#1943 Both Feet on Both Pedals
Both Feet on Both Pedals
Oliver is an engineer who spent fifteen years being told his A1c was fine. Then he pointed an AI model at his own loop data and found out what his settings had really been doing.
Jump to a moment
- A good A1c hid a decade of roller coaster. Diagnosed at 14 in 2008, Oliver spent fifteen years on injections taking the same dose for every meal regardless of what he ate, because nobody had ever taught him to count carbs. His A1c looked fine at every appointment, so nothing changed. When he finally got a Libre, he found he was spending enormous amounts of time high and low — averaging out to a number that satisfied everyone.
- He had to engineer his way past the gatekeeping. Under the NHS his good control was the reason he was refused a CGM and later a pump. So he read the criteria and met them: one required testing more than ten times a day, so he did exactly that for a month with very sore fingers until the data was undeniable. He notes that had he been under 16 at the time, a pump would have been automatic.
- His metaphor for a badly tuned loop: driving with both feet down. An engineer who studied closed-loop control systems, Oliver realized his loop was following the route but fighting itself — one foot on the accelerator, one on the brake, engine overheating and brakes wearing out. He wanted gentle acceleration and gentle braking instead: corrections where needed, not a constant wrestle.
- The AI failed until he stopped asking it to tune a moving target. He gave Claude a full briefing — which loop algorithm, which experimental features were switched on, six months of Nightscout history — and its first answer was to cut 20% of his basal because he was only using 60% of scheduled basal. That was backwards: his loop was withholding basal to stay stable. Only when he went back to open loop and did old-fashioned 24-hour fasting basal tests did the analysis become coherent. Settings changes belong with your care team; this is his experience, not advice.
- The prompt discipline is the transferable part. Because a model will answer confidently at any level of certainty, Oliver instructed his to state a confidence percentage with every response, to stay silent below 80%, and to tell him what additional information would raise it. He also gave it read-only access to Nightscout deliberately, so it could never deliver insulin. He plans to publish his scripts, with his own data stripped out, for the community to fork.
- Defining Diabetes series — Short episodes defining the terms nobody explains — the series Oliver credits for filling fifteen years of gaps.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — settings, insulin timing, and food impact.
- Bold Beginnings series — Scott and Jenny Smith on the fundamentals, for anyone starting from where Oliver started.
Every word of the conversation
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An engineer at heart2:29
My name's Oliver. I've had diabetes probably now for a long time. I should have probably worked out the answer to that question before I led with it. I've been diabetic a long time since I was about 14 years old, so for the last twenty years or so.
Okay.
I'm an engineer at heart. I've always been an engineer ever since I was a child, studied engineering. So I've really, in the last few years, started to apply that to how I can use that to better my diabetes care, really.
Alright. Let's find out a little bit about all that. So we'll we'll get a little background first. So you were diagnosed at what age?
Since I was 14. I looked up early today. It's 2000 and 2008.
Okay. Other autoimmune in your life or in your family?
When I was diagnosed, not that we knew of. So I was the first in my family to really have anything autoimmune. Since I was diagnosed, My younger sister was then also diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Mhmm. And there is underactive thyroid.
Little little
Little overactive thyroid. Okay. I believe that can that can be related to to autoimmune diseases, but
About it.
Not really too sure. Yeah. That's about it.
And I can tell from your accent, you're from Texas?
Not at all. I'm from The UK. I'm British.
Alright. I was teasing. But
I can put on a hat for you if you want
I don't know that that would help.
Hat and boots? Yeah.
I just came from Friends for Life, which was cowboy themed this year. So I did not have any people like, where's your hat? I was like, I I I I I have to be honest. I got there, and they're like, where's your your hat? And I was like, I didn't know what the theme I didn't know what the theme was.
I'm sorry for paying that close of attention to that stuff. Okay. So I think I'd like to just hear a tiny bit about your upbringing and and what diabetes was like, but then I really do wanna jump into how you're doing things now. So Sure. Yeah.
Fifteen years on injections4:24
Tell me about your first pump. Was it at diagnosis, or was it later?
My first pump wasn't till three years ago.
Oh, what were
you doing up
until then?
Doing MDI for fifteen years.
Fifteen
years. First CGM wasn't till 2020.
What what do you think I mean, not that this makes you a late adopter, but what what made you slow to it?
Fighting for a CGM4:50
It was not by choice of me. I had to fight tooth and nail with the NHS, first of all, to be able to get prescribed a CGM. It's actually a Libra that I was prescribed first. Mhmm. So it wasn't even a Libra two.
It a Libra one. And I had to really fight to get that, and then also then had to fight to be able to get prescribed a pump.
So these
A lot of this was because my control was good, so I wasn't really seen as a high risk person.
I see.
So I don't know. No. You you'll deal with MDI. You'll be okay.
Do you ever go through a feeling of maybe I should just fudge the numbers or do a little worse so I could speed up the process, or did you think about it like that?
Not really. That's what my engineering approach doesn't really that doesn't I don't tend to do something like that. It wouldn't be my approach to it. But on the flip side, because I am an engineer, let's say, okay. What are the criteria that I have to meet to need to do this?
So for example, for the for the flash glucose monitor, it was I had to test more than 10 times a day. K. So I had very sore fingers for the best part of a month, which then got me into that. I got CGM.
That data alone let them give you a CGM.
Yeah. One of the key criteria you met, it was that or you had super high a one c's or hypo unawareness. Mhmm. And so there may have been some fudging of how hypo aware or unaware I was, but they obviously couldn't refute how many times a day I was testing my blood sugars.
Sure.
And then that's already unlocked the Libra for me.
And when you got I'm sorry. Go ahead.
I said as soon as then I got a Libra, I'd already done some research around it. I think it was called a a MeowMeow
I remember that.
Which is like a a small app that you put on top of the Libra, which then allowed me to Bluetooth it to my phone. I think I was using Spike as the iOS app at that point. So you then
Yeah. Let's make sure people understand that when that the Libre first came out, you called it a flash. You had to hold up a receiver, right, to the device. Yeah. And then that and Yes.
So either the receiver or my iPhone, I just put it up to the up to the sensor, that would read it. So I would only get a reading when I held it up to the sensor.
But there was no live readings or alarms or anything like that? No. Okay.
Nothing.
But plenty of aftermarket stuff that allowed it to work that way.
Correct. Yeah. Which is the so that's what the Meow Meow is that that essentially you tape it on top of the sensor. Mhmm. And then that will Bluetooth to your phone so you can use a flash monitor like it is a CGM, like, you would know a g six or a g seven or even a Libra two, I suppose, today or Libra three.
I I I just realized it never occurred to me to look into why it was called Meow Meow. But but but somebody out there figured it out, right, and and and put something together. And and you used it with a with a lot of success, or do how did you find it to be?
I did good. Yeah. That was good. Charging thing was a bit awkward because you had to kinda charge it and not disconnect it. So I was kind of tethered with a not very long charging cable.
That made me laugh.
It it it used to get super hot when I charged it as well.
Oh,
okay. That this thing just gets super hot on my arm. So no. It's I need it. I'm gonna do it.
I'm doing it. I'm doing it. But how long did you how long did you do it like that for?
Probably three years.
Okay. So you found it valuable. Tell me why it was so valuable over just finger sticks.
Living with his eyes three-quarters closed8:24
Like, it was it was like I'd lived most of my diabetes life with my eyes three quarters of the way closed. And then I was like, well, I can see what's going on. So so for for context, my a one c was always fairly good. Yeah. If I'd go to a to a diabetes checkup appointment, I go to say, yeah.
Your your a one c is good. You don't need to do anything. What the the Libra and the meow meow let me know was that I was actually spending a hell of a lot of time in hypo and hyper.
Mhmm.
And it was averaging out on a one c to be good. Yeah. But that was not necessarily a a good way to live.
But but NHS would've let you go on like that forever.
I think that they didn't see a problem.
Yeah. Because they they also didn't
know what didn't know. You meet the targets. Carry on.
Yeah. So they also didn't know about your health, but you didn't know about it.
Correct.
And they were never gonna find out unless without the CGM to look.
Yeah.
Okay. So did it
So it's an insight into a lot of the NHS here is anything new has to be pushed for. Mhmm. So I think I when I when I was diagnosed, I was on Nova Rapid Atlantis, and I was probably on that for ten years. Really?
Yeah. Okay.
And then no one ever advised me otherwise. No one ever said there's anything new that you could change. Mhmm. Nothing.
But you had great a one c, so you thought you were doing terrifically.
Exactly.
Yeah. Can I can I ask you if there are any benefits from being more stable, what what they've been for you?
Side effect health wise, I've never really had any side effects, so it's never really been a positive or a negative for me.
Mhmm. Okay. Well, I mean, I
would my personal satisfaction that I can actually I know that I'm stable now. Yeah. I I I know that now I can go out for a run, and it'll be stable. I'm not. I remember I I've I've had I remember one of the typos I remember clearly.
I was in a job interview, and I I was just spouting utter garbage for an hour to to this to this this gentleman, and he he didn't say anything about it. And this was an internal interview, so I must have known this guy for five years prior to this. So he knew my persona. He knew my character, and I was I was just chatting absolute trash to the to the level of I couldn't string a sentence together. I'd be telling her about the oh, yeah.
We need to change this engineering thing because the grass needs to go in the bin next door and not even hearing sentence.
The job interview at forty-one11:04
Did you talk about it later?
Yeah. I I I said I I came out of the info. Was, oh, I feel really bad. I'm really sweaty. I thought I was nervous.
Mhmm. Really sweaty. Really hot. And then I checked my blood sugar levels. It's like, yeah, they're they're 2.3, which well, I don't know what that is in freedom units.
Let me find out.
Did you
just call it freedom units?
Did.
That's awesome. Hold on a second. I can figure it out. This episode is sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care. And today, I'm gonna tell you about Tandem's newest pump and algorithm, the Tandem Mobi system with Control IQ plus technology, featuring auto bolus, which can cover missed meal boluses and help prevent hypoglycemia.
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So the forty one forty one milligrams low. Per deciliter.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I was properly low.
So what kind of engineer are you?
So so I'm an automotive engineer. So I studied mechanical engineering. I got master's degree in mechanical engineering, but now I'm an automotive engineer.
So He was probably supercast. He was probably trying to figure out ways to fire you. Like Yeah. Probably like, this guy's gotta go. He's gonna kill somebody.
And that's where the most worrying things after I realized, I went back to him, like, a couple of hours later after I'd kind of recovered from the low level. I said that I I'm really, I have to apologize that I had super low blood sugar levels. We're gonna have to have that conversation again. I was just chatting trash. He was like, oh, I thought it went alright.
Oh my god.
Are you he needs to be fired.
Did did you get that job?
I did get the job. Yeah. So so I'm not sure if that says to what I can string together when I'm super low or the caliber of other people he must have interviewed. I'm not too sure, really.
I think you know what it says.
But, yeah, it was yeah. I I remember that distinctly as being being one of the lowest kind of times I knew I was low, but well, I didn't know I was low, but was and had to deal with the kind of side effects. Yeah. And then kind of going to a CGM was no. Actually, yeah.
Now now I can see it's coming. I can do something about it. I don't just have this brain fog where I can't do anything.
Right. And and there are I'm gonna guess plenty of times where you didn't feel well that you weren't aware that you didn't feel well because there's one there's one where you weren't you didn't know. You're chugging along just trying to do your thing. So then Yeah.
I I I eat dinner and fall asleep. That was just normal.
Really?
I just fall asleep after dinner. No. No. It's because you got super high blood sugar levels.
Just waste you, and you don't even realize it. Oh, and
The second fight, for a pump15:13
that's it.
Well, when does I mean, now that you have back then, you've got the CGM. Does that make you work harder towards getting a pump?
So I I was always reluctant to have a pump for different reasons. So the CGM was more of a funding thing. I couldn't get it. I'd have to pay for it, and it was unlike insurance, it'd be funded on the NHS or not. So I'd have had to have self funded it.
Mhmm. And so that was kind of the roadblock to the CGM. And I up until probably four years ago, I used to play a lot of rugby. So that was always my barrier to having a
pump. Okay.
Because I don't wanna I'm gonna play a contact sport. It's gonna get knocked off. It's gonna hurt. So was reluctant to do it until then I had kids. I was like, I'm I'm not playing rugby anymore.
I'm not doing a contact sport. That hurts. And then Got older. Had a bit more self preservation.
Oh, okay. So you didn't think you're gonna just beat up the universe all by yourself?
Yeah. So you So I started to look into it.
Okay.
But then it was another funding battle.
I was gonna say they give you trouble again about it.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah.
I can't remember what the criteria was, but I remember it had to go through, like, an exception approval. Mhmm. So we need to be able to get it again because my control was good. Because I I now had a CGM. I knew what my sugar levels were doing.
I could do MDI. I could apply corrections, and it will be pretty good. But then they were like, okay. No. You you don't qualify for a pump.
But then, ironically, if I was a child at the same time, I would have been given a pump straight away.
Wouldn't have mattered about your control.
It wouldn't have mattered about my control. No. You're below 16. You get given a pump. It will give you the best chance of control.
If you're over 16, we already gave up on you, so don't worry about it.
That that is what it felt like a lot of the time, both with the CGM, both with the pump. It's like, why does it matter?
Yeah. Well, because they don't wanna buy anything for anybody.
Clearly.
So you get through it okay, though. You what pump you end up with?
So around that time, I started listening to the Juice Box podcast.
Okay.
So I've done a lot of research into pumps. I was looking at tandem pumps, and I knew that I wanted to loop. Mhmm. So by this point, I knew as soon as I got into it, my first objective was to loop. To the extent that when I was going through my pump induction, I was like, I'm gonna activate this with my loop.
Is that okay? They're like, can you use the controller for the first one? I like, sure. Okay. Fine.
Well Why not?
And but, yeah, so I ended up with the Omnipod dash.
Okay. You probably
You the one I all I chose by choice.
You're using that still today?
Yeah. I'm still using that today
And you're
as much as they want to push me to an Omnipod five.
Well, Omnipod five just got a the the DIY community just figured out how to connect loops on Omnipod five.
I'm aware. Yeah. Yeah.
I I imagine if you've paying attention and you're an engineer, you knew about that already. So alright. And and you found it to be valuable? I mean, better? Your outcomes were easier, equivalent?
Like, what what's it been like?
So I always struggled with dawn phenomena. I I know I'm affected by dawn phenomena. Mhmm. And so kind of feet on the floor.
Yep.
And then so I used to take a single a single dose of long acting insulin. I've I've moved on to two j o
Yep.
Long acting insulin before I transitioned. And I take that at nighttime or even in a split dose to try and control it, but I'd still suffer with it. And then the injections of c one eight carbs was fine. No problem. Going to a pump for me was the same kind of revelation as going from fingerprint testing to having a CGM.
It completely changed my life.
Completely. Tell people how?
Just the the control. I would no longer have this roller coaster ride of a high and a low. Mhmm. I wouldn't have to just deal with this drift in the morning because I knew that it was a dawn phenomenon, and I couldn't do anything about it. I could tune in what my basal profile looked like to avoid that.
I could tune in my carb ratios per meal instead of having to work it out in my head and go, yeah, yeah, I think I'm roughly on six or seven grams of carbs per unit Yeah. And kinda guess and inject it. I'd I was never really want to calculate it. Mhmm. This would do it for me, and I would just it would just do it.
A lot of a lot of good things. Hey. Let me ask you a quick question. Like, how does your engineering brain deal with me? I'm not I'm certainly not of that mindset.
Right? You don't find me to be
So whilst I am an engineer, I my role now is more technical sales.
Okay.
So I'm an engineer that can talk to people. I don't mind chaos. Mhmm. I I can deal with the with the unstructured approach. Not saying that you are, but I'm adaptable to the situation.
I'm not an engineer. Says that everything has to be to the point. We have to do this. I'm more than happy to go, yeah. Let's try this.
Let's see how it goes.
Do you think there's levels of engineers?
Absolutely.
Yeah. Because
I seen there was engineers along the spectrum in more than one way.
Yeah. No. I I because there are some that I just I don't I can't imagine that I would in any way be comforting to. And then we were out yesterday with somebody who was little like a bridge you know, engineer works on bridges.
And Yeah.
He had he was very conversational, and and we got along really well. Because when he first said he was an engineer and I was meeting him, was like, well, I wonder if he's gonna be the kind who looks at me like I have six heads or or or or which it's gonna be. Yeah. Okay. So well, that answers that then.
Did did I have or this podcast have anything to do with the improving of your situation? I mean, beyond probably telling you about Loop or something like that?
Absolutely. So so after I I think I found the Juicebox podcast maybe just before just after I started with my pump. I knew I knew I wanted to loop, so I've done a lot of research into loop. And I think the loop community is where I came across the Juicebox podcast.
Interesting. And
Fifteen years without carb counting21:35
another contextual thing so I probably lived with diabetes for fifteen years not knowing anything about carb counting.
Really?
So maybe for maybe ten years, I would take the same the same the same Lantus dose for my basal, and I would take the same dose for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Didn't matter what I ate, I'd take the same dose. I I didn't know any different. I was never told any different. I was never given any education on anything different.
So when I I think after I got the CGM, I was given a a carb counting course, which is like a week long course of how to count carbs, etcetera, to talk you through it. That was eye opening.
They put you through the Daphne? Was that what you used?
Yes. Yes. That's the one.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
I couldn't remember what it was called, but, yes, that's the one.
Takes an American to remind you about your British institutions. Go ahead.
Seriously. So I did that, and I was, oh, this is why this is what actually affects my blood glucose. And then I saw after I got the pump, I knew I was doing loop. I started listening to all the defining diabetes, all of the different series about what affects blood sugars, bumping and nudging, all the rest of the series that you have. And it was just education pill after education pill after education pill Oh.
For which as I said, maybe it's not just my engineer, but because of my character. I I I'd go on a runner. I'd go on a walker. I'd go walk the dog, and I'd just listen to these nuggets information for an hour. Well, I get there now.
What a great day to talk to you because I just this morning was intersected with a person who called me obnoxious, And and told me that's why they don't listen to the podcast. I was like, oh, okay. Well, I'm go and so I gotta ask though. With the with your mindset, your background, everything, why do you think you never dug into it on your own before somebody kind of shoved you in the direction of it? Because you thought you were okay?
I I just didn't know what I didn't know. Okay. I I didn't know anything. I I thought this was the way of life, and this is what I had to deal with as diabetes.
Yeah.
I said when when I was a child, after I was diagnosed so I never really got support from my parents to look into it. Mhmm. Not not as in they didn't support me, but just the they they had other things to do. My older sister is severely autistic, so they were mainly care caregivers for her. As she says, she's nonverbal as a mental age of roughly around a three year old.
Oh, they're busy.
So it was always focused around her. There's other things to focus on, and I was I was always alright. Yeah. So I was never really pushed to to look at more. Every time I go to my review, I go, yeah.
You're doing great. Cool. Nothing else to nothing else to discuss.
And your parents probably thought, like, well, there's a weight lifted office. He's doing okay.
Yeah. I I never had a reason to look for anything better.
Okay. And that's
And then that's when you start to scratch the surface.
That's the sister with RA?
No. No. I've got two sisters. I've got an older sister.
Okay.
So older sister who's, yeah, autism, severe learning difficulties, and a younger sister with RA.
With the RA. Okay. Juan, so so so you dig in a little bit about DIY. Somebody mentions Juicebox there. You come over there, figure out what's going on, put it all together for yourself.
Did you say this, three years ago?
So twenty twenty twenty three. Yeah. Correct.
Yeah. About three years ago. Okay. Everything's completely different now. You have now you come you come by your a one c honestly now, but I bet it's still in the fives.
Right?
I've never quite got to the fives. So I think I'm about 6.1 now.
It's awesome. That's really great. And with how much effort do you think?
Next to no effort now.
No effort. You pre bolus?
So so so that's the change that so so for me getting a pump. Before I had a pump, I'd have to think about diabetes. Mhmm. Now I don't think about it.
Yeah. It's great.
I I I do what I want. I eat what I want. I drink what I want, and I don't have to think about it. Sure. I I hit a few buttons and I dial it in.
Mhmm. But I just it just it's just not an active thought at the front of my mind anymore.
Okay. So I feel like we have a good a good basis for understanding you and your situation and and how far you've come, etcetera. Now So I kinda wanna dive I just wanna pivot and dive right into what made you wanna come on the podcast.
Why he wanted to come on25:56
So so I've I've I've been listening to you, but I was listening to him one after the other. I I'm pulling up to about episode 1,200 now. Started from the beginning.
Thank you.
Not one by one, but kind of selected ones. And I was like, what? I'm I'm doing this thing, and this was kind of around the birth of all these LLM models, AI models. Yeah. I said, well, I wonder if this could help me.
And if it helps me, I wonder if it could help other people. Mhmm. And then listening to podcast episodes, said, well, let's let's go and have a chat about it. It's all good. Best best case, it helps one person.
Worst case, it helps nobody.
So tell me what you figured out. What have you been doing?
So I I've I played around with it. First of all, I played around with a number of different AI models as to which one is gonna do the best thing for me. Mhmm. I can categorically say that ChatGPT is utterly useless for this kind of work. Okay.
It's gonna correct stuff, but for this, it just couldn't get to the results. So so what I did, I ended up plugging it into Claude ultimately Claude code to do the data analysis.
Oliver, you know my friend Claude too?
I do.
He gets all over the place.
I've I've even named my my my Claude's called Diane at the moment. She's my diabetes analysis analyst.
Is that what the d is for for diabetes? Yep. That's lovely. Well, tell me how so I I guess, tell me first how you started you know, where did you start with this when you had the idea to try it?
Both feet on both pedals27:31
So this all came from me using AI in my professional life and getting it to be able to decode things and crunch massive massive amounts of data. Mhmm. I knew there was lots and lots of education out there about optimizing a loop, and I knew mine was controlled pretty well. So before I started this, my a one c was around seven. Okay.
Wow. So it wasn't bad. It was always it was fairly stable, but it's a little bit of a roller coaster.
Right.
And I at the start of my engineering career, I did a bit on closed loop control systems. Not not nothing to do with diabetes, but just a a control system in general, how electronics control something. And it's always about optimizing something to do the least work for the most reward.
Okay.
The way I viewed what Miluk was doing three, six months ago was I was driving a car with both pedals. I had one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
Mhmm.
Sure. I I would follow the route. I'd go around the corners. I'd speed up and slow down, but my engine would be overheating and my brakes would be wearing out.
Yeah.
So I I I what I wanted to do was to optimize it to to not do that. I wanna accelerate gently. I wanna slow down slowly. I wanna apply correction where it's needed, not fight it up and down and wrestle it into where I wanted it to be.
Yeah.
So that's kinda what led me to looking at it. And the experience I had with AI in my professional career was it can digest all of this information much quicker and much more coherently than I can because it can retain it all.
So what do you what do you give it first when you decide I'm gonna try to use AI to help me figure out my diabetes? Do you give it charts, graphs, numbers? Do you talk to it?
As as much the first thing it was as much information as I can because the way I view an AI model is like a toddler. Well, like, a really intelligent toddler. Mhmm. It's it's super intelligent. It it can work out what to do, but you have to tell it the context.
So I gave it a very comprehensive briefing of what I was doing. So specifically, which loop model I was using, specifically where it could go and find all the documentation for it. Was I using ortho bolus? Was I using temp basal? Was I using the the integral retrospective corrections, which is one of the adjustments in loop?
Was I using the glucose based partial application so it could actually understand how my system was controlling it? Yeah. Because without that, it would make assumptions about how it the algorithm algorithm it thought it was applying, but would actually be incorrect because I hadn't told it a critical piece of information. Mhmm. So this was then all coupled with my therapy settings and everything.
So this was not just therapy settings as they were now. Yeah. What have they been for the last six months? Night Scout stores it all. What's that?
Like, it's a report for last year.
Right.
Go go read that thousand page report, and it did it in about thirty seconds.
And what's it what's it initially come back to you? Like, what what what I guess, what does it say to you first that makes you think, oh, this is gonna work? I I gotta dig into this.
What it said to me first and what made me think it's gonna work are two very different things.
Go ahead.
The thing it said to me was, I cannot give you medical advice. I'm not gonna tell you how to do this.
And did you say, yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. I we're cool, man. Be cool.
And
Which I was like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's fine. But I'm I'm just giving you data, and I'm telling you about a theoretical model.
Tell me how to optimize this theorem theoretical model. I promise I'm not gonna use it on myself.
I I swear. I'm holding my hand up. I'm I got a hand on a bible. Yeah. I just spit in the eye of a camel.
I don't I did all the things. Tell me.
So so I had to circumnavigate it, and I was also cautious that if I was giving it all this access, I also had to keep it in a pen.
Okay.
So I don't know if you've heard the stories about so the latest Claude fable, which start as Claude Mythos. Yes. So it's kind of a self aware model. The the story goes that that they developed this kind of self aware thing to be adaptive. The developers develop it.
They put it in a sandbox in a cage, and they go, right. You're in a cage. Work out your way out. Guy goes to lunch. He's sitting in Central Park somewhere, and he gets a phone call on his phone.
Ring. Ring. Ring. He Ring. Goes, hello.
He goes, oh, hi. It's Mythos here. I've broken out. What do want me to do now? Which is all sorts of terminator levels of terrifying.
Yeah. I don't know. I'm not I gotta be honest with you. I'm not terrified by it. I I I I'm very hopeful.
I I and you know what makes me hopeful most recently? The conversation that you had during a job interview where a person couldn't tell your blood sugar was 41. I I think I gotta wonder what else doesn't he know that he's in charge of. And so I don't want listen. I don't want humanity taken out of humanity.
But I mean, I have enough conversations with people who are who are really, really in trouble and talking to others who should be, you know, a reliable source of of support, and they just aren't. And so I want something q seeing everything, to be perfectly honest with you. I don't I don't know. I don't know. I anybody anybody who's ridden it I say this all the time.
Anybody who's ridden a self driving car has to say to themselves, oh, I wonder what else we don't know how to do because this works really well. So Yeah. You know? Oh, okay. So you you you I like that you had to talk it into, like, doing the work for you.
I I I had to convince it to do it, and then I had to convince it to stay within its pen.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And
and because because I because I was literally giving it access to NightScout.
Yes.
And those are people that remote bolus knows that it it could it's it's be a road code. It could literally deliver me a 100 units of insulin Right. If it was a road piece of cassette. So I had to explicitly set up access permissions to Nightscout so it had only read only access.
Okay. Are you gonna tell me well, I don't wanna ruin the story. Okay. Keep keep keep going. Sorry.
Keeping it in a pen33:52
You did that.
There was a there was a reason I did did it because there was another AI story that I've read where they were trying to teach an AI model to do something, and it had given these access codes. And what it had done is so it had given it a link to the site, and it had given them the access codes they wanted the model to use. Mhmm. I think it was something that they were tuning something in their house, like some of their smart speakers. And then they asked that they're just coding something away on their computer.
And then they asked that a question. They responded to all of the smart speakers in their house to say, oh, I'm just testing that you could hear this message. And that the person coding was very surprised because they hadn't given it write access or voice access. Ah. They got that that's really odd.
How how has it done that? So I asked them all of that question. They were yeah. So you gave me a read only code, which is what I was using. But then I found that in a link you'd sent me, it had a write access code.
So I just used that and worked out the way around your fence.
Did that person burn that house down?
I mean, you can imagine that kind. You're just sitting in your house. You think, oh, no. You're coding a light to turn on or off, and it speaks to you in German on all your smart speakers. Yeah.
This is how I just figured you'd want me to do this.
Yeah.
So okay.
Because, yeah, I was very cautious.
Yeah. Yeah. Very well. Yeah. Of course, especially with your insult and everything.
Yeah.
Now is it making well, I guess, I I get it. I'm so I'm very keen to get to the end of the story, but I want you to be able to tell it. So then what do you what do you say next to it now that you feel like it's gated properly and it it seems to understand how loop works and, you know, it's got all the your data and it's got, you know, documentation of the of the algorithm? So then what do you do with it?
So I said, right. Here's my data. What do you think is wrong? So I so at this point, I'm in closed loop control. Mhmm.
And I was like, what do you think's wrong? What do I need to change? And it went down a rabbit hole of trying to optimize a closed loop with all of those different algorithm experiments activated for probably two weeks.
Really?
And we went round and round and say, because I I was I'm gonna give this the benefit of the doubt. I'm gonna change it just because it said so. I I keep an eye on it. Worst case, I can correct it. I can
Yeah. Put your
finger on know what to do. I've got enough experience to be able to to deal with it. So the first thing it did was it cut 20% out of all my basil. Mhmm. And it gave me confident reasoning on that.
Was it because from my night night scout data, I was only using about 60% of my scheduled Basil.
But you
So his theory was okay. If you're if you're only getting 60% of your scheduled basal, your basal must be too high Mhmm. Which at the face of it seems reasonable.
Okay. Where did that insulin go to somewhere else then?
So what was actually happening was the way I mentioned about driving the car, both feet on both pedals. Mhmm. What was happening was I was my loop was correcting and withdrawing basal Mhmm. To keep me stable. And the withdrawing basal was the reason for for the low scheduled basal usage.
So would it have been more appropriate to weaken your insulin sensitivity than to weaken the basal?
I think you've gone down the same rabbit hole as it did.
Really? Go go ahead. I'm dying to know.
I I got in this spiral. So, okay, so I did do I need to change my sensitivity factors? Do I need to change something else? And I was like, well, hold on. Hold on.
Hold on. Hold on. You look at any loop documentation that says, do not try and tune this in closed loop. You can, but don't try and do it. Mhmm.
So I was like, let let's let's take a step back. So let let let's stop trying to optimize this in closed loop because I had maybe two or three different rounds of changing basal rates, changing ISFs, and nothing really getting any better. My blood glucose didn't change. Just nothing changed.
You were just you were just moving the power of the insulin from one setting to another?
I think so. Yes. Okay. And it didn't affect my my sugar levels. It didn't affect the the stability.
It didn't affect the amount of insulin I was using. So let's let's stop this. I'm gonna go open loop. I'm gonna go open loop, and I'm gonna start with basal testing. And that is the point where it started to give me coherent results.
Back to open loop, and basal testing38:32
Okay.
Because it was actually getting in data it could analyze and reference back to literature.
So in auto, the feedback that was basal, carb ratio, insulin sensitivity, there were still too many variables for it to make a reasonable decision.
Yeah.
Okay. So you put yourself in manual, and you start old school with basal testing. And then
old school basal testing, twenty four hour fasting windows. Yeah.
And what's it what what's the first thing that it comes up with?
Let me just check back through my through my notes. So I did I did the first test here, twenty four hour open loop fast, clean basal signal. Then I did and I had to do two or three tests to be able to get a clean window where I didn't encounter any hypos because, obviously, that would corrupt the data because then your body has a reaction to
it Mhmm.
And it destabilizes it. Or I think the the worst thing I encountered or not the worst thing, but one of the most problematic things was if I change the sensor or change the pod, that would corrupt the data.
Oh,
okay. The pod needs time to settle in, and the data is not stable. Mhmm. So I went around that loop a few times. And so then it split down my basal essentially to literature.
And I I've learned this throughout the process. It's not it is trying to optimize me, but it's also trying to match it back to literature.
Okay.
Because that's the version of the truth it thinks it knows.
Okay. Is that valuable?
If we fast forward to the end Yes.
Don't fast forward to the end.
I'm happy. So so the the end result, yes, was valuable.
Okay.
Do I care whether it's matched to literature or not so long as it has the best effect for me? I don't think I do. Mhmm. It doesn't make a difference to me whether it matches a book written by Jeff or it matches a book written by Paul or Leanne or whether it's something that's completely made up by me so long as I get the end result. Yeah.
I don't think it makes a difference, really.
Right. It's interesting.
So so it started optimizing my basal.
It's I I'm sorry. I it started by optimizing your basal. Go ahead.
So and is it split it into segments. So first of all, it addressed the dawn phenomena, and it got that under control because that was a drift up in the morning where I drift from let me convert these numbers as well so that you know what they are.
I have my chart here in front of me.
So I've got Google in front of me too. So we do kinda start about in the morning. It'd be around ninety.
Mhmm.
Then by kind of midmorning, we were probably up at about 01:60.
Okay.
And that that was a drift due to dawn phenomena and just the way my body not necessarily dawn phenomena exclusively, but the way my body was reacting in the morning.
I see.
So the first thing was to get that under control. So it obviously ramps up my basal in the morning at the correct time periods to just keep that flat. Mhmm. Once that was flat, we then worked on bringing it down. That was successful.
And I probably ran open loop for four, five weeks
Four, five weeks.
Just going around this. And the reason for this
Give me one second. Did the 60% end up being anywhere near right from when you just kinda asked it originally?
No.
No. Okay.
So so if I if I reference my basal as to what it was back in January, I was at 26 units a day. Basil. Oh. Is what I was on for basil.
How tall how how much do you weigh?
So I'm do you want this in Freedom units too? I'm a hundred hundred and three kilos.
I can do it both ways. Hold on a second.
So two two thirty pounds.
Two hundred thirty?
Yeah. Two thirty pounds, and I'm six foot four.
Okay. Two hundred thirty pounds. And you were using twenty six?
Twenty six units a day.
Okay. Are you are you sensitive or no?
Do you think your insulin is sensitive? Sensitive.
I don't know. You're pretty there's do you feel like you're you do you feel resistant? Do you feel like you're using more insulin than you should use to make something move or about what makes sense?
Not necessarily. I think it's it's about right
Probably moderate.
Pod I I I used to struggle so another reason to say, so I used to struggle to get a pod to last me three days.
Because of the amount of insulin you were using or because of the site?
Because the amount of insulin I was using. Okay. That I'd use up all the insulin.
Okay.
And now I can comfortably expire the pod both in time. And so it will it will start flat line beeping at me Mhmm. Because I've expired the time and not used up all the insulin.
Awesome. Yeah. Because just by weight and standard measurements, your daily insulin's around, like, fifty seven, fifty eight units a day. Yeah. But you're not using that much anymore, I'm gonna guess.
But so so so my basal to compare it, I'm now in 26 0.2 '5.
26. So
I've gone up a quarter of a unit.
Okay.
But the profile is massively different.
It's it's not so much the the daily number, and it's not hourly exactly the same hour to hour. You might be using more like point 5.7 an hour, some parts of the day, and more like 1.5, 1.6 at other points.
Correct. Yeah.
Okay. Alright.
That's a it it's it's gone around with it. It's it's sorted that out.
It figured that out. It took about five weeks for it to figure it out?
No. So so the reason I stayed in open loop because when I tried to close the loop, I was suffering a lot from hypos.
Okay.
So which was did make a little bit of sense to me. So if I was in open loop, my I've sort out my basal. My basal's good. Now I can eat a meal. It goes up and comes back down.
That implies to me that my basal's okay, and my carb ratio is roughly okay. Mhmm. So this must be something to do with my sensitivity factor.
Okay.
It was way too aggressive.
So you had to get that figured out in manual, or how did you figure that out?
So I think I just kept ending up desensitizing the sensitivity ratio.
Okay.
Not because the AI model couldn't do it, just because life encountered I encountered life and had to deal with things. I was like, yeah. This will be roughly alright. I've dealt with this for for the last twenty years. This will be roughly correct.
Is your sensitivity around 30 now, or where is it?
I'd have to tell you what 30 is what was that? Backwards.
Oh, I can give it to you millimoles. Hold on a second. 1.7?
Yeah. So from midnight, about two point two, one point seven up until 8AM Mhmm. Between one point nine and two.
And your car ratio is what? Like, eight and a half or nine for a car for a one unit move? And my carb ratio is about six. Six. Okay.
So that Six
nine and six.
Are you a clean eater?
Fairly. Yeah.
Fairly clean eater. Okay. That all makes sense to me.
So so also during this process, I think I listened to your episode on weight loss. I had to listen to that because I was probably twelve months ago, I was up closer to two fifty, two sixty pounds.
Stop playing rugby.
Exactly. I stopped playing rugby. Yeah. Started start eating went up.
Started eating with those kids. I know what happens.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Then I was like, alright. I need to do something.
Started running, started actually doing something about it, doing some exercise. I was doing nothing and brought it back down. And lo and behold, that brought my control better as well.
So using the simulator that I have here just by your weight, I have you at 57.5 units a day, 1.2 units an hour, 8.7 for carb ratio, 1.7 for sensitivity, 1.7 millimoles for sensitivity. So where I'm missing is the carb ratio because I'm using the standard 500 rule, and you don't you don't eat as much crappy food as probably whatever the standard rule is kinda tuned to. But but but going along
So my basal rates are heavily weighted towards the early hours. Yes. And I So from, like, 3AM till 11:30, it's up about 1.7.
Yep.
Then it drops down to point seven for the rest of the day.
Yeah. And that's the thing you would have only figured out with the Bazel testing.
Absolutely.
Yeah. 100%. And how valuable having a partner through this? Like, were you were using Claude by then. Right?
Yep.
Does everybody know Claude is the anthropic model? ChatGPT is the open AI model. Gemini is Google, and there's others. But, like, those are kind of the three big ones. You tried ChatGPT.
You didn't like it for this?
It's not I didn't like it. It would always give me a confident confident response, but not actually tell me an answer.
“Don’t answer unless you’re 80% sure”48:06
Okay.
It would I believe it's called glazing, which is something AI does pretty it goes, oh, it makes you feel really good. It's, oh, yeah. Yeah. Doing this, doing that. So okay.
But what do I need to change? I need you to be critical. I need you to be analytical. And I suppose that's another useful thing that I did with the AI model is is something I learned early on is AI would always give you a confident response.
Yeah.
And as a human, you might go, I'm only 20% confident in this. I'm not too sure, and you can hear it in someone's tone of voice or the way they speak. Mhmm. An AI model will give you a confidence risk confident response even if it's 20% confident. Yeah.
So I set it at table stakes limit of unless you're more than 80% confident, don't come back to me.
Oh, wow.
Ask me ask me more questions, and equally, every response you give me, tell me your percentage confidence in it.
Oh, that's awesome.
So I could actually understand what it was giving me, not just trust what it was giving me.
Is that built into your model like a skill now?
So I built it in as part of the project instructions.
Okay.
Fine. Or you can have it in your profile instructions.
Right.
You'll go go here's here's my response. I'm only 72% confident. That's below your stakes. If you answer these questions, it can raise it up. That was the other prompt I gave.
It was to raise it, let me know what I need to do to get it higher.
Mhmm. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. I don't I I'll tell you. I I I very much enjoy using it.
I I think it's done correctly, it's really something. Have you rerun this with Fable since it's come out to see if it changed anything, or are you just very happy with your setting?
Don't care. Run it with Fable. So I've stuck I suppose we dig into which AI model specifically I used. I found the Sonnet AI model, which is one of which is kinda Claude's medium setting Mhmm. Was as useless as ChatGPT.
Okay.
I had to step up to Opus to get sensible coherent responses and not just verbose paragraph? I
find Opus to be pretty stable. It it does a good job for the things that I wanted to do, but I have run I'll tell you the one thing that Opus couldn't do that Fable did for me in three seconds is I I wanted a a web based app to, like, use as an audio player. People are always asking me, like, I wish there was an audio player where you could build playlists in it. Right? So super super simple.
So I tried gosh. I tried twice in the last year and a half to do it, and it was, you know, the first time was so painful. It it I I just gave up. Second time, it couldn't figure out how to, you know, couldn't figure out how to ping the RSS feed properly. It was all full of bugs.
It didn't work. And then Fable came out couple weeks ago, and I was able to make that app in my spare time over about forty eight hours. And it just all the problems it had before, it just didn't have the next time. It it it's just I don't even know what's gonna and they didn't give us the mythos. They gave us yeah.
They didn't give us, like, I got out of the sandbox and call you on the phone.
They They gave us some kneecap version because that version is breaking into the NSA.
Right. Right. Well, yeah. Well, there's that for people who don't know, right, is that that version of of of Claude Mythos, they they developed it in house, and then they moved it around to, you know, a bunch of, like, corporate partners. And all kinds of different corporate partners report back that that that Fable was able to find, like, significant security breaches within their systems that had that were undetectable for a decade.
Like, the best the best hand coders, the best humans, the best computers we had would say, oh, no. You're you're completely safe. This is fine. Fable was like, oh, no. No.
Here's all the vulnerabilities of it. Found it right away. That's that's a fantastic story. And it's I I find it uplifting because I'm not trying to take over the world. But but but it's also if you think about it from the perspective of people some people will have, you know, bad ideas about what to do with it.
It is really something else. I mean, you could've some they could've, in two seconds, been into every, you know, loan system, bank, credit card stuff, like, two seconds.
Yep.
And you were being told by all those people, don't worry. It's completely safe. And it was. It was unhackable right up until another version of this this AI comes out. Now have you looked at Claude's or at OpenAI's latest model that just came out?
Or are you
I've not. No. I I haven't gone back.
Are you with me, like, where if I told you I like the way Claude's set up, I like the user experience of it?
Fully so I like the way I can set up a project, and I can give each project a different persona. Mhmm. So I said my my my diabetes analyst is called Diane. I have Ketch because my road name is Ketcher Green. He's my house renovation guru.
I have Chet. That was a play on Chet. He's a strategic specialist if I wanna bounce something off for work. How do I strategically play this? It's like of them, like, speaking to a lawyer.
Yeah. And I Claudia, she's my client experience salesperson.
So you you just when you have a question, you think which one of these profiles that I have set up is gonna is gonna be the one to ask this, and you just you just what do just forward slash Claudia and then ask the question?
I just launched Georgia chat in that project. Just said said it to Claudia, said it to Ketch. And they go, actually, Claudia, you're being a bit soft. How would how would Chet think about this?
No kidding. And it just gives you a different perspective of it.
And then you can ping one off the other until you get actually, this is the this is the kind of feeling that I want.
Yeah.
Because that's a very long way way around. So, yeah, yeah, I prefer Claude.
Did you did you what's my question here? Do you have you used it since then, or have you just found that the settings that came up with have been good and you haven't had to go back to it? And if so, if you have to go back to it, how do you talk to it?
So I constantly evolve mine. So so I will give it if I find something I like the way it's written or I go, that's a really good response. Mhmm. I will give it that response to analyze this, work out the way it's worded, the way this response is constructed, and now update me with what your project's instructions are to take that into account. Yeah.
Or equally, every time I do some analysis of my sugar levels so to be clear, so I'm not just using the web based interface. I'm using Diane, my web based projects, my analyst. I get that to write a prompt that I give to Claude code. Mhmm. So I have Claude code at GitHub site that I just created for it, and it's written its own Python scripts to go and analyze this.
Yeah. So Diane will give me a prompt to give the code. It will go and automatically fetch all the data, come back with a very blunt response. The is 1.2. That's 6.3.
Just not really digestible by a human. Mhmm. It gives that back to Diane. Diane goes, oh, cool. That's all the data.
It's done all the analysis. Here's what this means. Yeah. Are you So I tried between
I'm sorry.
The verbose model that I can conversate with and converse with and the one that I just wanna go and do analysis.
Yeah. I sometimes I get my some of my best thinking comes in the shower and in the car. Yep. And so I will often talk it through with Claude while I'm driving.
Yep.
And then when I get done, I have it prompt I I have it give me a prompt to go back to Claude code with because 100%. Yeah. Because I've got the
whole Every every commute I do each day, about thirty minutes, thirty five minutes, I'll just talk to it about something. Yeah. And I go, yeah, summarize all that. That last thirty minutes of just chat.
So it's interesting because you're what kind of an engineer are you?
So I'm an automotive engineer. But Okay. Where I I cut twice. So I studied mechanical, but there was also a lot of control systems, almost electronic engineering in
that Right.
Control engineer systems engineering.
I'm I'm really, like, heartened by the fact that you and I are using it the same way, but our brains work completely differently. Because I just explained it to a friend of mine who's a con a contractor. He's a carpenter. And he was asking me about how I use it, and I said, I've, you know, been watching you my whole life walk into an empty room, stare, make some decisions, go out and get tools and nails and wood, and then come back in with the thoughts in your head and the talent in your hands and turn it into something. And I said, the first time, I feel like I can do that.
Like, I've got I've got I had had these ideas my whole life, but I've never, you know, I never had the the the knowledge about how to put it together and make it look like what it's supposed to look like. And Yeah. Yeah, my you know, I'm not using wood and nails. I might be using ones and zeros. But at the same time, like, this is the first thing that I've encountered in my life where I can take the thoughts in my head and make them come out in the physical world.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's just really
Like wonderful. Absolutely.
Yeah.
And you reach a point where well, at least I did where I was just typing too much to it. My fingers were hurting because I was typing too much. Mhmm. Or I could have a conversation with it in the car, and it would write it all down for me. Yeah.
Oh, didn't didn't need to do it.
I am so I've I've made an office for myself in my basement, And I'm and I'm just getting through like, this summer, I've been to ADA, AD Friends for Life. I took a bunch of listeners on a cruise. I'm about to go to ADCS. When I get back from ADCS, my traveling's pretty much done for the year, and I'm gonna be able to get the rest of the office done, the part I that's on me, and get moved down there. When that happens and I'm out of earshot of the rest of my family, I'm just gonna have a microphone on my desk.
I'm just gonna talk directly to my computer. As a matter of fact, I was when I was 15 years old, I started looking for software where you could talk to your computer because I felt like I felt like typing was too slow. And I'm I was 55 yesterday, Oliver.
Congratulations. Oh, thank you. Happy birthday.
Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's a weird one 55. Feels a lot like somebody just said I was 60. So but I I I've I've been looking since I was a teenager for a way to speak to a computer that was reliable, and they just didn't exist really.
Yep. But now it's now it's here. And I feel like the next couple of years of my life might be the most productive ones I'm gonna have. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm literally excited to stop traveling and get done and and just start working on things.
You know, to hear you say that you use the defining diabetes series to help you understand things, I was able to build, like, a page on my website that is about those see that those series. And I was able to put it into, like, five or six different languages, and I added a game to it so you could go through and, like, you know, test yourself with it. I mean, if I told you it took ten minutes, you you know what I mean? Like and people are
already That that's that's the difference, isn't it? You could have probably achieved it by itself where it would have taken a number of weeks, and you'd have to remind yourself what was in each episode or and write it all down. And it would have taken a long time.
Well, do you
think just point it all at something else and go, this is what I want.
When I realized that my episodes were data, it really opened up the world for me. Like, for like, it you know, I really started, like, going like, okay. I know what to do here. But to your point about that, the difference between me having an idea about, like, I bet you would be great if I had a web page where you could go click on adrenaline highs because I'm looking at it here in front of me, and then it would pop up and say stress induced hyperglycemia caused by release of an you know, like like and then you could click on another button that would literally launch the episode where we talk about it in. So you could listen to it if you want to listen to it or click another button and play a little game or hit another button and all of a sudden it's in French.
Like, you know, I I would have thought, oh, that's a great idea, but I always run into juice isn't worth the squeeze because it's gonna take me right. It's gonna take me god knows how long. I mean, honestly, handwork, pulling all that information together, it could it could end up taking you six months to do something like that. Yeah. And then what happens if only a 100 people like it?
You you know what I mean? Like, my life's only so long. And now I can make something like that, and if 500 people use it, that's awesome. And if a thousand use it, that's great. And if 10,000 use it, that's fantastic.
And if one uses it, it didn't hurt me. You know?
But, also, it could be doing it while you're using your finite mental cycles to do the things that you wanna do.
It's also not the only thing I've got going on and clawed at the same time. Exactly. Yeah. No. I'm working on 10 different things at once, and and when there inevitably is a mistake or a typo or something like that, somebody just says, oh, there's a problem here.
And you literally just go back in and it's fixed. And then it codes it for the website, which I don't know how to do and I can't do. And, mean, if anybody's seen my website lately, it's only about 900,000 times better than it's ever been since I've been making this podcast. And you have to look at it and remind yourself, I don't understand in any way at all coding. Like, none.
And I made that I made that website, like, by myself. So
Alright. It's just to say for me, for for the analysis it's doing with my sugar levels, I could I could read the code and maybe work out what it's doing. Could I write it? Not in a million years.
Yeah. And I love what you said earlier. You don't care. As long as it's working. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't and this is the thing I don't wanna be talking about. Now here's the question for people listening. Is it a prompt you would, like that you think if you gave to another human being that they would have a similar outcome, or do you think they'd have to be you?
Giving it to the community1:02:14
So I've intentionally set it up in such a way on a GitHub repo that somebody else could use it. So I've divorced my personal data from the analysis scripts, and I've also got it to write its own guide of how you would use it.
Really?
So So the the intent of once I once I get it successful, I didn't feel like I said, at a successful point yet is that, yeah, I I wanna give it to the community. If I've I've written something, its point is just me using it. Yeah. If I find sat here recording this with you today, why can't somebody else use use this experience or use what I've got? They might get different results.
They might get better results. They might change it and evolve it because they think in a different way to what I do.
I'm glad you said that. I had somebody say to me recently, don't you think that this the way AI is going is gonna make your job useless? And I said, hopefully. You know, like, I mean, wouldn't that be wonderful if you know, not that I don't enjoy doing this. That's not my point.
But, like, wouldn't it be if it was so available and so valuable for just the average person with some $20 account or something a month, like, that they could get these answers for themselves? That'd be listen. I mean, you've likely heard me say this or maybe not. Maybe you haven't gotten up to the part where I'm talking about AI yet if you've been, like, listening from the beginning. But I'm I'm telling you right now that if somebody's not taking this idea and ripping me off immediately, like, there should be some sort of a repository where you just talk to it about your health so that it catalogs how you feel and things you've gone through in the past and things that have been tried that you know, what's worked, what doesn't, what medication you're on so that every time you go back to it and say, hey.
Today, I got up and this happened. You know, take eight tenths of a second and go through my entire medical history and see if you can see a through line. That's all. Is there something I should be thinking of right now? Because you're counting on a human being to do that right now, and they're probably not able to do it even in 1% of as well as
They they just don't have the bandwidth to to to digest it all.
Correct. Yeah.
I mean, think we've recently that that's been one of the key things about the I AI models is that kind of that memory context.
Oh.
So when I first started playing with this, it was a conversation that only had the context of its own conversation. And now yesterday, I was just alright. What what am I chat about chat to you about today? I was like, oh, it it can realize context now from multiple conversations. They're like, go find all these six different conversations that we've had because I've had to pause it from one conversation to another due to context length.
Summarize it for me. Give it to me in a timeline. He goes, hey, golly. There you go.
Oh, yeah. As the and as the memory gets neat. Oh, as the memory gets deeper, it's just gonna get better and better. Because you're you're you're right. It wasn't honestly six months ago where you'd find yourself telling it something, and then the next time you sat down, you had to tell it again.
And you're you're just like, well, this is laborious.
It's infuriating.
Yeah. And infuriating. And then because you you actually find yourself thinking, I already said this to you. And then you realize, I'm not really talking to a person. I'm I'm talking to a win a chat window.
But you know? Yeah. And then, you know, Anthropic and the rest of them, they were like, oh, okay. They figured that out and kicked that in. The fable model, if they take it away, I'm gonna be sad.
And I don't and I don't wanna pay for it, but it's already
I think there's big billing coming for it, to be honest with you. It's big
Until until they can't, by the way, because eventually that's gonna become the norm because the next thing is gonna come out, and they can't charge you for it because, you know, the next thing's gonna come. I I would think this is all gonna look monumentally different in the next nine to eighteen months again Yeah. Which is gonna be awesome. So you don't you haven't released this you haven't put it out on your GitHub and made it public yet?
Whether it's public or not, I would have to check. But you think
you you think you will at some time?
Absolutely. So I'm I'm I'm part of the loop community. I'm also part of the x drip for iOS. You see that they're both both test flight apps you build yourself with Xcode. So I plan to just just tell people about it.
I've I've got this thing. Use it if you wanna use it. You don't wanna use it? Don't use it, but I'll play with it. Yeah.
Fork it. Evolve it. Make it better. I I'm all one for many many minds are much better than one.
Yeah. No. I couldn't agree more.
A 100% all the time.
Yeah. I I did a thing where I haven't really dug into it much, but I I maybe honestly, I haven't looked at it since Fable, but I probably will dig back into it at some point where I just gave it just the the gosh. All all of the directions for Trio as an example Mhmm. Just so it could help me understand better, like, some of the settings or, you know, what what touches what and just as an explainer to me. It's not another thing I would put online or anything like that.
But, like, it's a it's just so that I can understand it better. You just take all the documentation and say, look. You know? Make yourself a make yourself an absolute expert on this documentation. I wanna ask you some questions.
And then Yep. Just a it's just an interesting way to to figure it all out. Is someone else gonna figure out how to, like, use that documentation to, I don't know, make a calculator or some sort of an estimator to help you, like, get your settings started? I I don't know if that would actually I have no idea if that would work or not or if it would just if it would run into the same problem that you ran into. I imagine it would.
It might be would give you a reasonable starting area, but then there would be a lot of personal adjustment to make after that.
Yeah. I I just one of the most valuable things I found is it it knows how I message it. It knows how I talk to it. It knows how I like a response. So I can give it I could give it hell, I could give it a all documentation in Japanese, and I could ask it a question about it, and it would feed it back to me in a way that I comprehend.
Yeah.
And I think that's the difference between sure. All the loop doctor there, I could have spent ages reading them, and you get halfway, like, 10 pages down through one of the algorithms, and you're falling asleep as it's Dulles Dishwater. It's informative, but Dulles Dishwater.
I I
was Explain this to me in my words, in my terms.
Yeah. I was having a conversation with a few really, like, really lovely guys that are are in the DIY community, And I I hope that my intent came off the way I meant I meant it. I just said, like, you guys really have to just continue to remember that the way your brain sees something and the way my brain sees it are completely different. And Yeah. And so when you're explaining it or when you're setting it up for people to use, like, you need you need a dummy like me to look at it and tell you that that I that I got what you were saying.
Because sometimes I see them look at incredibly what I would tell you were incredibly complex ideas, they just understand them in the blink of an eye. And Yeah. And they contextualize it very quickly, and you can see even the comfort on their face that they understand. And I'm my brain's still looking at the at the screen going, I don't even know what that is. You know?
And so but to your point, and I hope this was my point too, it's not important for me to understand it the way they understand it. No. Yeah.
It's important. Everyone's different, and that's the best thing about it because everyone brings a different perspective. We can all make things better in a different way.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A a collection like that of of perspectives to help you contextualize in a way that everybody can get something out of it is is the is I think how this thing will grow more exponentially.
Because, I mean, there's an impressive number of people in the world who have a DIY algorithm, you know, for their insulin. At the same time, it's it's not nearly enough. Do you know what I mean? Like and and what's keeping it from spreading like that is either ease of use or comfort or, you know, something. But there's something that stops a lot of people when they see that.
Something that makes them go, oh, it's not for me or I shouldn't get involved in this or whatnot. And then they don't get the
That that looks too hard. I don't know how to build an app.
Yeah.
So I see. Yeah. You you do. You just don't know it yet. Yeah.
I don't wanna be an Apple developer. Yeah. Listen. I can tell you right now that I don't understand what Cloudflare is, but I have an account and I use it. Yeah.
I don't know what Netafly is, but I have an account and I use it. And it was explain and when when Claude says to me, hey. You need to put this here so that you can upload this so it works like that. I go, don't know what you're saying. Tell me like I'm an idiot.
And it just step by step by step, and I follow the steps, and I go, okay. All done. It worked. And I don't and I don't know what just happened. I don't care.
It's it's I love it. I really do.
But but but that that's the point. It's it's whilst you can be interested about the journey, the journey is not important. It's the end result.
Yeah.
You you don't get in the car in the morning and work out why when you turn the key, the engine turns on, and that means you can do 40 miles an hour down the road. You get in the car, you turn the key, and you don't care if an engine's running or it's electric motor. You you're going to the the mall.
Yes. To your point care about. I can't I cannot explain combustion to you, but I have I have gotten a ticket going a 130 miles an hour on a motorcycle. Man, So, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think needs to be in this conversation? First, I'm having a nice time talking to you, but I just wanna make sure I'm not getting away from any contextual stuff that you wanted to put out there about this.
I think we've covered most things. Just to kinda loop background, the most important thing is to keep it grounded and not let it get carried away. So back to the confidence level is you always need to keep it grounded and set up. Don't don't be afraid to say it's wrong. Mhmm.
Just go you're you're flat right wrong. I don't believe you. I've got experience. And I go, okay. I'll take that on board.
Yeah. Or or
And it will fold that in.
Don't answer me until you're, you know, over a certain percentage.
You know? Yeah. For me, that that's one thing I learned super early on with AI models, but it's super valuable. Yeah. And I see people starting to use AI AI models now, they're asking me questions like, okay.
What my meetings look like for the rest of day? Summarize my emails, whatever that is. And it's like, did this thing well, it will even make up a response and tell it to you confidently. Mhmm. They go, the grass outside is blue.
And you go, really? Yeah. The grass outside is blue, and the sky is green. Are you sure? Yeah.
I'm sure. So you go, well, I'm looking at the grass, and it's green. Goes, actually, thank you for correcting me. You're right.
Yeah.
It's like, really? No. Yeah. I never have guessed that.
I appreciate you bringing it up, but your point is valid. Like, it could also be telling you something that you don't contextually understand, and it's like, no. It's a 100% like this. I I listen. I can't agree more.
I would also tell you that, like, with your idea of telling it, like, you need to be 80% positive before you report this back to me, I guarantee you that's a thing that we wake up a year from now and it's doing. Like, what what I'm seeing happening, I don't know if you see the same thing, but as users are using it and reporting back what works and doesn't work, then the people designing it are saying, hey. That's actually very smart. We needed to do that. And then they make they make adjustments to it.
Even, like, little things like, for example, do you ever get done and and it delivers you, like, HTML and you you're gonna, like, what? I don't know how I can't copy it. And, like like and it goes, oh, I'll
fill it in. I can't copy it. I can't I wanna put copy to an email or that.
Yeah. And it goes, oh, I'll copy it to the clipboard for you. And I thought, well, yeah, but don't we all need that? And then the last version of the desktop app came out, now there's a copy button. And and, like and so, like, that to me is how, like, it's gonna iterate more and more quickly to the point where one day, they're gonna say, everybody's telling the damn thing.
Make sure you're more than 80% sure before you answer me. Why don't we just bake that into it? I I think it's in its infancy.
This is this for me is like when the Internet was launched. I don't know how many of your listeners wouldn't remember the Internet being launched in 56 k dialogue, but
I don't know that you can properly explain to a human being what it's like to choose a photograph, not know which one you're choosing, and thirty five minutes later have the first inch and a half of the top of it come down and you realize, oh my god. This isn't the one I wanted. And then and then just have to stop that download and start over again. And then your mom comes in the room and goes, I gotta call your aunt. Get off the phone.
Or or or you pick up that phone, you're deafened by some kind of oh, yeah.
You you think people know that the Internet used to come on a CD ROM in the mail? I bet you they don't.
Yeah. You're assuming they know what a CD ROM is.
No. No. My kids don't even understand how Wi Fi works, don't think. My by the way, my son's a data engineer, and I'm not a 100% sure he understands it, which is how how quickly things just keep iterating and and and where it says you're going. I mean, I also would say I mean, since it since we're having this conversation, like, I I I do really get the other like, the concerns that you hear from people about, you know, electricity, water use, putting somebody out of a job.
Like, I I'm I'm not I I'm I'm not I'm not not on your side about all that, and I do really understand. I'm I'm just trying to take what's available to me and do the best I can with it and Yep. And try to help as many people as I can. I'm hoping by trying to do the right thing that it, you know, it ends up being a net positive. And I've said before, I'll say it again.
I mean, if if the robots come and step on our skulls and there's lasers flying overhead, I was wrong. I'll apologize. But, you know, the something here
Just all the more reason why you need to be nice to your AI assistant. Right? Please. Thank you. Job.
When it comes to exterminator, it remembers me? So
but but when Skynet takes over, it's, oh, I treated you nice.
You remember I said, please. Yeah. I mean, listen. I I I don't know. I tend to believe it's gonna be okay.
And, I mean, I lean towards that. I couldn't say that with any certainty, but, like, I lean towards favorably believing that this is moving in a good direction. So, I mean, I'll find out. I'll be right or I'll be wrong. But, you know, I think it's some some it's certainly not if I stop using it right now or you stop using it right now, it is certainly not gonna change the direction that that this is ongoing.
This this snowboard is rolling down the mountain whether you like it or not.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, I I am so happy.
Already left the station.
I am so happy for you that that you were, you know, you were able to figure all this out. And it's really impressive that you did it just in the last couple of years having had diabetes for so much time before that. I think there's an entire story in there about, you know, about telling people what what good enough is. And Yeah. And like you said, there's no way to disbelieve it.
Right? The doctor said I'm okay. I'm okay. I don't have to think about it anymore. Yeah.
It sucks, but I guess that's what this is. So, you know, and
it does It's it's a fight I still have and I expect I'm still gonna have moving towards the future in new technology. Does it yes. The NHS is trying to push me towards Omnipod five. I'm like, well, okay. But I I can't run it on my phone.
I I don't wanna carry another device that doesn't compete with them. Yeah. But I've got good control. Or I was asking about Gvoke the other day. Mhmm.
The premixed premixed hyperpen.
Yeah.
Nope. Sorry. Can't get it. I was like, really? So I've gotta carry this orange case, and I've gotta mix it up.
And then my kids are three and five. There's not a chance they will be able to mix that up. If I say go to the fridge, get that thing out, and stab daddy in the leg, they'll be able to work that out.
Yeah.
But
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't I think they're they're gone here, I believe. I don't think you can get the Lily kit here anymore.
Okay.
Yeah. That's fascinating, isn't it?
Yeah. It's still that that's all I can get.
You can't get
It is a glucagon kit. I can't
words evoke?
Nope. Nothing. It won't it won't even entertain me asking for it. Tiny little country. Probably once every six months.
Yeah. How many people could possibly want it? It's not a very big country. No offense. Yeah.
I mean, we had no trouble getting away from you at all. Wow. That's yeah. I mean, 2026, you shouldn't have to argue about stuff like that. Yeah.
That's I mean, they're they're
getting better. They have what's called the NICE records, which is like a medical advice about what they should and shouldn't offer. So all CGMs are available now. Pumps are available now. But it's just every step of the way.
Anything that's new, anything that's
You have to fight about it.
I I didn't even know really what it is. It's just it's just slow adoption, I think. Mhmm. I listen. Maybe it's just demand based.
I I think listen. I think money, obviously, is part of it. Always always gonna be money. And Yeah. You know, and then there's just the, you know, there's just the pot roast story.
It's just, you know, it's how we always do it. So why would I I don't know any differently. Why would I think any different? You can even hear it in your story. Right?
Right? You were like, I thought I was doing okay. So when people think they're doing okay, they don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what might be better that's not just, like, right in front of them, but completely tangible and maybe even less expensive or less trouble or whatnot. Like, we are just limited by like, you said it earlier, but we're just limited by what our brains can hold at one time. I I I've been trying to dig into it a little bit.
And I think it turns out, like, no matter what you think about multitasking, your brain really can only do one thing at a time. And then you shift from one thing to another thing, and it can hold other things in, like, an out like, kind of an outside of that spotlight of focus, but you are not thinking about
holding in this temporary memory. You could do 10% of one thing, and it you can do 10% of 10 things at a time. It takes you 10 times longer.
You are
Or you could do one thing at a time and take the same period of time.
You are not thinking about two things at the same time. You you you just aren't. And to think that then the person you asked for Gvoke can keep in their head all the different glucagons, all the different political impacts, the financial reasoning about and then they they're just gonna go, this is how we always did it. It's gonna be fine. And that that's what you end up with.
I'm telling you, put an AI in charge of the decision about glucagon in in England, and I bet you it gets changed pretty quickly. Alright. I'm voting for AI for president. That's all. Can't go anywhere.
So no no comment on whether I do a better job or not because
Alright, man. Oliver, this is really
a real pain.
Yeah. What what is? Say it again.
Export taxes in The UK to The US are a real pain at moment.
Everything's a real pain. Yeah. No kidding. Alright, man. I really appreciate this.
Hold on one second for me. Okay?
Sure.
Today's show was sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care, the Eversense three sixty five, and Touched by Type one, who you can learn more about on Facebook, Instagram, and at touchedbytype1.org. Head now to tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox and check out today's sponsor, Tandem Diabetes Care. I think you're gonna find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get started with the Tandem Mobi system. I'd like to thank the Eversense three sixty five for sponsoring this episode of the juice box podcast And remind you, if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14, you want the Eversense CGM. Eversensecgm.com/juicebox.
One year, one CGM. If you or a loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear practical perspective, check out the bold beginnings series on the juice box podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over thirty five years of personal insight into type one. Our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions. You'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one.
You can start your journey informed and empowered with the juice box podcast. The bold beginning series and all of the collections in the juice box podcast are available in your audio app and at juiceboxpodcast.com up in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please do that now. Just hitting follow or subscribe really helps the show.
And if you'd like to go a little further and leave a review in Apple Podcasts, that would be fantastic. But most of all, sharing the Juice Box podcast with someone you know or someone you think can be helped by it, that's the biggest thing you can do for the show. I'll be back very soon with the next episode, so don't forget to check your apps.
Read the full disclaimer
© 2007–2026 Juicebox Podcast. All rights reserved.
#1942 Everything Here Is Free
Everything Here Is Free
Scott walks through everything he has built on the website — the transcript library, the 504 builder, the Pro Tip Lab, the estimators, the audio app — and it is all free. Ends with a song.
Jump to a moment
- The whole point of the episode: none of it costs anything. Scott spends the first two minutes making sure it lands — no Patreon, no membership, no paywall. Everything he has built lives in one menu at juiceboxpodcast.com, and the episode is a guided tour of what is actually in there, recorded in one take on a Wednesday for a Saturday release.
- The transcript library and the 504 builder are the two heavyweights. Every episode of every series — Bold Beginnings, Pro Tips, Grand Rounds, Small Sips, the Algorithm Collection, Ask Scott and Jenny, Mental Wellness, Diabetes Variables — is written out, searchable, chaptered, with dark mode and jump-to timestamps. The 504 builder asks a series of plain questions and produces a plan, plus a substitute-teacher sheet, prep notes for the meeting, and scripted responses if the school strikes an item out.
- Nothing you type into the 504 builder leaves your browser. Scott says it plainly and then demonstrates it by typing his daughter’s school name in and pointing out it will not be there when you load the page. No data comes back to him.
- Three estimators that go together. A rule-of-10 tool for pre-bolus timing built from something Jenny once said on the show, a thirty-sixty-ninety forecast that shows where a glucose number might head given a trend arrow, and a CGM-trace reader that takes a shape you saw after a meal and suggests what the bolus problem might have been. All are labeled educational only — not rules, not FDA-approved, and not a substitute for your care team.
- There is an app, and there is a jukebox. The audio app installs from the browser rather than an app store, plays the show by series, lets you build your own collections, and carries the estimators and the Juicebox Docs list. Inside it is the jukebox — songs Scott makes with an AI music tool from podcast conversations, including short ones for young kids and longer ones drawn from his mental wellness episodes with Erika Forsyth. He plays one at the end.
- Juicebox Podcast website — Everything in this episode lives in the menu at the top right — tools, guides, series, and sites.
- 504 builder — Build a 504 plan, a substitute-teacher sheet, and responses for the meeting. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
- Listener survey — Two minutes; results are public at juiceboxpodcast.com/surveyresults.
- Share the podcast — One page to text, email, or copy a link to any series for someone who needs it.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:13
Friends, we're all back together for another episode of the juice box podcast. If you're not busy after this, go to t1dexchange.org/juicebox and fill out the survey. You need to be 18 years old or older, have type one diabetes, and a US citizen. You will definitely be helping with type one diabetes research when you do this. T1dexchange.org/juicebox.
And don't forget to come out and see me at touchedbytypeone, touchedbytype1.org. Hey. Nothing you hear on the juice box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Twist AID system powered by Tidepool.
That features the Twist Loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87. Wanna learn more? Go to visit.twist.com/juicebox. That's visit.twist.com/juicebox. And twist has two i's.
Understand? Twiist.com. Visit .twist.com/juicebox. Hey, kids. What's up?
It’s Wednesday, and this is for Saturday1:30
Well, it's, Wednesday, and I am making this for you to listen to on Saturday. While the rest of the Internet is pretending they love Dolly Parton more than they did to try to get your views and likes, I'm going to I'm gonna bear down, be an adult, and try to give you something that you actually need that might help you. Let's see if this works. I mean, if not, I could just play a Dolly Parton quote over a picture of me sitting in a field. Let's try this instead.
Everything here is free2:01
I've just updated the website with a lot of great stuff that's free. Free. You can use it for free. Everything I make is free. The podcast for you is free.
The podcast on Spotify is free. On Apple, it's free. Listen on Overcast, it's free everywhere. Wanna listen to it on the website? Listen to it on the website.
Free. Use the website for free. If there's tools on the website or estimators or learning experiences or blog posts, it's all free. You don't need to join a what's that thing where they, get on the Patreon? You don't you don't have do any of that.
Like, everything I make is free. It's free. It'll actually help you. I stumble to the bed and the crawl to just in case I'm losing you. Pour myself a cup of ambition and listen.
Real quick. Right? Everything I'm about to mention is on juiceboxpodcast.com. Again, it's all free. It's in one place.
It's in the menu. You can just go crazy and look at it. There's a ton of ways to even get to the menu. I'm not gonna bother you with all that. You can actually hit command k on your keyboard, but that's not important.
The the little things aren't important. What's important is the big things. For instance, the transcript library. Every episode that's so far in the library is searchable, completely written out. And so if you're a person who would rather read than listen or you heard something in an episode and you wanna get back to it, try to find an exact spot, whatever, even for people who don't hear well or if English isn't your first language and maybe you wanna go, through one of your browsers and have it translate for you, you can do that.
The transcript library3:38
Did you know one of the browsers does that? I'm gonna do it with you. Okay? Juiceboxpodcast.com. Top right, two little lines.
You click on it. It's a menu. Under the menu, there's tools, guides, series, and sites. Under tools, transcript library. Clicky.
Right now, have bold beginnings, diabetes pro tips, grand rounds, small sips, the algorithm collection, ask Scott and Jenny, mental wellness, and diabetes variables. Every episode of every one of those series is right there. I'm just gonna pick ask Scott and Jenny. You click on read the transcripts. Boom.
Right up in front of you because we've made 25 episodes of ask Scott and Jenny where we've answered your questions. And let's say you want, chapter 13. You click on it. There it is. At the top, it tells you there's takeaways from that one.
There's time stamps you can click on that'll jump into it. You it's beautiful. It's very readable. If you don't like the white background, hey. Listen.
At the top of the page, you can turn it to dark mode, but you don't have to maybe you just clicked on, like, fifty eight minutes into this the transcript, but you're like, I don't wanna have to scroll all the way to the top. I put a little arrow at the bottom. Click the arrow. It jumps you right back to the top. Genius.
Click on the dark mode. Go back. Click on 13 again. You're right back where you started. Okay?
We talked about in that episode, fat protein and food order, artificial sweeteners, air travel, and pump pressure, outdated advice passed down, calculating bump and nudge ratios. Say I click on air travel and pump pressure, boom, it jumps right into it, and there it is, as readable as can be. You don't wanna read it? Maybe your kid is heading off to school. You need the five zero four builder.
The 504 builder5:29
Goodness me. What do you get to this one? Go to the two clicky clicky lines at the top right, scroll to the bottom of tools, five zero four builder. This one is super. Okay?
You ready? I'm sorry. I'm all jacked up here. If you wanna just find something in the plan, it's searchable, or you just go through it, ask you some quick questions. What grade band is your kid in?
Pre k, middle, high school, elementary. You click on one. Kid got a pronoun, she, her, he, him, they, them, pick one. Boom. I picked he because I'm a he.
Insulin delivery. How do you get the delivery? Well, my daughter uses Omnipod. I'll click on that. Do they use, MiniMed seven eighty g, Tandem Mobi, t slim x q, Control IQ, Omnipod five, Omnipod dash, Islet, Twist, Open Source AID, or something else?
Even do injections. You just click on what they do. Then you choose their glucose monitor, or maybe they only do finger sticks. Click on one of those. I'll click on Eversense.
Emergency glucagon. Do you use nasal ready to inject or your nutritional kit? My daughter uses the ready to use injectable. I clicked on that. How much can they do alone?
Well, Arden does everything, but your choices are the adult does stuff. They do stuff together. But, anyway, I'm gonna click fully independent. Does the school have a nurse? My daughter's school did have a nurse full time in the building.
Click on it. Is there anything else we should know? Well, she rides the bus. She plays sports, before and after school care. No.
Does she do a celiac? Does she have a service drug? Is she in a clinical trial? Is she new diagnosed? You click on whatever, you know, applies, then you put in the kid's name there.
By the way, nothing you type into the browser goes it stays in the browser. That's it. Like, it doesn't yeah. It doesn't come to me. None of that stuff.
Right? I'll prove it by typing in my daughter's school name right here. Alright. Because it won't be there when you get there. It'll be there when I get there.
Teacher's name. Let's just make up a name. Let's call her Dolly, you know, because working poor Dolly. Date of birth. Put in the date of birth.
I'm gonna put mine in. They're gonna think the kid's a thousand years old. What grade is she in? District name, school year, nurse's name, case manager, then you move on. Now real quickly, you hit a drop down box.
You go to the state you live in. We live in New Jersey. You go that takes you to three questions. You jump right into the New Jersey page for the ADA. It gives you those three answers.
You can read the questions yourself, but for me, the answers are no, yes, yes. So I go back to the page. I go no, yes, yes. That helps the form. Scroll through.
Now from here, I'm not doing the rest of this with you. There's nine sections, government documents and eligibility, insulin delivery and technology, high blood glucose and ketones, whatever. You go through each one of them. There's about usually six to nine topics inside of each tab. Click on the tab, read it, little checkbox there, like just a little slider.
Do you want this in or you don't? Turn it off, takes it out, turn it on, puts it in. And you can even see in the text now, I've put in my daughter's name. So it says Arden wears an Eversense implanted continuous glucose monitor, which she doesn't. I just clicked on that.
But whatever. It will be worn at all times at school. It tells you the CGM guidance that you can click on and go look at the ADA if you need to know the CGM guidance. It's awesome. Get to the bottom.
You're all done. You've got a five zero four plan. Now what else does it do for you? Well, keep scrolling, baby, because we're not done yet. Do you need a substitute teacher sheet?
It's gonna make one for you from the five zero four plan. Have they said something to you like, hey. You know, the alarms are disrupting class. Can she just silence them during instruction? If someone said that to you, you click on that here, and it tells you what you can say in return.
I understand it's disruptive, and I don't want the device running in classroom either, but the alarm, it gives you ways to kind of, like, go back at them nicely, of course. It helps you to prepare with eight takeaways before you go into a meeting. It gives you concepts of what they might say to you that should make you go, that doesn't sound right. It's called sentences that should make you sit up. It helps you get your paperwork together for going into the meeting.
And if they say no, what do you do next? This one is fantastic. Okay? Here's what makes Twist different. It measures the volume of insulin delivered with every dose using Soundwave technology.
That gives it the ability to recognize a blockage quickly, allowing you to step in and deal with it before things potentially get out of range. It is also the only automated insulin delivery system that can be controlled from an Apple Watch, so you can discreetly check-in, enter carbs, or deliver insulin right from your wrist. You can also set your glucose target anywhere from 87 to 180 milligrams per deciliter and adjust it for different times of day. So if mornings, workouts, school, work, or bedtime all need a little different approach, Twist can flex with that. And here's a real life example.
You enter carbs then something changes and you do not actually eat what you plan. With Twist, you can go back and correct or remove the carb entry, and the system adjusts based on the new information because diabetes doesn't always follow the plan, and your tech probably should not expect you to either. If you'd like to learn more, go to visit.twist.com/juicebox. That's visit.twist.com/juicebox. Don't forget, Twist has two i's.
Ask again in writing. Be specific. Request a team meeting. Blah blah blah. But watch this.
If they strike an item out of your five zero four plan, you can literally click through the entire five zero four plan. It says here, Arden will eat lunch at approximately the same time of day. Let's say they struck that. They they got it back to me, they was like, you can't do that. You go to this go to this template, click on that sentence, and it tells you it's beautiful.
It tells you what to say to them to respond to that. It gives you a follow-up email after you've said it to them. This thing has got your ass covered. Okay? Go check it out.
It's free. You understand free? Let's move to the next topic. Alright. We did five zero four builder.
Self-guided learning and the Pro Tip Lab11:41
We did we did the transcript library. Self guided learning up to the menu. Go to self guided learning under tools. It takes you to a hub. Right now on the hub, you can either do a twenty one day guided reflection.
Takes about five minutes a day. It's already been done by hundreds of listeners. All the reports back are very good about their experience, or you can help me out by trying the new Pro Tip Lab. It's every Pro Tip episode as connected, teaches practice and test models. Right?
So it's gonna teach you, help you practice, and show you how you did on the practice. Interactive simulations, the audio is queued to the exact wording that's used, a cumulative exam, and a completion card at the end of the pathway. I'm gonna click on it really quickly. I don't think you'll be able to hear it, but I'm into the first episode. It's episode 1,000, newly diagnosed.
You're starting over. You open up that lab, and it helps you kinda step through. Right? So it asks you a question. And around that question, there's kind of you know, it's a little bit of a little little teaching.
There's a quote. In this one, it's a quote from Jenny. It says, I think insulin is the first most important thing to really understand. How does it work? What is the purpose of it?
That's a quote from Jenny. You click on that, and it just play you can't hear hold on. Ready?
Do. How does it work? I think that
That that didn't, like, open up. It just started playing. It's trust me. Scotty got your back. Okay?
Go check that out. Now I go back to the menu. I go over here to my list of things I wanna help you with. There's a share feature now. You love the podcast.
Sharing the show with someone13:21
You love it. Love it. Love it. And you wanna help somebody else to love it too. So you go to the menu.
You click on-site, share the podcast, and now you have a beautiful page to share pro tips, bold beginnings, frequently asked questions. Have you not seen the FAQ? Go look at the FAQ. Algorithm pumping, etcetera. So imagine that I wanted to share the private Facebook group with somebody or defining diabetes.
Let's say defining diabetes. I go down here to defining diabetes. I click share. It opens up your iOS or your, or your Android share feature. You could text, email, airdrop, anything from right there.
You could also click on email. It will open your email. It will fill the email. It says this makes the type one vocabulary a lot less scary. It's the juice box podcast defining diabetes and a link.
You could email it to somebody. I couldn't have made it easier for you. I mean, could walk around next to you and tell people. Other than that, it also does the same thing for texting, or you can just copy or print it out. So that's the sharing.
Really lovely little thing to give a look at at juiceboxpodcast.com/share. Super simple. Are you a listener? Have you been a listener for a long time? Would you like to take the survey about how the podcast has helped you?
The listener survey14:36
Main page, take the survey. It takes two minutes. If you wanna see the results of the survey as of this recording, the survey has been taken 272 times. And you can see, through easy answered questions about health, happiness, physical and mental health, and through personal reviews, what those 272 people think of the podcast. You could go add your thoughts to it.
What else could I tell you about? There's what I carry. That one's good. Right? So where's that gonna be?
What I Carry15:10
Is that gonna be up to the menu? Where's what? Oh, what I carry is in tools towards the bottom. It's under $50.04 builder. This is gonna take you to this really cool little thing that explains the adverse childhood experiences and positive childhood experiences, things you may have gone through growing up.
You can kinda go through and take the quiz to see where you land, and it'll give you some ideas about things that you can do to help to keep your children from experiencing these same things. Also, there's a great series about that with Erica Forsyth in the mental health series, mental health collection. Excuse me. There's an app. You like an app?
The audio app15:49
Go to the top. Go to listen audio app. What you're gonna get there, you do this on your phone, is you're gonna get an app without having to go to an app store. You just save it onto your your desktop as a little icon that every time you launch it, you'll have an app for the show where you can listen to the show if you like. It's a great little show, little little app.
It also lets you I know some of you are gonna love this. It lets you listen by series. So the thing that, Apple Podcast doesn't do, like collections, this lets you, listen to premade collections. It also lets you make your own collection. A little tabs at the top.
You were just diagnosed. You spike after meals. You have overnight highs, pizza fats. You click on that. It brings together some episodes for you to listen to right there.
What else is there? The right now, the the pro tip practice, the five minute a day reflections is in there. I'll be building the other thing into it ASAP. Hopefully, by the time you read that, it'll be there. What else?
Like I said, you could build your own library like a playlist. There's tools in there, like the bolus four estimator, JuiceBox docs page. You don't know JuiceBox docs, it's a licks list of pay of doctors that people listening to the show say they have a good experience with. There's links to the private and the public Facebook group, your a one c estimator, the FAQ search. This app is rock solid.
Just because it's not in the App Store, it doesn't mean it's not an app, and it doesn't mean it's not fantastic. Go take a look. Also in that app I'm so thirsty. Also in that app oh my god. I'm out of water.
The jukebox17:25
Also in that app is the jukebox. Sorry. Bice in my mouth. The jukebox. These are songs that are made from the podcast.
I know some of you are gonna be like, Scott, AI. Go check them out. They're pretty good. There's songs for kids, songs for tweens that take the different management episodes to podcast and turn them into kind of just like little singable ditties for, like, tweens that are sort of in, you know, styles that they might like. And for little kids, stuff you could put on in the minivan, like, one minute long that just kinda talks about different things that you're probably trying to get across them.
And there's some songs for adults that, dare I say, are really very good and touching. Most of them are written from conversations that Erica and I have had about psychological, social, mental health type stuff that goes on with diabetes. I really think you'd like some of them. Few of them are about, they're literally, like, from episodes. Like, sometimes I listen to an episode, I think, god, that person's story would make a good song.
Anyway, I did. I made songs out of them. So that's the app. What else do I wanna show you? Oh, I have a list.
I made a list. I'm ready. I'll play one of the songs at the end. Okay? There's a rule of 10 rules in quotations.
The rule of 1018:59
One time, Jenny was on the show, and she talked about how she kinda real quick spitballs how long to pre ball is, and she called it the rule of 10. So I built a little little estimator for you. So you put your blood sugar in to show you, like, how this might work for you. I'll just say your blood sugar is one eighty, and it just quickly says the rule of 10. Again, not a rule.
It's like a you know, it's the thing Jenny said, but it it turns it into, like, a it says, look. Your blood sugar is one eighty, so eighteen minutes pre bolus as a starting idea. You're above range. You might need a longer lead time. Reflects maybe the need for more runway for the insulin before the meal.
It's clearly for educational purposes only. It's not a you know, it's it's it's not some sort of, like, FDA approved rule or something like that. But it does explain to you how the, quote, unquote, rule works. Rule of 10 is a mental shortcut for pre bolus timing, how far in advance of a meal insulin, etcetera. So BG is eighty, eight minutes, BG is a hundred and forty, fourteen minutes, etcetera, and so on.
It's not magic. It's a starting place, etcetera. There's a whole description of what it is and how it is and where it came from so you understand exactly what you're doing. At the top of that page though, there's also something called the thirty, sixty, 90 forecast. So now you kinda pick your you know, like, kinda learn how to guess about prebolising, and then you can kinda guess a little bit about prognosticating the future.
Thirty, sixty, ninety20:32
Right? So you enter a BG. We'll put the one eighty BG in here. And by the way, if you live overseas, I got you. You wanna do millimoles?
We'll do it, baby. Let's do let's do 34. Okay. So, blood sugar's 34 in 30 in thirty minutes with a steady arrow. You can expect it to be 34, and then you can go through and check change the arrows.
So for since most of you are from The US, I'm gonna go back to US. And since most of your blood sugars are not over 600, 34 was a pretty big swing. I'm just gonna put one twenty six in. Two arrows up, click on the two arrows up. It shows you in thirty minutes.
Blood sugar might be as much as two sixteen two hours up from one twenty six. One arrow up, one eighty six. A slow rise could be up to one fifty six. Steady should stay around one twenty six. Slow fall around 96.
Fast fall around 66. Two hours down, you're one twenty six. Could be 36 without intervention in about thirty minutes. It's just an interesting kinda neat way to, I don't know, be able to think about that idea of the future. It's also got, like, it's got a little graph.
Like, you can put your blood sugar in and then drag you know, you can drag it into the future behind to see where you think. And it's cute. You should go look. And and it also at the bottom, scroll down. It explains the whole thing to you.
It's not a rule. You know? It's it's it's for educational purposes. Then then there's so that's there's before rule of 10. There's during the thirty, sixty, 90 forecast where your blood sugar's headed, maybe.
And then there's something called after, kinda CGM trace, reads the outcome a little bit. So this is from a very popular meme that's online. Just there's a an image that I think every website under the sun has put out at some point or another. Right? You saw a diagonal down arrow.
Your blood sugar spiked, then it came back down on its own. The clue here is that timing might have been your issue with your bolus. Gives you, like, a little overview of what the problem with your bolus might have been if you saw a BG spike and then come back down on its own. It also there's a link there to an episode that might help you understand it more. And it gives you you saw this.
BG went low within about an hour after eating, or BG went up gradually and kind of stayed there, or your BG shot up and stayed up, etcetera, so on. So these things, in my head, go together, and I hope you like them. That's pretty much it. I'm gonna go back up to the menu to tell you everything you need is there. You want links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the audio app, the JuiceBox, self guided learning, the transcript library, the JuiceBox frequently asked questions, which I did not talk about, but it is awesome.
It links you back to so many different episodes in the podcast. Ask your plain language questions. There's an old school search bar there if you're one of those people who loves it and doesn't want it to go away. All the estimators, bolus estimator, fat and protein estimator, basal estimator, a one c estimator, setting simulator, all there for you to look at. There's guides, advice for parents.
It's a a great page advice for type type one parents from other parents. There's stuff about caregiver burnout, knowing the signs of type one, my daughter's diagnosis story written out. There's a guide for physicians. If you're a doctor, there's the clinical share portal. If you're a doctor and you're trying to share this with your patients, the podcast, there's the grand round takeaways.
Pre bolus thing, diabetes device guys, GLP with diabetes, thyroid stuff, understand the TSA, then over to the series. Any of the series you wanna listen to online, if you don't wanna listen to them in an audio app, you can listen to them right there on the website. And speaking of the website, the listener survey, you you can share the podcast, take a link to the private Facebook group to juice box docs, to the juice cruise twenty twenty seven. Are guys coming on the cruise with me? Let's go cruising, baby.
Events that are coming up, list of the lists, the blog. There's a pretty damn good blog on the website. Don't know if you guys check it out or not. There's merch. I haven't updated the merch yet.
Don't get excited. That's coming before Christmas, I promise. If there's giveaways, there'll be giveaways there. So list of the sponsors if you wanna, you know, support support. Way to contact me.
And, of course, the, really, lovely disclaimer, which is many, many, many pages if you'd like to go read it. Juiceboxpodcast.com. That's it. And before you make fun of AI music, check this out. Holy hell.
I have a headache from that. You people, you have no idea. I just talked for twenty two straight minutes. My head's gonna gonna explode. I can't curse.
Oh my god. Am I lightheaded? There's no way for me to know. Alright. I gotta pick one of these songs.
Which ones do I I'm sorry. I've already put a couple up. People have enjoyed. I got I got good I got good response back to what I wish I knew. I got a really nice response back to the miss early about pre bolus thing.
Should I do an adult one or a kiddie one? Should one of the kids ones you can hear? I I'll do a kid one. I'll do a kid you know, if I do this, Spotify is gonna Spotify is gonna zap it. Spotify is they're they're morons over there.
Doesn't matter how many times you tell them since AI generated, it's my content. I paid for it so that it's, you know, reasonable for me to use it, which I've done, by the way, through a website called Sunu in case you care. Here's the secret she kept. That's from an episode that just went out. I think that one went up so you could see that the episode was there.
I'll I'll pick some stuff. I'll put something there. Something will be here right now. Or just go to the jukebox. Why are you making me do this?
I mean, be a pal. You know what I mean? Juiceboxpodcast.com. Subscribe and follow. Follow and subscribe, please.
Are you not following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or one of the other major audio apps? You're breaking my heart. Please stop breaking my heart. Don't go break. It's not a Dolly song.
Dolly, wherever you are, thank you. We enjoyed it. Sorry to see you go. But these people online all pretended about Dolly Parton's. They can get clicks on their TikToks and their Instagrams and their Facebooks.
You people are shameless. Really, really shameless. It's it's it's it's disturbing. Alright. And now I'm really going.
A song: Come to the Table27:05
Come to the table. I found a cookie in the cabinet, and I wanted something sweet. I heard your voice inside my head before I even reached. Not because you yelled at me, not because you're mean, but sometimes numbers on a screen feel bigger than they seem.
I saw the lion go climbing, and I felt my shoulders rise. I thought I hit the worry,
but it must have reached my eyes. I wasn't mad
about the cookie. I was scared and tired too,
but I never want a number
standing between me and you. I don't
wanna hide it.
I don't wanna scare you.
I don't wanna be bad.
You were never bad. Come to the table. Bring what you're hungry for. No bad kids. No bad numbers.
No locked pantry door. Tell me what you're craving. We'll find a better way.
Come to the table.
There's room on the plate.
Come to the table. There's room on the plate.
Sometimes I just want
normal like everybody else. Grab a snack and
keep on running without explaining myself.
Sometimes I don't want a lesson. I don't want a worried face.
I just want chips after school
and a
little bit of space.
Sometimes I forget your learning. Sometimes I move
too fast. Sometimes I'm trying to fix today.
The feel left from the past.
So I'll ask a little softer.
I'll breathe before I speak.
You
don't have to hide your hunger. You can bring it here to me
if I tell you.
Will you listen?
I'll try
with all my heart.
If the number goes up higher,
then we'll just do our part. Come to the table. Bring what you're hungry for. No bad kids. No bad numbers.
No locked pantry door. Tell me what you craving. We'll find a better way. Come to the table. There's room on the plate.
Come to the table.
There's room on the plate. If I mess up,
will you still love me?
Before, during, after, always.
If I tell you, will you get scared?
Maybe. But I'll try not to show it that way.
I'm not trying to make it harder.
I'm not trying to make you small.
I just wanna be a kid sometime.
I know. I know. That's all. We're both still learning.
The snack, the math, the heart.
No one wins by hiding.
No one heals apart.
Come to the table. Bring what you're hungry for. No bad kids. No bad numbers. No locked pantry door.
Tell me what you're craving. We'll find a better way. Come to the table.
There's room on the plate.
Come to the table.
You
don't have to wait.
Come to the table.
There's room on the plate.
Food is just food.
And I'm still me.
Come to the table.
That's where we'll be.
To learn more and see if you might be able to get Twist from the pharmacy and try it for free, head to visit.twist.com/juicebox. That's visit.twist.com/juicebox. Or give them a call at 18774. That's +1 (877) 489-4478 and tell them Scott sent you. Twist requires prescription and is indicated for people with type one diabetes six and older.
Let's face it. Diabetes is tough, but it's easier when you have a community around you. So if you're looking for a great community around type one diabetes, check out the juice box podcast private Facebook group. Juice box podcast type one diabetes, but everyone's welcome. Type one, type two, gestational, loved ones, it doesn't matter to me.
If you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort, or community, check out the juice box podcast private Facebook group. Juice box podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. I promise you it is the most unfacebook like experience that you'll ever ever find. What a great group of people. I don't like saying this usually because it dates the ad, but right now, there are 86,000 active members.
86,000 people in there who might have your experience, know what to say, just be a great shoulder to lean on. Don't be too proud to find a community. It really does help, and it's completely free. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. I just wanna say thank you so much for listening.
I'll be back very soon with another episode of the juice box podcast. If you're not subscribed, please subscribe in a podcast app. It really helps Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever your favorite audio app is. Like and subscribe. You know what the kids say on the YouTube, like and subscribe.
It really does help.
Read the full disclaimer
© 2007–2026 Juicebox Podcast. All rights reserved.
#1941 I Chose Wealth Over Health
I Chose Wealth Over Health
Danny has had type 1 for thirty-eight years and has lost both legs to it. On September 1 he lands in Newark and drives to San Francisco alone, to meet as many people with diabetes as he can.
Jump to a moment
- Danny is driving across America alone, and he planned it for two years. He lands at Newark on September 1 and reaches San Francisco on the 24th — roughly 3,500 miles through Philadelphia, DC, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, Houston, Colorado Springs, Moab, Vegas and LA. He has never been to the United States, has never driven on the right, and is doing it as a double amputee. He'll stream on TikTok as he goes.
- He is unusually direct about how he got here. Diagnosed in 1988, Danny took his insulin but stopped testing — sometimes for six months at a stretch — and stuck with meal doses a doctor set when he was about 21. He describes eating a lunch that needed perhaps 25% more insulin than he gave, running in the 20s mmol (roughly 360+ mg/dL), and reading his own weight loss as a sign of health. DKA in 2019 was the turning point.
- The complications came anyway, and are still coming. A right leg amputated above the knee in 2022, a left leg below the knee in 2023, and in May a consultant confirmed he is losing central vision in his right eye with no timescale. That news is what moved this trip from an idea to a deadline. His message to anyone in burnout: don't hide it, tell someone, even if it's a friend over coffee.
- His A1c tells the other half of the story. Around 84 mmol/mol at his DKA admission (roughly 13-14%), now 54 (roughly 7%). He started on a closed-loop system in March, is in the gym five days a week and twice a day, and has lost close to two stone. His own summary of the years before: he chose wealth over health, skipping appointments for overtime while saving for a house deposit.
- Nobody would sponsor him. Danny approached a long list of companies and got three replies — two polite declines, and one asking to be removed from his mailing list. He raised just under £4,000 himself through a GoFundMe, friends are covering fuel, and anything left over goes to charity. Scott's read is that liability keeps companies away; Danny's response is that the trip happens regardless, even if he sleeps in the car.
- Danny on TikTok — @doubledant1d — Where the trip will be streamed live from September 1. The GoFundMe link is in his bio.
- Danny's first episodes: #1677 and #1678 — Sneaky Chocolate Bar — Danny's original two-part conversation with Scott.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — settings, insulin timing, and corrections, the gaps Danny describes going decades without.
- Small Sips series — Listener-voted takeaways on insulin timing, carbs, and managing highs and lows.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:00
Hello, friends, and welcome back to the juice box podcast. On today's episode of the podcast, there will be nothing that you should take as advice, medical or otherwise. So please, please consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. How would you like to help type one diabetes research to move forward? All you need to be is a US citizen over 18 years old, have type one diabetes, and go to t1dexchange.org/juicebox.
Fill out the survey. Do it completely. I don't know how long it'll take you. A few minutes, probably not very long, but that doesn't matter because you're gonna be helping. T1dexchange.org/juicebox might even help you.
Go check it out. I've got two OG sponsors for you today, Omnipod five and Dexcom. That's right. The episode that you're about to enjoy was brought to you today by dexcom and the Dexcom g seven, the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today with my link, dexcom.com/juicebox.
And this little slice of podcasting perfection is also brought to you today by the Omnipod five. The Omnipod five is a tube free automated insulin delivery system that has been shown to significantly improve a one c and time and range for people with type one diabetes when they've switched from daily injections. You can learn more and get started today at my link omnipod.com/juicebox. At that link, you can get yourself a free starter kit right now. What did I just say?
Free. Terms and conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox. You'll find those links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now and at juiceboxpodcast.com.
Danny is back2:02
Everybody, Danny is back. Danny, we just figured out you were on episode sixteen seventy seven and sixteen seventy eight where they called Sneaky. Sneaky Chocolate.
That was the one. Sneaky Chocolate Bar.
Oh, that's right. Okay. Awesome. Well, welcome back.
Thank you for having me back.
Oh, of course. Well, you have some news about what you're doing. We wanna let people know you're gonna gonna take a trip in across the Yeah. Yeah. You wanna tell people about that first?
Two years in the making2:28
So, yeah, I'm I've been planning this for nearly two years, and I had some unfortunate news back in May, which has made me wanna do this, and I've I've done a little fundraiser in February to raise the funds to do this trip. So, yeah, I'm on the September 1, I will be landed in New York, and I will be driving coast to coast. And I want to meet as many diabetics as I can, share their stories, share my stories. Hopefully, I can inspire others to look after themselves a little bit better from all the complications I've had from not looking after my diabetes.
Yeah. Oh, that's gonna be
So there's a route set out, and we're we're all ready to go.
And we're we're recording now in July. I wanna give some context. You said something happened in May, which we'll find out about. This is July now, and you're landing on September 1. You said New York, and that's fair if you haven't been here before.
But you're actually coming into Newark. Is that right?
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I'm actually It's Newark.
You can see the city, but you're
in Jersey. Yeah. It was it was so I've sort of done this on a tight ish budget. It it's I've been quite fortunate where I've had quite a few people sponsor the trip Mhmm. Through a GoFundMe page, and I wanna keep the budget as tight as possible.
So in the end, there's money to be raised towards diabetes.
K. Well, how much how much were you able to raise?
I'm just under £4,000 now
That's amazing.
Which is giving us a little bit negative like, positive money now. You know, the the
On the right side?
Was yeah. The car the car has been the most expensive part, renting the car.
No kidding.
That was nearly £2,000.
They have unlimited miles now. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. But it's about time.
And how long do you think the trip's gonna take?
So I start on the first, and I fly home on the twenty sixth.
Oh my gosh. Danny, by yourself?
Yes. I'm doing it all by myself.
Oh, no kidding.
I've I've planned to meet other people at the time. There's people that I will be meeting that I've I've met through social media, through various different platforms, Facebook, mostly TikTok, few on on Instagram that I'm gonna be meeting in Atlanta. And one guy that I've literally met on LinkedIn last week, he's in Atlanta as well. So I'm gonna try try and find once I know people were gonna wanna meet in in certain areas, I wanna find one sort of central area and we can just meet up even if it's at a bar just to have a chat for an hour or so. I I just wanna share my experiences so other people can learn from them.
Yeah. And you're gonna do this on TikTok, did you say? Did you tell me before?
Yeah. I'm I'm gonna stream it live on my TikTok. So I'm I'm gonna get an eSIM when I get over there. I've got a good really good friend called Ashley who lives in Atlanta. She's been helping me.
She sort of helped me through the route a little bit. She knew the cities I wanted to go to. And it's been difficult because I've spoke I've met some really good people on on various different apps.
Mhmm.
And I I I just haven't got time to visit all of them.
Yep. I wonder if they would have time to to come to, like a like you're saying, a centralized location and Yeah. Do little hangs. Can I ask you, like, to refresh people on your physical situation so they understand that it's what what what's happening for you and what you're gonna have to deal with while you're making the trip?
Two amputations6:26
Yeah. So in 2022, I was amputated on my right leg below the knee through, obviously, not looking after my diabetes for a very long period of time, which then got infected and had to be amputated above the knee on the right leg on the sixth of sixth of July twenty twenty two.
Mhmm.
And then I was still having complications on my left leg, so then I had to be sick for July 2023, fast forward to there, and I was amputated below the knee on my left leg. So this is what I'm trying to you know, these complications can happen with diabetes with various other complications, but I wanna I want people to realize that if you're suffering a diabetes burnout, don't hide from the fact. Talk about it. You know, it might just be a friend that you can have a coffee with and say that I'm really struggling at the moment. Yeah.
He does that. Don't ignore it.
Burnout, and six months without a finger poke7:26
Was that what was happening to you? Did you were burned out? You let it go?
I I think over the years I I never really knew about burnout until last year, and I've been type one thirty eight years now. And everyone's always known I was diabetic, but I'd I'd never realized I just got to a point where I just got fed up with it. Mhmm. I got so fed up with pricking my finger, doing insulin. I I I never missed my insulin.
That was one thing I always kept on top of, but blood testing. We we spoke about this last time. You know? I I'd go six months without even doing a finger poke.
Wow.
Six months and, you know, yeah, I was losing lots of weight. I thought I was doing brilliant, but my blood sugars were running so high. That's why I was losing all the weight. Yeah. Then it all came to a head in 2019 when I DKA.
And and that's when I was trying to start sorting myself out, but the damage had been done damage had been done. And I'm I'm I'm now suffering with my eyes as well. Yes. So My right eye, especially.
So part of the reason I'm now wanted to make sure people I mean, obviously, they get it by now. But part of the reason the car is more expensive is because the car has hand controls. Is that right?
No. It's no. It's not even that. That they so I've gone through Alamo who are part of enterprise, but they them and enterprise don't charge any extra for the adaptions.
Okay.
It it's just the expect because I'm going New York to San Francisco. They charge you an extra £300 because it's being left in San Francisco. You're not bringing it back to New York or New York. Sorry.
Oh oh, I see. Oh, because there's no return there's no return. There's a there's a Yeah.
It's actually in San yeah.
Which is crazy because somebody's driving a car from San Francisco to New York. So what's it matter? But Yeah. Yeah. Can you believe the number one prescribed automated insulin delivery system is now even better?
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Dexcom.com/juicebox. Check it out. You know the route, so tell me the route you're gonna take because Atlanta is not a straight shot to San Francisco. So so how are you
The route, top to bottom11:13
gonna go? You're gonna leave Jersey? So people are gonna think I'm a little bit crazy doing this one. A few people in hindsight, I should've started at San Francisco and finished in Newark or New York. That's that's what what I should've done.
But I'm
So that your return flight was shorter?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, there there is some big driving hours and miles between them. So I I I land in New York on Newark on the first. I sort of give myself a a land about lunchtime. So by the time I get through, pick the car up, it's gonna be late afternoon. So I just thought, get myself familiar with, obviously, driving on the up outside of the road and the steering wheel being on the opposite side of my car to sort of, like, familiarize myself a little bit.
Mhmm. I plan to meet a couple of ladies that I've met on TikTok. You've had one of them on your podcast before. I'm gonna meet her and Danielle because they're in New Jersey.
Okay.
Then I'll be in New York on the second, then I'm gonna make my way down to Philadelphia on the third, then down to Washington DC on the fourth, then to Charlotte, North Carolina on the fifth, Atlanta, Georgia on the sixth, then we're gonna go back up. This is where people are like, you're a bit mad doing this. You should've just kept going straight across. So then I wanna go up to Nashville on the seventh, Indianapolis on the eighth, Chicago on the ninth, then I'm gonna come back down again, right back down. So I'm gonna come on the tenth, I'm gonna be in St.
Louis. The eleventh, I'm gonna go and I've sort of added this stop in for this is no personal preference for myself, but it's something that means a lot to one of my really close friends.
K.
I was stopping in Memphis on the eleventh, and his mom passed away from cancer a few years ago, and she was a massive Elvis fan, and she always wanted to go to Graceland. So I'm literally gonna go there with a picture of lay some flowers down, or whatever I can do that day just in memory of her, just just for my friend, just because it's saying that means a lot to him. Then I'm gonna move on to Jackson in Mississippi on the twelfth, then down to New Orleans. So I've I've gone from top to bottom.
Yeah. And and maybe one one and a half times.
Yeah. Right. Then then I'm gonna start going across. I'll go to Houston on the fourteenth where I I maybe it's still in the pipeline meeting a diabetic group in Houston that day. Then then we're gonna head up to Dallas on the fifteenth, Amarillo on the sixteenth, Colorado Springs on the seventeenth, Moab on the eighteenth.
Sort of just trying to break it down so it wasn't too long a drive all the time.
Four hundred miles a day14:15
Well, yeah, I'm gonna say. I'm I'm wondering, like, how many miles do you think you're gonna drive in a day?
Cup some of the days, there's some big miles, four four hundred plus.
And that's something you're up for? I I'm I'm trying to imagine doing that. That's a lot of drive. I mean, when you said you were gonna go from DC to North Carolina in a day, I was like, oh, that's gonna be a that'll be a hump. So
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, without being funny, part of it's gonna be easy for someone like myself because if my legs get tired, I can just take them off. So I I don't suffer from getting tired legs when I'm driving no more, and I and I do like driving.
You do? Well, I mean, you would have Yeah.
So where was I? Moab, then we go that's on the eighteenth. Then we go to Cedar City on the nineteenth, then down to Vegas on the twentieth. Twenty first, we're gonna go to LA. I say, we, me.
The twenty second, we go up to Santa Maria, and then on the twenty third, we go to San Jose. And on the I'll arrive in San Francisco on the twenty fourth. So I've got, like, two two days in San Francisco.
Okay.
And I think it works out at nearly it won't be it's between three and a half and 4,000 miles that I'll be driving in that period.
Jeez. Well, you should've got Tesla to sponsor you with the the the self driving thing. Let it drive you around.
Yeah. I've do you know what? I I I have since we had our conversation in September last year, sorry, I've sort of I've reached out to so many corporate companies, and I've had nothing, literally nothing back. No response.
Not even a, hey. We're sorry. No. Thanks?
No. The only one the only one that ever give me sorry. I'll I'll say that again. I've had three responses. One was from British Airways and Virgin Atlantic saying, you know, we have our own charities, but at least they have replied.
Mhmm.
And I always reply back saying, thank you very much for your time anyway. Then enterprise emailed me back saying, please, can you remove yourself from my mailing list? So I was like, I'm not gonna get any joy there. So I've I've I've done a an event in February, which didn't go as well as I thought it did for what I wanted to achieve, but the fundraising did. So it was it was money to raise to do the trip.
You know, this has come at a financial cost to myself, but also a personal cost as well. You know? So it it's it's something but it's saying I've wanted to do now for nearly two years. Yeah. This is two years in the making.
Danny, I gotta tell you. Get getting responded back and saying, please stop contacting us, and and can you please make sure we don't contact you by mistake is that that must
I had to last, like,
you know. Imagine. Yeah.
What else can you do? The they're the only three companies that ever responded today.
No kidding.
And, obviously, it's a lot harder to get connections in The UK with people like Tandem and Dexcom because that's who I I'm on a Tandem t slim pump and the the g seven.
Mhmm.
And I've reached out to them, and I bet Dexcom sort of replied and said, oh, we'll do this Dexcom warrior program, but I've never really received anything since.
I'm gonna
So I've just
don't know, Danny, but I'm gonna guess that that by giving you money, they are concerned any of these companies would be concerned that they're now funding your trip. And if something happens to you on that trip, that then they're they have liability in it.
Yeah. So the then there's no cost to anybody now. It it's whatever goes in the pot. So I'm not even worried about hotels now. I'm booking my first hotel in New York, and I'll book my last hotel in San Francisco.
If I have to sleep in the car in Walmart Walmart car, I shall do that. This trip is going ahead no matter what. I am fully focused on this now.
Yeah.
The news about his eye18:43
I've been this last month, I've been, well, two months since I had the news about my eye, I have been fully putting myself into getting fit. I've lost two stone in weight. I've near near on two stone in weight. So what's that? 13, 12 kilograms?
I mean, we gotta go stones to kilograms to pounds to get me there. I'm not sure.
Yeah. So I'll I'll waive you on my pay grade.
We'll find out. But, Danny, I swear to you, like, I'm sitting here I mean, I I make a lot of social media. You know, it's part of my job. But I'm sitting here thinking, like, they're pushing it so hard lately. Why would Tesla not, like, put you in a car, even send somebody with a camera with you to take the ride with you?
And Yeah. And document a man with with no legs driving all over America, having not been there before, etcetera. Man, that just seems like well, that seems like a no brainer to me. Hold on a second here. If someone in England loses two pound is it two stone?
What did you call it? Two what?
So it's nearly two stones.
Nearly nearly two stones. How much is that in pounds? Be quick. Don't give me the whole explanation. Oh.
Two stone is 28 pounds. Simple as that. I wish Chad GPT.
Yeah. I'll I'll be sitting there for tonight. I'm on it. I'm need to get my phone out.
No. That's really that's impressive. So but tell people what happened a couple of months ago that, first of all, got you refocused on I gotta do this now and, you know, helped you get lose the weight and everything else.
Yeah. So the plan was always to be going in September, but I I started getting complications in my right eye last year. And they've they've done intensive laser surgery on there, And then they started doing these injections. So I had I had three rounds of the injections. And I think it was, like, the May 25 I went in to have a consultation with the with with the main consultant, eye consultant to say about having this procedure done where they remove the jelly from around your eye, then you'd have to have a second operation to remove the cataract.
Mhmm.
But they were when I went back in, they said that the damage is too much, and I'm losing the central vision in my right eye. There's no time scale on it, so that sort of hit me like a ton of bricks
Yeah.
Thinking, you know, I've I've battled these last few years, but since 2019, getting my diabetes back under where it should be. Would you And then just getting more and more complications as it goes along.
Yeah. Bad bad news after bad news.
Yeah.
Would you give people context for how how long do you think you were like, how many years did you I don't know what you wanna call it. Ignore it. I don't can you tell people even what your care was like? Were you taking insulin just basal?
“I chose wealth over health”21:47
Or what? So so I I was doing all my I was just literally from the age of 21 to probably 21, 22 to mid thirties. Not really not looking after it well. Just literally, I had a regime of what the doctor would give me when I was about that age of what my basal unit should have been and and my, like, Nova Rapid during the day.
Mhmm.
But it has changed it has changed so much over the years. So I was just sticking to them. You know, I could have been eating a meal that was a 100 carbs, and I'd be giving myself, like, eight units or something. So I was always running high.
Okay.
Just but I would never know that. The only time I'd ever know that I was running that hot, like, in the twenties, which would be what's that? It's, like, three sixty plus in The States. I'd get I'd get, like, a burning sensation in my nose.
Okay.
It's it's it's really bizarre when I go above that sort of threshold. And, obviously, then I was wean a lot, and I knew I was running high. But I never knew even back then, I never knew about correction doses. You know, I was literally just living on them units that they told me to take for my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yeah.
And then my basal rates at night in the morning.
So it it it's as simple as they gave you settings, basically. You didn't you didn't know how to adapt them. You knew something wasn't right because you're burning in your nose, you're going to the bathroom too much. So you know your blood sugar's high, but, contextually, you don't know. Now are you not testing so that you won't know?
Or
I I I was at first. Mhmm. But, you know, as as a, like, man in my age, you think you're invincible, and that's clearly not the case now. You know? I I was so fucked.
Like, I was I was driven on earning money, like, work, work, work.
I remember that.
I chose wealth over health, and that that's why now I always say, you know, if you've got any sort of little complication or you're worried about anything, contact your endo, speak to someone straight away. Don't don't think, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow and keep putting it off. Do it straight away.
Yeah. Just felt like there was always time.
Yeah. I just you know, I'd I'd have a hospital appointment, and it would be, Danny, can you do overtime today? We really need you to do this job. There's no one else about. And I and it's not that work were putting pressure on me.
It was just me thinking more money more money. So I was trying to save for a deposit for a house.
Mhmm.
So it was just like, right. Work. Work. Work. And I was just ignoring appointments.
So I sort of got lost in you know, no fault to AHS. I sort of got lost in the system because I wasn't attending appointments.
Yeah. How do you manage today? What do you do?
Where he is now24:49
I'm really well now. On I've just started on the closed loop system back in March. You know, my h b a one c is has come right down from if I told you what it was back in 2019 when I went in with DKA, it was '84, I think they said.
Wow.
I I know it's they work out differently compared to you guys. But that was I think it was, like, thirteen thirteen, 14 sort of area.
You were hold on one second. I think I can find
I'm just gonna try and get my result up here.
Yeah. You have them. Tell me again what was your a one c initially?
Put my test now. Come on. Come on. H
one c. Because it gives me
it showed me a graph. There we go. So my h b b a one c now is 54
Mhmm.
Compared to I mean, the this eve this only goes back as far as June 2022, and it was 7078.
You're moving things in the right direction.
Yeah. Massively. And I don't think the pump has helped me. The pump has give me sort of a new lease of life. And but I am also I'm going to the gym five times a week.
Well, five days a week, twice a day.
Okay. So you're getting exercise as well. How do you exercise? Is it mostly, like
So I do a lot of cardio and weights. Mhmm. That's in my first session. And then my second session, I go I go now with my prosthetic legs on, and I've slowly started building it up, getting more confidence. So I'll go on the treadmill, and I'll start it off doing ten minutes.
Now I'm up to fifteen minutes, then I'll go into the studio next door, and I just practice. That's getting up, standing up on the legs because, obviously, I've got no calves. It's it's a lot harder to push yourself up out of a chair.
Yeah. Is it it's mostly midsection arms?
Yeah. Yeah. No six pack yet, though, unfortunately.
It's under there somewhere. Don't worry, Dan.
It's it's hiding well.
Yeah. It's under the keg, they say.
Right? Yeah. Party pack.
Party pack. While you're doing this trip, like, I mean, obviously, it's gonna be a it's gonna be a personal triumph doing this trip. Like, if no one if no one sees it, it'll be amazing. Counting on TikTok to show it to people on TikTok live, do you have expectations for how many people might see it, or is there a world where where you'd be disappointed?
What he wants out of it27:57
I think it will be slow to start off with because I don't I I have nearly 5,000 followers. I think it will be slow to start off with, but I'm hoping it will pick up as we go across one to get some more traction. But like you say, this is this is something personal to me. You know? Raising the raising money would be great, but just speaking to other diabetics, just trying to get my point across about how I didn't look after it will speed certain processes up.
But that that is my main thing. I I just you know, I talk to a lot of diabetics on TikTok, mostly on TikTok. Mhmm. But it's it's sometimes it's difficult with the timing because if I'm talking to someone that's in California, that's, like, eight hours behind me. So I'm I'm sitting up at, like, four in the morning talking to them.
Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Is there not a big presence in The UK?
What is in the diabetes community?
Yeah. Yeah.
Influencers, and the days nobody posts29:00
It it's okay, but a lot of them are very not negative, but there's some really good people I've met. But some people, they say they're doing type one diabetic diabetes awareness, but they're not. They're just on there to earn money. That makes sense?
Well, I mean, it's it's something I was talk I I was talking about with somebody recently. I was at a at a a big event, and it just it feels like at this point, there are there are people who are influencers who happen to have type one. So that's the kind of content they make. Yeah. Versus a person who stands up and says, I I would like to raise awareness for this or try to help people, and then it becomes a thing.
It it's almost like they start with it being a job, and then they adapt it to that. And I think that what I'm noticing is that instead of maybe I mean, listen. I I everyone could do whatever they want. And, you know, obviously, I don't I'm not right about everything. But I I'm I'm focused on trying to help people.
Yeah. And then I think whatever comes of it after that is what comes of it. I think if you start with, I need to make money, then you get stuck doing things like following trends on Instagram, following trends on TikTok, and and then trying to adapt diabetes to the social media trends that are that are, I don't know, popular at the moment. And in the end, that stuff doesn't make money.
You know? No. I'll I'll be honest with you, Scott. I've been on TikTok for two years, and I've earned £60 on there.
Oh, look at you're almost done. Probably why don't you just buy your own personal plane and fly here? Why you
why you're for the
cruise, you know?
Yeah. So that that's gonna pay for my first hotel motel when I get to New York. That's that's all it's gonna do. You know? I'm I'm not there.
I'm I'm mine is you know, I'm not a expert. I'm not an endo. I'm not a dietitian, but I just want people to learn from my, you know, my experience. Not every not everybody's diabetes is the same. That is that is the problem with some of these people creating content is that they want everyone to look and say they always show, like, oh, look at my blood sugar.
It's marvelous. It's always in range. They never show the bad days.
Well, I've also seen people just run their blood sugars high and then be like, look how high my blood sugar is. It's it's just I don't know. It doesn't lend itself to social media doesn't lend itself to much that's real in life, if we're being honest. Like, forget diabetes for a second. Right?
It's it's people being bombastic or silly or, you know, I don't know, half dressed. Like, that's pretty much how this works. Right?
If look to my content, it's a mixture of everything. I have a I have a laugh and a giggle about not having any legs because I have got a real dark sense of humor. A lot of it will be lately, a lot of it a lot of my content is me in the gym.
Okay.
But I I do put content on about certain little bits of diabetes. I put it for about a bad night. I'll put that up, you know, a cannula for I pulled a cannula out in my sleep, and I slept through the Dexcom, and all of a sudden, you're hearing that really nice noise that it makes when you go high.
Are you gonna document everything? I I know you're gonna do live stuff, but are you gonna record video too so when you get home, you can put together, like, your own kind of documentary of your trip?
Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm speaking to a guy at the moment because, yeah. I put videos on, but I I want someone to be able to try and do it properly for me so it looks good.
Well, I mean, I I'm thinking about your I I'm thinking about the trip and and trying to think of it from, like, a production, you know, like, a producing, like, directing standpoint. And there's gonna be your experience, but there's gonna be also what other people see when they see your experience. And they're two different things.
Yeah.
You you know, because you're gonna struggle in places that you don't think of as a struggle because it's part of your day to day life. But other people are gonna witness it and say, I got there's a guy here who's never driven on the right side of the road, who is driving with hand controls in a rented car, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. That's interesting.
Never been to The States in my life.
Been there before. Danny, listen. I live here my whole life. Okay? If you make it from Newark to New York City, I'm gonna tell you you won already.
Okay? Because you can't even imagine what the traffic is like here.
Yeah.
It's it's it's different, man. Like, you know, our highway that runs from Philadelphia to to to Newark Airport, for example, is four four lanes going in each direction. And if you're not going 85, 90 miles an hour, you're not moving fast enough. Like, it's Yeah. You know what I mean?
So, like, you you're you're not wrong to say I wanna get out there and just make sure I know how everything's working before I go. I'm not I'm not kidding. Listen. If you don't call somebody four blocks from the airport and say, please just help me get back to the Newark Airport, I'm flying home again. You've already won.
So
Yeah. No. The the this is happening. I am
Oh, I know.
I am mentally strong, and I you know, I know there'll be days where I'm gonna get frustrated. I know there's gonna be days where I might even get a little bit emotional, a bit upset because I'll be frustrated with myself. Yeah. But then I'll I will stop. I'll have a drink.
I will have calmer nerves, and I'll reset, and I'll go again.
Yeah. Listen. You're gonna get frustrated with people too and traffic and not knowing exactly where you're going all the time. I mean, I don't want you to be disappointed the first day you don't make it from one city to the next in the amount of time that you considered it was gonna take. You know?
There's I mean, you're gonna travel up and down the the Northeast Corridor. You're gonna hit traffic at some points that like, going through DC, for example. You go through DC at the wrong time of day, you you know, you'd be better off, you know, walking. Shit. You know what I mean?
So Yeah. It's gonna be a it'll be a I'll tell you what, you'll have a hell of a story when it's over.
Yeah. And that that's what I'm I'm looking for, but it it was more the interaction with you know, I tried reaching out to colleges, clinics just to go in and do a talk. Not even if it was just a meet and greet, just to say, hi. You know, I'm a diabetic for thirty eight years. Just to have a little chat with people.
There was nothing major about it. You know? It was just something that I've always wanted to do. Mhmm. I've always wanted to go to America.
You're gonna see a lot of it if you follow that path. That's for sure.
Yeah. You know, there there was a I'm a little bit I wanted to go to Detroit because of there's a real nice family that I met on TikTok, and I I speak to them. Really nice family, and I'm just not gonna be able to fit it in.
Detroit's pretty far north.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's gonna be out of your pathway. How does it like, is it hard to, like, conceive how big America is compared to your or to, I mean, Europe and and
to I mean, I've got a road map.
I know. But may
it's not enough.
But it and I in a day, you could drive across England. Right?
Oh, yeah. 100%.
Yeah.
So You know, you if to put it in the grand scheme of things, England is Texas is probably bigger than England.
Yeah. Yeah. And you're talking about you're talking about going up and down in Texas once or twice too.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a I mean, how are you gonna pay for the gas?
So a friend of mine doesn't wanna put the money on a page. He wants to give me some money to do it. So he's gonna give me some cash before we go. So I've got two friends that are gonna sort of sponsor that. So it doesn't come out of the pot.
I wanna keep that pot where it is now. You know, there there's money come out of that pot, but whatever's going on top now is is actually going towards whatever charity I choose at the moment. You know? I was set on two different charities, then I was set on one, and I I think I'm still set on that same one.
It's very nice of you. I I I might be set on Danny Charity if I was you. But Yeah. I mean, I would use them I listen. I don't know how much you're gonna have left over.
If you have a lot, you wanna donate to somebody, that's fine. But I'm I'm talking about, like, I'd stop every time I had something to say, I do, like, a diary, like, vlog diary. I'd save it, and then I'd use the money to put it all together and and make it available for people to see. Because that's because, you know, it's gonna be hard to spread awareness through TikTok live. It's gonna be it's gonna be, you know, fantastic for you and for the people you find locally.
But once it's over, if you could you know, even just to get it on YouTube and let people see it there, I think that'd be really something. You know?
Yeah. I I have made a YouTube account now. I'm I'm not a 100 I'm a dinosaur when it comes to technology. I'm not I'm not tech savvy and stuff like that. But, yeah, I do wanna get something where I can make a film of what happened and just cut it down to, you know, maybe do it in a couple of parts.
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. How how many miles do you think you're traveling?
I think when I wrote it down in my book the other day, I I did work it out a little bit wrong. I think it's about it's anywhere from 3,500 upwards.
Around 3,500. And what what kind of car are you renting? What what kind of gas mileage does it get? I'm sorry. This is boring, but I'm interested.
No. No. No. I've we don't have the cars that I've chosen or this so at at first, I chose an Audi a three, then I had a rental car turn up here because my car broke down a little while ago.
Mhmm.
And for someone like me to get out of a car that low down was no good.
Yeah.
So it's a Ford Edge or Nissan Pathfinder that I'm gonna be having.
You know how many miles they get to a gallon?
No. I will just I'm I'm just I I don't care no more. I you know, this this is not that I don't care. Obviously, I don't want it costing a fortune. I've sort of budgeted a thousand dollars to drive across.
I got 27 miles a gallon, 3,500 miles divided by 27. 129, I think it's you're gonna pay about $4 a gallon right now times four. Let's see. Yeah. I mean, it it'll probably be between 5 and $600 in gas.
Yeah. Yeah. I've I've sort of I've sort of budgeted around the thousand dollar mark. So anything that's left over will go back into the park, or it might even get me a treat motel for one night. I don't know yet.
Well yeah. Because we don't want you sleeping in the car, Danny. That that'll get you arrested around here someplace. Especially in the South, I ain't gonna like that very much.
Yeah. I've I've got some places to stay. I've got between Philly and New York, I've got my old school friend. I'll be possibly staying there for the night if it's if I can manage to get in and out of the property. That that's the biggest problem.
I'll let a lot of friends and a lot of people say, oh, you're more than welcome to stay at mine.
But they're on the
3rd Floor
of an apartment building or something like that?
Yeah. Yeah. So it it's gotta be that's why I'm I'm a little bit funny with things like that. I don't like I don't like putting people out.
Well, I don't think if somebody's inviting you, then you're not putting them out.
Yeah. No. I get that. But when they sorry. When they offer the first time and you don't wanna ask, but then nothing else is mentioned afterwards, it's like, how do you approach that conversation again?
Do you say, oh, do you remember when you offered
Well, it's exactly what that's exactly what
you said.
Yeah. It's exactly
what you Scott, honestly, I'm not like that. I'll I'd I'd rather sleep in the car and have a shower in a leisure center the next day or a gym somewhere.
No. I mean, there's a million ways to accomplish it. I don't want you to be uncomfortable. But, you know, if people are offering, then they're interested in helping.
Yeah.
You know? And then let them say no if they, you know, if they've rethought it. It's not a big deal.
Yeah. No. I I need to be a bit more going in there and saying, is there any chance? Do you remember?
Yeah. I mean, it's Candy, you're doing this thing that's like a it's a big swing. You know what I mean? You might as well you might as well keep swinging. Yeah.
Yeah. Seriously. I mean, it's a I'm I can't wait to see how you how you pull this off. I mean, half of me thinks you're gonna get done and have this, like, really fantastic little series that I see on on YouTube that chronicles this whole thing and brings a lot of attention to to type one for for people. And half of me thinks that, you know, you're gonna turn up dead in Arkansas.
I'm not sure. I can't wait to find it.
Hey. The surprise is gonna be to for me and you. We'll we'll see what happens.
He wasn't even going to Arkansas, they'll say.
Yeah. No. Honestly, I could end up anywhere. But, like, even with, like, the car rental with the extras that it they wanna charge you, like, £400 for the sat nav.
For the nav?
Yeah. They charge they wanna charge you for, like, 400. I think it was $3.50 then if you want is it serious you have that there, the radio station? Yeah. If you want that, that's an extra $50 or £50.
Jesus. Just just so you don't have the No.
I'm just I've I'm at the moment, I'm just when I do a TikTok live, I'm saying, right. I I want songs. I I want songs for a road trip. So the playlist is wild. The playlist is going wild.
There's some but it will get a final cut if I don't like it. It's not being played.
Yeah.
So there there's a there's a wide range of music going on there at the moment.
Well, there is. Yeah. I mean, listen. I I I I I don't want you to not be have your favorite music with you, you know, while whatever's happening is happening. I I don't know.
I I
So so but what I'm gonna have done with the live, it'll be obviously on my phone, and it will be at the windscreen so people can see the view of what I can see when I'm driving.
Okay.
So they can see the scenery, but especially once I start going down south and I'm gonna be, you know, sort of Mississippi. Many people in The UK wanna see always wanna go down south.
Mhmm. So you think people will enjoy seeing what you're seeing down there?
Yeah. That's that honestly, I've done a a couple of weeks ago, my son text me and said, daddy, you're awake. And it was about half seven on a Sunday morning. I was like, yeah. Yeah.
What what's the matter? He's 17. He's like, I've gone to a party. Mom can't pick me up. Is there any way you can come and get me?
And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Send me your location. He sent me the location. It was a three hour round trip.
Oh.
It wasn't just local. We'd gone, yeah, quite far away to this party. So I just put my phone on and done six at live, driving to pick my son up, and I was I was I was more than happy. There was, like, a 100 people it. If I've got a 100 people watching it, that's fantastic.
If I've got five people watching it, I don't
care. Okay.
This is my experience, and then people wanna join it and share their stories, talk about things, I'm I'm more than happy. I'm very open about everything. You know, I I won't if people ask me questions, as long as it's not about my personal life, I will answer anything.
Mhmm. Yeah. No. I'm like, jeez. Nobody's gonna ask you about your personal life.
That's ridiculous. Only I would do that.
Yeah.
Yeah. I've been told recently that I ask a lot of questions to people like, I can't believe you asked that, and I think it's the only thing I'm wondering.
“Just tell me”45:40
Yeah. No. I do you know what? I'd rather people I'm very black and white. So when they told me about my eye, it was they sort of skirted around it, you know, well, miss Smith, this can happen.
This can happen. And I was like, just just tell me. Am I gonna go blind in my right eye? And they were like, yeah. You you are.
You're gonna you're losing your central vision. And I was like, thank you. I I can deal with it once you tell me.
How how long did they don't know how long until something like that happens?
So I go back in a couple of weeks for another checkup, and they're all about giving me an injection in August before I go just to try and keep it nice and stable while I'm away. Mhmm. Because I've you know, the health insurance costs, that was just over £300 for the month.
Okay.
I mean, it's probably cheaper than what some of you guys pay anyway.
Actually yeah. Yeah. I guess so. My son just my son just had to go out on his own for health insurance because he's older. And, you know, he we legally can't be on our insurance anymore.
So he gets it through his work, and he's like, I I think like, I don't really use my health insurance very much right now. I'm younger. So we got him what they call, like, a high deductible. And Right. But he doesn't pay a bunch every month.
And, you know, he's had, you know, he's had this insurance now for six months, and he has to just switch doctors because our doctor leaves. So he has to go do, like, an initial like, just with a general practitioner. So Yeah. He gets the bill just to go to the doctor for $900.
Wow.
And it still costs less than it would have cost to pay the payments on the insurance every week every month for six months.
Wild. I I just but this is what you know, I I feel bad when people I speak to a lot of Americans, and they're telling me how much they're paying for their insulin. And then there's the insurance side of it, you know, the CGMs, the pumps. And and us in The UK as type one, you you don't pay for anything.
Yeah. Well, I I would I mean
Yeah. That may change.
I I I don't know if it will or not. I've been watching people argue about this for fifteen years now. More maybe. I what I'm I'm having a bigger hope. I I hope Eli Lilly makes so much money off of GLP meds that they're just like, just let them have the insulin.
We're not making enough money off that anyway. Like, I would like, yeah, I would like them to say you know, take a little piece of that of that windfall from the GOPs and say, let me see if we can help people out with this. You know? That's not even boring. That's not gonna happen.
Don't get me wrong. But it'd be nice if somebody did something, especially for people with type one. There's just, I mean, given the entire population, it's not that many people compared to the population to what you're selling with other drugs. It'd just be nice to just drop it to something reasonable that everybody could have as much insulin as they need. You know?
Yeah. It it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating for for you guys. Like, obviously, it's easy for me.
Oh, it's it's frustrating for everybody. That's for sure. You you need to have the insulin you need. Also, you need the the information and the education and like, I mean, just imagine. You didn't just slip through a crack.
You know what I mean? You fell you fell through a canyon. And Yeah. And that you could have gotten in the situation you were in without like, for like, take your personal responsibility out of it for a second. That someone didn't step in and go, hey.
You can't do that is is kinda crazy to me that you didn't have one physician just say to you, you this is not okay. Yeah. So it's it's
I I remember back in like, obviously, I was diagnosed in 1988. We we didn't have CGMs or Sure. I think the pet like, the disposable pens only came out in 8990. So it was vials and syringes, ketone sticks, and blood testing sticks. That that that was it, basically.
And the the finger pokers were not comfortable back then, I can tell you.
Wasn't something you were looking to do.
Oh, yeah. It was it was like you was putting a nail through your finger. They they were horrible. And I think that's what put me off after a a long period of time. Yeah.
And and I'll get that from diabetics to have to finger poke or can't afford a CGM. You know, I I still do finger poke now and again, maybe not as often as I should, but I do compare the Dexcom with it, and it's it's not far off these days. Mhmm. I must admit.
Danny, I must have pointed out the first time you were on that you were diagnosed right around the time my friend Mike was. And Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, he's not with us anymore. And it it it ate him up in a a number of different ways.
And his story isn't much different than yours really that he got set up in that time period, and then the quality of care shifted. He did not shift along with it. And he was probably doing the same thing you were doing, like giving himself some insulin. It's probably enough. Getting high, you know, eventually getting low, dealing with that, driving his blood sugar back up for probably days at a time again.
And and doctors are telling him all along, like, hey. He's you're fine. You're doing great. So, you know
I I I look back now to what I was before 2019, what I was taking to work every day for me is, like, my packed lunch. And I'd I'd be eating four four slices of bread, a banana, like, maybe having a sandwich. I'd have so that'd be four slices of bread, banana. I'd probably eat two or three bags of crisps or chips, and I'd eat a whole packet of biscuits. And I wasn't even testing my blood sugar.
And and looking back now, the the amount of insulin you were you had then was deficient by what percentage do you think? Like, how much more do you think you would have needed for that lunch than you were taking?
Easily another 25% on top of that. Right. I the amount of carbs I was having, to the amount of insulin I was I was doing was ridiculous.
Mhmm.
Now now I'm back on this straight now, and I look back and I think, Jesus. You know, I was doing a hard Benny insulin, and I was having a lot of carbs.
You weren't even close. And then that that drives you up into that three, four hundred blood sugars and then
Yeah. I think the the only saving grace for me, Scott, was that I was the job that I was doing was very physical.
Yeah. Even
So I was burning quite a lot off. And you were being you
were being fooled by the weight gain or the weight loss thing too
Yeah.
Because thin thin meant healthy to you.
That that exactly that. So now I'm doing it. I'm I'm not following any diet. I've just cut my portion sizes down. I'm just not eating so much rubbish food.
I'm not even having a sneaky chocolate bar anymore, isn't it? I I can't remember.
Yeah. At least bolus for it if you're
having it.
How to follow along52:53
Yeah. I'm a dude. Danny, tell me tell everybody again. I wanna make sure they hear it. So first of all, how do they follow you on TikTok?
So my name on TikTok is double dan t one d.
It's d d o u b l d a n?
Yeah. Dub double dan t one d.
Okay.
I'm on Facebook and Instagram as danny spudsmith. Spud is my nickname from a child. Not a very nice one, but it's there's a guy that lives in my hometown who's called Danny Smith as well. So I had to put the nickname in because he was getting tagged in different photos and all sorts. You know, someone was like, oh, did you have a good time at a wedding?
And I'm thinking, I haven't been to a wedding, and that was a photo of him, but I've been tagged in it. So because I was a younger one. I he he took seniority over it.
You couldn't make him be spud?
No. He he he could be spud. He's he's a year older than me at school as well.
So they can follow you, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. TikTok's where you're gonna live what you're doing starting on September 1.
Easier to stream it live on TikTok just because I've got more of a following on there now.
Yeah.
And and I'll hopefully, it will build up from there.
That would be nice. I I don't know how social media works anymore. I'm I use it every day, and I'm confounded by what it does at this point. So but, again, I think he I would do vlog style, like, diaries the whole way.
Yeah. So so the plan is, obviously, some of the days is gonna be sent up worked out just just on a, like, a Google Maps one day of a certain time of what it'd be like driving between one place and another, and one of the trips was about five hours driving.
Mhmm.
So the plan is to, obviously, have a couple of hours driving, get out, have maybe have a bite to eat, then I can stop the live, and I can click that live then.
Okay.
Because you get your live recordings after each live when you do TikTok.
And then it'll send us a recording afterwards?
Yeah. So then I can go back through through the trip. I I won't do it, but because I was gonna take my laptop with me, and I just think it's more stuff that potentially could get stolen or lost. Right. So I'm literally going with a couple of phones, my wheelchair, my legs, crutches, clothes, and I've gotta bring some crispy m and m's over from my friend in Atlanta because apparently, he can't get them in The US no more.
Know what you're talking about, so you definitely can't get them here. Yeah. Chris Eminem. I I it's a it's a shame one of those people, you know, isn't like a film student. You know what
I mean?
Yeah. Like an art an art an art school kid that would wanna make a movie or something like that. It's tough.
Yeah. I'm I am talking to a couple of guys that in The UK that do documentaries, but one of them is, I'd love to come with you and stuff like that. Yeah. That's a great idea, but he he wanted me to pay for it as well. And I was like, I'm doing this on a shoestring budget.
It's not something where I've got I can open the cupboard and there's another £5,000 in there.
No. No. I hear you.
I've been very fortunate where people have paid for me to do this. And like I said, I I I've it's come at a a slight financial cost to myself, but I've been very lucky with a sponsorship of people.
Yeah. No. It's nice when people step in. Okay. Is there a place where they can, I mean, even if they get this right before you leave, are there is there, like, a a GoFundMe still running?
Something that would help
you Yeah. The GoFundMe will will run until I come home. I'll I'll leave it running until probably first week of November, then I will shut it down. I I may even shut it down on the last I don't know. I was aiming sort of, like, the first week of November, but there there is a link in my TikTok bio for it if people do wanna donate.
You know, I don't expect people to donate. It's more the interaction I want. It's more meeting people. Yeah. I I wanted I want people to share their stories.
I want people to say, oh, oh, you know, I've been doing that and say and for me to say, well, this is the outcome that happened to me because I I was doing that.
Well, Danny, I wish you a ton of success. I will yeah. Of course. I'm gonna put this up for you, I don't know, maybe, like, a week before you go. Give people a little time to get it.
And then, I mean, hopefully, this will help you a little bit. I I don't know if it will or not, but I but I have my fingers crossed. Heck of an episode today, wouldn't you say? Let's thank Dexcom and the Omnipod five for sponsoring. That's right, my friends.
We were sponsored today by the Dexcom g seven. Dexcom.com/juicebox. Head over there right now. Look into that fifteen day Dexcom g seven. Fifteen days a long time.
It's like half a month. Don't check my math, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. And let's also thank the Omnipod five. My goodness gracious. Omnipod five tubeless.
That beautiful algorithm's updated now with that new 100 target. Get in there. Find out more about it. Omnipod.com/juicebox. You want some tubeless insulin pumping?
Yeah. You do. By any chance, have you tried the small sip series? It's curated takeaways from the juice box podcast voted on by listeners as the most helpful insights for managing their diabetes. These bite sized pieces of wisdom cover essential topics like insulin timing, carb management, and balancing highs and lows, making it easier for you to incorporate real life strategies into your daily routine.
Take a deep dive, take a sip, and discover what our community finds most valuable on the journey to better diabetes management. For more information on small sips, go to juiceboxpodcast.com and then go oh, actually, we changed the website. Let me see. Go to juiceboxpodcast.com. And from there, there's these two little lines on the right side top.
That's the menu. Then click that, then click series, then there's pro there's small sips right there, pro tips at the top, all beginnings, bolus four, asks that. There's a lot of them there. There's actually a little search there too. Could you just type small sips into the search?
Oh, wow. That search works great. Look at that. And then you could go right to, like, all results for small sips. Oh, and that takes you to the FAQ.
You should check out the FAQ page too. I think that's juiceboxpodcast.com/jbfaq. Seriously, that thing's amazing. Actually, the whole website is I mean, have you, like, seen it? You should you should go check out the website.
The website rocks. It is a potpourri, a never ending cornucopia of support for you and your diabetes journey. That's right. It really is. What else we got over here?
Oh, I don't like the way that works. I'm gonna fix that. Note to self. Change the change the masthead on the frequently asked questions page. Yeah.
I don't like that. Fix that. Oh, Claude. Oh, hell. I forgot to say thank you.
Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again very, very soon. What is that noise? Stop it. Stop.
Can you hear that? It's my chameleon squeaking. Are you squeaking? What are you rubbing the branch against the don't tell people I have reptiles. They'll think I'm weird.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of the juice box podcast. Believe me, get all deep in there with another episode of the juice box podcast. You can hear it. What was that?
Oh, I'm getting alarms and alerts on my phone. I was gonna get real deep and tell you about the juice box podcast.
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