. Like 1110, like 1011 years old, like the first thing my dad smoked was a cat tail. Do you know what that is from a field? I do. They rolled that up and smoked it like because they were looking for something to smoke as children. My dad smoked unfiltered cigarettes his whole life. And like something called Chesterfield kings, like they were like, vicious cigarettes. Like if you back in the day, like Pall Mall, like something like those kinds of things. And strong like strong tobacco unfiltered, and my dad would always say like, I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine. He had coughing fits like you wouldn't believe. And he would smoke two and three packs of cigarettes a day sometimes. And he'd be like, Oh, the doctor says I'm fine. Doctor says he can't even tell I smoke. I heard that my whole life. And then my dad died of congestive heart failure. But he told himself his entire life, that this thing that he knew was hurting him. He told himself his entire life. It wasn't. It was just, I don't know. It's fascinating. Really? Do we all need therapy on? What do you think? We do?
Anna 1:06:20
I mean, but it also gets into addiction, too, and how things affect your brain prevent you from making good decisions? Yeah.
Scott Benner 1:06:29
And maybe the food and the sugar, and all those carbs? Like, maybe that's got a lot to do with it. I mean, I kind of believe it, you know?
Anna 1:06:38
Oh, for sure. I mean, some of the medications that we use for addiction can also be used for weight loss. It's all like that pleasure center.
Scott Benner 1:06:46
Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, honestly, I just said I'm using we go V for people who don't know we go v is the exact molecules as Empik. Like so ozempic was made for type two diabetes, because they people said, oh, people lost weight, and their Baba boss got better, etc, that you know, and it's because they couldn't eat as much. And they I think it goes right to your hippocampus and tells you you're not hungry, which is, you know, the story about the GLP ones and the healer monsters. Not that well. Okay, but GLP ones GLP twos were discovered in the saliva of Hilah monsters in the beginning of the 80s by a Canadian researcher. And that's what this this is what this drug is, like. I think the, the researcher noticed that he'll, uh, monsters are like vicious eaters, but once they've eaten there, they don't eat again. So like, you could put a goat in front of one, it'll swallow a goat, but then you put another good in front of it. It's like, No, thank you and fall, whereas other animals, yeah. And I think he noticed that they were very muscular, didn't carry any fat, and seem to be in control of their hunger. And that's where that all kind of began. So I'm telling you, it works. Like I in the first couple days of the injection. I told you, I had to remind myself to eat it was worse than that. Like, like, I got dizzy. That's how I knew I was hungry for the first couple days, because I had no physical signs of hunger whatsoever. And
Anna 1:08:12
did you did you like that? Like, that would be?
Scott Benner 1:08:16
No, I immediately was like, why am I woozy? Like, not just woozy, but tired. Like, I was like, am I shutting off. And then I said, Oh, I have to remember to eat on a schedule. So now I just get up in the morning. I used to not be a breakfast person I eat every night, every morning now. And on purpose. I eat every morning. And then I usually make the podcast and late morning. And then I as soon as you and I get done, I'm gonna go eat something else. And I'm not hungry. I have no desire to eat whatsoever, but I'm gonna go eat something else. So to avoid that, so it took me like three days to figure out how to avoid Oh,
Anna 1:08:50
weird, I was raised in a very, like, clean your plate clean plate club type of family. In with our son. We've been very intentional about trying not to do that and do that, like listen to your body to try to like develop more healthy eating habits. And it's interesting to like to see kind of what the next generation and I feel like. I mean, I hang out with a lot of other physicians as well who have similar ideas to me if the next generation of kids will have similar issues around eating and overeating that I think especially people that grew up in the 70s 80s and 90s with a culture of fast food, have fun Easter,
Scott Benner 1:09:27
I went to a family member's house on Easter. There were 10 people there. There was a spiral ham, a pulled pork that was smoked a couple of different casseroles, mashed potatoes, rolls to different kinds of roles. At the end, there was chocolate cake and Rice Krispie treats and people were drinking the entire time there was beer and soda and wine and like everything right? And so the it came time to eat and I Put my food on my plate. And I was like, I wanted to try a little bit this little of this. And I, I even recognized as I walked away, this looks like I don't know, it looks like they gave me a certain size spoon and said I could only fill it once, you know. And, and I went and sat down, I thought, I wonder how much more food would be on this plate if I wasn't taking this objection. And I think the honest truth is more, I definitely would have had to have the rolls, like and I had one, I had a very small scoop of potatoes. And I tried both of the like, I tried the pork and the ham, I didn't like the ham. And instead of just eating it to be polite, which is what I would have done. I was like I'm throwing this out. And then I had a little bit of a chocolate cake later. And I had a rice krispie treat at the end of the night. And I woke up the next day and I weighed the same exact amount that I weighed the day before because I was in the last three because of my theory that I was in the last three days of the shot, right. But I I know myself if I would have went there on Easter prior to this. I would have come back I would have gained weight I would have been retaining water the next day. So I don't know what's in the magic. Like he'll a monster juice. But I said to Jenny the other day while we were recording a type two, with the state of food. And the way we like, by the way, my point about Easter was that I walked away with my food some the amount of people said are you not hungry? When they saw my when they saw my plate was really interesting. Are you not hungry? And I'm like, No, I am. Thank you. Are you sure? Yeah. Like the idea was like more? There isn't enough food there for 50 people. Yeah. And it's not like no shade to them. Like they just put out a bunch of options. And like it was lovely. It just, I looked over at somebody else's plate while I was eating. They had a little bit of everything on their plate. The plate was full. Like it was there's no way anybody needed that much that many calories in a whole day. And this was just like dinner. But anyway, so the Jenny I was like, you know, to your point earlier about like generational stuff. I said the way this week Ovie seems to work so far, if my experience continues, I'm saying, we take a whole generation of people who have children, and inject this in them, and their kids, their kids are gonna grow up with a completely different idea of how much food is the right amount of food to eat. Yeah, like really, because you just
Anna 1:12:14
affected your enjoyment of food when you do eat. Interesting.
Scott Benner 1:12:18
I am not a food person to begin with. In my perfect scenario, I wish that ever eating was like the Jetsons, like, you know, they would get a pill. Remember the beginning of the Jetsons they got a pill, they'd cut it in half with a knife and fork and eat it and they were done. Yeah, I don't love food. But I also think my stomach would get upset my whole life too. And I wonder how much of that makes you not want to eat, really. And that I've addressed before this. So before I tried to be goofy, I did try other things. And one of the things I did very successfully was I watched Arden like Arden was clearly having trouble. And I don't know if you've heard that episode, but we added a a digestive enzyme to Arden's like meals, and that and that got her digestion going well, and then we added a magnesium oxide, which got elimination going really well. And we put a probiotic, and she's been doing very well with that cocktail. And I was like, I'm going to do that. I did that it changed my like, changed my life. Like just taking a digestive enzyme when I don't have that. Like, that's not sitting well feeling ever again. Like I don't you know, and I'm doing I'm doing the whole thing. So I'm eliminating every day on a schedule, eating, you know, I used to have to take fiber, I don't have to do that anymore. And so I tried that. And then once I got it rolling, I was like, I wonder if I'll lose weight because I don't eat very much. Like I'm not overeating. And it just didn't touch my weight at all. Nothing like I felt better and everything was working better. But I did not lose a like an ounce. So I tried that. That didn't help. By the way. I've now I've become like a heroin dealer with digestive enzymes. Easter my niece was like, oh, like there's dairy here. I'm not going to feel well later. Like all this stuff. And I just kind of heard around the corner, Matt. I took these two little like tablets or these capsules I dropped in her hand. I was like, take those. I felt like I'm like I knew if I was 10 years older, it would have been the crit I would have. I would have been like that old lady like dropping like pills out of a tissue. Take this like, anyway, she's like, really I'm like, Just take them she was what are they? I'm like their digestive enzymes are gonna help you digest your meal. And she popped them in her mouth. She had her food. I don't know what shade I didn't pay attention to her. And hours later she said to me, you know, usually by now my stomach's upset, my stomach's not upset. And I was like cool. It's great. I said here's a couple more time for a few days see what's up. Obviously for art and she has type one and your pancreas also helps you digest food and you know, stops working and stops doing other things besides making your your insulin but the way I saw it help art and then when I set it on the podcast, the amount of notes I'm getting from people like that like 111 was like, my stomach is hurt every day for 30 years. And I've been okay for a week now because of this. It just like super excited, like, I think the foods just, I don't know, like a lot of what we eat is garbage. It's just I don't think, I don't think it belongs inside of you. You know, I think I think it's kind of amazing that your body does as good of a job with it as it does, to be perfectly honest. So it is, yeah. Hey, so anyway, you have type one diabetes should have probably brought that up at some point. I mean, I could ask you all the boring questions about like, how do you do that at the hospital? And you'll be like, Oh, I make sure to stop and get snacks. And all the nurses know, like, I know those answers already. So I'm very just much interested in, in what type one, having it having gone through 12 years of, of medical school, how has it impacted how you treat people,
Anna 1:15:56
you know, it's sort of evolved with me. As I think I learned more about Thai politics, I got it, you know, not too long before I went to medical school, and just also sort of matured as a person. I remember being a resident, so just out of medical school, still doing training, and we rotate through a diabetic clinic at the VA hospital. And at that time, was only a few years, and I was mostly recruited type today, medics, and I sort of realized I did not want to be an endocrinologist, because it was all it was too much to like, deal with diabetes, like all day long, and then also have to manage my own. And I think I mean, a part of the medical system training, I didn't have a great understanding of what type two diabetes at the time and really felt like, well, if you just did all of these things, right, like you could get rid of your diabetes and upset but like, I can't get rid of mine, if I can do all of these things, definitely now has led me to have more compassion with my patients and understanding of like, the frustration of like, knowing all of these things about diabetes, that we don't talk to our patients about, knowing that there's better ways to manage that we can't do or don't do. I'm very selective, I think I've only told two patients in my entire time of practice that I have diabetes as well. I like we're a pump in a glucose monitor. So like some patients pick up on it when they see it. But twice, I've actually shared with that, like, oh, you know, I was diagnosed diabetes, or I have type one diabetes and kind of share my story with them to help connect. And I think that has been helpful in a couple of instances. Once with a young woman who is about the same age, I was just 19 when she was diagnosed, and that's what got her hospitalized. And she was really struggling and very tearful, very upset about it. Her family only really knew about type two diabetes, her mom like, had pulled me apart. It was like away from her. I was like, Well, you talk to her about losing weight, because that's what she needs to do. And so I had a talk with her and her mom be like, that's not the issue right now. Like, right now, let's talk about what diabetes is and why you need to take insulin. And this isn't just that you need to lose weight, you know, losing weight with type one diabetes is not going to change the fact that you have this disease. But this is frustrating, it's stuck, that it's going to change your life. And I get that. And I think I mean, that seemed to be somewhat helpful for her. It's also really led me to try to work with my hospital and provide some like collaboration with our diabetic educators just to provide better care. For our diabetic patients. residents know when they work with me that I'm not going to let them get away with like, let's just console endo to like figure out this that I feel very strongly that internist need to know what diabetes is and how to manage it. And they need to know how to manage their patient's diabetes. So that's something that we always talk about how many
Scott Benner 1:18:38
people type one type two combined, do you see that have diabetes? A lot, I would imagine,
Anna 1:18:43
we see we see a lot more type two, just because the nature of people that get hospitalized tend to be able to have multiple medical problems, and mostly older, but it's not infrequent for us to see type one diabetics hospitalized either in our hospital is pretty good. We have a whole protocol if you're like on a pump that you can stay on your pump more. Our nurses are more familiar with Dexcom, which actually came out of COVID Dexcom donated a bunch of supplies to hospitals with COVID Yeah, mostly. Yeah, so our nurses didn't have to go in the room. But now it's been awesome because our nurses know how to like set up Dexcom and we have access to them. And we can use it for a lot of our patients and you can use it as education. A lot of our patients have glucose monitors now. And so it's always a good way to kind of introduce those topics to our medical trainees to show them and I usually actually try to use our patients to educate our residents in our bed. So you have a libre on like, how's that working and like, try to like role model for my medical students and residents that our patients can teach us about their disease and like how they're managing and what their understanding is. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:19:50
I thought when COVID happened and Dexcom was like we're getting these into hospitals because it was keeping nurses from having to go in and check people's blood sugar's right they could do it from outside. And I was like, Oh, this is brilliant because it's going to teach a whole generation of medical people about the glory of like, continuous glucose monitoring, and people are going to wear it and see, like, you know, geez, I have diabetes. And like, I didn't know that this impacted me. Like, it's such a simple conversation, but like the CEO was on here years ago of Dexcom, Kevin, and he said, I wear a continuous glucose monitor, you know, trying the products and making sure I understand the, you know, the experience and everything, because he doesn't have type one. And he said, I remember him telling me like, three distinct foods that he's like, I'm never going to eat these things, again, just for seeing what they did to my blood sugar. And you get that, that that's an education. Yeah, you know, like somebody's telling you don't eat, like, eat? Well, I use, you said it earlier. Like, people say I eat great, but like, they think of mashed potatoes is like healthy. They're like, that's a vegetable, like, exactly, you know. And so they're like, Well, I'm where let them see one time, let him see their blood sugar, go to 160 and sit there for two or three hours after a meal. And be like, Oh, I am tired right now. And they don't feel well. And you know, I didn't like you know, for generations, it was just a joke, right? Like, everybody falls asleep after Thanksgiving dinner. And people would be like, it's tryptophan, um, I was always like, your blood sugar is high. Like, you're way too much food and your body is trying desperately to get rid of it right now. So, yeah, maybe that maybe that's what education looks like. And I don't see anything wrong with that, like, whether it be this GLP one. We're somewhere we're in a glucose monitor. I think that's terrific. I think that if that's what gets it through people's heads, then great. And we just don't do, we don't do a good enough job of teaching anybody. It's just a human. It's a human problem. Like, even like this whole thing, whether you're on the side of the patient, or you're the doctor, people are just at some level are limited in how much they can manage and handle and understand and put into practice. And it's just always gonna be this way. But some things are just, I don't know, some things just seem so obvious. It's baffling that we can't pull it together. As a society as a society. I mean, and to be honest, that that statement could have been for politics or health care, you know, anything really like how was it? How was it so obvious to everybody? And yet, we just go like, Oh, okay, well, I guess this is all right. Yeah, I do anything,
Anna 1:22:33
can improve diabetes, we will have as many people on dialysis people will be dying of heart attacks, people won't be having strokes, they won't be losing limbs won't be losing their vision. And
Scott Benner 1:22:43
they won't be spending their life dealing with this stuff. You know, like, it's just a it's just a it's a net positive. Like every everywhere, everywhere is positive. And I don't, it's not it's not as simple as you know, eat better or just don't have a potato chip. Like, it's not that easy. You know what I mean? It just, we pretend it is. And we pretend that anybody who doesn't react to it and do the quote, unquote, right thing is a lost cause who doesn't care about themselves? And I just don't think that's true at all. I think it's just too easy
Anna 1:23:18
disease to blame the patient, right? If that all comes? It's because you didn't care enough? Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:23:24
I am not lying to you. I have not eaten differently in the last two weeks than I ate the two weeks before that. And I've lost eight pounds. So who cares why I honestly don't care why. Like, I'm not embarrassed, like, I'm not like, I don't want to die prematurely. I don't want my joints to hurt. I don't want my knees like we we've gotten to the point where people are overweight, and they're saying like, I'm tired all the time. And my knee hurts. I wonder what's wrong. Like you're carrying too much weight on your frame. Like it's like it's a but we look for other reasons. As fascinating. Like, you don't mean like you skip over, like step one. And you go to step two, oh, you know what it could be? I don't know, what could it be? All can be this very rare thing where people students? Or how about just like I shouldn't, like I shouldn't be carrying this weight around. It's just I don't know, it's become very confusing to me as time passes.
Anna 1:24:20
Well, we're better at fixing the like, problems that come from the way or the problems that come from diabetes, and we are fixing the weight and fixing diabetes.
Scott Benner 1:24:28
know for sure what's easier? Yeah, that we seem to be on top of no problem. I mean, even me, like I'm a fairly reasonably intelligent person. I know when I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. Like I'm not unaware of it, you know? And, I mean, what are my eating troubles? I don't eat vegetables. And I've discussed this with Jenny and the type two series like I just grew up with people who like came from that clean your plate generation two, and I didn't like textures of some foods. mostly vegetables. And then my parents would sit me in front of them until they got ice cold and make me eat them. And like I I spent evenings of my life sitting in front of green beans for examples. And I've had them brought back to me for breakfast. I don't know what, what lesson my mom was trying to impart in May. But she was a complete parenting failure. Like, I'm sure she was just doing what she thought was right. And I don't, I'm not mad at her. But like it was a it was a parenting failure. And now I can't stomach vegetables. I can't bring myself to do it. And yet I try some sometimes I'm like, this is fine. Like, but it would never occur to me to go back and eat it again. Because it is so far out of my food lexicon at this point, that when I'm thinking to eat, I don't think Oh, I did like XYZ. Last time I had it. I should make this now. Yeah,
Anna 1:25:50
and it's that same thing that leaves you to probably think of green beans and feel nauseous or not want to eat them. That makes you want to finish your plate. So you can have dessert afterwards. And even if you're not hungry,
Scott Benner 1:26:03
yeah, no, yeah, we have to keep eating. It was all about like, also, we were broke. And and like growing. Yeah. So it was like if somebody bought something you're like, Oh, holy hell look what's in the house, like, eat it. It's never coming back again. You know, like there was that there was that kind of like scarcity mentality of like, Oh, my God, there's cake. They'll never be cake again, eat all the cake. Because I won't be able to have it again. Anyway, my point is that that's true. I mean, that's my story. It doesn't mean I should have to have a heart attack. Like, you know, and just because somebody else grew up in a way that's got them in a situation, it doesn't mean that they lose. Do you know what I mean? Like if your life's not perfect. That doesn't mean you don't get to live. So I'm for what, um, for whatever helps. Anyway, I'm sorry, did. Why didn't you want to come on? The podcast is probably a little late to ask you that now. But we got all that right. Like, is there anything we didn't like? Go over? You wanted to?
Anna 1:27:02
Know, I mean, that was I think I forgot which episode it was exactly. But talking about in patient management of diabetes of like, but it's not just that we don't care that we have these other motives, these other thoughts behind it, like that nice sugar study that I mentioned. Yeah. Wanting to explain some of that. And just the kind of being on both sides of it, having diabetes, being how diabetes is managed? Yeah. Yeah, the one thing I would say that sort of nice is my colleagues, I work with a group of, I think there's about 60 of us, between our MD group and our eight VPS, which are physician assistants and NPS, they sort of know that if they have diabetes questions or management questions that they can come to me and ask questions, and we try to do better, help manage better in the hospital, knowing that we've failed at it in the past.
Scott Benner 1:27:51
I mean, it's nice to have like a person there who might have a deeper understanding. And, you know, you can go to, then you find them doing it, like they actually come to you. Yeah, that's excellent. That's very cool. No, I mean, it's nice to you know, to hear younger doctors talking the way you are. It's actually very exciting. It's just, I don't know, my, my experience with my mom. And, you know, it's just been a little shaky, like, you know, you meet some people who are just right on top of it, and other people just, you know, don't care. Like I've said on the podcast before, the first oncologist that my mom saw, was absolutely happy to let my mom die. Was he was a he actually said to me, I'm not going to kill your mom in surgery. And, and then you, you know, you start hearing about things like doctors have scores, and they have to keep their scores up, or, you know, like the hostage and you're like, oh, okay, great. So you're not going to help my mom in case she dies. Because then that'll look bad for you. And I was like, cheese, that's crazy. The next doctor is just like, Yeah, I'll do it. And now it's two years later, and she's still alive. Like, it's amazing, you know. And that's an example of, you know, that's not going to leave me like I'm not gonna be able to shake that example. I'm not going to be able to shake the, the amount of times that when Arden was younger, and she went to, you know, a very good Children's Hospital, like a very good very popular very, like, you know, competent Children's Hospital, where we'd go there. And even as a small child, Arden would say, why do we come here? What are we doing? And I had to tell him, like, Well, we're here to get your prescriptions, you know, in the hospitals acting like they're doing all this stuff, and I'm just like, look, you're just the guy with the prescription pad at this point. And you know, it's lovely to see you wonderful people. I love visiting with them and everything. It's all really nice. But the amount of time something's been said to me that I was like, Oh, um, that's actionable. I need to remember that is an You could argue that's because Arden was doing so well. And we had a good grasp of it and everything. I'm sure other people were getting other direction. But for us, like, it's, you know, there was still a time when Arden was going there, and our agency was eight. And it was, you know, in the mid 80s. And nobody was saying anything that was like, here's how you can fix this. Like, it was just like you're doing great, keep going. It's always how it was, you know, so I don't know. It's just, it's tough. Like, it's tough to be sick. And it's tough to know that the thing that you're fighting with doesn't go away. And that you're going to be with it forever. Like but I think it's a leap you have to make in your head, you just have to say this is just part of who who we are and you know, add it to your added to your cycle of things that you think about. I don't know, might end up missing a couple Netflix series this year, because you don't have time, but they should be
Anna 1:30:56
healthy. Anyway, while your limbs and organs
Scott Benner 1:31:01
I think that's a damn good trade. I am also I apologize to him. A guy spoke too much today. But there's nothing I can do about that. All right, good, like motivated, and then it's hard to set off. Also my energies coming back. I just got my iron infusion recently. So I'm jacked back up again. Hey,
Unknown Speaker 1:31:22
other stuff.
Scott Benner 1:31:24
Do you have other stuff? Do you have thyroid or anything else?
Anna 1:31:28
Oh, do I? Yeah, yeah, I have Hashimotos as well.
Scott Benner 1:31:33
You take just a T three supplement? Or do you take T three T four is a just Synthroid and you don't have any trouble that that works for you.
Anna 1:31:43
No, no, it's been fine. My thyroid is sort of weird. I've never actually been very symptomatic from it. And my endocrinologist just caught it because when you're my TSH went from like, I think just under two to just under four. And she was like, well, technically, you're still within the normal range. But we like doubled. So let's check your antibodies and everything came packed, like very, very elevated. So I just started Synthroid, before I even really had true symptoms.
Scott Benner 1:32:09
I think, yeah, that's terrific, actually. Yeah. Can I ask you a couple more questions? Sure. Yeah. When you hear people all the time, say everyone, like the whole population is deficient in vitamin D, do you think that's very impactful?
Anna 1:32:24
Vitamin D is a tricky one, like my physician perspective, is the evidence has gone up and down. Like I feel like it for a while, it was like vitamin D will fix everything. Everyone needs to be on vitamin D to make everyone's life better. But then when we actually study it, and see what outcomes are it, it probably doesn't make everyone's life better. It's probably a little bit overdone. But it also is not going to hurt you.
Scott Benner 1:32:48
What about anemia? And like low ferritin? low iron? Do you see that with people very often?
Anna 1:32:56
We do I personally think that that is definitely under recognized. And it has a big effect on how you feel because we normally don't think about it until your hemoglobin your blood counts are actually dropped. But your ferritin can be low wait before that. I've had problems with that when I was younger I did. And then even my son was sort of interesting, he had this whole big workup because he was a terrible sleeper, which is common among a lot of kids. But low ferritin levels can be one of the causes and kids because they can get restless leg syndrome. And his pediatrician told us when we like brought him in, we were talking about it like well, you know, his hemoglobin is fine, so it's probably fine. But we should check his ferritin and it was like crazy low. So he was on a lot of supplements for it and we saw a big improvement with his sleep. So because of my personal experience, I definitely believe that we probably are not as aggressive with chemotherapy tends to be too reliant on waiting for like the bigger down the stream outcome of low hemoglobins before we address it as the
Scott Benner 1:33:53
person who it happens to I can't tell you like like it would be difficult for me to explain how turned off my body and brain becomes when it gets lower. Because of the the insurance system I am set up in that situation where I'm like, I have to almost turn off so they'll give it to me again. And we're trying right now to get them to just preemptively do it. Like as we start seeing numbers fall like why can't I just have Excuse me? Why can't I just have more now so they don't get to the part where I'm like, fumbling around. Yeah, terrible and like exhausted constantly. And I just wondered if that's something Did you see it with people who have other autoimmune issues? Or is it just kind of across the board?
Anna 1:34:36
Yeah, I've seen it across the board. Lots of people for lots of different reasons. Not always specific to autoimmune.
Scott Benner 1:34:43
Now it's interesting it just really is like I changed my it changed my life like getting a an iron infusion and bringing my fire to and back up again. Like it really like I was in trouble and and then hindsight showed me that this was happening to me most of my adult life and I didn't even realize said, I actually have an episode going up tomorrow or the next day with the hematologists, who came on to chat. I joked with him in the beginning, I was like, this is the only time you're going to hear somebody say how excited they are that a hematologist got type one diabetes, because now I have access to you on my podcast. But he came on was terrific and like shared all about it. And I just think it's something people should be more aware of, because a lot of doctors, like, I guess I'm gonna ask you this last question. I'll let you go then. Because you brought it up with your own thyroid in range, your labs are in range. Why does that stop many physicians from caring about your symptoms? You know what I mean, you know what I mean by that, I think because
Anna 1:35:44
we're so taught to treat to a goal, we give medicine, we check labs, you want to get to a goal. And so it looks like hey, we got there. And it's so much easier to be like, well, I can see an exact number than to have to sit and listen and to what she's saying. It's it's easier to, you know, target that certain goal than to listen to symptoms and see if this fits for hypothyroidism. I mean, it's, it's not good. And I don't want to make excuses for that. But it's, I think it's just easier to do that, you know, you see a patient you check their labs, you can call them and be like, don't worry about it. I don't have to think about this anymore. For thyroid though, argh, are in range goal is like really outdated? Isn't what we know about when people have symptoms. And when it says of it as well.
Scott Benner 1:36:31
No, it's fascinating. Like, I you just, I mean, over 2.1 You probably need medication. And yet the range goes up to 10am. I right about that.
Anna 1:36:43
Um, normally No, it's for most adults. It's five on we think like geriatrics we give a little bit more wiggle room up to 10. But most labs will say under five is technically normal.
Scott Benner 1:36:56
Yeah. So us people who are like dragging themselves, they're like a puddle. Their hair's falling out. They're gaining weight, nothing, nothing. They do help anything. And a doctor is like, well, your TSH is only four you're in range. And then that's it. And then it happened to my wife where we were just like, Just give her the medicine. See what happens. It's the reason we were able to save Arden so early because when Arden's TSH went up originally, the hospital said that's in range. And I was like, oh, no, you might I don't care what you say about range, she gets it immediately. And then still, Arden is interesting because Arden can't function without teeth for NT three. Like she needs she takes point two five micrograms of Saito mil a day. Yeah. And if she stops taking that for more than about four days, she starts to shut off. It's fast. It's fascinating, like into a into a puddle. And there's real really something else like How interesting. It is that just the tea for alone will not help her. It does. It takes away all the other symptoms, but her energy is shot. It's ridiculous. It's interesting.
Anna 1:38:05
Everyone's so different. Yeah, I think, you know, there's some concerns I know that some physicians have because I know milk can be abused, especially when we think about young woman with like eating disorders. So it's I think, in general this is very cynical, but medicine tends not to believe especially young women write about their symptoms that are more difficult to quantify. And so they are taken less seriously and thyroid autoimmune diseases are more common in women auto mean like thyroid disease or more is more common in women. These symptoms that we describe are that you have from your thyroid disease are are hard to quantify and really make people who don't have the disease understand what it's like. And so I think they're just taken less seriously and so it's harder to get appropriate treatment. Well
Scott Benner 1:38:52
my wife was dying from it when we were younger and she was told like exercise lose weight and you'll feel better. They told her that for sleep like seven years at 70 I guess sleep but can you sleep with the sun so when the sun goes down close your eyes and when it comes up open your eyes. Oh, thank you.
Anna 1:39:10
That's it. That's how easy
Scott Benner 1:39:12
Should I try a cold plunge to so so I just um not that cold plunge can help you with things I'm just saying like it's you know it's interesting where the where they'll go and where they won't go Yeah, you know and and I take I take your point about the thing with young women and by the way, who was on here Chris Freeman. Did he share this with me while we were recording her afterwards? He said athletes will cut weight with cider mill and that was one of the things I he might have said that off anyway. It wasn't Chris nevermind. But but but I but Arden like for sure like Arden will start gaining weight and she gets really tired. Like right away and nothing changes. out about her intake or anything like her life doesn't change she just without that T three she, I mean, we went through so many things. She might have pots that that was one that was fashionable to yell about for a while like for I don't know for people got pots. Now all of a sudden everybody tired has pots. And that went on for a while. And then does that happen? Is there like a psychosis that goes through doctors? They're like, You know what I've been hearing lately. Let's test for this. Oh,
Anna 1:40:26
for sure. Yeah, the popular diagnosis. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:40:29
yeah, I figured, because I right away, I put a stop to that. I was like, she doesn't have pots stop it. Like, I'm like she has type one. And she's got this and the type ones managed, like let's focus on the thyroid. And they actually got away from it for a while. So she struggled for like a year and a half to the point where and I know I've said this on the podcast before. But in Arden's yearbook from high school. We did like a page like that with photos of her and her yearbook and if that's something everybody can do or not. And Arden's page is in the center. It's her it's a really nice photo of her that we had taken when she was graduating. And around her picture in the middle are nine images of her asleep on various hard surfaces in our house. And the caption says if you see our daughter sleeping in college, please wake her up like like something like that. And it's very funny by the way, but but that was so much of her life before we figured out cider mill was like she just power through come home pass out like I mean on the floor in the fetal position head down ass up asleep with a blanket over top of her or passed out forward on a hard countertop sitting in like a like a barstool chair, like with her face just on a piece of stone just unconscious to after school. Like just really, really crazy stuff. So anyway, I don't know what the answer is. But I think the answer is fight for yourself. Learn as much as you can and and stick up for yourself. So thank you so much Ana for doing this. You really were terrific. And I'm going to have you back sometime where I don't talk as much. Hold on one second for me.
A huge thanks to Ana for coming on the show today and sharing her story. And I also want to thank us med U S med.com/juice box or call 88721151 for the podcast was also sponsored today. By ag one. Drink ag one.com/juicebox links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. Last little bit if you're listening. It doesn't matter where you're listening. If you subscribe in Apple podcasts, Spotify iHeartRadio wherever you're listening and whatever app you're listening in. It helps the show immensely. Subscribe and follow and make sure you set your downloads to download the most recent episodes.
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#1065 Canadian Clown Cars
Nine year old Kristyana has type 1 diabetes.
You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.
+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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 1065 of the Juicebox Podcast.
I want to be transparent when the microphone came live for this episode, I was expecting to speak with the mother of a child with type one diabetes. But what happened was, the mom signed the kid up for the podcast. And there was just a nine year old little girl there. It's not easy to interview kids sometimes. But I think Christiana and I had a really nice time, she's from Canada, and I teased her unmercifully about that. But I don't think she ever heard my sarcasm, which makes this sort of a delightful conversation in a way that you're not expecting. I've actually been really excited for this one to come out. I'm going to tell a story at the very end that you might enjoy. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan, or becoming bold with insulin.
This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the private Facebook group for the Juicebox Podcast Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes, 43,000 members, strong type ones type twos, lotta gestational adults, caregivers, anybody you can think of. They're in there having a conversation that you would enjoy or be able to help with. If you're looking for community, head over. If you think I don't need community. You might not be right about that Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. I'm also going to give a shout out to the type two Pro Tip series The Type One Pro Tip series The after dark episodes, the mental wellness episodes, episodes. Let me use English. We're doing a great parenting series right now with Erica, you should check that out. Jenny and I are about to drop a new series called Grand Rounds you're not going to want to miss and I'm working on some other stuff for next year. I'll tell you about it right now. One of them's called bitch session, and the other one is called whistleblower. I'm not telling you anything more about it. You'll have to keep listening to find out. What do you think of that? I'm just trying to get in character to talk with a nine year old ready? Actually, I'm not going to start yet. Don't anyone else tried to trick me to interview on their kid? That wasn't cool. But I did like talking to her. So I don't know why I'm complaining.
Kristyana 2:48
My name is Christiana Olsen brain. I am nine years old. I live in Kamloops, BC.
Scott Benner 2:56
Okay, so while you're talking I'm writing down what you're saying. So first of all, I say your name Christiana or Christiana?
Kristyana 3:05
Whatever.
Scott Benner 3:07
Sweetie, not whatever. Do people say your name wrong all the time?
Kristyana 3:10
No, no, no, let's do Christiana. Christiana.
Scott Benner 3:14
Okay. And your nine. I got that. And do you have type one diabetes? Yes, you do. How old? Were you when that happened?
Kristyana 3:23
Seven or eight. I think I was turning eight. Okay,
Scott Benner 3:27
so maybe a little more than a year ago? Yeah. Gotcha. All right. Now, does anyone else in your family have diabetes?
Kristyana 3:36
My aunt and my grandma. Oh, now?
Scott Benner 3:39
Is that your mom's sister or your dad's sister?
Kristyana 3:42
My mom's sister mom. And grandmother.
Scott Benner 3:45
Oh, a mom. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay. Do you happen to have any other autoimmune stuff? Like, do you take a pill for your thyroid or No, celiac? stomach hurts? Yeah, nothing like that. Okay. Anybody else in your family have that stuff?
Kristyana 4:04
No, no. Okay.
Scott Benner 4:05
Do you remember getting diabetes? Like do you remember? Like, how it how you figured it out?
Kristyana 4:12
Hey, yes.
Scott Benner 4:13
Can you tell me about it?
Kristyana 4:15
So I was using the washroom a lot at night. So then, the next day my mom called into emergency, not an emergency. What's a cough? Sir? Didn't care. Okay. Millie tests tested and I had diabetes. Where do you generally like to emergency where did you test or didn't care? is in the hospital ICU.
Scott Benner 4:40
So you went to urgent care? They tested you there figured out you had type one sent you to the hospital after that? Yeah,
Kristyana 4:47
sent me to an emergency. Gotcha.
Scott Benner 4:52
Hold on one second here. Christiana. My daughter's texting me. You text your parents? Yeah. I'm gonna tell you why in a second? She just sent me a text that says, I'm gonna read it to you. She's in college. What grade are you in? Grade four, four. Wow. She said, My professor just called me Aidan three times in front of the class. But her name is not her name is not eaten. She said, This is the sixth week. I don't even think I'm going to correct him. And I was telling her that I think she should very politely after class, go up to him and tell him. My name's not eaten. Right? What if I started calling you? What if I started calling you, Patricia? You'd be right.
Kristyana 5:36
No, our teacher is really funny and discards us random names he makes.
Scott Benner 5:42
I think he's pretending to be funny, but he can't remember anybody's name. What do you think? No,
Kristyana 5:46
he can remember everybody's name.
Scott Benner 5:49
We only have 2828 kids in your class. Oh, wow. Christina, do me a favor. Is your are you wearing headphones that have a wire on them? Yes. Okay. Try if you can to keep the microphone from rubbing against your shirt or your hair or anything like that. Okay, while you're talking. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so now we're in the hospital. And we know we have diabetes. But when someone in urgent care says that to you? Do you understand what it means? I know your mom does because of her sister and her mother. But do you understand?
Kristyana 6:22
No, not really.
Scott Benner 6:23
Okay. Do you remember how your mom explained it to you? No, no. Okay. Do you remember anything about being in the hospital and what they talked about? Okay, do you recall if you were scared?
Kristyana 6:40
A little bit, a little bit.
Scott Benner 6:41
But did it feel comforting because your parents were there? Yeah. Okay. So how long were you in the hospital?
Kristyana 6:49
I'm not sure. Right now. Maybe a week or two weeks?
Scott Benner 6:53
Wow. So more than a couple of days. You were there. Yeah. Okay. And they taught you about diabetes taught your parents about it. Did your grandma or your aunt come to visit? Are they not in Canada? Yeah.
Kristyana 7:06
No, they are in Kamloops. But they were living in Vancouver at that time.
Scott Benner 7:12
That's kind of far right. Yeah, yeah. And people in Canada. They don't own cars. They go on sleds with dogs that pull them so it would take forever to get there.
Kristyana 7:21
No, there's cars. Oh, there are cars there.
Scott Benner 7:26
Yeah, okay. You would take cars. Oh, you guys have cars do but don't polar bears, like live in your backyard and stuff like that? No, no. Oh, I missed that cul de sac called that you have pets? Like like penguins give a penguin feel? No. What do you have? A dog? There are dogs in Canada? Yeah, I've never been to Canada. I thought is Canada where Santa Claus lives? Or is that a different place?
Kristyana 7:52
That's a different question.
Scott Benner 7:54
I got confused. Where does Santa Claus live?
Kristyana 7:58
I'm
Scott Benner 8:00
North Europe. Right. And that's not Canada. You're saying? Yeah. Unbelievable. I've been told a lot of things that aren't correct. That's crazy. Do you think I think all those things? I don't know. You don't know. Okay. Well, we'll find out as we're talking. If you have questions for me, you can certainly ask. So you get a little hot you get out of the hospital right? And now you're home and you have diabetes. How does that work? Do you think like I'm gonna do it myself. Do you think I want my parents you
Kristyana 8:36
know, I my mom will come to school. But I was able to do my influential let's say made it out at the hospital.
Scott Benner 8:44
Good for you. So were you using needles or pens? Needles you know pens pens what kind of insulin Do you remember?
Kristyana 8:52
And can I just add asked my dad that
Scott Benner 8:54
way you don't you can if you want the look? Do you know what kind you use now? It's called Christiana listen. I'm gonna say no now. Oh, no. I don't know how to say yes. Yes. Yeah, yes. I know which one it's it's the little yellow one right yellow on the bottom.
Kristyana 9:18
And when I got diagnosed, it was mph. Oh, yeah.
Scott Benner 9:24
Right. Because Canada that's how they usually start kids. And so are you still injecting or do you have a pump now? I have a pump. Oh, cool. Which one? Do you have?
Kristyana 9:35
Omnipod dash.
Scott Benner 9:36
Oh, that's the one my daughter uses. Do you have a CGM? Yes. Which one?
Kristyana 9:46
XCOM G Six.
Scott Benner 9:47
Six. Have you heard about the g7?
Kristyana 9:51
Yes, yeah,
Scott Benner 9:52
you're not gonna isn't improved
Kristyana 9:53
in Canada? Yeah,
Scott Benner 9:54
no, I know. It's well plus they have to deliver them on on dog slides and it takes forever. No they don't. All right. What do you think? I truck? You're probably right. You're probably right. So as soon as Do you think you'll get it when it's approved in Canada? Um, I don't know. Yeah, my daughter just got hers the other day. She's wearing her second one right now. She says it's a lot smaller, and very easy to put on. You don't have to like snap the transmitter into the sensor. It's just all one piece. But she's pretty excited. All right. So Christiana, like tell me a little bit about how you take care of your diabetes every day. Like what do you do? And when do ask your parents for help?
Kristyana 10:39
Yeah, really, in time, just when I'm at home, I usually let them put my insulin into my phone.
Scott Benner 10:44
Okay, because why? Because, yeah, tell me why. When when you're at home, why do you ask them to do it? Just Are you looking for a break? Or?
Kristyana 10:53
Yeah, because that's the day that school two times, right. Oh, okay. I sometimes do it. But they know the carb count for food for
Scott Benner 11:03
the stuff. And um, so do you pack a lunch every day? Or do you buy something at school? I pack lunch. Yeah. Okay.
Kristyana 11:10
So you have to pre order at my school? Yeah.
Scott Benner 11:14
And what do they serve there? What kind of food?
Kristyana 11:18
I'm like, usually because they serve it. It's like chicken nuggets.
Scott Benner 11:27
Like junk, junky food, like nuggets and stuff. No, not
Kristyana 11:31
really. There's been like, making it at the school now.
Scott Benner 11:35
Oh, wow. That's pretty great. Do they? They don't have they don't have the chickens there though. Right? No,
Kristyana 11:44
they just I think they just buy the chicken nuggets. And cook them.
Scott Benner 11:49
Nice. Well, that's excellent. So you bring your lunch. You know how your mom tells you. How many carbs is your dad? Yeah,
Kristyana 11:56
we just tried to sit down on a piece of paper. Nice. Now.
Scott Benner 11:59
Do you? When do you Bolus when you you Bolus in your class as you're going over to lunch? Do you Bolus at lunch? How do you handle that?
Kristyana 12:07
I usually just get my insulin when I'm gonna eat. Okay,
Scott Benner 12:10
and then what happens afterwards? Do you get high low? Don't your blood sugar stays pretty stable. What have
Kristyana 12:17
we usually I eat before like we have snack. We and then we have recess and then we do masks and stuff and then we have to go outside Danny? Usually during our second recess, I usually go low because I'm running. And I haven't ate and the first juicers are usually fine.
Scott Benner 12:39
Yeah. How do you handle it when you get low?
Kristyana 12:43
My mom because she works at the school. Now she's a CPA. She usually either gives me gummies or the person might mercy. Who helps me sometimes she gives me gummies things lemons.
Scott Benner 12:58
I say okay. And then when you get home? Is your blood sugar usually like where you want it to be? Or? Yeah, it is. Oh, that's excellent. What's your favorite class? Um, tea. It's a good choice. What's your what do you guys do in gym? What's your favorite thing? Um,
Kristyana 13:21
we're doing track and field right now. But the other day we had to stand side. So we did floor hockey.
Scott Benner 13:31
Okay, yeah, just stay inside because of the ice storm. No,
Kristyana 13:35
there was no ice storm. It's like 27 degrees right now.
Scott Benner 13:38
I don't know how much that is. I live in America. Oh, hold on. I can figure it out. Christiana, you keep working on not touching that microphone for me. Okay. Okay. 27 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit. I'm not the first person to Google this in case you were wondering. Oh, that's 80 degrees. It's lovely out. Yeah. Oh, you must have grass and everything. Yeah. Oh, that sounds wonderful. Have you ever lived anywhere besides Canada?
Kristyana 14:09
Ah, no, no, no. Yeah. Besides Vancouver.
Scott Benner 14:12
But yeah, but what do we count Vancouver is Canada. Yeah, we make a lot of our TV shows in Vancouver America. I mean. Yeah, they make a lot of TV shows there. You didn't know that. Right? You ever seen that Flash show where that boy runs around real fast? Yeah,
Kristyana 14:33
I don't think so. We probably
Scott Benner 14:35
don't let you guys have the shows. We probably just make them and bring them back here. That doesn't seem fair at all. What's your favorite TV show?
Kristyana 14:45
I don't really know. Yeah, you
Scott Benner 14:47
don't do watch TV?
Kristyana 14:48
Yeah, do
Scott Benner 14:49
you do okay. Do you play sports?
Kristyana 14:53
Yes.
Scott Benner 14:55
What do you do?
Kristyana 14:56
Um, rock climbing track and field. I'm hearing though that was mostly summer and then biking for summer school during and stuff, but the winter will be skiing and snowboarding.
Scott Benner 15:10
Yeah. Do you really enjoy that? Yeah. being active and being outside. Wow, that's pretty cool. Do you guys do it as a family?
Kristyana 15:21
Yes. Rock climbing. I take classes, so I can't. But everything else we do is terrible. That's
Scott Benner 15:28
lovely. Do you have a brother or sister? My brother? Is he younger or older than you? Yeah. Do you like telling him what to do? And no, you don't like, are you sweet to him? So is he a baby? How old is he?
Kristyana 15:44
Um, he's 708 this year. And you
Scott Benner 15:48
guys get along? Well? Yes. Gotcha. Does Do you think that he ever thinks about whether he might get diabetes or not? Oh, no, no. Do you ever wonder?
Kristyana 16:01
No. Okay.
Scott Benner 16:02
Here's a weird question. Do you ever wish someone else in your family had diabetes? No, no, like, you know what? I mean? So you wouldn't be like the only one? Yeah, no, you don't think he has it? Oh, that's a good. I appreciate you bringing that back up. Do you and your aunt talk about type one? No, not really. No. Does she ever pump?
Kristyana 16:27
No, she only has Dexcom do six. Oh,
Scott Benner 16:30
no pomp though. Old school.
Kristyana 16:35
Yeah, because I don't know what time she she was pretty young when she got diabetes. Like you?
Scott Benner 16:42
Yeah, that's nice. No, no kidding. My daughter. Do you know how old my daughter was? Do you want to guess we'll play a guessing game. Oh, my daughter. She was in cut. She's in college. Now. How well do you think she was when she was diagnosed? You had to pick a not just pick a number. 202 is right. How did you know that? Are you cheating? No. Stan, are you on the Google? No, no. All right. Well, that was a really good guess.
Kristyana 17:14
Shall we do listen to your podcast?
Scott Benner 17:15
So you already knew or you listen to this podcast? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Do I ever say stuff and your parents? Like don't listen to that part. No, no. Okay. Do they? Do you think they pre listened to it and then tell you the episodes to listen to? No. Do you listen to all of them?
Kristyana 17:34
Not all of them yet. All right. Here's
Scott Benner 17:36
a question. Do you listen to on your phone or on someone else's? My
Kristyana 17:41
parents or parents?
Scott Benner 17:42
Did they get you a phone? Yeah. Nice. That's the like having a cell phone?
Kristyana 17:48
Yeah,
Scott Benner 17:49
yeah. Do you do anything with it? You're not supposed to. No, no. Okay. Which one of your parents is a better parent? I like them both. It's a good answer. It's a very good answer. Do you do certain things with your dad and certain things with your mom? Or do you guys trade around? That's really nice. That's really very nice. All right, Christina, listen, you've listed the podcast. So you know, I like nice and quiet. So what are we doing with that microphone that says rubbing on something. Don't do that. Okay. Just think. Okay, thank you. I really appreciate that didn't sound harsh did it? Yeah, no. Okay. Mikey. I didn't mean it harshly. It's just making my brain tickle. If that makes sense. Okay, yeah. What made you want to do this?
Like, did you say, did you say to your parents, I want to be on the podcast, or did they say to you, you should be on the podcast?
Kristyana 18:51
I
Scott Benner 18:53
don't remember. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. What are you going to do today? It's very early in the morning, so obviously, you're gonna go back to sleep. But then after you wake up, what are you gonna do?
Kristyana 19:03
No, I'm gonna go to school after you go to school
Scott Benner 19:07
after this. Yeah, what time do you have to leave?
Kristyana 19:11
740 Oh, that's pretty soon.
Scott Benner 19:13
Are you all ready to go to school already?
Kristyana 19:15
Yeah.
Scott Benner 19:16
Have you eaten?
Kristyana 19:17
Yeah,
Scott Benner 19:18
you got up early to do this with me. Yeah, thank you. That's very nice.
Kristyana 19:23
You're welcome.
Scott Benner 19:24
What so what did you eat for breakfast?
Kristyana 19:27
Um, a bagel? Well, half a bagel. I don't want to eat the whole thing. An apple.
Scott Benner 19:35
A bagel on an apple.
Kristyana 19:36
Have you ever been some cheese? Some cheese?
Scott Benner 19:39
Have you ever had a bagel in New York City?
Kristyana 19:41
No.
Scott Benner 19:42
I've never been there. They're way better than the bagels in British Columbia. One day you get one. Okay, how many carbs or how many carbs are in your bagels?
Kristyana 19:53
Because these ones are keto ones are used. They're only two grams.
Scott Benner 19:57
Oh, you're not gonna like the one I like the one in New York then it's gonna have like 85 carbs in it. But it's really good. Wait, so do you eat keto?
Kristyana 20:10
Sometimes Sometimes,
Scott Benner 20:11
like for certain foods where it makes it easier to Bolus? No,
Kristyana 20:16
not really. I just eat whatever. Okay, how do we have the bagels and eat?
Scott Benner 20:22
Nice? Is somebody in your house keto? No, no, you just buy keto bagels. Wow. Because they're good. And they are good. Yeah, shout them out. What do they call it? You know?
Kristyana 20:37
Oh, no, I don't think so. Okay.
Scott Benner 20:39
I like when you just say I don't know. And you think those bagels make it to British Columbia truck you're saying you don't think they're pulled by dogs?
Kristyana 20:47
Yeah, they might be made. You think
Scott Benner 20:50
they make them? They make bagels and British Columbia?
Kristyana 20:53
Yeah. make bread.
Scott Benner 20:57
You got bakery? You guys have everything there? Seriously, I just I just thought Canada was like a big piece of snow. And then some animals and then some people that are you telling me you don't live in an igloo? Yep. Oh, like with walls and everything? Yeah. Unbelievable. That's wonderful. Times have changed. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah. Nothing. You listen to the podcast or ever say anything stupid that you're like, why is that stupid guy saying that? No, no. Do I ever say anything that you're like, Oh, my parents are gonna make me do that now. Yeah, no. All right.
Why? So this morning when you had your bagel and your Apple did you Pre-Bolus for it?
Kristyana 21:57
By like, five minutes.
Scott Benner 21:59
Now, is that something you were supposed to Pre-Bolus when you just didn't do it? Or you just that's usually how you do it? Yeah. Okay, so about five minutes. And then did your blood sugar go up afterwards? Okay.
Kristyana 22:18
Yes, it always goes up in the morning. Do you know why?
Scott Benner 22:24
It's probably because you didn't Pre-Bolus Yeah. And I so listen, so what's your blood sugar right now? I have a little conversion chart in front of me. It'll tell me
Kristyana 22:33
what 8.4
Scott Benner 22:37
point four. I just typing it in juicebox podcast.com 8.4. Sugar blood sugars like 150. Yeah. Well, that's not bad at all. After a bagel and an apple. You prefer a red apple or a green apple? Red. Do you want to guess what color Apple I prefer? Green Green. No, that's wrong. I like red as well.
Kristyana 23:09
Well, ours apples are usually reddish yellow.
Scott Benner 23:14
Yellow, red and yellow. i There's no way they grow apples in Canada.
Kristyana 23:20
Yes.
Scott Benner 23:21
Are you sure?
Kristyana 23:22
Yes. Hold on. I've been fine.
Scott Benner 23:27
You've been doing orchard? Yeah. Yeah, I just googled
Kristyana 23:33
the name which is in Canada. Yeah.
Scott Benner 23:36
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of Oh, wow. Apparently Canada does grow apples. I would have bet money against. Okay. Do you have any idea what you want to do when you get older?
Kristyana 23:55
Why want to be a nurse. Yeah. How
Scott Benner 23:57
come? Yeah. Do you like helping people? Yeah. Okay. Has a nurse that have you ever had a nurse that helped you?
Kristyana 24:12
In the hospital? Yes.
Scott Benner 24:16
That's it. One. Yes. One lady or a man?
Kristyana 24:20
Yeah. No, it was a lady. Well, there was a few other day but I like to.
Scott Benner 24:24
Yeah, how come you liked her more than the others?
Kristyana 24:28
He was really nice. Gotcha.
Scott Benner 24:30
Do you think you'll be a nice Nurse? Yes. Yeah. Makes sense. Do you ever think about I mean, your nine What do you think about every day? Like what's very important to you? school. School doing well at school? Yeah. Okay. Hey, did you have to go to school from home for the COVID stuff?
Kristyana 24:54
Yes. A year. Well, half a year basically.
Scott Benner 24:58
Yeah. How was that? It was good. Yeah, your mom teacher.
Kristyana 25:04
Um, our parents, my parents and my friend's parents that was just up the street would take turns teaching off of call. Nice.
Scott Benner 25:14
So you didn't do like a zoom thing where you talk to your teacher through like your computer
Kristyana 25:18
while we would, we would but otherwise that we would do it together are very nice.
Scott Benner 25:25
My daughter used to cheat in gym class on Zoom. Why? Because she didn't want because it was early in the morning and she didn't want to do the calisthenics. So she would put her computer in a certain way where you could just kind of see her head. And then she would just lift her neck up and down once in a while to make it look like she was doing situps Do you think you'll ever do something like that when you get older? No, no, you're a good girl. Right? Yeah, my kids a monster. I hear what you're saying. Just breaking the rules and pretending to do sit ups. You know, I'm saying you shouldn't do that. I'll tell her later when I thought she also did not take my advice about telling her teacher her name. She said she's not doing that. I know. It's unbelievable. Do you think your parents will have more kids? Or is too enough? Yeah. Do you wish that? Yeah. You would like a girl or a boy? Yeah. Because your boy is your brother. Like doesn't do the same stuff you do or what's up?
Kristyana 26:25
He does some things.
Scott Benner 26:29
But you'd rather have a sister or an extra. Not in place. I'm not saying you don't want your brother. I'm saying you know,
Kristyana 26:36
well. I want my brother but I want another sister or brother. Yeah. You
Scott Benner 26:40
know when we get off this? Why don't you tell your dad that? Tell him you and I spoke about it and you really would like a sister. Okay. Yeah. Do you think he knows how to get that done? Wait, why? Why are you laughing? You're laughing What do you know about babies and how they get made? I don't. Okay, they don't tell you anything. No. Do you think a stork brings them to the house? No, no. How about a sled dog? You think a sled dog brings it? No. Have you ever seen a sled dog? No, come on. Really? What do you live in? Do you live in a city or a town or something? I gotta look up this British Columbia. Are you serious? You ain't only me. Are you telling me there's like there's like tall buildings.
Kristyana 27:37
I'm not so tall. Not college Vancouver.
Scott Benner 27:42
Oh, but you have like lakes and mountains and everything too. Yeah. Oh, it's really pretty there. I'm looking at pictures.
Kristyana 27:50
Hold on. No sled dogs.
Scott Benner 27:51
No, I'm understanding that now. And you're on the west coast of Canada. Right.
Kristyana 27:56
I'm not sure you aren't. Cam Lopes.
Scott Benner 28:02
Yeah, you can trust me. I'm looking at a map. Definitely the west coast of Canada. Yeah. Okay. Oh, cuz Vancouver. Vancouver is also in Vancouver, British Columbia. Yeah. Okay, I understand. Now I'm getting it all together in my head. So you want to be a nurse? You're like your brother. You don't? You don't pick on him. Ever. You never pick on him? Know tease them a little bit when nobody's looking. No, no. Does he pick on you or tease you? Why do you think you two are so nice? Your parents making you be nice. Are they paying you? No, no, no. Do you get a an allowance? Like you do stuff around the house. They put a couple coins in your pocket. Noah Looney are here. Here there? Yeah, no. Yeah. You know, they put they made diabetes money in Canada last year. Did you know that?
Kristyana 29:05
They put one second hold
Scott Benner 29:07
on. I'm gonna explain it to you. Because I don't know a lot of the words. Last year. Yeah, here it is. Canada issued a $2 coin to celebrate the research of insulin in Canada. You didn't You didn't see them? No, no, I have them here. Somebody sent me some somebody from Canada sent me some because they were very nice to me. They came in the mail too, but I just assumed about the dog. I guess I was wrong. Yeah, so it's like a it's like a coin with a picture on the back of like some like scientific stuff. And it says insulin and 1921 to 2021. So I guess it was I guess that was the 100 year celebration of when they found Did you know they found insulin they figured out how to make insulin in Canada. Oh,
Kristyana 30:01
no.
Scott Benner 30:03
Oh, that would be a good thing for a book report one day. Do you ever have to write reports?
Kristyana 30:08
No, not in first grade. But
Scott Benner 30:10
you know how to write though. Yeah. Okay. You prefer pencils or pens?
Kristyana 30:16
Pens. Yeah, me too. erasable pens.
Scott Benner 30:20
They make our erasable pens. That's amazing. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, yeah. All right, the guys that found insulin in 1920 they're called Frederick Banting. And Charles Best and there's other people say there was a third guy there and a lady but I don't know their names. But yeah, they they discovered insulin in Canada. That crazy. Oh, wow. Yeah. Makes you feel proud. Right? Yeah, yeah. I wonder what else they figured out in Canada. Let's look up things that were invented in Canada. Do you wanna do that? invented? I mean, I'm doing it but then I'll tell you about it. Alright. Marquis wheat. Universal Standard Time. Insulin, the snowmobile. Well, that's not surprising, is it? Oh, these are funny. The electric wheelchair. I don't know why that's right. I think
Kristyana 31:19
they have them here.
Scott Benner 31:20
Of course they do. They made them they're here. This is interesting. They say the telephone in 1874. Although the first telephone was built in the United States by Alexander Graham Bell, wait, Alexander Graham Bell claims to have invented the device in Brantford, Ontario. This guy's Canada. Yeah, that's definitely Canada. They also wait a minute. There's something here called Canada Arm. What could Canada RMB. Lights? The light bulb? You guys did the light bulb. I gotta stop making fun of you. Give me me. Hi. Let's figure out what Canada Arm is first. Oh. It's a series of robotic arms that were used in the space shuttle. Have you ever seen pictures? Do you know what the Space Shuttle was? Yeah. Okay. So there's they would open up the top of it. And they'd had stuff inside. And then they had a crane that came around and pulled it out. The crane was the catalog. Oh, wow. We're learning all kinds of stuff here. Also the Wonder bra. Do you know what that is? No, no, you're nine. You don't need a wonder bra. That's for sure. Bra. It's a bra. But I think it I don't know how to explain it. But it says wonder bra has been helping women in Canada feel and look beautiful since 1939 1939. How old would you be if you were born in 1939? I don't know. Do you know how to figure it out? Yeah, you take this year, which is 2023. Okay, then you subtract 1939 from that? And the answer is how long you would have been alive. 84 years if you were born in 1939. And you're nine, right? Yep. So if I subtract nine from 84 that means a person born in 1939. Is 75 years older than you? Oh, isn't that insane? Right.
Kristyana 33:27
Yeah. Turning 10 this year.
Scott Benner 33:29
You are turning 10 this year? Yeah. Let me be the first person to say Happy Birthday then. When is your birthday?
Kristyana 33:34
November 29.
Scott Benner 33:36
I'm a little ahead then. You're gonna have to remember this on your birthday. Are you having fun? Oh, yeah, you are? Is it? Why? Why are you having fun? Are you just being polite? No, no, you're not just like, oh, I can't wait for this to be over. No, you're having a good time. Yeah. Do you don't seem capable of why? What's the biggest lie you've ever told?
Kristyana 34:07
I haven't told him. No.
Scott Benner 34:09
Is that a lie? Just now? Did you just lie about lying? No, you've never lied. That's excellent. That's excellent. Let me ask you a question. You're outside in British Columbia, which we now know is a city or something like that. And you're walking around. It sounds like you probably have sidewalks and everything. Right? Yeah, right. Right. So you look down on the sidewalk. And what do you see on the sidewalk? It's a bag full loonies? You know what that is, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so a big bag full of coins. You're like, you start digging through it. Like there's a lot in here. What do you do with it?
Yeah, cuz if somebody was on the way to the bank and dropped their loonies on the ground, didn't realize it, to try to find out who's the They are do you keep them for yourself?
Kristyana 35:02
I tried to find out who they are.
Scott Benner 35:04
That's really nice. You know where that story comes from? My sister in law who found money when she was a kid and Cabot? My mom said money. Yeah. How much do you think? 2020? Oh, that's sweet. I once found $5 in the washing machine was super excited. It was even stupid because I think it was my $5 You don't? I mean? Isn't that ridiculous? Yeah, right. Like if I had $5, and I left it in my pocket. And then later in the day I reached in, I found $5. I wouldn't get excited. But for some reason, I left it in my pocket. And when in the washing machine when I saw it in the washing machine, I was like, I found $5. But I didn't really find it now that I'm stopping and thinking about. Interesting, right? Hey, how do you how do you feel about putting on your Dexcom and your Omnipod? Do you? Does it bother you? Are you pretty good with it? Do you do it yourself? Or do you let your parents help?
Kristyana 36:05
Where do you like to wait? Good, because putting the insulin into the pump is hard. Like drying it out.
Scott Benner 36:11
And then getting the ball and getting the bubbles out?
Kristyana 36:14
Yeah,
Scott Benner 36:15
yeah. Do you mind the clicking with the only pods going in? It's like click click click this. You don't mind that. Interesting. You think of yourself as a tough kid?
Kristyana 36:29
Not always. No.
Scott Benner 36:31
Does it ever get upsetting or sad? They have diabetes? No. Wow. You're pretty cool. How? You're very welcome. Let me ask you this. This is tough for me. Okay. It's a big question. You ready for this big question? Yeah. Do you know what I'm doing right now? You know, try to think of my next question. I was trying to make it sound like I had a big question. Then. It didn't happen. I didn't like nothing came into my head. So now I'm embarrassed a little bit. All right now we've been talking for half an hour. Do you have any questions for me? Nothing. What is it like to be a famous podcaster? Maybe you wonder. No, that's not a question for you. Yeah, How tall am I? You know, how tall are you?
Kristyana 37:30
I'm not sure I'm four foot. four
Scott Benner 37:33
foot something? Is your mom. Is your mom a tall person or No?
Kristyana 37:37
No. Do you think you're my cousin as though? Oh,
Scott Benner 37:41
there is a little height in the family though. Yeah, maybe you'll be taught Do you want to be taller? Can I give you a piece of advice? Yeah, if you end up being tall, be proud of it. Hold your hold your head up. Don't slump. Okay. You know, slump. You know the word. Yes. Yeah. Like the roll your like shoulders forward and like don't do that. Tall. Girls are cool. Short girls are cool, too. But, you know, I'm saying
Kristyana 38:10
like cousins. Well, then she's taller than my mom called Arthur.
Scott Benner 38:14
No kidding. Like a big like tall like a basketball hall or just regular tall.
Kristyana 38:23
recoloured not too tall.
Scott Benner 38:26
I gotcha. Who's the most famous Canadian you can think of right now?
I thought you're gonna say Drake. Do you know who Drake is? No, no. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Have you seen a movie theater recently? All right, Christina. I was gonna ask you if you like popcorn and how you Bolus for it? I do. Like how do you Bolus for it?
Kristyana 39:03
I had popcorn a few days ago. Oh, yeah.
Scott Benner 39:06
Did the kernels get stuck in your teeth? Yeah, yeah, I hate that.
Kristyana 39:12
Oh, we have a scales that we can put stuff on it. And it would usually measure how many carbs because we had no idea there was no packaging with this because at school, they made it for Autism Awareness Month. Some high scores.
Scott Benner 39:31
They always, they always say if you want to bring awareness to autism make popcorn. Yeah, yeah. So you put it on a scale?
Kristyana 39:39
Yeah, we have a scale that you can put numbers in and then that's your number. Do you use that for it?
Scott Benner 39:46
Do you use that skill for every meal or just once in a while?
Kristyana 39:51
I'm asleep or when we're at home for dinner time. There's there's like noodles and stuff.
Scott Benner 39:58
Yeah. Do you ever go out the restaurant?
Kristyana 40:01
Yes, sometimes.
Scott Benner 40:02
Do you find it more difficult to Bolus at restaurants than you do at home? Yeah, yeah. What's your favorite restaurant?
Kristyana 40:15
No towels. No, that's in sample. lets you know that as somebody moves out or
Scott Benner 40:27
lecture, you're not sure. Hey, when you guys decide to go out to eat, this is what happens in my family. We say, hey, let's, let's go and get Sunday. People like, Alright, and then we forget, it takes forever for everybody to get in the car. Then they get in the car, and everybody goes, where do you want to go? And then everyone says, I don't know. You decide. Does that happen to you?
Kristyana 40:46
Know, you guys usually have a decided? Look at your people.
Scott Benner 40:52
You guys are very organized. Who's Who's the organized person in the family? Is that your mom or your dad?
Kristyana 41:00
They both they both are. Okay.
Scott Benner 41:03
Do you know what your dad does to make money?
Kristyana 41:08
He he. I do now just explain it.
Scott Benner 41:16
Okay, well, keep trying. How do you explain think about it? Like he does this is you working in a building? Or does he do this to do something from home from home? Okay, so he's not a logger? Yeah, no. Okay. Does he tan beaver pelts for hats? No, no. Okay. Does he sit on his computer and type a lot?
Kristyana 41:42
Um, yeah, because, okay, yeah, that guy Nana. So he coaches athletes for baking.
Scott Benner 41:53
Yeah, that's really cool.
Kristyana 41:55
And then he there's this kind of it's a game for biking indoors. You have a trainer and then you have a progress door computer view and it's called Swift. And then there's another one I forgot what that was called.
Scott Benner 42:12
Well, Christiana, you went from I don't know how to explain it to explaining it very well. I don't know. Look it up. With Z. Oh, it's like peloton with bicycles? Yeah. Does your dad running and running? And does your dad ride them? As a trainer?
Kristyana 42:35
With the train? Oh, so he's not
Scott Benner 42:37
the guy that people see when they're looking in the computer screen. You get to make your character. Oh, you have to make a character.
Kristyana 42:45
You get things when you lit. Level.
Scott Benner 42:50
Wow. Look at you. Doing a little. A little product placement for your dad. That's very nice. So does your dad work for them? Because he owned the company?
Kristyana 43:04
I think he
Scott Benner 43:06
helps. Yeah, that's what I do at my job. I just help mostly other people do stuff and I help. So if you're a nurse, you're not gonna be able to work from home. Is that okay? Yeah, you prefer to work? At a hospital maybe? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Hey, do you have to go to school? Um, I hope I'm not holding you up. Am I Is everything okay?
Kristyana 43:26
No. Okay, good. Good. Leave at 740.
Scott Benner 43:29
Okay. And then you just hop in the car, which we now know you have and you drive to school? Yeah. Sure about the car thing? Yes. Okay. I believe you. You'd ever lie. Right? Yeah,
Kristyana 43:44
well, look it up. Wait, there's cars in camera.
Scott Benner 43:49
I'm gonna get I'm gonna Google it. You know, Google, right? Yeah. Do Wait, does does Canada have? Oh, wait. Do you want to know what other people Googled? What? Do you know, when you type stuff into Google that shows you what other people Googled? So does Canada have free health care? Do you think they do?
Kristyana 44:14
I'm not sure. They do. So for some people.
Scott Benner 44:18
Does Canada have a President? Yes or no. I was a president
Kristyana 44:27
on the hard one. I don't know that. You
Scott Benner 44:32
have a guy but he's not called a president. I think it's the Prime Minister. No Prime Minister. Yeah, pretty guy. Ever seen him on TV? No. Does Canada have states? No, no. What do you have? Um, cities provinces say provinces. Province
Kristyana 44:54
provinces.
Scott Benner 44:55
Are you say like a regular person, not like a Canadian. Okay, this dude Does Canada have nuclear weapons? You think you do?
Kristyana 45:02
Hi, not sure.
Scott Benner 45:04
Does Canada have a queen? No. A military? I don't know you do daylight savings time. Do you switch your clocks twice a year and the time changes the little? Yes. Yeah, that then do you have those be
Kristyana 45:22
good it goes. I think it was an hour later in our report. So I was at a ski competition in Revelstoke here in Canada, and the time change to the next day. And we would have to be up at like 530 because we have to be at the ski hill by seven. Get up after the chairlift.
Scott Benner 45:46
You know, any Yiddish ever you want ever heard somebody say? Well, a few. No, no, you find the bagel in New York. Someone will say, Does Canada have a constitution? That's the last one. I don't think you do. I have no idea what that is. I'm just gonna I'm gonna hit that one. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which was adopted in 1982 82. Come on, guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in its subject to reasonable limits prescribed by law. I don't know what that means. But apparently you got something called a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's very wordy. If you asked me. You don't I mean, yeah, yeah. And 1982 what was happening before that? I have no idea me either. How old was I in? 1982? Let me think I was 11 How old are you? 10. Wow. Yeah, turning 10 So in 1982 I was your age and now in 2023. You're that age. That makes me what? I don't know how old I'm old. Right. Are your parents old?
Kristyana 46:57
Not too old. No.
Scott Benner 46:58
They're okay. Then I can play to that their knees hurt or anything yet.
Kristyana 47:02
My dad his back because a snowboarder
Scott Benner 47:07
and when his back hurts he's never said I have a my back.
Kristyana 47:10
Never once.
Scott Benner 47:13
Okay. Christiana, you're delightful.
Kristyana 47:21
Thank you. You're very welcome.
Scott Benner 47:22
What color hair do you have?
Kristyana 47:26
Kind of like a golden brown.
Scott Benner 47:31
Oh, lovely. Is it like long like to your shoulders or is it shorter? Was it very long?
Kristyana 47:36
A little longer than my shoulders?
Scott Benner 47:40
Do you ever look at magazines? Think about what you want your hair to look like? Yes, no. Do you like clothes? Yes, yeah. Do you like to put your own outfits together? My daughter loves to do that when she was low.
Kristyana 47:52
Well, I can't ask her school days.
Scott Benner 47:56
Oh, do you have to wear a uniform? Yeah.
Kristyana 48:00
Private School.
Scott Benner 48:01
Oh, do you have to dress like a Mountie? No, no. Do you know what a mouse he is? Yes. So you so is it like they? Is your uniform? Ugly? Or is it not? No. No. Is it blue?
Kristyana 48:17
It's like naked people.
Scott Benner 48:20
skirts or can you wear pants?
Kristyana 48:23
Like we can like your pants? Shorts? Skirt?
Scott Benner 48:26
Nice. You got to wear the leggings with the skirt? No, you don't have to. You don't have to. But do you in the winter? Because I mean, is it a very cold there?
Kristyana 48:36
No, it isn't too cold. But when you go up onto the mountain for skiing, it's my it's summertime is minus 30.
Scott Benner 48:46
That sounds horrible. Do you like skiing? Or does your family just drag you along? And you have to go? No.
Kristyana 48:51
I love skiing. Love it. Tell
Scott Benner 48:53
me about loving ski.
Kristyana 48:58
I like because it's like cold. The cold.
Scott Benner 49:03
You do like the cold? Yeah. Yeah. The cold makes me sad. Makes me say it's so cold. It's so cold. It's so cold. It's so cold. Why are we here? But you like it? That's nice. That's very nice. Okay, so what do you think we've learned so far today?
Kristyana 49:29
About definitely do go. And
Scott Benner 49:37
we learned a lot of things. They have cars in Canada who knew that? No, I knew that. You did because you're there but I've never been there before. Like, here's a question for you ready? Want to get really, like really thoughtful. Have you ever been to America?
Kristyana 49:51
Um, no. No.
Scott Benner 49:54
Okay. Do you think there are cars in America? Yes. Do you know that for sure. Oh, yes, no, you don't know that for sure. For sure. Here. Let's do another thought exercise. Are you in a room right now? Yeah. Okay. Is the door closed? Yes. Okay. Is there a big clown standing outside of the door? No, that's not the right answer. The right answer is probably not. But you don't know for sure. Because you can't see. There is an infinite possibility that there's a clown on the other side of the door. Do you like clowns? No, no, me either. No one does not even clowns. They're self hating people. Now, my point is this. Is there a clan outside of your door? Probably not. All reasonable. All reasonable thought tells us there is not a clan outside of your door. But you cannot with 100% Certainty tell me there's not because you don't know because you're not outside of the door. So let me re ask my question. Are there cars in the United States?
Kristyana 51:01
Navy. Very
Scott Benner 51:02
good. You've learned a lot today. Don't make assumptions. Okay. I've made a ton of them today. And not one of them was right. Remember, I thought you live where Santa Claus lived? I thought there were no cars where you? I believed you had a pet penguin that there were polar bears in your backyard. And that there were no tall buildings. Right. I was surprised to hear there were sidewalks. And yet all those things exist now. That's what you say? I don't know for sure. I've never been to Canada. I've ever been to an island. A nice warm Island
Hawaii, you know, Hawaii. Tell your parents. Here's what we're gonna do when we get down here. Don't forget we have some messages for your dad. What are they? Do you remember? Well, you would like a baby sister. Right? And if he's riding a lot of bikes sooner than later, probably. So you would like a baby sister. And maybe a nice Hawaiian vacation. Yeah, right. Yeah,
Kristyana 52:14
we are going to you this year.
Scott Benner 52:16
Look at us and see where in Europe? You're going. All right. Your dad going home? Yeah, yeah, you guys. Have you ever been to where your dad's from? We dance from Germany? A lot. drags you back to Germany all the time. So what is the how long is the flight?
Kristyana 52:36
Um, so here we usually go from here to Vancouver. Which is maybe in our insane Coover to either Frankfurt or the other place. We're going to this year, maybe 10 to 12 hours. Wow.
Scott Benner 52:53
What do you do? And then another
Kristyana 52:55
like, hour or two? Does
Scott Benner 52:57
your blood sugar try to stay high on the plane? Or do you do the? Um,
Kristyana 53:01
I haven't been on the plane yet with type one. Oh, okay.
Scott Benner 53:06
Okay, well, that'll be interesting and different. May I give you a little suggestion? Okay, when you get off the plane and you're running around looking for your luggage, that's a good time to like, make sure like to check to make sure you're not getting low. Okay? Because sometimes you're on the plane, you're sitting very still. And you're giving yourself a little extra insulin because your blood sugar maybe won't come down. Then you get up and you start moving and then maybe your blood sugar could drop. So that's a good thing to pay attention to. Okay, what do you what do you do to keep yourself saying on the plane? You got a movie you watch you do? Sudoku, what do you do?
Kristyana 53:43
Usually the plans they take have a built in iPads in front of you. And then you just bring headphones, plug them in and watch 12 hours of last time I went on a long flight. It's probably up for like six hours. Four hours of sleep. It was nice. For
Scott Benner 54:03
you slept overnight. Yeah, you know,
Kristyana 54:07
four hours.
Scott Benner 54:08
Do you know what they call a flight that happens overnight? What they call it a red eye?
Kristyana 54:14
Oh, well, we're going to share overnight because we're going to be leaving the first day of spring break at 4pm. And we'll probably get to Vancouver depending on what time we're leaving. Zachary by five or six. Wow, that's and we'll probably get within there's jetlag because they're like nine hours ahead of us so probably tired.
Scott Benner 54:38
Yeah, for sure. Sounds like you have it all planned out. How many? How long are you going to be gone for
Kristyana 54:45
six weeks?
Scott Benner 54:46
Wow, that's so cool.
Kristyana 54:50
As we every two months some summer break.
Scott Benner 54:54
What are you doing with that dog while you're gone?
Kristyana 54:57
My friends are gonna look after him.
Scott Benner 54:59
That's Lovely, very nice friends. Wow, that sounds really cool. And you'll get to go see where your dad grew up and stuff like that. I seen it. You'll see it again as long as there. Is the food better there or in Canada? They're really interesting. Canadian foods no good. Yeah, no, no, I'm glad you've taken the stance. Okay. This will probably be big news. Canadian foods. Thanks, says Christianna.
Kristyana 55:31
I never said that.
Scott Benner 55:33
Oh, look at you. Can you just let me have my fun? Thank you. Once you're done with all this, like, say, say later today, you're at school, you have show and tell?
Kristyana 55:48
No. That's only in kindergarten. How
Scott Benner 55:52
do I know? I'm not in Canada? That's why I'm asking the questions. So say you're in school later today. And your teacher says, we're going to go around the room. Everybody's going to tell us what you did. Before you came to school today. How would you explain what we did today? When
Kristyana 56:07
you don't do that?
Scott Benner 56:11
Are you practicing to be my wife? What's going on here? Just answer the question. So seriously, if someone were to ask you about what you did this morning, how would you describe this?
Kristyana 56:23
I don't know.
Scott Benner 56:27
All right. But you do know where you want to go to dinner when you get in the car. Yeah, where are we? Where do you want to go? If we went out to dinner tonight in Canada? Where would you want to go again?
Kristyana 56:35
I'm
Scott Benner 56:40
white to white skull. Spot white. I was gonna say white school does not sound like a good restaurant. was like a white spot. Oh
Kristyana 56:56
I have it there. Yeah, I
Scott Benner 56:58
got the I got the Google machine and everything. Huh, Canada's got everything. Wait.
Kristyana 57:08
Wait, I'm
Scott Benner 57:09
looking. Yeah, there's one in Vancouver. There's all kinds of stuff.
Kristyana 57:14
All right. There's like two or three here.
Scott Benner 57:18
Unbelievable. What's your favorite little thing to get there while you're eating?
Kristyana 57:24
I like to use your I pretty much sure like a lot. Oh my god. Adult.
Scott Benner 57:33
Nice. Oh, yeah.
Kristyana 57:35
The title is how hungry I am. I
Scott Benner 57:37
hear what you're saying. They say would you like a children's money? Like no thank you. I can wear from the adult menu.
Kristyana 57:42
I still get the kids menu because I like doing what's on the kids menu.
Scott Benner 57:47
Oh, the like, draw on them and stuff. Yeah, word find activities, connect the dots. And stuff like that. Yeah, I hear you. I used to love that. Does your mom and dad do it with you? Or do they let you do it by yourself?
Kristyana 58:00
I do.
Scott Benner 58:03
Okay, Christiana, I think we've had a lovely time. It's been a whole hour that we've been talking. Yes. Pretty cool. Is there anything that you want to say that we haven't said because we're gonna finish up?
Kristyana 58:21
Let's see. Yes. Go ahead. Um, back to the pump. Yep. I use we looped it on to my phone. Oh, did your daughter use that?
Scott Benner 58:39
Arden's using the loop three. Yes.
Kristyana 58:43
You just have a teacher now. Nice. How do you take his when we will go skiing sometimes we will go out for lunch. And then we would forget my TOMS shoes and I couldn't eat like the bread and stuff. Okay. Then when we looked at onto my phone because I would always have my phone with me. Yeah. It was a lot
Scott Benner 59:09
easier. Nice. That an iPhone you have over there. Yeah, yes. Fancy. You like it? Yeah, yeah. I am looking at my iPhone right now. Because I'm getting a message about Arden's blood sugar. What does it looks like? Like Princess Arden has eaten recently. I'm looking on night. I'm looking on Nightscout Nightscout us? Yeah. So she just looks like she. Here's what happened. Like she got out of bed and her blood sugar went up a little bit. I see the loop has been trying to fix it but it has only been able to hold our blood sugar around 150 and she has just bolused for food. Let me get my glasses. As I'm old as I brought up earlier, so it's hard for me to see the phone. Oh, look, there it is. 30 grams. She put in 5.95 units just now actually. Oh, yeah. Oh, they're right. How much insulin do you get?
Kristyana 1:00:20
Um, I cannot get 5.95 units, right? Yeah. 30 grams. She's, like 60 grams.
Scott Benner 1:00:29
That would be more like 60 for you. Yeah, okay. Yeah, Arden I have to say she's been doing the last 12 hours has been more snacking than actual meals. But now here's a meal going back like a day. 13 units. Oh, wow. Yeah. 13 units would put you to sleep. You'd be like, that's way too much. How much food would you have to eat for 13 units?
Kristyana 1:01:01
I don't know. For seven. I've had I've had 13 units before I think around that
Scott Benner 1:01:10
for Tim Hortons. No, no, for what? Pizza? Pizza. Wow, you've never had pizza on the East Coast of America. That's a shame. You would love it. Where do you get pizza from?
Kristyana 1:01:25
Um, we just use a pizza crust and make it Oh,
Scott Benner 1:01:29
you make it yourself? Oh, that's very nice. Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. There are no other pizza places where you can go out and get pizza. I don't usually do that. Yeah, Canadian pizza cannot be good. Am I right?
Kristyana 1:01:43
Yes, sometimes?
Scott Benner 1:01:45
Is it? You're so proud Canada, you're very pro Canadian person. I like this. They call that patriotic? They call it patriotic in Canada? I don't know. If we went back and did a transcript of this whole conversation. Do you think I don't know is the thing you would have said most?
Kristyana 1:02:08
Probably.
Scott Benner 1:02:10
I tricked you into saying probably. Because if I would have said to you, if we went back and made a transcript of this conversation, what do you what phrase Do you think you said the most you would have said?
Kristyana 1:02:23
I don't know? Exactly. Then
Scott Benner 1:02:24
I would have giggled to myself, but nobody else would have known. All right. Well, Christina was very nice to meet you. I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much.
Kristyana 1:02:32
You too.
Scott Benner 1:02:33
Yeah, you were lovely. I we can just say goodbye if you want unless your dad's in the room. And you want to go yes. Yeah. Do you want to tell him now that you want to baby sister while I'm still recording? You're not going to tell him? Can I tell him? Oh, you don't want them to know. Okay, well, it's just be between me you and the 10s of 1000s of people who will one day listen to this. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. I hope you have a good day. You too. Bye bye.
All right, let's thank Christiana for coming on the show and her slippery mom for getting her past the screening process. I'm just kidding. I'm mostly kidding. I'm not kidding completely. And remind you to go check out the private Facebook group for the Juicebox Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I genuinely love doing this. And I promised I was gonna tell you story. I'll do that in just a second. There's a little outtake of crystianna and I saying hello to each other. And then I'm going to tell you a story afterwards. But I don't know there's nothing really left to say go find the private Facebook group and follow the public page to if you wouldn't mind it's just called Juicebox Podcast or bold with insulin or I guess maybe I should know what it's called. But there's links in the show notes. You'll find it hi, hi. Christiana. How are you? Good. Good. It's so nice to talk to you today. It's Oh, of course. It's is Is it very early in the morning where you are?
Kristyana 1:04:13
No, only 6am Oh,
Scott Benner 1:04:15
Christiana. That is very very, very early to me. It's nine o'clock where I am. Where do you live? Kamloops BC? Oh, in British Columbia. Yeah. Oh, no kidding. Where you were born there?
Kristyana 1:04:30
No. And yeah, in Vancouver. You were
Scott Benner 1:04:32
born in Vancouver. Okay. But your parents? Are they not from Canada?
Kristyana 1:04:37
No, my mom is but my dad is from Germany. Oh,
Scott Benner 1:04:41
okay. Oh, that makes sense. Okay, so I'm going to ask you some questions. Okay. And then you tell me your answers. I'll ask you more questions. If I ask you something you don't want to answer you can say I don't want to answer that. If I asked you something that you don't know the answer to. You can tell me that that as well. But I'm just going to try to find out who you are and a little bit about your story. Okay? Okay. Okay. So whenever you're ready, introduce yourself, just tell people your name and a little tiny bit about yourself. Okay. Okay, I promise your story. So, in this episode, you heard me ask Christiana, if there could be somebody on the other side of a door that she couldn't see. She kind of a thought exercise, right. But I was thinking on my feet there because I used to do that in my real life. But the way I was the way I would say it, obviously, she was nine. So I didn't do this. But when people would tell me you know, that they know for sure something, I would say, let me ask you a question. Do you think it's possible that on the other side of that door, there is a clown with a knife, getting ready to burst in here and kill us all. And I want the credit for not saying that to a nine year old, okay, I was able to tailor it down for the age. Anyway, after I recorded this, I ran downstairs and I said to my wife, I was like, I made a nine year old wonder if cars existed in America. So proud. Anyway, I was so delighted with myself and with this conversation, and I just wanted you to all know that what popped into my head to say about you know, a clown on the other side of the door I cleaned up. So for those of you who think I'm not responsible or don't like the way I talk or whatever, you know, you I'm trying really hard over here.
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