#1950 Name a Rule You Break
Name a Rule You Break
A Facebook post asked people to name a diabetes rule they break. Hundreds answered. Scott and Jenny Smith go through the list and plan a series around every one of them.
Jump to a moment
- The series came from one line in the Facebook group. A member named Andy posted: name a diabetes rule that you break. Hundreds of people answered, and Scott sorted the replies by how often each came up — eleven main rules. Each will become its own short episode with Jenny.
- What people mean by “bad diabetic.” Scott's read after going through the responses is that it isn't about numbers at all — it's about the sense of breaking an expectation someone was handed. Jenny's counterpoint is instructive: she has never felt like a bad person for not doing it by the book, because she knows the clinical rules and she knows the Jenny rules, and she does the ones that work.
- The top of the list is lancets. Twenty-two people named not changing the lancet. Jenny guessed it first, along with reusing needle caps and syringes, which Scott had folded into the same category. Skipping alcohol swabs was her second guess and also on the list.
- Some “rules” are worth breaking and some are not. Jenny draws a clear line: swagging carbs, skipping calibration, and stretching a site are one kind of thing, but rotating injection sites, priming a pen, and clearing air from a line have real consequences if you skip them. She is also pro-calibration when a CGM is being wonky, rather than never.
- The rest of the list. Doctor's authority, stretching supplies past their dates, finger sticks and hand-washing, logging and writing down data, running out of supplies, and going through TSA scanners wearing devices — which both of them do, and which Jenny notes is technically against manufacturer guidance. Scott adds one the list missed: how badly people pack supplies when they travel.
- Juicebox Podcast Facebook group — Where the original post came from — the private community, free to join.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 with Jenny Smith — the management foundation.
- Jenny Smith — Integrated Diabetes — Jenny is a dietitian and diabetes educator who has lived with type 1 for over 35 years.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:06
Friends, we're all back together for another episode of the juice box podcast. 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. T1dexchange.org/juicebox.
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There is one blood glucose meter in this house, the Kontoor Next Gen blood glucose meter. That meter is on my daughter's person right now and at all times. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at kontoornext.com/juicebox. Jenny, this is the first time we are recording with my new setup. You don't know about this, but I have a new, can I tell you something embarrassing real quickly, then we'll jump into this?
A new setup, and a consultant1:49
Sure. I've been making this podcast for fifteen years, I think. Mhmm. And I hired a consultant to come look at my setup, and he looked at it and said, I can't believe this works.
Oh, no. Well, you put it all together, and clearly it works because what you got is a good product.
I I made it so long ago. He's like, what is this cable for? I was like, well, that's how the audio gets from here to there. And he goes, that's not how that's supposed to happen. And I went, really?
And he goes, nope. And he, like, he's like, pull that out, do this, do that. And we did a bunch of stuff, and I was he's like, do you hear how much clearer it is already? And I was like, I do. And I was like, oh my god.
And then I felt silly. And he was trying to tell me, no. You figured this out. Like, he's like, you MacGyver this whole thing together. And and he's like, it's it's I can't believe how good your podcast sounded, he told me.
So, anyway
Well, good job for doing what you had done. There's getting it.
There's boxes here that I don't need anymore. He's like, I don't know what that is. You don't need that. And I was like, oh, okay. So I'm just I've decided to just be happy and move forward.
But Awesome. But, anyway, this is the new setup. Hopefully, going forward, I would think probably somebody might hear this sooner. But in, I guess, mid to late August this year, you should notice the podcast sound different consistently after that. Oh.
So anyway
I will have to pay attention then.
Jenny's like, maybe I'll listen to this dumb podcast once. Oh, I listen. I listen with
I listen to grab on on topics, honestly, that I can draw something from. And there are a number of them, so thank you.
The Facebook post behind the series3:29
Thank you. Oh, no, please. So I wanna do something based on a Facebook post. I actually wanna make a series based on a Facebook post. And the post was it was super simple, and I I wanna give Andy credit for it, one of the group members.
He just said, name a diabetes rule, and I think rule is in quotes, that you break. And then a lot of people responded. A lot of people responded.
Oh, I can think of lots of things.
So I wanna so it's funny because it gave me some reflective time as a person who does not have type one
Sure.
To really think about the idea that, gosh, are people walking around feeling like they're breaking rules? And I could tell from a lot of the responses that they did that I think that's where the you know when some people call themselves bad diabetics? Sure. I think they're referring to, I know there's a thing I'm supposed to be doing and I don't do it. I'm a bad diabetic.
I think after having those conversations, that's what I'm hearing them say.
“Bad diabetic” means broken expectations4:34
So that it's not you you have a sense that it's not all tied to the numbers, that it's actually some of the habits and the things that they've been taught or we've been taught that they're not doing the way that, you know, the book says to do it.
Expectations. I feel like they think they're breaking expectations. So, anyway, so we're gonna make a series, called I don't know what.
Can I tell you something funny
I guess so? Please.
I never really feel like I'm break like, I'm never like, I'm a bad person because I'm not doing it the way I just I'm like, screw that. I just wanna do it the way I do it because it works. And, you know, I know the rules clearly. I know the clinical rules. Mhmm.
And then I know the Jenny rules.
Clinical rules, and Jenny rules5:18
You know, the ones that work. Well, listen. There's some rules on here. There's no way you're not following. But so I have it broken down into a list by how many times somebody mentioned it that they break Okay.
They break I every time I say break the rule, please just assume my quotes around it. Okay. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11 main rules that that people brought up. And so I first wanna hear what you think the rules are. Like, what comes to mind when you think of diabetes rules?
Then I'm gonna tell you what this list is, and then we're gonna make little episodes around each one.
Guess the list: lancets first6:01
I would hope that one of them is to change your lancet.
That is one of
The little pokey thing that you poke your finger with. Right? The lancet. Change the lancet every time you poke your finger. It's gotta be one of them.
Right?
22 people mentioned not changing their lens sets. Okay.
Oh, yes.
And that so that's one of them. Alright. You got that. Oh, this is fun. Let's see if you can get the rest of them off the list.
I'll make a list of when you get right. Go ahead.
Another one has to be similar changing the needle cap or even the syringe that you use for an injection.
All of those are blended into the
They're all together.
Lancet category. I bet you're I bet there's gonna you're not gonna get some of these.
I'm sure I'm not.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I typically tell people not to use this, and I think you have as well, but using alcohol to clean a slight a site.
Very good, Jenny. That's one too. I skip alcohol swabs is Mhmm. One of them. I don't skip them.
I just don't use them, but that's Just don't use them. Right. I have a rule too around alcohol.
Yes. I think one applies to something I do even though you're not supposed to technically do it because I'm still using g six. Oh. I've not switched. So I restart my g six.
Restart your CGM.
Because you know what? Then I get, like, three weeks out of one sensor most of the time.
This is just gonna make people sad and upset because I the g six is done already. Right?
It is. I as of July 1, you technically, they're not supporting or sending supplies from what I understood it to be. Now I have
A stack?
A good a good back stack of them.
Can you imagine all the people listening right now that are like, wait. I could have restarted the g six. Oh, yes.
And there are so many YouTube videos about how to restart it. Each of them a little bit different. I found the way that it works for me. So anyway, that but that I think is a breaking the rule.
Alcohol swabs8:09
Well, that wasn't on here, but I like that one. That was good. So we'll use that as, like, we'll call it again, assume the the air quotes, misusing tech. Maybe we'll make that our own
Or miss yeah. That would be a good one. Right. I think another one and this it kind of only applies to those who may be using a steel needle cannula for an insulin pump, and it might go along with the lancet idea. But because the steel needle, it's kind of like a thumbtack, and you can pop it right back under if you needed to and you're really short on supplies.
Now this is not medical advice. Please do not do this. I'm just saying that I know that some people do reuse that set and pop it in and just apply an extra little tacky around it to put it back in.
Jenny, you have found one of the things that people suggested. They stretch sites, use use things longer than they should, put stuff where that it's not supposed to be put. They don't rotate. Yep. That's all under one too.
So That's
all on because I was gonna say rotation of sites to locations that are not what are approved technical sites.
That's one of the things people say the rules they break are that. The Kontoor next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of the juice box podcast, and it is entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you are paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contournext.com/juicebox, You're gonna find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger, Meijer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips and meter than you would pay through my link for the Contour Next Gen and Contour Next Test strips in cash.
What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you are paying right now even with your insurance. And I don't know which meter you have on you right now. I can't say that. But what I can say for sure is that the Contour Next Gen meter is accurate.
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I don't know if some of the breaking rules is getting lab tests as frequently as their provider recommends. Is that in there?
Yeah. Let's see. Doctor authority. I skip endo appointments. I don't do what the doctor says just because they're a doctor.
I learned on my own. I yeah, I guess that's right there, like, not listening to medical advice.
Right. Okay. And, again, what I've experienced with that is you could be correct in not listening to that medical advice, especially if you are seeking assistance outside of your medical practice because they're not serving you well.
More from the list12:00
Mhmm.
Then remember that that's not necessarily breaking a rule. It's just that you've learned beyond what your clinician has told you, and it's working better the way that you are doing something. So that's not a it's not a breaking the rule, but you could see it as Yeah. That.
I wonder where you stand on this one. I'm gonna give you one. So Oh. I don't think if I'm being really thoughtful about it, I don't think I've checked Arden's ketones a half a dozen times in twenty years.
Could that be rule breaking? I guess.
Right? Well, when you're when you're guy is to have right? They tell you a high blood sugar for not long, you should be checking ketones.
Anything over two fifty. In fact, I think you most meters, if they don't still do it, used to when your blood sugar was at least two forty Mhmm. Would or, you know, like, 13 something if you're a millimole user, you got a reminder on your blood glucose meter to check ketones.
Really? Oh, that's interesting. Yes. Yeah.
But I I do think that if you are somebody who can skirt around illnesses, that you don't get sick very frequently or that you don't have high blood sugars like that
Mhmm.
You may not check ketones regularly. And so doing it I always think that doing it at least to get an idea of where do your ketones typically sit, especially in a fasting state, like you wake up in the morning, and do a ketone check.
Yeah.
See where you typically sit because then it gives you a ground, at least a baseline for here and now. Where are my fasting ketones typically? Because then if you do it in the future, you kind of have a base to go off of. Right? Especially if you're sick or you've taken your insulin doses down considerably because you're ill.
It at least gave you a guideline of, well, my ketones are usually point one or they're usually point two, and gosh, now they're two point something. Clearly, I have ketones I
have Okay. Do something Alright.
Right.
That's good.
But that is interesting that, I mean, I I infrequently test my ketones. I don't
Yeah. I mean, there's been times where I realized she hasn't had insulin by mistake. You know, like, we had a bad sight one time, got knocked off during swimming. We didn't realize it. Check them then.
I mean, in the beginning, if she got sick, I would check them, but I think it's after the third or fourth time that you check and there's no ketones, you think, okay. Well, it got higher, but I'll get it back down pretty quickly and, you know, that kind of thing. Not that I'm blase about it. Okay. What are the the big ones?
This is interesting because there's no way you wouldn't do this, and it's the number one mentioned thing.
So it's something that I wouldn't do?
There's no way you
That I would definitely follow the rules in doing this?
Yeah.
Not bolusing for food.
Prebolusing. Prebolusing. Prebolusing
is the one Same category.
Everybody was like, I see, isn't that interesting? You just think of prebolusing as bolusing for food. They I do. They think of it as an extra step they have to take, and it's overwhelmingly listed by people.
That's interesting.
Yeah. People it's I it's my takeaway from doing the podcast that it is one of the things that people with type one diabetes struggle with maybe more than anything else is prebolising.
I think because it's defined by a time in which let me back up. It's not really an extra step because in either case, whether you're bolusing ahead of time or you're bolusing at the meal, you're just you're bolus thing. It's a thought
it's a thought process.
Working through the middle16:00
But it's an ahead of time thought process to what is coming. And that means there's planning that you have to do for knowing what are you going to eat. Right?
I heard a kid tell me recently, I don't know I'm gonna be hungry twenty minutes before I'm hungry.
And I thought
I thought that's fair. You know? Mhmm. I've had other people explain to me, like, it feels like a loss of control or an an unfair step, like, that kind of thing. Like, why should I have to do that when other people don't have to?
So there's a a couple things around there. So prebolism My Yeah.
My counter to that thought is always if I pre bolus, I'm less likely to have to interact later, which means I don't have as many steps. Yep. I don't have as much frustration. I've taken a piece of anxiety, worry, more, you know, poking buttons and looking at things. Like, if I pre bolus then the aftermath.
Yeah. I wait if my alarms go off, and if they don't, then woo hoo.
I mean, listen. That's how I see it, but I also don't have to do it. So True. Yeah. This one has the word rule right in it, which it's funny because then it because this is also mentioned a lot.
This one threw me off because it's so not a rule, but, obviously, it's beaten in everybody's head, the fifteen fifteen rule.
Fifteen fifteen.
Yeah. I get low blood sugar. I take 15 carbs. I wait fifteen minutes. I retest.
I can't believe that persists. It's really interesting.
It persists because it's still taught.
Wow.
That is a 100% a rule that is still taught that needs to not be taught, but meaning don't take it out completely in what to do, but give context to how how you should treat it. What should you treat it with? What time frame should you look at? How can you use your technology? Like, there's a whole bunch more information than just a simplified rip off page that says fifteen fifteen.
This is what you need, and that gets ingrained in your head, especially at diagnosis where everything is brand new and you just want the set of five things that's gonna contain this.
The, the next thing is I find interesting because this was overwhelmingly brought up. It's kind of a a little conglomeration of ideas, but rage bolusing, waiting to correct, stacking insulin. But that's another one that I think of as poor education that leads to that feeling. Right? Because when people say stacking, I hear bolusing.
When people say rage bolusing, I hear correcting. And when people say I didn't wait long enough to correct, I hear they didn't do a good enough job counting their carbs the first time.
Or pre bolus ing.
Yeah. Or pre bolus ing. Right? It's it's and it's to me, it's all in the way you couch it when you explain it to somebody. Like, it's funny that, like, education has come down to three pejoratives around what could be three, I don't know, three statements that make you feel empowered.
Right.
It's it's interesting to me. It's all that's all bad communication is what that is. Yeah.
What bad communication, more really education that needs to be updated.
Yeah. No. Right. It's just a different way to talk about it. Yeah.
Alright. Listen. We're gonna we'll we'll run through all these, and then Jenny and I are gonna do little, like we'll do, like, vind like, small sip kind of episodes on each of the ideas. Yeah. Because the Internet, it needs the Internet wants us to do shorter content once in a while, Jenny.
We have to give the Internet what it wants.
Is is oh, I know. I'm sorry about that. Is one of the things on the list I'm curious if it is remembering to refill your prescriptions in time?
Running out of supplies20:09
I have expired supplies of this and and so using expired supplies, which I think if you understood how those dates work, you wouldn't think of them necessarily as expired.
I was Yeah. Tell people, like, your supplies are not cheese. Yeah. Really. Right?
They're not cheese. They're not salami. They're not something
that Will this work? And I go, there's one definite way to find out. Put it on and see if it works. Put it
on and use it, honestly.
Because you were gonna throw it out anyway, so give it a whirl. Yeah. And this one that I find to be overwhelmingly debated online, insulin storage. Oh. So my insulin has to be refrigerated.
It cannot get warm to the people who are like, I have not refrigerated my insulin in decades.
I will tell you that that's the rule that I adhere to. Again, having been diagnosed thirty eight plus years ago, I think it's fear, I think, is the wrong word, but I wanna know that it has been at a stable temperature. What is the most stable? It's in my refrigerator. Mhmm.
I can't guarantee the temperature of the shelf in my house being up and down, whether I've got the air conditioning on the same as I did yesterday or it's a nice day and I don't turn it on or, you know, whatever. It's in the fridge. That's where I keep it. Whether you don't or not is entirely up to you because the manufacturing companies have obviously placed out there the rule that once in use, you have up to what? Twenty eight, thirty days to actually make use of it.
And then where the breaking comes in, this is where I break the rule. Like, my bottle of insulin is definitely like, I use it beyond a month. Come on. There's insulin left in the darn bottle, and I have plenty insulin. I'm not at a deficit, but there are some people who are.
I will
Please don't throw your bottle away just because it's twenty eight days.
When we talk about this, I'll share how I feel about it. So Cool. Because I have I'm fairly specific about it in a couple of places and then much more laxed about it. Other I'll I'll give my thing later. Cool.
But but your question about not filling scripts, not on here. I think that's Oh. Yeah. Like, so so not keeping up not keeping up with supply orders. Is that a thing you see happening to people a lot?
Somewhat. They run out
a lot?
They run out or they run out because not necessarily by their fault. Right? But they used up more or it's a time of year that they're going through things more. And then that reminder kind of comes through, and it might be a text message that gets delayed in them responding to and right now, in today's world, everything can be reordered by a click of a button. I mean, that's what I do.
Right? I get the text message, hey. Your refills are ready. And I click the button, and there it goes. It's sent off, and I get my supplies.
But you do have to pay attention, and we're busy people. And it might be forgotten. Mhmm. And then you might say, well, gosh. I used up three when I usually only use up one, and now I'm down to only one in my box.
So
Yeah. That's a good one. I think that I see online, again, a lot of people, like, I I ran out. I need help. Or Right.
I think the one that that isn't on here is that it it's fascinating how poorly some people pack when they travel with diabetes. Yes. I don't know. I brought one. You brought one.
What if that's the one
that goes for ten days.
Also, what if that's the one that goes bad? Like, I I wherever Arden goes, if she's more than thirty minutes from the house, she has two pumps, two CGMs. Like, because one might go bad, and then what do you do if the next one you put on goes bad? That Right. It ruins your day then.
Anyway, I'll get to that later. Nope. Let's roll through we'll roll through a couple of these. Carb counting and swagging, they people see that as breaking rules by swagging their carbs. It's how it's literally the whole way I do it.
Carb counting and swagging24:33
We got this one. We got that one. Okay. Sorry. Doctor's authority, stretching sites out, expired supplies.
Oh, finger sticks and calibrations. I don't do finger sticks as at all. I don't wash my hands before I do finger sticks. I desperately wish I was a person who would calibrate my CGM, but I'm not. Like, that was all that right there.
I'm a fan of calibrating CGMs, I just wanna say. Mhmm.
Using When needed, I think it has Not constantly.
But when if it's being wonky, you know Yeah. Give it a whirl. See what happens. Yep. Here's the rest.
Rotating injection sites and spots, priming your pen, or clearing air from a line. Oh.
Mhmm. Now those are those are a breaking. Let's say it's a breaking the rule, but it can have big consequences if you aren't doing those steps.
Right.
So just FYI.
Finger sticks and calibration25:41
This one I found interesting. Log, it's still being brought up logging or writing down my data. I mean, is any I have never done that once in my life. I'm sure you have. You probably have books.
Oh.
Yeah. Of numbers. My mom saves everything. She still has my books. She still has all of the logs, all the meals, and the units of insulin, and where my blood sugar was, and whether I went out and threw the ball in the yard with my dad, like, notebook after notebook.
She was trying to figure it out. Yeah.
She was. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, making records to actually spot some trends that she could then go to the doctor and say, what do we do with this information? And to her credit, honestly, it's one of the reasons that she pretty quickly after diagnosis got my doctor to rewrite the prescription for test strips for finger sticks.
Because she was like, I don't I don't know what's going on here. Like, they told me to check my my blood sugar about four or five times a day at the most.
Yeah.
She's like, I don't I don't know what to do with this.
Awesome. Thanks. Here's one that I find. I I this is another big con online conversation all the time. I go through TSA with like, I go through the scanners with my my stuff on, but I I can't ever decide if I've Arden does that sometimes.
Rotating sites, priming, logging27:04
She doesn't always get wandered. But then I've heard people say I went through, and then my my, I don't know, my CGM, you know, stopped working. So I don't I don't I honestly will have to figure out when we talk about it what what the real
Yeah. That would be a good one to I usually say we should technically follow what's recommended by the, manufacturer. Right? I too follow I guess, I'm a little breaker. Like, I wear my products on my body.
I wear Omnipod and Dexcom. They stay on my body. I clearly can't take them off. I go through the big old scanner. I don't ask to be hand wandered or look at my supplies.
If they see stuff in my supplies they wanna take a peek at, have at it. You can swab my hands. I promise there's nothing funky there.
Yeah. Do you know the greatest thing that's happened since I've lost weight is now when I go in the scanner and I hold my hands up and I do the thing, I'm thin enough that it leaves a gap of of, under my arm, and they have to pat me down to make sure there's nothing there when I'm wearing a sweatshirt because my because my fat is not filling the space. It looks weird on the scanner. I'm every they're like, we're sorry. Have to pat you down.
TSA and the scanner28:12
I go, no. No. It's fine. It's the best part of my day.
It's all good.
Here we go. I'm happy to be patted down. I don't follow the rigid meal schedule I was given. So there's people that are, I guess, still being given, you know, eat at a certain time, eat a certain thing. This one breaks this is the last one.
I and this one, I don't know why. Like, I think this one breaks my heart for some reason. It's so simple, but I don't carry fast acting insulin and supplies with me when I leave the house. I don't understand traveling without your diabetes stuff.
I don't. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a hard one for me. And maybe it's because I'm a parent. I don't know.
Yeah. And I wonder if it's more that nobody's really given this person or the people who commented within it what should go in. I always talk to people about it, like, a t one d to go bag. Right?
Yeah.
It should be packed next to the door. It might not have insulin in because, obviously, however you keep it, store it, but it should go in as soon as you're going to leave the house. And I adhere to a similar rule as you. If I'm gonna be a minimum of thirty minutes away from home, usually, means I'm going to something I want to be at. Yeah.
And I don't want to have to interrupt that when my pod dies.
I I had to make it was a long time ago, but I had to make a decision in a movie theater. Am I gonna leave in the middle of this movie, or am I gonna let her blood sugar rocket up so she can stay and watch this movie? And both of those this both of those ideas made me equally upset, and so I bring stuff. And a movie is one of the things. Like, we don't bring it in even.
It stays in the car, but I am not gonna walk out of a movie and drive home because something goes wrong. I don't want a a vent to be ruined. I don't want that Right. It's not even the time. It's the feeling.
It's the Yeah. It's the psychological, like, oh my god. I have diabetes, and then this stupid thing doesn't work anymore. And now I have to leave here. And I and I don't I just don't.
I'm trying to avoid that feeling. Now Right. Addendum to that, most people are not carrying glucagon with them.
That's true. Yeah. And You're right.
I know it can be expensive if you don't have the right insurance, and it is hard to spend money on something that you will very likely throw away. But I don't know. That one that one gets me a little bit too. Anyway Yeah. Jenny, we are gonna come back, and then we're gonna do, like, little vignettes on all of these.
And, we'll pick through them one at a time and see see what we figure out. I appreciate it. That sounds like fun. It's been nice talking to you. Thank you so much.
You as well.
I'll see you soon.
Okay.
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#1949 Diabetes Overload
Diabetes Overload
Ashley was working as a diabetes educator when her own son was diagnosed. She talks about the burnout she had already watched up close, and what she does differently because of it.
Jump to a moment
- She was a diabetes educator when her own son was diagnosed. Ashley is an RN and a family practice clinic supervisor who was working as a diabetic educator and care manager the week Braden was diagnosed at eight. Her clinical knowledge meant she read his lab results before anyone called — and it also meant she had spent years watching adults who could not keep it up.
- Burnout is why she changed jobs. As a care manager she worked with a man in his twenties who was too burned out to dose at work, and he died. She describes going home from that to look at her freshly diagnosed child and being unable to hold both. Her read on the people she saw struggling: some started managing alone too young, and most simply did not have good resources or help.
- She insisted on a CGM immediately. At the training day the morning after discharge, she was told there were requirements — weeks of finger sticks first. She said send the prescription anyway and offered to pay cash. They left the pharmacy with a Dexcom that day. Getting an eight-year-old to wear it cost a fishing pole and a Fortnite account leveled to 100.
- Sports make his numbers unpredictable in both directions. Wrestling can send him to 400 on adrenaline or drop him to the 40s mid-match with no warning, and there is no practical way to check during a match. He is now on a DIY closed loop he found through the podcast, and she programs around a school lunch and recess pattern that was reliably dropping him.
- He forgets to pre-bolus, and she has made peace with that. Braden rates his own diabetes care a two because he starts eating before he doses. Both Ashley and Scott think that is ordinary for a preteen. Her position is that she would rather he be a happy kid thinking about his friends — so she lets the algorithm carry his school lunch and covers what she can from work. Not medical advice; that arrangement is between them and their care team.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — settings, insulin timing, and food impact.
- Listener survey — The five-minute survey discussed in this episode; results at juiceboxpodcast.com/surveyresults.
- Touched By Type 1 — Programs, the annual conference, and Dancing for Diabetes.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:07
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A nurse, an educator, and a mom2:29
Hi. My name is Ashley. I'm a mom to four. My third one, he passed away shortly after birth due to a birth defect, and my fourth one is my son who has type one. He's 11, turning 12 on Saturday.
I'm also an RN. I'm a supervisor of a family practice clinic, and I used to be a diabetic educator.
Wow.
I was actually a diabetic educator when Braden was diagnosed.
Well, that's odd. Yeah. Okay. There's a lot to pick through there already. How you're married?
Yes.
You have to be or I mean, what would you do with all those So Right. Can you imagine three kids by yourself? I'm sorry for people who are doing it. I can't imagine that. I
I can't imagine, especially if you had children who are diabetic. I mean, it's so much work and then to try to coordinate between two people, especially if you're, like, the main caregiver, which sounds terrible, but, like, I feel like it has to kind of default slightly to one parent more than the other, otherwise, you'd be going against each other every day.
So what happened to us? We we we early on decided, like, it was gonna be one of us more, like, mainly because it was very difficult back then even just to pass it off, because you'd be like what what I found us doing, keeping in mind there were no CGMs, and we weren't using a pump because it was so long ago. But you'd find yourself going like, okay. Well, here she is. She ate two and a half hours ago.
It was this many carbs. I gave her this much insulin. We tested forty five minutes ago, and her blood sugar was this. She seems a little and you were like, it was too it was just too much information to pass back and forth to people. And then, you know, somebody wouldn't get the vibe of what the first person was doing and something would go wrong and it just kinda was a mess, honestly.
So I
can't imagine doing it how you guys had to do it in the beginning compared to now.
My god. Am I an old head now? Like, am I, like, a am I am I, like
Just like diabetes has grown so exponentially even just the last two, three years.
Yeah. I guess I hadn't thought about that. I guess I'm the modern version of, like, regular and Miles per hour. You just had a meter?
Right. Like, that's terrifying.
Yeah. Why why? Tell me why.
Well, so Braden's in, like, a bunch of sports. So he goes super high sometimes due to the adrenaline, but it's not predictable. He's like, if he wrestles, sometimes he'll shoot up to 400. Other times, he'll just stay at, like, 70. I don't know that.
He doesn't act differently. But then sometimes mid match, he's down to, like, 40 for no apparent reason. You can't just I mean, I guess you could stop a wrestling match and pick their finger and see where they're at. But
That'd be crazy.
That would he would lose his mind if that's what I started asking him to do it during every wrestling match.
I I can't imagine you looking at the ref and saying, hey. We just need to hold up one second. Right. Yeah. He's gonna he's he's gonna change.
Check his blood sugar just real quickly. Oh my god. Right. Yeah. I mean, I
think not go well.
Wrestling, and numbers you can’t see5:47
I take your point. It's it really is I don't know how to put it exactly. I I guess it's just a different time. And I didn't think anything of it back then because what you described going to 400 or, you know, dropping, falling, blah blah blah, we just didn't know unless somebody felt dizzy or you happened to test at the right time.
Right. Yeah. I had a friend when I was in high school who was diabetic, and she was the first person I was ever really exposed to it. And I just like, I didn't understand it, but I know she ate every day and took insulin every day. But let me tell you, not one time did I ever see her check her blood sugar.
How is she today? Do you still know her?
Yeah. She's good. She's on a pump and CGM now. Omnipod and Dexcom.
Cool.
Doing great. That's good. So weird to think back. Like, I know you didn't do that. That terrifies me too.
Like Well
My son is already not great at taking insulin. So
Is is he does he having trouble?
He so, like, yesterday, I asked him, like, what if what would you rate your diabetes care at? Like, he's like, a two. Like, why? He's like, because I always forget to put insulin in until after I start eating.
He can't remember to pre bolus? I think that I don't think that's a two. I think that's pretty common.
Yeah. That's what I thought too, but that was his his answer.
Why do you think he feels that way about it?
I think he just like, he knows he's supposed to pre bolus. That's a thing. We talk about it. But he just I don't know. He can't get it in his head, which I think part of that I'm kind of happy about.
Like, he's thinking about life and hanging out with his friends as a little preteen boy. Yeah. Not only that about diabetes, so that it's kind of a win, life first. I mean, I want him to have his life, so I need him to take the insulin. But I also want him to be a happy boy that doesn't get depressed.
And
Why she left the job7:48
Yeah. There's there's there's too much to think about, isn't there, Ashley?
Yeah. I so as when I after he was diagnosed, I was taken care of when I was a diabetic educator, I was also a care manager there. And I was taking care of this guy who is type one, and he was in his twenties, and he just didn't he was too burnt out. He couldn't do it. He didn't want to take the insulin while he was at work and didn't want to do the stuff, and and then he died.
And that's when I left being a care care manager and diabetic educator because I couldn't see that negative of the burnout that happens and then go home and look at my freshly diagnosed child.
Oh, you you changed you changed professions or or at least focuses because of Yeah. Do you think it was in was it the experience with that one person, or was it an overall kind of collection of experiences?
I think being the care manager, I kind of saw the worst of the worst for care, like, the people who needed the most help, which is great. I helped a lot of people, but I also saw so many people struggling. And that's all I could think about every day. Then when I go home, it's like, I'd look at my little tiny child who lost all this weight from diagnosis or prior to diagnosis. Like, is that gonna be his future?
Is he gonna be 21 and he's so burned out that he won't take insulin? And
Can I ask you, did the burned out people have anything in common? Like, was there something about them that you could put your finger on?
I don't know that it was a specific thing. Like, I thought maybe they just started too young on their own for some of them. I think a lot of them just didn't have really good resources and help, which shouldn't be Braden's case. But
Still was a lot for you to consider.
Right.
Yeah. Every time.
Like, you're this fresh in this world that you like, I obviously knew about diabetes and how to treat it, and that was really lucky for us. We didn't even have to stay in the hospital when he went to DKA because of my position.
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One year, one CGM. No. I I think
The week before diagnosis11:55
A lot.
I think I understand. Plus you you lost a child too. Yeah. Yeah. So you have some built in anxiety around that, I would imagine.
Yep. Yeah. A little bit.
That makes sense.
A little bit of PTSD of already losing one child to finding out you have another child. And, like so I kind of thought maybe Braden was heading that way. We went to the doctor. They tested him. His blood sugar at that exact moment when he was feeling fine was 75.
So he's good. He doesn't have diabetes. He's just puking for no reason every couple weeks. And then, like, the week before he was diagnosed, he just started not feeling good. Like, he stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday from puking, which had been normal every couple weeks.
So I scheduled a new appointment on Friday. Like, we're gonna go see a different doctor. Whatever. And then Wednesday night, we went to his wrestling academy, and he drank so much. I mean, like, he drank probably four Gatorades in this two hour practice.
And
then we went to Dave and Buster's, and he started crying there because he was so thirsty. And then he's like, I really don't feel good, mom. It's okay. We're going to the doctor on Friday. Be good.
Thursday, I was the day that I saw my patients in the clinic, and, like, he didn't feel good that morning. He was gonna stay home from school again, go to my mom's, whatever. Then my husband called, and he's like, hey, Ash. Like, he's kind of lethargic. He's really not feeling well.
I'm like, okay. We'll just take him to urgent care and get him checked there, and then we'll go from there. Because I already work in the Endo office. And then his lab results came through, like, on our MyChart, and I'm like, oh, you got super high ketones. Yeah.
Did you Cool.
Cool. Did you think prior to the lab results, were you thinking diabetes?
So I thought, like, this could be diabetes. And then I also thought, like, no. I'm a diabetic educator. I am totally just pushing these symptoms on him because that's what I see every day.
No.
There's no way.
The Oh, there was
a way.
Yeah. There was a way. The in the family, any other autoimmune stuff?
So I have thyroid issues. I have Graves and Hashimoto's, and my husband's mom had RA and lupus.
Okay. That's that's for sure. Anybody else? How about the kids? They have anything besides the type one?
Nope.
No? Okay. How old were you when you got your thyroid problem?
19. I was pregnant with my oldest, and she I went hyperthyroid. Mhmm. And then when I got pregnant with my son who passed away, like, shortly after that, it must have happened that I went hypo. I had miscarriage after miscarriage, and that was what they determined is that I flipped, and that's why I couldn't have babies because it's hard to get pregnant when you're super, super hypothyroid.
Gotcha. Were you managing it? I I mean well, but, like, were your numbers okay? Or because if you knew when you were 19, you were taking medication. Right?
No. They didn't put me on meds. They just said it was pregnancy induced and to just watch it. Like, I was right on that edge kind of
Oh.
Where you're hyper, but you're okay.
Mhmm. And nobody did anything for it?
No. They completely blew me off everywhere I went to. Like, I saw three different doctors, and my OB doctor wanted me to do the iodine treatment. Like, I I'm not doing that right now, like, radiation. I just had a baby, and I'm not going to not hold my baby.
That's not good for bonding or mental health.
So you wanted to kinda hold off a little bit. Yeah. Were what were your other simp did you have other symptoms? And if so, what were they?
When I was hyper, I had, like, all of the symptoms. I was all energy super, super thin. Like, I'm five to eight, and I was probably, like, one ten. Oh. Then, like, the GI symptoms that kinda come with it and the hot flashes and the heart palpitations and all of
Everything.
All of it.
Like, you're all jacked up on something Yeah. Because you are. Like,
if I was a monster drinker, it'd be, like, a 12 pack a day. That's probably what it felt like.
What what are the GI symptoms with hyper?
You get more diarrhea.
Oh, more. Excellent. Fun. Yeah. Who doesn't want more diarrhea?
Oh, it's a blast. When you're already thin and don't eat because you're never hungry.
When you said it's a blast, were you trying to be funny? Yeah. Oh, my god. That's awesome. Okay.
So his he goes to the urgent care, gets the labs back. I I am interested if because of your job, do they just act like you know what to do and then they don't say anything to you, or how does the process go?
So I saw the results before he saw like, my husband saw the results. I'm like, he's diabetic. He's gonna go to the hospital. And then they came in and told him that, to go to the hospital. Mhmm.
And I'm like, okay. Go to the children's the HSHS Children's Hospital in Green Bay because that's, like, the clinic I'm attached to. Go to that one. Well, in Green Bay, there's two hospitals right next to each other, and he went to the wrong hospital. So I'm sitting in the emergency room, like, just waiting for him to come through.
I'm like, what are you doing? Like, this should not take that long. I left work to come here. You should be here.
Two hospitals, four hours, and home17:37
Your husband went to the wrong hospital?
Yeah. I'm like he's like, I'm in the emergency room. I'm like, no. You're not. I I am here.
I do not see you. He did. He went to the wrong hospital, so I had to come over. And so we get called back to the room, whatever. I explained the symptoms, and they're like, oh, so he's type one.
Like, you think he's going into DKA again or something? I'm like, well, he doesn't have a type one diagnosis or anything at this point, not officially. And she's like, oh, the way you presented that just sounded like he already has it. Like
yeah. That happened to us too. We went to the desk at the emergency room. We're like, she has type one diabetes. And then she started asking questions, and we were like, oh, wait.
We're sorry. We're diagnosing her with type one diabetes. Like, like, this is, like, a, like, a fresh thing. So you did the same thing. Yeah.
Yeah. And the doctor's like, oh, okay. So we'll we'll just give him some fluids and some insulin and try to bring him down. And then from there, we will work on this, and and we'll get him in order. And then if things are good, we'll determine, like, if he can go home and you can manage it or if he has to stay.
And, ultimately, his stuff came down enough that they let us go home. We caught it pretty early. I mean, his blood sugar was, like, six thirty, which I feel like in the grand scheme of diagnostic numbers for DKA is pretty probably on the lower end.
How long was he at the hospital?
Four hours maybe.
Oh, no kidding. Did they get him out of DKA that quickly?
Yeah. He was, I mean, barely there.
It just it started to happen. Oh, wow. Well, thanks. I'm glad you figured it out so quick.
Then we went to the pharmacy, and they, like, wouldn't give us any insulin. Like, pretty sure we need that.
Why didn't they wanna did you not have a script?
They sent the prescriptions in, but they didn't have the junior pen the Humalog junior pens in stock, so we had to find a new pharmacy for that. And then my insurance didn't cover Lantus. They wanted Basaglar. And I was like, right at the end of this pharmacy shift, just give me the medicine. I'll pay for it.
Just wanna go home.
Yeah. Jeez. What a terrible thing. How long ago was this?
He was diagnosed about four years ago.
Four years ago.
October '22.
And he was what? Was he seven now?
Eight.
Eight. Okay.
Just turned eight.
How long has it felt how long does it feel like it's been? I know it's been four years, but does it feel like a lifetime ago, or
does it Yeah. Like, it's hard to remember not being him not being diabetic.
Hard conversations with an eleven-year-old20:18
Yeah. And do you think it's had any impacts on him growing up either positive or negative?
So we kinda talk about this a lot because he had a friend who committed suicide recently.
Oh my gosh.
And so we we have a lot of in-depth talks. Like, how does this feel? Like, where are you at? He's like, I hate it. Like, he's like, I obviously don't like it, but it's not the end of the world.
Mhmm. It definitely affects him. He has to leave practices because his blood sugar goes low. Or in matches, sometimes he doesn't wrestle good because his blood sugar is too high, and I can't get it to come down too fast without crashing him and making him feel weak.
Yeah.
Like he definitely sees that. Like, it's it's part of his life, and his friends don't have to deal with that. But he feel like it's not the end of the world. He's like, I know this is what I have, so it is what it is.
So you think he has a a fairly positive attitude about it?
Yeah. As good as an 11 year old boy can.
Yeah. No. I mean, he's he's really young. Gosh.
I know my daughters wouldn't have that attitude. That would be way worse.
They they what why do you think that?
Well, one is absolutely terrified of needles, so she would be losing her mind every time. My son, like, he's like, whatever. Take the shot. Whatever. I'll do the finger poke.
Unless he is super low, then we don't can't do anything because he's a rage monster.
Hey. I didn't expect to talk about this, but how do you parent through an acquaintance or a friend committing suicide with with your kids?
That was hard. Like, I was the one who told him, like, hey. One of we lost one of your friends today. And, like, he he guessed a friend, which is not the friend it was. And it's hard to, like so he wears a bracelet every day, like, live live like that person, and we talk about, like, living life and the being grateful for life every day.
I think that has really brought a lot of that talk that maybe you don't always recognize until someone dies.
Yeah. Wow. It must have been shocking when he chose a different kid. Did you did you consider did you consider talking to that person's parents, or did you think it's none of my business?
I think the reason so the kid he picked is a very emotional child.
Oh, okay.
Like like, he cries a lot and lets all those feelings. And so that's why he thought. And I don't know that that actually would
Lead to the same situation.
To yeah.
Yeah. It might it might actually be beneficial.
Right. That's what I and talked to my husband because he's a teacher and administrator. Like, this is who he said. Do you think, like, this is someone who should be on a suicide watch? Or, like, is that a thing?
He's like, I would not suspect that he he doesn't hold those emotions. He lets them go.
That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I that being an adult is is it's really terrible. Imagine having to, like, moderate that with a child, and it's gonna have, like, impacts throughout their, like you know, they're gonna remember that person for years. You know what I mean?
I'm I'm sure he'll remember him forever. Yeah. I mean, they were good friends. They did sports together. They show in the fair together.
Oh, that sucks. Well okay.
And it's a small school. I mean, there's only, like, a 100 kids in their high school, so it's it's small.
Yeah. Right. Right. So everybody knows everybody.
Everybody knows everybody. Yeah.
Friends, alarms, and a raging low24:14
What about the diabetes with friends? Is he good with it being exposed to others? Does he have trouble, like, sharing it?
No. He's super good about it, and I think it's kind of cool to see some of it. Like, one of his friends put a Dexcom on him one day, and he let him do that. Like, I don't know, little things that are just kind of cool. We were sitting at a wrestling dual team in Iowa, And his other friend is like, hey.
What's your number? Because his alarm was going off. And he's like, 67. And then they all, like, freaked out with the six seven thing. Like, the whole side of the mat is just, like, 67.
And I don't know. It's funny. They're like, what is a good number, and what are we looking for? So I don't know. That's really cool.
I mean, do his friends understand that when he is high, he is slow and doesn't think good and whatever? No. They understand that when he's low, that he can not be well fun to be around.
Yeah. He's he's agitated when he's low?
Agitated is a word. He is a raging monster when he gets really low. Not always, but, like, he can. You could tell him the sky is blue and the trees are green, and he would be like, no.
Really argumentative right away.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. We need to take this low treatment. He's like, I'm not taking that.
Don't like those. Okay. I mean, there are definitely times when he was first diagnosed when we were playing the roller coaster game. Like, okay. You gotta have a low treatment, and he would not eat, and he would not drink.
And he would fight it and fight it. And I'm like, I can try to force you, but at the end of the day, he if I try to put a drink in his mouth, he's probably gonna spit in my face in that moment.
How do you handle that?
Cry.
Does that work? Eventually,
she comes around, but I do very distinctly remember there was a couple times where I was like, we're gonna die. Like, we're gonna go to the hospital because you're gonna die.
So the crying from you is out of fear?
Yeah.
Yeah. When Art when Arden was really little, and I mean, like, super little, you know, two, three, four years old, if I couldn't get her to drink or eat something when she was really low, I would purposefully get in, like, little arguments with her because the the back and forth arguing would like, it hit her adrenaline. It would and it would pop her blood sugar a little bit.
I think that probably is part of it because when he's arguing, I mean, he he does he gets all raging. He does come up a little bit, so I'd feel less about it. Yeah. Especially now that he doesn't have shots, that seems a little easier to manage because he uses Trio now, and that works
Oh, nice.
Pretty well.
Yeah. I I have to say I've it's not a thing. Like, I it's not a tactic. It's just something that happened, you know, that I realized one day when she got mad and I got upset and we were being upset together that her blood sugar would start to go back up without her taking anything. And then there was a couple of times where I couldn't get her to drink or eat, and I just, like, kinda picked a fight with her to make it happen.
It's not like a not like a point of pride or anything like that. It's just a thing that happened. I shared that once on the podcast years ago, and then I took a lot of crap online for it. So I look forward to somebody being terrible to me again.
But You know, sometimes we just gotta do what you gotta do in the moment. If you can't get them to eat a drink, you're not physically harming them by making them agitated.
Yeah.
If that's what will raise their blood sugar enough to make them think clearly, like, maybe I should actually just drink the freaking juice Yeah. Then
Actually, I was there. I did I did what I had to do. You you you know what I mean? It's it's a little hard to judge fifteen years. By the way, she just turned 22 yesterday.
She's doing I know
I saw that. Her pictures are so beautiful.
Oh, yeah.
So beautiful.
Thank you. Thank you. I'll tell her. So does he get a CGM? I mean, it's only four years ago.
Demanding a CGM on day one28:21
Do they offer you CGMs right away? You obviously know what they are. So what's that whole process like?
So we left the hospital. The next morning, we went right to Children's at 07:30 for our hundred hour training day. And they're I'm like, I want a CGM today. I'm like, I don't care if it's a Dexcom or Libre. I'm like, I know Libre is $75 cash pay.
I will cash pay if that's what I need to do, but I want that today. And, like, we don't usually I'm like, no. I want this today. Mhmm. This is happening.
So I don't care. Send the prescription in. So I did. And they sent in the they're like, well, you're not gonna get it. You have to have too many weeks so many weeks of finger pokes and blah blah blah.
I'm like, I don't care. Just send it. We went to the pharmacy. We got it. I had to bribe him like heck to get this Dexcom g six on his arm.
And if you're wondering what a bribe to an eight year old is, we he wanted his dad to level up his Fortnite account to level a 100 because he wanted that skin, and he needed a new Googan Squad fishing pole.
Did it cost you a fishing pole and a level up on a video game?
Yep. That's where we were at.
It's not bad. Yeah. You would probably gotten the fishing pole anyway. So
Right. Like, it was probably coming. Maybe not that one because it was, like, $250, but whatever. He put the Dexcom on. He hated the g six, though.
The g seven was lifesaving to us because every time putting that g six on was a nightmare.
You know what I'm I'm heartened by? The fake outrage social media around the move to g seven is not working.
It's so weird to me because I think the g seven is so much more accurate for us, and it warms up faster. And it doesn't hurt going in like the g six did on him at least.
Oh, well, I'm glad it yeah. I mean, Arden's been using it for, like, since day one, g seven. And as soon as they went to fifteen day, I got them to write the prescription for fifteen days.
Sweet. I have had fifteen days because I talked to the reps in the clinic still, and they don't generally last the full fifteen on him. But I feel like part of that's probably because he's so active, and he's little. I mean, he's, like, five foot one, but he's a hundred or not a hundred. He's, like, I weighed yesterday.
He's eighty five pounds.
Yeah.
It's like he's skinny. He has no fat on him. Like, negative fat. So and maybe that's why pushing and pulling in wrestling practice or golf practice or baseball practice.
It makes as much sense as anything else. Yeah. I mean, listen. You're you're in health care. If I put a heart monitor on you and then told you to go out in the world and just live your life and one of the leads fell off, you wouldn't say this heart monitor sucks.
Right. Yeah.
No. I don't think it's the g, the fifteen days fault. I think it's just a
I I don't dismiss the fact that it doesn't work the same for everybody. That I know is a 100% true. And I'm I feel really grateful that Arden's last right out to the last second. It's just it's dumb luck that it works for her physiology. And by the way, she deserves some dumb luck.
Not everything goes her way. And Yeah. But but what I'm talking about is the the people who thought they were gonna get social media clout by complaining about being forced off of g six. And I'm seeing them try their posts, so they're not working. Meaning, they're getting, like, one or two likes.
On progress, and people who resist it31:46
The algorithm's not picking them up. So the the fake outrage I'm gonna get, like, diabetes in you know, influence cred off of complaining about the upgrade of a device from one to the next is not working, which I I don't know. I I felt good about because I thought we were gonna see for I thought for six months, we were just gonna see people complaining and that it was gonna pop off, but it doesn't seem to be going that way. So
No. I just don't understand it. There's just I mean, having the two pieces of the g six to me, while it's great at the time, better than the things before, is kind of inconvenient, especially if you have a child who's already afraid of the g six or it in general, and then you have to snap on another piece and push on the area that in their head thinks really hurts.
Yeah. You know, I mean, listen. I I have to be honest. This is I I don't know how much of a pivot this is is I don't understand most of people's upset at this with progress. Like, I I I think it's possible that if you were born in the last twenty years or you've lived with cell phones or computers and the Internet and everything that you can things have been pretty good for you.
And you when they make something new, it just feels different, and then different feels scary. Like, I get all that. But you you needed to grow you're not old enough, but you needed to grow up when I grew up. Like, I I think, like, even just, you know like, I get the arguments about AI making art, for example, that, you know, they're like, well, it just scanned the Internet and stole everybody's style. And I'm like, yeah.
That's definitely wrong. Those people should be compensated. I hope we could figure out a way to do that. But if you just kinda step back for a second, if you were me in 1976 at five years old, six, 07/08 through the end of the seventies, this is magical. Like, what's going on right now?
And there are so many great ways to use it or to enjoy it or to be creative with it. And instead, I see people just going like, it's wrong. It's bad. Ah. And I'm like, I don't know.
Like, don't we wanna move like, isn't progress, like, what we're shooting for? I don't I I don't I don't know how to make sense of it exactly, but, like, my brain looks at it and goes, oh my god. It does this. I have five ideas right now I'm gonna do. And then other people see it and go, it's slop.
It's do it yourself. Like, do it myself. You thought I would
Not everyone has the skills to do it themselves.
How the hell was I gonna do that myself? I'm I
know what you're talking about. It's not like I'm going to go pay someone to do it. So either, I have this option that can do it for me, and it's really cool.
Oh, that's the other thing that's that absolutely baffles me. That you you've taken a job from an artist. I'm like, no. I haven't. I I cannot afford to hire an artist.
I've I've made a thing that would otherwise not exist. But if you think that the all they seem to set up this false narrative where I I had $90,000 to pay a programmer to do something, but instead, I decided to use AI to do it. Like, no. It wasn't gonna get done the other way. I don't have that kind of money.
I don't have that kind of resources. I'm a guy making a podcast. I'm not Coca Cola. You know what I mean? And and to see and to see that out, it is really interesting, the false narrative that comes up.
Like, oh, well, you did this instead of that. I'm like, no. I did this instead of nothing. Yeah. Also magic.
Like, are you like, magic. I just I I took an idea in my head, and I moved my fingers on a keyboard, and something showed up in the physical world that works. And you're going and you're going boo. I'm like, I don't know. You you and I are seeing a different pathway through the world, I guess.
And then they you know, it's, you know, water and electricity. And I'm like, no. I get it. Like but it won't be like this forever. I mean, look what happened the other day.
I don't know how like, if people track this stuff. But when there there's kind of this thing that happened. Right? Like, like, American companies making AI said we need more power to get more compute to make this thing work. Like, they said, it'll work better if we if we power it more.
And then a bunch of other companies that couldn't afford the power said, well, we'll just have to rewrite the code and make it work better. And they went off and did that, and that's actually working now. So some Chinese company just put out a model called Kimi, and Kimi doesn't use the same power that, you know, ChatGPT does, for example. So somebody got pressed into a corner to figure out how to make it better without using all the electric, and they figured it out. And ten years from now, it won't be like this again.
Just like you know what I mean? Just like things change along the way. I I don't know. I I just I wish everybody had to grow up in the seventies and watch Yeah. You know, watch one of three channels.
And after school television was a guy with a puppet who you probably would call a pedophile now if you looked at him. And and there was nothing to do, and he had to get up at 06:00 in the morning to watch Mighty Mouse. And and that was on Saturday, and then it didn't happen again till Saturday next year. And there were no computers and no Internet. You were bored out of your freaking mind and blah blah blah blah blah.
And then live through that for a day and then come back and tell me this is this is bad.
Right. Like, kids don't get it. You there's so much instant gratification for everything.
Yeah. Everything just works.
And if it's not there, then it's, like, a tantrum. And then if it's not how you exactly want it, it's also a tantrum. It's funny.
Yeah. They grew up where everything just did the thing it's they said it was gonna do.
Right.
There's an expectation that everything just works. It just does it. It happens immediately. I saw something the other day that said the average watch on a TikTok reel is three seconds. Yeah.
I mean
That's crazy.
Yeah. What it's the I'm being pressed by by things to make shorter podcast episodes. And it not that people don't want longer podcast episodes, but, you know, just through the the the the fact that you're alive, you might start an hour long podcast or an hour and twenty minute long podcast and listen to an hour of it or an hour and five minutes of it or something like that and not watch not listen to the last ten minutes or something, which is fine. I don't care about that. But the algorithm then reads that as not completing the the view.
What the algorithm rewards38:19
And so then I and then I get hurt if you don't listen all the way through. So the pressure is to make shorter stuff, twenty, twenty five minutes. Now even if it doesn't have all the information or doesn't, like, expand the conversation or whatever, I'll get I'll get a different I I get different weight on a chart if you just finish the episode.
That's weird. I'll make sure I finish all my episodes.
You're very nice, but, like, that's not my that's not why I'm telling you. What I'm telling you is that the algorithm is pressuring me into making something that I don't think is the right thing.
Right.
You know what I mean? Because you you and I have been talking for forty minutes so far. Yep. And we've talked about so many, like, big ideas and going over things we didn't expect to go over. Hopefully, it's been interesting for people so far.
I still have other stuff I wanna ask you about, the diabetes piece of it. And, anyway, I just making stuff to these algorithms is a mistake. And Yeah. You know what I mean? It's and I don't know how to fix it either.
I I have
no idea. Weird because, like, there is more stuff. And then if you're only doing that, the short little episodes, I don't know. Like, I really like the short episodes too. Like, when you and Jenny talk or when you do the little ones that are, like, ten or twelve minutes, that's interesting too.
Nothing at all.
Can fit in more than one.
Yeah. Yeah. But, like Yeah. No. I don't
I'm also open to the super long episodes. I don't The the three learn stories.
Yeah. Yeah. I listen. I appreciate that. And I don't I there's been there are some reasons to make shorter episodes, but not because the algorithm will put me higher on the chart because of it.
And then I can and then I can show the chart to somebody and get an ad for it, and then they'll like, it's that's ridiculous. And Yeah. And it's leading to a three second reel. Like, so when when when Instagram first came out, you were like, oh, I can see people's photography. You could look at a picture and be like, oh, that's really great.
And now and then in short term, it just went to, like I used to talk about all the time, like, I the flick flick tap. Like, it's flick tap tap, flip tap tap, flip tap tap. And I would say to Arden, I'm like, are are you liking those pictures? She goes, yeah. They're my friend's pictures.
I was like, what are they of? She goes, I don't know. She's liking them to to support her friends. But support them in what? Taking a picture that nobody looks at?
I don't even understand what we're talking about. And it went from that to now, like, people are making, like, videos, and you're watching three seconds of it. Yeah. Like, you can't put anything meaningful in three seconds.
I totally get that because my son had a wrestling YouTube channel. And, like, people watch it, and you can, like, see, like, they only watch this much. I'm like, so you watch the introduction. Cool. Appreciate that you liked it.
That makes him super excited. It's just funny.
But to what end? Exactly. Right. And and now, you know listen. I I I I don't know if you've seen it or not.
Like, I I put out a a survey. I I hope everybody goes and takes it. It's juiceboxpodcast.com/survey. It's just about how the podcast has been for you. It's, like, literally a five minute survey.
Actually, I did take the survey.
Thank you. Oh, I really appreciate it. And, and the the feedback that's coming back says that the podcast, the way it works, is really valuable for people. But you put me in an ecosystem where it's it's flip, tap, tap, flip, tap, tap, not even that now. People don't even like anymore.
Now it's just flip, flip, flip, flip. Like like, I mean, you're living in a dystopian movie where your eye your eyes are peeled apart by clamps, and we're just running, like, fractions of videos past you all day long. Like and I and, like I mean,
in three seconds, you can't even say, like, hey. It's Scott. That that you're out in three seconds. You're done.
Do you pre oh.
Get to introduce yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. Pre bowl. No. Oh, darn.
Guess they You're done.
I guess they won't learn to pre bowl. And and so you don't bother making content for that. But the people who do it anyway that get that view, then they go out and sell that view for ad space. But it's not real. Like and you just made the point with the YouTube video.
Like, they nobody's watching your YouTube video. Podcasts are unique where you can pick them up, put them down, pick them up, put them down. Yeah. You don't pick up and put down a YouTube video. It's No.
Not generally. Yeah.
You have to be really invested if that's what you're gonna do.
Exactly. And so now there's people out there like, look. I have ten, twenty, 30,000 views on my YouTube video. I'm like, no. You don't.
You know, you've you've
We don't have that. We're in the thousands.
Yeah. But
Which is fine. I don't need a 100,000 kids looking at my child wrestling, but he thinks it's really cool.
Yeah. Listen. I don't understand how to I don't understand any of this. I'm I am officially too old to think that this is a good idea. And I but the funny thing is is I don't think anybody else thinks this is a good idea either.
No. I mean, it's proven. Like, medically, we know our attention spans are getting drastically shorter.
Yeah. It's it's
gonna be a problem. The ADHD is astronomical. No one has attention span anymore. Mhmm. No one can do anything.
So what does that say for our future generations that have zero attention span? Like, how are we gonna get through college?
How are we
gonna have careers?
Well, you're
gonna cannot sit for a forty minute class.
Attention spans, and what we lose43:49
Yeah. And I think you have to think out farther than just a generation. Like, you have to ask yourself, like, what is it gonna mean to be a human being at some point? Right? And how much of this will be progress and how much of this will be a loss of yourself?
And I I don't know any I don't have a my brain does not expand far enough to consider all those things. I'm just gonna tell you that it would be a great idea to not scroll. That'd be a big eye that would really help you. Yep. So we'll see.
I mean, there's a whole listen. There's a whole world full of people who don't do it. They're not represented online. They're out there living their lives every day. I see the guy, you know, across the street from my house cutting his lawn.
He's not on TikTok. You know? He's he's living his life. I don't know if one learns better. I don't I don't know.
I'm not even making a judgment about it. I just think it's I just think it's
There has to be
a at
at minimum a balance. Like, okay. You're gonna look at it, but, also, you have to get out and live your life and do stuff that doesn't that requires you to think more than three seconds.
Yeah. And and and look at what you're, you know, look at what you're propping up is this idea of, like, I say all the time. Like, I'm not I'm not gonna scream into into my cell phone. But that's what works. Like, there's actually phrases that that are, like, proven to stop your scroll.
So if you pay attention, the videos all start with that phrasing. And it's always big eyes, like big bug eyes staring into their phone, like, or big faces, like, to grab your attention for a split second. And then they're selling that view. Like, you stay for ten seconds before you go, I don't care about this, and you scroll forward. They cared about it.
They just want the ten seconds. They just want they want the view click. And then they'll go out in the world and tell people, like, look. You know, I, you know, I don't it's boring, but I I bumped into some people recently who do diabetes influencing, and they asked me for my advice. And I said, you should try to help people.
Like, they you must know something. Like, take that thing out there and try to try to help people. And don't just scream into the camera and look pretty and bounce around and giggle and dance. Like, if you can help them, like, they'll come back and watch it again, and they'll tell somebody else about it. Otherwise, you're just you're just you're just being an attention whore.
And Right. That's not building a thing for you or for them.
So there's no benefit in that?
Well, not no. Not at all. And I can't and and, really, you have to like, if if I gave you a phone right now and let you scroll somebody else's feed and came back in ten minutes and asked you what you saw, you'd have absolutely no idea what you saw. No. So the person who thinks, oh, I'm being seen, you're not being seen.
You're not being seen at all. You are just you're digital visual noise. So, I mean, that's not a great way to live your life.
No. I look at like, my son will he scrolls through the TikTok when we're in the car or whatever. Like, what in the actual hell are you watching? Do watch the most random I mean, there's a lot of sports things. I get that stuff.
But some of the videos, it's just like, tap tap tap tap tap tap, like, people typing on their phone. Like, why are you watching that? That's so dumb.
Don't
like, these random AI videos that are so stupid. Like, how did that get into
your face? Hijacked. Listen. Every once in a while, I'm gonna tell you my two favorite videos this week. Not that I don't have I mean, I have social media like everybody else.
Little kids swimming off of Malibu with a 10 foot great white. They have no idea the shark is swimming around them. It is horrifying. And I'm just gonna let you all know that the veteran that slapped the guy in the head at the Cubs game for not standing up during the national anthem, I was delighted by that.
I didn't see that, but I feel like I need to look that up now.
There's a there's a, you know, there's a a Vietnam Veteran. He's at the Cubs game. He's out in the bleachers. Kids sitting in front of him, I don't know, 18, 19, 20 in that range, by himself, seated in front of the of the vet. A couple of rows up into the right are some older guys, probably late twenties.
They look like they might have, like, a, you know, a computer job, and they're at the game today or something like that. And I you can't really hear them, but the national anthem's playing, and the old man bends forward and says something to him. Like, you know, telling him, like, you know, get it seems like he's telling him you gotta stand up. And the kid kinda dismisses him, and the old man tells him again. And I don't know what the kid says, but when he turns back around to stay seated, the the old man, like, takes his left hand and slaps him in the head.
And That's crazy. And that kid pops up and looks forward. And the part of me that grew up in the seventies was like, see? That worked. And Yeah.
And and I also know we got listen. I'm not I live in the same, you know, same era that the rest of us live. I know we can't go around hitting people. I wouldn't do it. But watching it from a distance, I was like, maybe we ought to smack more people in the head.
That worked pretty well. Right. And then the two guys, the reason I explained to you, there were two, like, slightly older guys ahead. They turned around to give the old man shit, and he was like, whatever he said back to them, they shut up and turned around. And I thought
That's great.
Maybe we need a little more of all this. Now the news got ahold of the old guy, and he and he he was thoughtful about it afterwards. He says, look. I wish I didn't hit him. You know, he goes, you know but you need to understand, like, I lost a lot of friends in Vietnam.
People were fighting for him to be able to sit at that ballgame in the middle of the afternoon and watch the watch the Cubs play, And it it hurt that he didn't stand up. It's not respectful. And then and then the rest of it is he said, but it's not lost on me that I fought for his right to sit there if he doesn't wanna stand up. So it was really interesting to see him conflicted. Now if you could
use The bodge sword.
Yeah. And if you could use social media to have that, like, experience that I had, which only took me a minute to experience the initial video and then the the gentleman, like, speaking to the news afterwards. Like, that was kind of a full moment. Like, I feel like I got something out of that. Right?
I don't know what I would have figured out in three seconds, but, anyway, I'm sorry. Let let's finish up strong here. Your, son's using Trio. Yeah. So what do you use?
Letting the pump take lunch50:22
An Omnipod dash with DIY Trio and g seven? Yeah. Yeah. How's that all going for you? How do you find it?
I found it through the podcast. Oh. And it's going great. My so, like, in school kids, they have lunch, and then they have recess, and he was going low every day. So I'm like, well, let's program this algorithm so we can just do this.
So he took insulin at lunch one time the whole school year. One. What wait. Last year.
He's forgetting to bolus it for
No. He's he's just not doing it. We're just we're not.
Oh, you're you're testing.
The pump has officially taken over his lunch bowls at school. Not all the time because he eats way more outside of school than he does. But during school, like, he he doesn't take a lunch bowls. If he has some random snack during the day, then he has to bowl a sport.
Outcomes for that have been what? Good. Yeah. What what do you see usually?
Like, he'll go up a bit probably to, like, to 300 maybe. I try to catch it. I know he like, last year, he ate lunch at 11:50. So I give him some insulin from work, and and then he just goes about his day being a kid.
Where they are now51:38
Tell me why you were com tell me why you were comfortable with that.
Well, because one and if he isn't giving himself insulin or spotily giving himself insulin, it's easier to say, don't do it, and I will take care of it because then we're not double bolusing.
Okay. So why why are you so so he you you came to the conclusion that he was going to forget the bolus. Right?
Yes. Because he was doing that regular.
And you put him on the algorithm because you thought, well, this will be more aggressive and at least will hold him down, but he's still popping to, like, 300.
Not every day. That's, like, the highest days.
Okay. What's
the average? Say I'm on a phone call at work, so I also do triage and stuff, and I lose track of time a little bit. Mhmm. Then it's a late bolus. But it still catches it and brings them down pretty quick.
Like, it works pretty well. Most days, I would say he probably doesn't even go up to 200 on lunch. The bad days, he hits up to 300 and comes back down.
Is that
But we were having a lot of lows when he was giving himself insulin at lunch.
When he was giving himself insulin, he was having lows. Would you say that the three hundreds are more about the food that he eats or more about you not being able to jump in and throw some extra in when you see it go up?
Second. More when I'm just a little behind it.
So you're remote policing when you Yeah. So what happens? You get a little beep beep. He's going high, and you go, oh, this must have happened. You look at the suggested insulin and put the suggested insulin in?
So I start, like, all day. Like, at my work, I I have a double screen. One screen, I keep up mostly with his blood sugar stuff. Like, I have Nightscout open.
Mhmm.
And then I just kind of watch that and give him some insulin as needed to kind of keep him on track.
Okay.
So I think we're starting to hit puberty. Hate that. But our numbers are a little wonky right now as we're trying to adjust to turning into manhood.
Do you think there's a world where he will are you fearful how do I wanna ask you this? Are you fearful that by covering for him and not asking him to do it at all, he's never gonna do it, or do you think that he's about to get to an age where you can reassess and get him involved again?
So, like, when he goes to his friend's house or goes like, he went to the Dells with some of his friends once, he did his insulin. Or he like, at school, they went to Camp Unawala last year, and he did his insulin for that. So it was fine. Like, he can do it. Like, it's kind of one of the life balance.
Part of it, I'm sure, is a little bit of my history of the care manager and stuff that I don't want him to feel burned out. I want him to feel the burden of just being a 11, 12 year old boy with his friends and experience that and not have to be diabetic first.
Can I offer
I'd rather be his diabetes first?
Okay. Can I offer a tiny bit of perspective? Just my own personal?
Absolutely.
I would be careful not to overcompensate.
Like, when he's not in school, he mostly does it himself.
Okay.
Does he need some reminders? Like, hey. Did you take insulin for your snack
Yeah. Sure.
Or your drink?
Is
it going up?
I would But yeah.
I So it's like kind of a balance.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it sounds like you have it. I've just from just listening, I just thought, like, don't don't get so, like, defensive of one idea that you, like, let the other things, like, slide off a cliff is all.
Oh, absolutely not.
You're not doing that.
Pretty much the only one I do is lunch. Right. And like I said, if he has snacks at school, if he has when he has breakfast, lunch, dinner, Other days when he's not at school, he does it. It was just hard because we kept like, some days he would take his insulin, and then other days he wouldn't take his insulin. So then I'd give him insulin, and then he would also correct his insulin.
And then we're like, oh, crap. Now we have, like, way too much insulin, and he's super sensitive. So that extra unit is a big deal.
Yeah. No. I mean, listen. And just like we said earlier, you're gonna have to find the thing that works for you guys and and do what what, you know, what you gotta do.
I think as we move forward and he gets better, I think I'll probably each year try it and be like, hey. Are we gonna do our insulin at lunch? Like, this is on you, my little friend.
I mean, listen. At some point, I would imagine he he you said he knows when he's higher when he's wrestling. Right?
He doesn't feel highs. I can see it when he wrestles and he can't think through things that he would be able to think through.
I gotcha.
Or if even when you ask him questions when he's really high, like, it just takes longer. He's just like a a slow computer. Needs to be rebooted back down to where he should be.
Oh, no. Yeah. I know. And I know that Arden doesn't really notice it about herself in the moment. I don't I can't say that she doesn't know, but, you know, in that moment, I think it's you're not saying to yourself, oh, I'm probably answering slower now because, you know, it just kinda doesn't work that way.
Yeah. Yeah. I was He said he doesn't feel high at all. He feels lows, but not not high at all. He said he can't tell a difference.
Yeah. So, I mean, listen. Timers on the phone is I used that at school. Like, a timer would go off. She'd pre bolus then.
And, you know, she would text me and say, how much are we gonna do today? And I'd say, I'd, you know, I'd look at her blood sugar, and I'd say, well, your blood sugar is this. You know, you have this for lunch. I think let's put this much in now. And then when you sit down and you start eating, we'll do the rest.
I would say that sometimes. Sometimes we would send it up as, like I mean, I realize the systems are different now. Sometimes we would set up, like, extended boluses to put a bunch in upfront and then, like, dump the rest in over, like, thirty or sixty minutes to kinda so she wouldn't have to bolus a second time. There's a bunch of different ways I used to manipulate it to get it to work. The algorithms are I mean, obviously, to say that an 11 year old at school doesn't have to bolus a meal, his mom pops on remotely from her phone, throws some more insulin, and he'd only gets to 200 and doesn't generally get low afterwards.
Is that pretty awesome? You know? Yeah.
I mean, I'm very thankful for that. He's I mean, when he first got diagnosed, he was on the shots for a while despite my pressure to get on the pump right away.
Mhmm.
And, like, dad's a teacher in the same school, so he would just go down there at lunch. They'd figure it out, do a shot, have a 100 kids around them looking, and go on about their day.
Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I I listen. I think you're doing a great job.
You feel okay about it? Are you I mean, being a parent of a child with type one, is it a thing you're handling well? Are you in therapy? Are you crying still?
I'm pretty good about it. Like, there's days that I'm like, what is what is happening? Like, two weeks ago, he was just high. I mean, like, I he his total daily insulin is, like, 25 to 30. Mhmm.
And he was getting, like, sixty units a day and still just high. Like, what is what is going on? Change his pod. Change his insulin. Change his sites.
Like, why won't you come down? And then all of a sudden, the next week, just back to normal.
It's okay again.
Are you kidding me?
How do
blows my mind. Like so I have this perspective. Like, I see the family practice clinics, and I see these sliding scales prescribed and, like, oh, your blood sugar's 300. Take this much insulin. Like, how does that how can that functionally even work to people?
Because diabetes is so fluid. Like, one week, it's gonna be this, and the next week, it's gonna be wholly different. And we're just like, take the science scale for the rest of your life, and you'll be great.
I don't understand. I listen. Were you were you managing people who were doing that?
And it drove me insane because I'm not a prescriber, so I can't change it.
Does that happen in in
Take your insulin.
2021? How is that happening? Because that's, what, about four years ago. Right? So what what do you think the reasoning was behind the that that prescription from the doctor?
Some people just can't some people are not mentally there to do more. They won't do it, actually. They just straight refuse to do it, but they, okay, I'll take my insulin out my meals sometimes. Mhmm. But that's where they're at.
And, like, that's just that's what what they're gonna do.
So some some of it is just people's inability or or lack of desire?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. It's heartbreaking. You see people with continuous 14 a one c's, and they just don't get it and don't care, and they feel fine, so they're fine until they aren't. And then they're like, oh my god. I need this gone now.
Like, well, it took a long time to get here. It's not going to go away overnight. It's gonna take some time.
Yeah. So do does everybody hit some level of horror that gets them turned around, or do some people just ride it straight into the abyss?
They just ride it straight to death.
Yeah. Jeez.
It's hard. I it's sad. I I just wanna be like, I'll come home with you. I used to make grids for people like, okay. You put your pen needles here, like, on this little map, and then you know you took your insulin for that meal.
And then, like, this is what we do. These are your meals. This is about what how many carbs are in that. So, like, this is what your insulin should be should you have this meal. Like, I tried to break it down to toddler level for some people.
And it's great because for some people, that really worked. Like, you have these standard meals like, oh, you're eating spaghetti. This is about how many carbs are in spaghetti. This is what your insulin should be. And then here's if your blood sugar is in these ranges, what you
do Yeah.
Which obviously is not a perfect system, but for some people, that was their perfect system.
Hey. I I not punitively, but just for understanding bigger picture. Intellect gets in the way sometimes?
Absolutely. Okay. Because you have to be able to under just to you have to be able to have a basic understanding of why you're doing this. Like, what's going on? Like, your body isn't making this insulin, and we have to have that for your food to get into your cells, and some people just can't comprehend that.
Yeah.
Why?
Explain it. It doesn't matter. It's fine
if you can explain it a 100 different ways, and you can use a teddy bear and the the same things that you would say to children to some of these adults, and they just I don't know if they just don't care or they just don't want to know maybe or just really don't have the mental capability to understand. And probably all of it for some of
them. Yeah.
But it is hard.
Sad. It sounds like it took a toll on you as well.
It did. And I won't like, I really enjoyed helping people. Like, the people that I could get some success to get their a one c from high to low even in just drawing pictures and telling them the basic things so they have something was great. Getting some of them to use the in pen so they could track stuff and get a recommendation, that worked pretty well.
Yeah.
Some of them are like I'm like, let's go on the Omnipod five because you don't have to know that much. And I mean, that sounds bad, but, like, you can give it some general ideas. Like, okay. For dinner, I usually eat about 40 carbs or at least that's what my nurse tells me. And as long as I'm sticking to my same normal meal sizes, it's giving me insulin, and it still has that ability to kind of help correct when I do it
wrong Mhmm.
Or I forget something.
Yeah. I always sort of I feel bad it's the wrong way, but to talk about it. But when pump companies are trying to make these pumps, there's, you know, there's levels of people looking for levels of help. And, you know, everybody's not you or me or, you know, or somebody else out there who's holding, like, 481 c. Like, some people are or more the way you described, and these pumps have to try to help everybody.
I'm I've always been, like, an advocate for like, I I I don't know if this is possible. It sounds possible to me, but, you know, I would I'd like a UI that, you know, has a switch in it that says, like, are you are you shooting for a five? Like, use this part. Yes. You know?
Are you are you having trouble remembering the bolus and you don't understand the math? And if I asked you what diabetes was, you wouldn't even be able to explain to me. You know what? Flip it over to this. It'll take care of that kind of stuff.
And Yeah. And instead of running around with a ten, eleven, 12 because you've probably seen people with up to 14 a one c's, I imagine,
Oh, yeah.
On the regular.
Yeah. On the regular. And Especially in family practice because that's where they get it.
And no one's helping them there for sure. So so Not the right way. If if you could slap even an algorithm on them that would drag drag them into the eights, that would be a massive, massive health benefit for them.
Yeah. That was my goals. I tried even when other educators are like, no. They can't handle this. They can't handle something.
Listen. All we have do is teach them how to start a pod. I mean, it's they're on their phones all day. It's not that hard to say, give me a meal. Like
Yeah. It can't handle what? Because the what's the alternative?
Right. They're not taking their stuff. They're going to die. I mean, that sounds harsh, but, like, eventually, you're going to have complications, and you're going to die.
It's not harsh. It's what's happening. I I I remind people all the time, if you're listening to this podcast and you're doing well, you are in the minority.
Absolutely. Yeah. I can't tell you the people that I see. And if you're seeing a family practice provider for your type one, you're probably doing bad for yourself.
Right.
And I love my job, and I love the providers I work with, but their knowledge of type one is none. Mhmm. Like, we have one type one patient who comes in, and he has a great a one c. And she's always like, you're going too low. You're going too low.
We need to adjust this. I'm like, first of all, it's not what you would adjust. Like, you're addressing the wrong thing here. But you do like, they don't have that knowledge.
Yeah. It's tough too because it's not really that difficult, is it, Ashley?
No. And I have to bite my tongue, though. I'm not a provider. I'm not overstepping, and I'm not losing my license. But I do make little comments.
Like, hey.
I hate the way the world works. I hate I hate that we see things that are wrong and then nobody says anything. Like, well, it's not my place or and not that you shouldn't have done that.
I I I understand. Tell her like, I don't change his prescriptions. I'm like, hey. Have you considered that maybe maybe the basal is off a little bit? And it's not that he his corrections are wrong, that maybe it's just the timing is slightly off, and that's
causing him to go low. Yeah.
Like, he's actually doing great, but lows. But lows. But lows. Like, but, like, you can treat they're not severe lows. They're minimal lows.
Like, you gotta look at the grand picture here, and and we want to be healthy. We want to live a life without complications the best we can. We don't want sandpaper going through our veins. So
yeah, I I don't know. I I just really I really can't wrap my head around why somebody can't figure out how to do this. I it's not it just isn't that difficult. Like, I I'm talking about a doctor, not the people.
Yeah. Like, doctors.
Yeah. How how they can't figure out how to explain this to somebody or or not to say something like, well, they can't handle a pump, but they're dying. Don't you think we should try? No.
I mean, they can't the end stage here. Why do we need something?
Why don't we just push them off a cliff then? I mean, what's the point exactly? Absolutely. I mean, it it it really is. It's it it is genuinely fascinating to me to to see, like, I don't know, to see a bull charging at you and to just close your eyes is how it feels.
Like, I don't know. Maybe it's gonna hit you anyway, but run,
die. Like, do something.
Do yell, hey. Look over there. I don't know. Like, shouldn't we try something? No?
Or just proactive. Yeah. We're just gonna shut our eyes and let it run us over because we don't think they could figure out how to put a pump on. Right. Yeah.
That's a lack of critical thinking.
Like, are you kidding me? You literally pull a sticker thing off and you stick it to your body. And then And people stick them everywhere on their body. I mean, there's not a whole lot of things you can do wrong there.
Yeah. Alright. Okay. Listen. We can't fix the world, Ashley.
Nope. And you gotta
get back to the Not today.
No. No. Not today. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that the packers aren't good. I just wanna kick that into the conversation at the end.
I'm not a big packer fan. I'm actually an eagles fan.
Oh, well, god bless you though. Everything's fine.
My son was a Chiefs fan forever, and then he met Jordan Love at Dick's one day. Okay. And now he's a diehard Packer fan. Let me tell you, Jordan Love is one of the coolest guys you could ever meet.
That'll do it. You meet meet one of those guys in person, and you'll you'll be a fan pretty quickly. At least a good
He even talked in a FaceTime group with all of his little 10 and 11 year old friends at that point. Oh, he's a cool guy.
Yeah. That's alright. Fine. Jordan
Jordan only only plus for the packers. Only push. Jordan was Eagles fan for life.
Yeah. How'd you get any how are you an Eagles fan?
I don't know. I started to be an Eagles fan when I was in high school. They must have been doing good and
Smart.
And then I jumped on that wagon and never let it go.
Smart of you. Very smart of you. Okay. Alright. Hold on
one second. Fan till death.
Well, you know, Brewers have that type one. Is he in center field? Garrett?
Garrett Mitchell? Yeah. Really cool. My we went to Vegas to see him, and he got to meet Garrett Mitchell. He got his he signed his glove.
He gave him a ball that said type one warrior on it autographed. Really cool guy.
I've been trying to get him on. He does not answer my, my DMs. So, I mean, if I was a if was a baseball player, I probably wouldn't answer my DMs either. But I'm just saying he he he's he's and he gets better and better. He's actually improving as a player as he goes along too.
His first year, like, not being unhealthy. So, yeah, it's it's really cool. It's a really cool guy. Yeah. Cool experience.
I'll see what we can figure out. Alright. Hold on one second for me, Ashley. I appreciate you doing this. 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. Think you're gonna find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get started with a 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 fourteen days, you want the Eversense CGM. Eversense CGM dot com slash juice box. One year, one CGM.
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#1947 Emily Is Twelve
Thirty-Seven Years and Still Learning
Marla has had type 1 for thirty-seven years and found the podcast last year. She talks about what she has changed since — splitting her basal, tightening her alarms, and what perimenopause did to all of it.
Jump to a moment
- Thirty-seven years in, and still finding new things. Diagnosed at eight and a half, Marla is the only person with type 1 across two large extended families. She found the podcast a little over a year ago and describes the strange experience of learning fundamentals decades into it — her point being that people mostly learn by living with it and experimenting, so a genuinely new idea can arrive at any point.
- Splitting her basal was the first change. On MDI, she had taken all twelve units at bedtime for years because that’s what she was told, and went low overnight. Nobody had ever suggested splitting it. She now takes it in two parts and holds her total, because reducing it — the usual advice — would just leave her high the rest of the day. Any change to an insulin regimen belongs with your care team.
- She solved a low by standing up. Marla has strong feet-on-the-floor rise, so when she wakes in the high fifties or sixties she simply gets out of bed rather than eating. Scott points out, affectionately, that she has built a personal rule out of an observed pattern — which she cheerfully agrees she does constantly.
- Perimenopause introduced anxiety she had never had. She describes filling out endocrinologist stress questionnaires for decades and always answering that she wasn’t worried about anything — and then, around 44, noticing genuine anxiety for the first time. She also traces a strong family pattern of thyroid disease and celiac across siblings and cousins.
- Her biggest practical takeaway: tighten the alarms. On MDI she moved her high alert to 130 rather than 180, which lets her correct while a rise is still catchable instead of after it has already happened. Scott shares early results from the listener survey — among roughly ninety respondents, a median A1c drop of 1.3 points, and about 72% reporting fewer severe lows.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — the series Marla says to listen to even thirty-six years in.
- Listener survey — The survey Scott reads results from here; results at juiceboxpodcast.com/surveyresults.
- Juice Cruise 2027 — The third annual Juicebox community cruise, sailing July 2027.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:00
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Thirty-seven years, and the only one2:21
Hi. My name is Marla, and I have had type one diabetes for thirty seven years.
Thirty seven?
Yes.
When asked to choose a number between one and one hundred people most frequently, I answer 37.
No way.
Yeah. It's one of those weird little factoids. Don't know why it's
true. Really?
Yeah. I think
Well, maybe it's my lucky year then.
Hey. You know what? I appreciate that because my stuff's been going bad for me the last couple of weeks. And something no. It's okay.
Yeah. First of all, Mari, you're sweet, but I make a podcast. I'll be okay. Okay. It's not it's not like the sewer truck I worked with smells extra bad or something terrible.
I just you know, things are and and I got to a point where I started feeling like, can I not trust people anymore? Like, is this is it just me against the the world, that kind of thing? And I don't wanna feel that way. And then No. And then something happened this morning, and I was like, okay.
Well, me I'm gonna I told my wife. I'm like, I'm gonna just take this as a good sign, and I'm gonna move forward as if things are gonna be better. So
Good. So something good happened today.
I mean, somebody confounded expectations that were very low, but, you know, it's okay.
Oh, okay. Well, sometimes you have to start. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm I'm also trying to remember that to look forward.
Apparently, I look away from the mic a lot. I get a lot of complaints about that. I'm working on that.
Oh. Okay.
I'm trying to live over here, Mara.
Okay. Well, hey. That's all you can do.
Tell me, 37. And how old are you?
I am 46.
Finding it all a year ago4:01
That means you were nine when you were diagnosed.
I was eight. I was 8.5.
Alright. You could've just agreed. But okay.
Eight and a I know. Yeah. I could yeah. So I was eight. I didn't have anyone else in my family.
Still to this day, no one else both of my parents come from big families, lots of kids. I have lots of cousins, nieces and nephews, lots of great nieces and nephews on both sides. Still to this day, thirty seven years later, I am the only one with type one.
That's no fun. You needed a buddy.
Yeah. But that it's okay.
Yeah. You're wishing to love anybody?
Yeah. Well, after thirty you know, I wasn't introduced to the juice box podcast until just maybe a year. It was a little over a year ago. So after thirty six years of having this, I've just learned so much from the juice box community. So I'm glad to finally found this.
Oh, that's awesome. I just met a person this summer who's had diabetes for over fifty years. And Wow. I and I've I've I've I kinda told this story already on an episode, so I'll just, like, really, like, condense it down. Went on a cruise with a bunch of listeners.
Next cruise is July 2027 if you wanna come. Juiceboxpodcast.com/juicejuicecruise. And, anyway, this one person makes it onto the cruise. And I do this thing on the first day of the cruise. Like, anybody who's interested in meeting me, I like, you can pick up spot on the ship, and we'll, like, sit down and chat.
Right? So I am, like, ping ponging around the ship, meeting people, like, every fifteen, twenty minutes, half hour, whatever. And I sit down across from this lovely woman, and she's I said, are, you know, are you this person? She said her name, and I was like, okay. Good.
And she said, you're Scott. I was like, yes. And she said, can I ask a question? I was like, of course. She goes, how long have you had diabetes?
And I went and I went, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm like, is it not clear on the podcast that I don't have diabetes? And she goes, what podcast?
Oh, no.
And I was like, awesome. I was like, how did you I said, you. You're part of the Juice Cruise. Right? And she said, yeah.
I'm like, how did you get here? Oh my talking to people online. I heard about the cruise, and I thought it'd be great to come meet. She didn't know a soul on this cruise. She didn't know me.
She didn't know there's nothing. Anyway, at the end of it, she's like, I am so glad I found all this. And I am now watching her online be a part of the community. And, like and she said even after fifty years like, I I sat and watched her in a number of different, like, chats that we had, talks that we did throughout the cruise, and she's just taking notes and writing stuff down. She came over to me at one point and she said, I've learned something here today that I think will help me in my personal life, not even around diabetes.
Oh, that's so cool. How awesome. Yeah. That reminds me of me because I've learned so much. I'm like, wow.
I've been doing this. But
Can you articulate that for me, though? Like, how is that possible to live thirty six years or something and then run into more information?
Well, you know, it's it's a common theme, I feel like, throughout the Facebook page and the podcast, just all of the people that you interview and visit with. We learned things just by living with it, experimenting ourselves. You know, we kinda say we're, little science projects. And every day, you might do something well, okay. Every day, we don't do something new.
Every day, we do the same thing, same thing, same thing. And then maybe at one doctor's appointment or something we read, we might do something different and then think, oh, this is working better for me. Maybe if it would be and, you know, I started to split my bolus, not bolus, basal Basal. A year ago. Because I'm MDI.
Splitting a basal nobody mentioned8:12
I do take injections. I don't wear a pump.
Mhmm.
And so that was one thing that I started to do. I just started to kind of slowly move my basal half of it apart so that I wasn't going so low in the middle of the night. And that's something that I've actually struggled with, I would say, most of my journey. So I'm doing better with that now. I just, yeah, I read that someone said, well, you need to split your basal.
Okay. Well, I've never ever been told that.
Isn't that something? Yeah.
They always I don't know why. Why is it always before bed? I maybe it's because that's when we're taking medicine so we'll remember. Is it too hard for people to think, okay. I'm gonna take my bolus at noon every I mean, I know in the middle of the day, it does get crazy.
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You can also set your glucose target anywhere from 87 to 180 and adjust it for different times of day. So if mornings, workouts, schoolwork, 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 planned. 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. So you're saying you were you were shooting your bit your basal insulin at night and then getting hurt and getting a little bit
bed. Right. Before bed. And I know everyone says it never it doesn't peak. You're well
Well, why did you used to have highs in the morning?
Well, not necessarily. However, I do also have okay, and you can help me with this. I've heard you talk about, something you did, but I don't know that you actually explained what you did for Arden
Feet on the floor, and standing up to fix a low10:44
Go ahead.
When she she was going low in the middle of the night, I believe. And your her endo said, well, we need to drop her basal. And you said, no. Because then she's gonna be high during the rest of the day. And I that's exactly me.
I have my basal down packed. Like, I know I'm taking twelve units every single day. It it really doesn't well, I believe it is better for me to do it in the morning, but I need that twelve units. I am not dropping my basal, or I'm just gonna be high all the time.
Why why did you did you ever think, why don't I just move this to the morning, or did it take somebody, like, saying something out loud?
I think it it did take someone saying something out loud. Well, why are you going low in the middle of the night? You need to split it. And that has helped, but I do also have feet on the floor. So I don't know that I'm I'm I don't know that the time of my basal is causing me to be I'm really not high in the morning naturally.
Mhmm. However, my foot on the floor is wild. Like and I wish it's kind of weird because sometimes if I go low at another part of the day, I think, oh, I just need to stand up, and then that will treat it. I don't need to eat anything because in the morning
this by standing up.
So Exactly. That's exactly what I do every single morning. I might look at my phone first thing. I'll see, oh, okay. Well, I'm I might be in the high fifties.
My body likes to sleep low, and I don't know if that's just a cortisol thing. I but high fifties, sixties, I might see, okay, if I wake up 67, 68, and I think, okay. I I really just need to stand up, and that will take care of it. I really have to do nothing else. I don't need to ever eat.
I I I love that it feels like you've made up a rule to explain something that was happening to yourself.
I oh, I make up rules all the time. Every single day. Well They're real helpful too.
They're real. Are are they called coping mechanisms? Is that what you call them?
Maybe. That's not what I call them.
But No. But it's smart not to call them yourself if that's right. Marla, married, children, no married, no children, where you at?
Yes. I'm married. I've been married for twenty three almost twenty three years, and I have three children. Mhmm. And none of my children have type one.
Once again, no one else in my family. I'm the lucky one. So every time I tell people, every time when they get a little bit sick or under the weather and my children are deathly they're getting better in their age, but my children have always been so afraid of needles. And I know you've talked about Arden being afraid
Mhmm.
Of needles now, and I just ugh. I feel so bad for her. But, I have never I've never had that phobia. I don't know if that's just, you know, one way that the Lord was wiring me. I don't know, the preparing me.
I I don't know the reasoning behind that why I've never had that fear. I can just take a shot anywhere, anytime. I I watch it. You know, we take blood all the time since, we go to the doctor so frequently, but I've always I've never been afraid to watch. They'll always ask all of the lab techs will ask, would you like me to count?
Do you need to turn away? Do you need to lay down? No. I'll watch. I've just always I don't know.
You're okay
with that. But you have But my children are scared even though they've watched me take, you know, six shots a day.
How how old are they?
18, 14, and 10. Okay. They're all four years apart.
Great kids, Marley. You're not afraid of taking a shot.
No. Mhmm. No. I'm not.
Never anxious — until perimenopause14:55
Listen. I was gonna ask you, do you have anxiety?
I I naturally, I do not. I believe since I'm 46, I've had not a few my children are anxious. I have never been anxious in my entire life.
Mhmm.
However, I believe that perimenopause has caused some anxiety in me.
Okay.
And just in the last few years, I noticed it maybe when I was maybe 44 or so. I remember growing up, every time I went to my endocrinologist, we had a form that we had to fill out every single time. So four times a year, I'm filling out this paper, and you're filling out. It was the same thing. You fill out, like, a sample meal.
I don't know if anyone else in the world had to do this. Maybe this was just my crazy endo, but you would fill out how many, like, carbs each of your meal was, and you filled out, like, the whole meal. You filled out your entree, your sides, what you drank with that meal. You did breakfast. You did snacks, lunch, snack, dinner, bedtime snack.
And then there was a question underneath your meals that said, what did it say? It said, like, how would you rate your stress levels, I think is what it was called. Are you a little under stress, you know, moderate? You're worried all the time. And I always looked at that growing up and filling it out even through college, and I thought, I'm not worried about anything.
I mean, you know, I did have worries maybe now and then, but overall, I would just get up every day and not
Go a
lot.
Diabetes, as you know, comes with a lot of things to remember. So it's nice when someone takes something off of your plate. US Med has done that for us. When it's time for Arden supplies to be refreshed, we get an email. The email just rolls up in my inbox.
It's like, hey. This is, you know, time for your supply order. I don't exactly know what it says. Open the email. There's a big button.
I click on it. I reorder, and I'm done. Finally, somebody taking away a responsibility instead of adding one. And boy, oh, boy, has US Med done that for us. An email arrives.
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Yes. I and I I my children, they worry about things all the time and it you know, we we talk a lot through things like, what are you going to change by stressing out? I mean
I don't think stress works that way.
No. It doesn't. It just doesn't.
Do you worry about them worrying?
That's a good question.
I know. Also, here's one for you. Do do other people in your extended family have other autoimmune issues?
Thyroid, celiac, and the family pattern19:45
Yes. We have a lot. It's mostly thyroid.
Mhmm. Mostly Hashimoto's?
Yes. Yes. My sister was probably the first in our family and even and this extends to cousins also. My sister had thyroid cancer, and and this was back when and she was 17. This was back when it was pretty rare for thyroid cancer was rare, and it was rare for a teenager to have cancer.
In the grand scheme, probably not rare, but in our little we lived in a very small town in Western Kansas, and it just
I I I think I smell a little celiac in your family too. Am I right?
Well, you know, I don't know that anyone has I've been okay.
I'm bad. You got some poopers? You got people in the family all the time? Can I tell the story, Marla?
Maybe not that, but just like it oh, my stomach hurts. Like, my daughter can eat, and she has been tested because I'm like, okay. You've got this. We've gotta figure this out. She can know, but she we love carbs.
We love bread. We love tortillas. And she'll she loves bagels, and she'll get a bagel and say, I know this is gonna hurt my stomach, and I'm gonna eat it anyway.
Sounds like she has celiac. And then do do you have foot
on the floor,
or do you get, like, jacked up for the do you get jacked up for the day, Marla? Do you get, like, super, like
I'm sure I have foot on the floor. Yeah. But I'm
saying, what does it come from? Does it come from, like, the like, that's why I asked you about the anxiety or the depression.
Is it my cortisol? I I've just always I've just always read that, okay. That's your body's way of waking you up for the day. So your cortisol's raising. It's signaling your liver to release glucose.
Mhmm. Sometimes, though, people just are anxious about living. And when you're awake, you're of you're you're aware of it.
Okay. So maybe that's causing the rise.
I wonder I wonder about it further. Even, like, why do some people get, like why do their blood sugars drop when they fall asleep? Sometimes I think it's because they're not all, like, anxious anymore because they're asleep.
Well, that's what I've always thought. I've wondered about that. I thought, well and I'm since I'm not really well, maybe I am anxious, and I'm just hiding it and trying to say, I don't know, Scott.
How much ADHD
is in
the family?
Well, you know, I would not say that's a common
Okay.
I wouldn't say that's a common thing that we deal with. I think because once again, perimenopause, I believe I've struggled with it. Yes.
I I don't think you ladies are I don't think God meant for you guys to live this long.
No. Probably not. He's yeah. I've I swear. I'm hard I'm thinking, yeah.
What am I how much longer am I gonna be doing this?
I I I listen. I'm obviously joking on some level, but on another level, I do wonder if we're not in the middle like, I mean, we're living longer.
Yes.
And there's no I mean, listen. It is not that long ago that you started having, you know, your period, and it was time to get married.
Right.
You know? And then, you know, '35, you you have a problem, and you fall off the wagon train. Who knows what happens to you? You know, like, like, you know, that's all. Where where's your wife?
She went in the woods. She didn't come back.
And Oh, no.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, then, like, then you go find the lady whose husband died in a shootout. You marry her, and she takes care of your house. Like, you know, the world used to be different.
It did.
And now people are living longer and longer and longer, which is awesome. But I'm wondering, like, how many of these things are are women especially walking around with, like, in the past that we now know about? Like, you know Right. We used to listen. I'll I'll tell you something.
I feel terrible in in hindsight. We used to have a thing at our house that we called insane Sunday.
Okay? Because That sounds amazing.
Mhmm. Well, it's because my mom would talk all week about watching the Eagles game on Sunday.
Okay.
She would watch every little bit of, like, news, any, like, radio. My mom was queued into what was gonna happen with the Eagles on Sunday. She'd get up in the morning. She'd watch the pregame shows. And as they were kicking that ball off, she'd stand up and proclaim, no one helps me.
I have to do the laundry, and then she'd disappear into the basement for the whole thing and do the laundry.
Looking back and naming it24:35
Yes.
Yeah. That was insane Sunday. That was insane. Stare at each other, like, you know, a little scared, and I realize now that was probably menopause.
Oh, of course it was. Yes.
Yeah. Or or ladies walking around, like, with big distended bellies because they've got some, like, horrible growth in their uterus or something. And, like, fifty years ago, they'd just be like, sucks being a woman, doesn't it? Right? Now now now they do something about that.
And or if they did something about it back then, it was a hysterectomy where they cut you open, like, you know, like, they fall age open and, like, it's
Oh my
You know, now there's, like, arthroscopic, and you go through a little hole, and it's still hard to bounce back. I'm just saying it's hard being a woman.
Yes.
The only thing you guys have going for you is you get to hang out with us, and we're great.
I know. Right?
Oh, yeah.
Luck lucky us. We have you.
Arden says to me, it's hard being a woman. I was like, I know I live with you. She goes, that's not the same
thing. Exactly.
Anyway, it's tough.
It's tough. So I wonder if I'm walking around I don't think I'm anxious during the day. I'm not like like I said, I still I don't have that worksheet anymore that I have to fill out at the endo. That endo has passed. However
good since you stopped asking me. How's that?
I know. But I still think, how would I answer that question? Like, I've always I've looked at that, and I thought, I am not I of course, I have things that I have to deal with every day. Of course, I have their bills to pay that I think, well, how's that gonna get paid? But I but
I think there's a reasonable level of of anxiety and stress that goes along with, you know, being upright and being alive.
So I think, okay. At night, when I'm it's my favorite part of the day when I get in bed. I just love I love to sleep. I always have. I've just I've always been a napper.
I love to take naps. Yeah. Look, Scott. I was in my bed.
I you you're recording for your bed. My wife said this morning as I was getting out of bed, goes, I'm gonna lay here for a couple more minutes. I love this bed. And I was like, okay.
So I know. Isn't that the best? I'm just gonna yes. So I think, okay. That's my body's When I'm going low, even though I I really it's kind of crazy if you look at my graph.
It really is as pretty it's a steady line. It's not like I'm going into the low fifties or the forties, but it's just kind of a steady line sometimes in the higher fifties, in the sixties, and it's I I've always just kind of felt like, okay. That's my body's that's how I like to sleep. It's my body's way of just, okay. This is where we are.
We're not a care in the world now.
This is where my body likes to be.
Yes. It's
a I love your that's a silly thought, by the way. Your body is
there because
of the time at night you shot that basal insulin. How come you don't wanna pump?
Well, I've yeah. I I use the word neuro what is it? Neurodivergent with my children yesterday. I said, I think I'm neurodivergent. And they're like, what does that mean?
They should know because, you know, they're in the world. We're
not still in Kansas, though, aren't you?
Yeah.
Where are they gonna learn big words? Stop it. Go ahead.
Well, they're a little a little more connected.
I thought you were gonna
call have the inter we do have the Internet.
I thought you were gonna call your kids Hicks for a second. I was like, oh my god. Is she gonna that's gonna be awesome.
Well, one would love to be a Hick, my oldest one, but we're all pretty they're city kids. But, I just don't like I I'm okay with my my sensor attached to me. I'm okay with that. It took me a while, but I'm okay with that. I really just don't want anything attached to me.
Oh, you have a you have trouble with something to me. Hey. How many engineers in your family?
You know, zero. Okay. That's not how we work at all. That's
alright. Was just checking.
We're pretty
I was
just type b, pretty artsy, more
No disrespect to the engineers listening. I just thought it was a quick way to get to an answer. Oh. Oh, okay. So you don't like things touching.
Are you weird with clothing, textures?
Yes.
When you get out of the pool, do you have to dry off right away?
Yes.
Mhmm. I don't like getting out of pool and being wet. But I'm may I be honest? I'm better at it now that I've lost weight.
Oh, okay. Yeah. That's good to know.
I used to get out of pool and be like, oh, I have to dry off. Now I don't feel the same way anymore.
Oh, okay. Yeah. When my husband yes. I'm big on textures. When my husband and I walk through a store Oh, Marty, you and I have this touch.
Yeah. Everything.
I touch every I have to I have to physically put my hands on every piece of clothing, pillow, blanket, and my husband's like, why are you touching everything? I'm like, I don't know. I just I wanna touch it. I wanna feel what it feels like.
To a store, I touch every piece of clothing that I'm interested in, not everyone I walk past.
Oh, okay.
So are you touching everything even if it's like like a cup
or something? Even yeah. Even if I didn't like how it looked, like, it if it felt good to me, I might wear it. I might or I might just wanna try it on. Say, okay.
This transcript into AI later and find out what's wrong with you in, like, two seconds.
No. Yeah. Please do.
Would you wanna know?
I don't know. But, yeah, I do. Okay. Don't know. Back to the weight loss, Scott.
I know I know. I wanna thank you. I know you've you've been a big, supporter of GLTs. What did Scott do?
Tell everybody, Marlo. Did I say
to You said you lost weight. Yes.
I I know.
Thank you for Thirty we can go back to thirty six years of type one on insulin alone
Mhmm.
With my finger pricks and my sensor. I've worn my sensor. I do wear it every day. I always take my shots. I've never I could probably count on one hand over those thirty seven and a half years how many shots I've missed just by mistake, whatever, leaving the house and not doing my basal.
I could I mean, it's probably been maybe four times in my entire life.
Yeah. You are you're diligent. And Because of your neurosis.
Still. Still. I've just never been that awesome. I've never had an awesome a one c, but, I have I started I started Mounjaro a year ago. And, I mean, I've I'd only listened to you maybe for a few months, and I thought, well, they might be onto something.
Okay. And I just started researching and seeing other type ones that were using them and thought, well, I mean, I really could stand to lose a few pounds, and I'd like to see what it does for my blood sugars. So I asked my endocrinologist at that time. She said, no way, no how. There's she told me there was a shortage of Mounjaro at the time.
This was in I know I realize now that there might really have been a few years ago, but this
up. Is They they they opened up new production facilities. Hey. Before you tell the story,
can I Okay?
Can we pause for half a second? I'd like to say something out loud.
Yes.
Hey, Eli Lilly. Where are my ads? What are you doing? Let's go. I'm out here spreading the gospel.
I'd like I'd like to get paid. I just wanna be clear.
Oh my goodness. Eli Lilly, please. Deserve it,
Eli Lilly. I it's I don't my rights are reasonable. Let's let's get on board here. Actually actually, you know what? There there's a lot of, they're doing a lot of, what they call, testing
on the the pipeline. I've them.
It's a common Well But go ahead. So wait. So I I said go ahead and wait in the same sentence. My communication skills are fantastic today. So you're telling me that you've been listening to this podcast for how long?
At this point, fifteen months. I would say fifteen months.
Okay. And you're saying that you've had diabetes for thirty six of the thirty six years prior to that, and you you're very diligent about taking your shots, but your a one c's have never been awesome. What have they been?
I would say they've been in the eights. Yes.
Okay. And
The Pro Tip series, thirty-six years in33:16
Except when I was pregnant. Okay. I will when I was pregnant, I was very diligent about checking that that's my always been my issue is checking my blood sugars. Now I did listen to the pro tip when I started, I listened to the pro tip series, and I appreciate that series so much. Even if you've been doing this game for thirty six years, Please listen to the pro tip series.
I heard you say that over and over, so I'm like, okay. I'm I took a trip to Oklahoma to visit my sister. I said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna listen to the pro tip even though I think I know everything. I'm surely there's something else that I'm missing.
So, you know, in the pro tip, I learned to tighten up my alarm my custom alarm settings on my CGM. So that's what I did. I tightened those up. I lowered my high alarm. You know, I'm just walking around doing life, taking my shots whenever I eat, and still, you know, spiking.
So I learned that when you're correcting at a 160, a 180, when it's going off, it's too late. So I do appreciate that. Thank you for teaching us that.
Marla, you're very welcome. I I wanna get to a number of these things here. What's your a one c today?
Today, it is 6.2.
Okay. And how much weight have you lost?
I've lost 65 pounds.
I I can may I say first of all, congratulations. That's wonderful.
Thank you.
You're very welcome. You must be thrilled.
Yes. I'm happy.
I I just saw you by the way, you popped up on camera when we first started. You do not, as the kids would say, code as somebody who used to be heavier. Like, I couldn't No.
Like, when I tell them
looking at you.
No. You wouldn't probably if I were to tell people that know me, they would probably be blown away by that because I don't I and I'm short. I'm only five two. So I'm yeah. I carry like, yeah.
I mean, that's like, sixty five pounds for someone that's five two.
Yeah. It's possible you should only weigh sixty five pounds. Yeah. I'm sure. I mean,
that's far off. Right?
But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Almost. When you look at the whole those dumb BMI charts, yeah, that's the numbers are ridiculous. But, anyway, I but I I really didn't have I never had a goal. I just thought, well, I just I shouldn't be I shouldn't be up where I am, and I've just got to do something after I had my I've always just I've never been, okay, I've maybe never been obese, but I've always been, I would say, after I turned probably 10 years old, I've just always been bigger than all of my peers.
Dying to know which were where you were gonna go. Pleasantly plump, chunky?
How I don't even know that I would consider myself chunky. Like, even through school or high school
Extra weight. I was It felt like you had extra weight.
Yes. Extra. Always extra. So, but, I mean, I've always I I did sports in schools, but never, like, I wouldn't ever say seriously, but I've always moved. I've always gone for walks with my family
Yeah.
Ridden our bikes.
You you're fairly active, but it didn't matter. You always
just got extra weight. Always. And I've never felt I know, diabetics always say that we're hungry because we we're missing we're also missing is it called amylin? Right. Another thing I learned from the Juice Box podcast and the group is I've never ever heard that in my life.
Never seen that word. How much I've charged you to listen to the podcast this last year?
Oh, like, so much. I but it's it's been worth it. No. You know what?
It just sucks
the podcast.
It's a free podcast, Theory.
Free is not cheap, but it's free.
It's not cheap, but it's free. But I I my point is is that this is a free this is a free thing.
Like Absolutely. I mean, you think about how how much how many co pays did I pay for thirty six years? How
Not one of the say it. Not one of those. Son of the bitches helped you. Right?
What actually moved the needle38:01
Well
Go ahead.
No. I mean, the so what you would say is that they had they had the script pad on their desk, and that's what they had. They had the script pad and were able to write me my prescriptions every single time.
Marla, did people tell you you were doing well? With an eight with an eight a one c. Did the doctor go, good job?
Well, I mean
Or did they tell you, hey, Marla.
Pull it together
and you
do I'll be honest. They were always saying pull it together. I mean, I was but I was I was trying. I was I've never eaten terribly. I've okay.
Back to the amylin. I've never walked around hungry. I've never walked around being like, oh, I just I can't get enough. I need more I need more food. I've I feel like I've always had a balanced diet, but I yeah.
But yeah. The weight and the blood sugars just are always always all over the place.
Marla, after a year of Scottie's free expert tutelage, okay, what is it you've learned in the last year that you didn't know for the 36 previous?
Well, I learned that I there is a better way, and that it it's not necessarily I know that a lot of times we might say in diabetes that you can do the same thing every day and get different results the next day. Well, there usually is a reason, and you might not find the reason, but there's a there is an answer for it. Yeah. What I mean by that what I mean by that is that, you know, I I so, like, my foot on the floor. I have gone around for, what, how many years?
And I'm seeing that graph go from maybe, let's say, seventy, and I won't do anything for an hour. I'll start to get ready for the day. I'll be in my bathroom. I'll take my shower. I'll do my makeup, my hair.
I'll put my jewelry on. I'll get dressed, and then I'll look at my graph, and I will be, not kidding, close to 200.
Mhmm.
So after listening to the juice box, I saw people talking about dawn phenomenon and foot on the floor. I never knew that it was called that.
Does it matter that it was called something, or does it matter that it matters that somebody said, oh, that happens to me too, and here's what I do.
What mattered to me is that, okay. This is why it's happening. This is your cortisol releasing glucose. You need a correction for that. And I saw someone else say, I just take a couple units in the morning first thing when I wake up.
Or if they'll they'll have their pump settings, you know, I'll just start to dose myself before I get out of bed. So I start I did start doing that. So as soon as I wake up, I just go to the bathroom. Before I do anything, I will just give myself a unit in the morning. And by the time I'm done getting ready, that graph looks much better.
If I correct at a 120, that's gonna because I know I'm shooting up. I I I'm not gonna normally correct in the middle of the day at a 120. But if I'm got extra cortisol waking me up in the morning, getting me ready for the day, telling my liver to release glucose, I mean, that's one thing. I'm like, I don't need that extra glucose. I think I can get up on my own, but maybe I do.
I don't know. Because I'm not a morning person. However, I'm gonna have to correct for it, and it's
What does that mean you're not a morning person?
Well, I okay. My husband is a morning person. So he gets up. He starts rambling off all these thoughts, all these questions. He gets ready for the day.
I'm still in bed, and he'll come to me, and he will say, how does this look? He wants to know every day how he looks. Does my beard he's growing a beard, and it looks really good, and I love it. But he'll say, okay. Did I trim it okay?
I don't have my glasses on yet. Mhmm. I'm blind. I cannot see anything. He knows this, and I just I'll just look.
I don't even open my eyes. I'll just look his way and and give him a thumbs up because I can't I can't even function to open my mouth. I'll just kinda give him a thumbs up, and that'll let him know, okay. Yeah. I'm all good.
And that'll be good enough
for Yesterday, Arden said to us this is probably too much private information, but whatever. Arden said to us, I'm glad I grew up with a dad and a brother in my house because now that I'm dating someone, I know to expect the stupid stuff that he does.
That's a Yes. The stupid stuff. But, you know, my husband, he I scared him once. He used to check my blood sugar. Before I was wearing my CGM, he would check my blood I had a really bad low a year after we were married.
And after that, he physically checked my blood sugar every single morning before he left for work when I was still in bed to make sure I was okay. Mhmm. And he would make oh, he he's well, he saved me several times, you know, before my CGMs when he's
had that. Taking these kids, Marla. He's like, I'm
not Well, that's true too.
He's like, I can't do all this myself. It's not
eight Yes.
It's not eighteen seventeen anymore. I can't just go find some lady whose husband got shot in a shootout in a bar and just take her home. So I got I'm gonna have to keep Marla alive.
Yes. Yes. That's mostly it. He does love me, but yes. That's yes.
He's thinking He does not know where the coffee is. Who's gonna pick these kids up from school? Who's gonna take them to practice?
I don't wanna talk to them all day long.
Oh, no. Well, he's a talker. He would love to talk to them. But yes.
Marla, I'm learning from you, and and I appreciate this. And I'm letting this unfold on purpose the way it is because I what I'm learning from you is that while you can't sit here and specifically articulate exact things that have happened, not happened, gotten better, gotten worse, What what I've learned is is that finding this community, listening to this podcast has somehow changed your a one c almost two full points in a year after having diabetes for thirty six years, and it doesn't actually matter that you don't know exactly what happened.
Yes.
Yeah. That's what I'm hearing. And I and I love that. And I'll tell you because I I took a I did something that I don't usually do. Scottie took a little siesta yesterday for a few hours, and, I got in my car, and I drove a couple hours to a friend's and hung out with him for a little bit.
Actually, his name is Frank Payne. If you're looking for really unique reptiles living art by Frank Payne, I'll throw that in there. And Frank and Frank and I hung out for a while at his his breeding facility, and we just looked around at his stuff and chatted and everything. We're we're, like you know, we have a lot in common. We're like minded people.
I just took my mind off this podcast and my life and everything for a couple of hours. And on the way home, I started thinking about it again because, you know, it's time to get back to work. And I got really just, like I don't know. I I I I started feeling a lot of weight around, I don't wanna be boring here. So let me try to do this really quickly.
Okay? I have a weird job that relies on the platforms of social media companies for its distribution. And so they can change how they distribute or change what they value, and they do that all the time. And at the moment, you know, some of it values quick and new and vapid. The the average view time on a on a on an Instagram Reel is something like four seconds.
Wow. You can't even start people are scrolling that quickly. Right? Do you know how long you have to watch a YouTube video to get a view on it? No.
I think it's three seconds. Three. So someone's running around. I wanna make sure I'm right about that, but someone's running around right now telling you that they have 10,000, 15,000, a million views on their YouTube channel. Okay?
And what they have is at least three seconds. How long do you have to watch a YouTube video to register as of you? I'm pretty sure it's okay. I'm sorry. Thirty seconds.
A YouTube video, you need to watch for thirty seconds for the registers of view. So somebody puts up a twenty minute video, a forty minute video, and after thirty seconds, somebody's like, I don't care about this anymore. And they say, that's a view. And then those people are out there, you know, in the world trying to sell their views to other companies or device manufacturers or whatever, like and it's just it's a nonstop pressure. And in a world where those videos are often about, like, did you hear there's a new pump coming out in in in Lithuania?
Like, you know what I mean? Or, like, we're we're go we're all cured. Everybody's cured. They're they're all leaning into that right now. Like, Elenon trial, you're all cured.
I'm like, 12 people. 12 it's 12 people. Yes. Yeah. It's awesome, but it's we're not all cured.
Okay?
That's why all those videos say, you must watch until the end.
Yeah. Then when they watch
until the end of
day, I can sell an ad on this is what
they need.
Okay? And so that's the world we live in. I am doing long form conversations for adults. Okay? It's a hard thing to sell excitingly out into the world, but I need people to buy ads on it so I can make it.
Know that you all won't believe this, but I do spend about sixteen hours a day making the podcast. And it's it's an overwhelming thing to do by myself. And I love it, but I need to I I also have electric and, you know, like, my grass grows and my my family seems hungry. Like, stuff like that. You know?
Right. And and so I I'm coming home yesterday and I'm starting to think about all that again. And I'm I'm getting frustrated. And I'm just like, why? This is not the I don't wanna play this stupid game.
Like, how is it possible I'm involved in this? Like, I how is it possible I live in a world where, you know, every five seconds, a new pretty face wearing an insulin pump or CGM is bouncing through their Instagram reel trying to get famous or get paid or whatever, and then they're gone six months later. And then I had I had somebody come up to me recently, and they're like, hey. How are you? And I was like, I I'm I'm I'm good.
How are you? And and the person's like, you know me. And I went, I I don't. And and and they're like, no. No.
I'm I'm like you you would know me from, like, TikTok and Instagram. And, I'm a diabetes influencer. I'm like I'm like, I'm so sorry. Like, you seem like a lovely person. I do not know who you are.
And and No. And I don't I don't I don't wanna be involved in that world.
Right.
But I somehow am. Right? And and and and I just I wanna have long conversations with people that leave a lady named Marla, thirty six years into diabetes with a six two a one c and a new understanding of her health. And that's what I wanna do. I don't wanna bounce my ass on TikTok.
Why he won’t chase the algorithm50:21
Okay? Not that that I think that would work, but, like, I don't wanna be in I don't wanna be in I promise you that wouldn't work. But I don't wanna be involved in that game. But the problem is that the people that I cater to, which I would say are people who are not scrolling TikTok, generally speaking, or not just wanting to be yelled at that there's a new CGM coming, or aren't you mad at how bad your CGM is? Or, like, you know, that I whoever those that click baity rage stuff.
These adults don't understand how this system works. So they don't like, they don't share, they don't comment because they don't realize that that's the only thing keeping this moving. And then I'm stuck saying that out loud, I sound like a whiny bitch when I say that then. And I don't like that either. So I would rather just sit here quietly and not say anything except that when I was driving home yesterday, I took the time to I mean, I had something read it to me.
Just wanna be clear. I wasn't driving and reading at the same time. But I was on a long drive, and I just recently put out a survey to the to the Facebook community about what the podcast is
Yes. I saw the survey.
If you haven't taken it, please do. Okay?
Okay. Can I say something?
Please.
I I filled it all out. I will I will finish it. And then it went to I I think I had to email it to you. Mhmm. And when I went to email it, it asked for my I am so old that I have Hotmail, and I didn't know my password to my email.
And it made me log in to my Hotmail. I promise. Oh, gosh. Sounds good. You could have just hit it.
There's a copy button at the end too if you just wanna make your own email. You could have hit
com Shoot. You had to read. I know. I Okay. This is awful.
Okay.
I will do But the you're
also I will go back and do it.
Barlow, also making my point, and I appreciate that.
Okay? It's That it was a roadblock, and I was like, okay. Well, I've got kids that need to be picked up. I've got something in this stuff.
I care about your children, Marla. I'm trying to make a podcast
over. Okay?
Now I'm
gonna everyone else is gonna suffer today. I'm gonna get that survey done. So Kids, I mean, my son might not get to go to football, but I'm gonna get that survey.
That's between you and Jesus. You help me. Okay?
Okay. I will.
So of the so far, I'm looking at it right now. So right now, we have a 143 responses. It's only been up for a day or so. Okay?
Right.
Right. We got a 143 responses, and it's got a bunch of it's a very simple thing to take. But here's what I'd like to highlight of the 140. Of the 143 responses, 90 people reported their properly reported their a one c change. So the median chain the median number for the podcast for these 90 people is they came in at a median 7.4 and they're down to a 6.1.
But I can see I can see all 90 of them on a graph. They have come in from between 15, okay, and a 5.2. Wow. At least 90 people. The person who came into this podcast with a 5.2 now has a 4.8.
And the person that came into the podcast with a 15 now has a six two. And everywhere in between, 12 to six two, 10 to eight two, eight to five nine. I I literally can't read all 90 of them to you. Right? And and then I said, okay.
I know I'm doing a good job, but I can't stand that that goddamn algorithm, like, helps people to be popular when they're just yelling, aren't you mad at your CGM falling off? Or don't aren't you excited that we're all gonna be cured? And I'm like, goddamn it. Like, don't use social media trends to attract people with type one diabetes and then not help them afterwards. Like, do something for them.
Like, that's how I
feel about
it. Okay? Well, between whatever. Okay. But I have it read things to me.
Like and so ninety nine of the hundred and forty three people also put in, like, kind of little testimonials or stuff like that and and I'll and checked off that it was okay to use their name, like, to make it public.
Yes.
And as it was reading them, Marla, I started to cry in my car. Oh. Because I was like, my god. And I don't usually think about it like this. I try really hard not to think about it like this because I don't I don't I don't know what it is about me.
I don't wanna think of I know what it does. I know what the podcast does. I don't like thinking about it. I don't I don't have good self esteem around it or some I don't know. I don't have a therapist.
Okay? But, like, it makes me uncomfortable to know that I'm doing a nice thing for people. But I but I I have to absorb it sometimes because I'm looking at this other crap and it's starting to get to me. And I started realizing, like like, I don't know. I didn't start realizing.
It's the thing I know. You kinda have to remind yourself of it. Is that the external stuff doesn't really matter. I I know what it's actually doing. And to hear people talk about like everything from pain to blood sugars to more stability to their children being happy, to them being happy.
And I thought, I am doing the right thing. Why won't these algorithms like, why won't they help once in a while positive stuff? But they're not going to. Like, it it just is not gonna happen. That's not how it works.
But hearing your story, I realized, like, you easily could have been in this this grouping, and I wouldn't have known right You you know? Anyway, I I'm glad you're doing better.
You you know what Thank you. Yeah. I am too. And, you know, I just listened yesterday to you reposted your episode with
Kent.
Mister Kent. Yes. And I I mean, this yeah. Talk about algorithms. I'm in Wichita, Kansas.
Oh. Kent was in Emporia, Kansas, I believe. He's he talked a lot about Northeast Kansas. Like and I believe he was in Emporia because that's where, like, all the big, the dirt bike races were that he would
He's talking about.
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
I've never heard of him in my life. In my life, I've lived in this state. I've lived an hour and a half away from him. Never once knew who this man was. So I just appreciate all that he did.
That's awesome. Amazing. And I remember you telling him about the sign language episodes? Was it the what were you putting in sign language?
Was it the pro tip? Yeah. I did the bowl. I had a a really beautiful person do the bowl beginning series in ASL.
And you and then you had, someone else contact you and ask you if their brother if you had anything for her brother to maybe see, and you said, actually, yes. I do. Yeah. So, I mean, I know you know. You were you lit got to listen listen to everyone's stories yesterday, and so that's amazing.
But these are these aren't just numbers. These are these are people. These are eight year olds. They're 10 year olds. They're 36 year olds that have, you know, been given a chance to live a better way.
I also would like to say that I don't begrudge anybody trying to make a living or doing anything. And if you like, I I'm just not gonna do it. Like, I'm not gonna I am not gonna put a camera six inches from my face and scream into it, and then try to get you upset or excited about a new CGM or a new pump or whatever thing because that's what people care about. They care about new new tech. You know what I mean?
Maybe for some people, that's what they need to see and hear, but not every obviously, for all of your listeners. And you're reaching parents. You're reaching, you know, old. Well well Not all of them are old, but
you're telling you this this response from this from from the survey tells me that it's pretty equal. Like, the the listeners are pretty equal parents and adults.
That's amazing.
It leans a tiny bit towards parents.
Yes. Okay.
But not as much as you think. Because online, what I've learned is that online, parents are are more likely to speak online, but it doesn't mean that the other people aren't there.
Okay. Yeah. Sure.
So I don't know. Again, I feel bad. Like, I'm not denigrating anybody. I just it's not for me. It it
It's hard to understand. I think in possibly thirty, forty, fifty years, we might understand a bit better what's going on right now with all of this. Yeah. But when we're in the thick of it right now, we just don't And I don't I don't know the answer. I'm with you.
We one thing that we like to do as a family, we're real exciting over here. We will sit. There's five of us. So there's my husband and I and our 18, 14, and 10 year olds. So we have a a pretty wide range
Mhmm.
Of people ages what's going on in life. And we will sit, and my daughter and I or we have a couple groups. I have a group. I have a TikTok group with my son and my daughter who are both teenagers, and then I have a group with just my daughter and I. And we'll play our group or we'll play our group, our family text messages, just the reels that we've sent each other.
So we'll sit in our living room, and we will airplay all of those and just watch them all together because
That's smart.
Sometimes my kids don't watch what I'm sending them. So we'll we'll sit down, and we'll just play them, and we'll just laugh. And we'll see which ones they really like, and my husband and I will look at each other and say, that was so stupid. What in the world? And then my daughter will play one that I sent to them, and this is exactly what you're saying.
She will not she'll play the first two seconds and move on. And I'm like, wait. You didn't get to the good part. It was gonna get good. It was really funny.
Yeah. I Listen.
She's like, no. That was dumb.
Think it's I don't think it's it's I was I was complaining to my wife when I got home. She's a captive audience. She can't get away. And and I and I said, look. I know we all know at this point that that these algorithms are like, they're hijacking our brains.
And and I know we know and that no one's stopping. I was like, but there are some people who aren't. But I just I feel very badly about like, Marla, be be serious for a second. Imagine now that you know what you know that you've learned over the last twelve months. Imagine you didn't know about it, but you can comment on on that Marla who'd who never knows, who's walking around with an eight a one c, who's walking around sixty five pounds heavier.
Like, can you imagine what happens if you don't intersect good information that's easy to digest, easy to put into practice, didn't cost you any money?
Right.
Right? Like, what what where are you today without? I I I don't wanna say it like this, but where are you today without finding that podcast?
Well, that's I don't know. I mean, I do know I probably just don't wanna face it.
It's sad. Right?
It is. Yeah. And
and you live like that a long time needlessly because I've been making this podcast for twelve years. Like, that'll don't think about that. That'll make you sad. Okay? But, like, imagine all the you found it.
You're you're yay. But what about the other people who instead of finding this today, who could make the statements you're making a year from now, are instead watching two diabetes influencers argue with each other on TikTok.
Right. Not helpful.
Right? It sad. Makes Like, you've you've you've found a platform. I'm not saying anything special. By the way, I see other influence out there ripping my stuff off word for word.
So they're trying. Those ones, god bless them, I guess, are trying to get good information out there. Also, you could have figured out a way to say it on your own, but fine. Take my words. Whatever.
But, like but my god. Like, is it that important to get your stupid video up to a certain number of freaking views so you can call some company and tell them you want a couple of thousand dollars to put an ad on their thing? Or whatever it is you're planning on doing with your dude your dude are you trying to get YouTube videos up so you can do this or that? Like, is that really what, like, this is? Like, you know what I mean?
Because I don't know. I I I I just just help. Like, I I I was sat in front of a few people who are diabetes influencers two weeks ago, and they said, do you have any advice? And I realized they were looking at me like I was Yoda, and not that I was all knowing, but that I was incredibly old. I I know that I know they were like, oh, this old guy's been doing this for a long time.
Maybe he knows something. And I said to them, stop what you're doing right now and try to help people instead, and then actually help them. And then once they're helped, they'll they'll continue to watch your thing, and they'll tell other people about it. And I was like, but if you don't do that, six to twelve months from now, a new you is gonna be standing here asking me this same question. You are gonna be gone.
Right. But some of them happen forever. Some of them, Scott, aren't eve even able to help. I don't think that I think they need the help as much. I'm I don't know ever.
For some people, that's the situation. But, like, but then find the thing you're good at that you it doesn't have to be the thing I'm doing. Like, you find another way to help people. Like and it's not helpful to them to, like, have your pump fall off, and then you pick your camera up and go, oh my god. I hate diabetes.
My pump fell off again. Like, blah blah blah. Right. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. That happens sometimes. Like, way to way to record the one time your pump fell off in the last six months. Great. Yeah.
You know, like, everybody's pump falls off sometimes. And and and but just try not to make it feel like it's happening constantly because there are some people who think, oh my god. This pumps fall off all the time. No. No.
They don't. Like like, stop. Or or you know what I mean? Like, my CGM's always wrong. I'm gonna die because my CGM's always wrong.
That's a great thing to run around. Why don't you tell them to hydro themselves or explain to them how to put it on so it works better? Or you you know I mean? Like, I don't know. Anyway.
Alright. Marley, here's what I need from you.
Okay. What?
I need you to get over your sensory thing because I think you would love a pump.
Yeah. I know.
I don't care which one. That's not my point. And, but I I think you might maybe not. Maybe you're gonna be an MDI for life person. But, I mean, think
think I could okay. If I did wear a pump, do you think I could just turn do you just turn the basil off at night so I didn't go low?
The part nobody sees1:05:42
Oh, my. I love that you don't even know what the hell you're talking about. Sweetheart, there's a there's a I know.
There's a sleep mode.
Right? No. No. They're they're all automated at this point. They take and give away basil all day long.
They're all it's always adjusting your basil.
Well, I know that. I know that much.
Okay. I gotta get you out of Kansas. Wait. When's the last time you left Kansas?
Oh, two weeks ago.
Wait. But would you go to, like, Missouri or something like that, or where'd you go?
Oklahoma. Oklahoma. That doesn't count.
I love that you said my kids are city kids. Trust me. They're not. Okay. Yeah.
I know. We talked about this, like yeah. We were talking about cities. I was talking, I think, to my daughter because she loves she loves the country. She would love to live on a farm, but I'm like, Reese, you can't like, you need a Target and a Chick fil A.
She's like, yeah. I do need a Target and a Chick fil A.
Marla, I'm gonna share something. I don't share a ton about my personal life all the time, like but and because everybody takes everything and tries to make a judgment about what it is, but here we go. Okay. I was at the the new record holding largest comedy show that's ever existed last week.
Seriously? Which one
I'm talking about? No. No. I saw Shane Gillis at the at at Lincoln Financial Center. My son
No way.
My son and I went.
Oh, how fun. We love Shane Gillis
at our came out. Who else was there? The guy he does this podcast with who I no offense, Matt, but not funny. But also put in a Tony?
No. Kill Tony?
No. No. No. Matt McCusker, maybe.
Oh, okay.
He was the opener. In fairness to him, he came out right after Meek Mill sang.
So Okay.
This thing was, like, Jason Kelce opened the show. Actually, that's not true. Bam Margera opened the show by making an announcement live
No way.
To video things. Then then Jason Kelce came out, opened up the show. Then Meek Mill came out and performed. Then Matt and, again, Matt, you know, I I don't know your comedy, but that it wasn't great, man. And then k.
And then Jay Oakerson came out who was funny from the from the jump, from word one till the end. He was super comfortable. I wanna keep you in mind that we were in a stadium. They sold 77,000 tickets.
Woah. I believe
73 and a half thousand showed up.
I believe Shane my daughter okay. So we love comedy. We watch a lot of comedy also as a family. And I believe my daughter was just telling me that I believe Shane has the record for maybe it was this, the
most He does. And I was there.
Sold oh my goodness. So 77,000. That's amazing.
Yeah. So so then Shane came out and performed. Then Shane brought out Dave Chappelle.
Oh my.
They didn't perform. They just talked for a while. And then you realize they were just chatting because because three six five mafia was gonna come out and do a concert afterwards. And I was like, what is happening? It was insane.
It was really just crazy. I this woman was dancing in front of me during three six five mafia who I later found out was Tiffany Haddish. I was like Aw. But I was
like In front of you?
Listen. This was my Christmas present. I I I don't I'm gonna say this because I don't want people to, like, think that this is happening all the time in my life because it's not. I do nothing ever. My wife overspent on this.
I was in the first row of the Shangillas thing. Aw. So and it was an in the round thing, so it was a square stage. So in fairness, there were four sides to a pretty big stage. There were a lot of people in the first row.
But we were first row. There's a girl up against the stage dancing like crazy during three six five mafia. And then later, I was like, that was Tiffany Haddish. The
guy Tiffany.
That she it was it was my point is is that your daughter has never seen 73,000 people together in one place.
Right. No. She would
and it was
Actually well, I don't know how many I don't know how big Arrowhead Stadium is, but she has been there.
Yeah. I'm we were down on the I was basically sitting at the 50 yard line at Lincoln Financial Center.
Wow. Was That's cool.
Awesome. It took us hours to get out of there afterwards. I've never seen the streets around the stadiums as filled with people as it was afterwards. People were just milling around every which way. Point point being is that there's no way that there's that many people that even live in Kansas.
No.
But that's okay. That's how we like it.
I like it. Also, I would prefer to live
big city.
I would prefer to live on a I would prefer to live in the middle of nowhere too.
Would you okay. How's your how's your or have you
talked to
your wife into moving yet? I know you've talked a lot about Yes. Moving south.
So Kelly is recuperating from a procedure. Okay. And people are gonna be like just laughed. I thought people are gonna think she got a boob job or something. But she she had a growth she had to have taken out.
Like, she's okay. Okay. And and so that would be her thing to say, not mine. But she had a she had a a surgery that takes a while to recover from. She's in the middle of the recovery.
We think that she's gonna be okay to travel in another week or so. So we're trying to make space to go do this because this is a thing she's never even seen before. So we wanna take a little road trip and look around in a few places. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that because if she goes back to work but trust me. She's going back to work.
But nobody nobody rides for free, Marla. Okay? Right. But but we I if she goes back to work before we're able to take this trip, it's gonna be much more difficult for me to get her on
the trip.
So I'm trying to, like, get her recuperated enough where she can take a car ride and and go look around.
Okay.
So we'll
I will pray for Kelly that she has speedy recovery, but that not too speedy that she heals correctly.
Yes. Yeah. No. She's doing I I was just telling her yesterday. She looked yesterday for the first time, she looked a little brighter.
Her energy was better, yeah, even towards the end of So the it's just hard to you know, you get older and you gotta do stuff and hard to bounce back. So I don't know if that's gonna happen or not, but I'm still I'm still doggedly going after it.
That's exciting.
And I am happy that I told this story about going to the concert. There's such a good photo of me and my son that I wanted to share. And I and I didn't share because I don't want people to think that they understand my politics because of a comedy show that I went to.
Oh, okay. Yes. You know what I mean?
Yep. Because y'all don't understand my politics. I promise you. Right. No matter what you
And that's okay. We don't need to understand.
You really don't. Also, I I've learned from making a podcast that if you like me, you just assume I agree with you politically. That's the thing that happens when you're listening to somebody like this. Yes. If you don't like me, you assume I I think opposite of you.
Yes.
Because I've watched people do it online. It's pretty fascinating.
Yep. I've seen that too. Mhmm. But I do appreciate, yeah, how you, manage the group and
Thank you.
Keep us in line and keep it yeah. Let's you know, we all yeah.
No. I do listen. I don't get enough credit for how good I am at that.
Actually, really do. You you do a good job.
Don't worry.
I'm giving you credit. Thank I see it.
Well, let me tell you a couple things then. We'll wrap up with this, but this is some pretty interesting stuff from that survey. And please, everybody go take the survey. It's gonna stay up. It's juiceboxpodcast.com/survey.
It literally takes five minutes. It's set up really well. It's easy to go through. Where impact lands with people? Confidence with insulin timing and dosing, eighty seven percent of respondents said that it improved.
They also said that glucose management a one c time and range improved. Eighty six percent said that. Seventy eight percent said I feel less alone. Sixty one percent said I have less fear of anxiety about diabetes. Forty nine percent say I have more confidence as a caregiver.
I'm better prepared for medical appointments. Forty one percent. I'm more flexible. Thirty nine percent. I have less diabetes.
Distressed. Thirty eight percent. Fewer severe lows. Thirty three percent. Better sleep.
What the listener survey says1:14:21
Twenty eight percent. Where did what drove my impact? Mostly the podcast, 45%. Both the podcast and the Facebook group, 42%. Mostly the online community, 9%.
I'll tell you that meant a lot to me because I have so far only announced the survey on the online community. And so that I only put it there and haven't talked about it in the podcast yet, but to find out that only 9% of them really can give the credit to just the online and not the podcast made me feel good because I always think that those people aren't listening.
Yes.
Median a one c change for those 90 people, 1.3. I altogether, your a one c's would drop to an average of 1.3. A one c points for those 90 people combined, 192.4 points have dropped of of all of you guys. Time and range climb to time and range in excuse me. Fifty six of seventy with both their step with their CGM estimates, 80% of those people's time in range has gone up.
Severe lows decreased six seventy two percent of respondents said their severe lows have decreased. It's pretty freaking awesome.
Yes. It is.
Lot more data here about it, but and I'm not giving myself the credit. I'm saying that I think that having a place to talk about it, having a group of like minded people who all understand the basics, and having a place where you can sit long form, listen, learn, and apply is really, really important for people. I'll stop joking for a second. This is incredibly, like, valuable. And and anyway, I I mean, if it was as easy as me just bouncing my ass, I would do it.
But I don't think that's not gonna help. You know what I'm saying?
Yes. Well, it's been incredibly valuable to me. Like I said, I I started to make a change when I listened to the pro tip series. I really did. That was before I began the Mounjaro.
Tightening the alarms1:16:22
I started to lower my a one c that way because I lowered my the biggest takeaway for me being MDI was that I needed to tighten up my CGM alarms. So Yeah. My low, I set at 70. My high, I set at one thirty. And if I saw that one thirty, obviously, one thirty is okay.
I'm not going to make a correction right there unless I see the arrow going straight up. But, obviously, if it's going off, it is going up. So if I make a correction there, it's going to hit, and I'm not going to get up to two hundred. I might still get up to 01:50, 01:55, 01:60, but I'm not going to
one ninety.
At one eighty, it's too late.
Yeah. No.
That is too late to be making a correction.
If that was your biggest takeaway that helped you, that's awesome. My point is that somebody else will take something else away. And somebody else will take something else away, and it they'll find the peace thing. Everything's in the podcast. Like, you just have to listen to it.
If listen to it, you'll be okay. Yeah. And and, I mean, I can't promise that, but I I will offer a money back guarantee because the podcast is free. Oh, okay. Nice.
Offer a a full a full guarantee.
Well, I wouldn't need my money back because I I benefited.
Well, I appreciate this very much. I really do. I am gonna go because I have to record again in forty five minutes because Okay. I am what they call a hustler. I don't know if you know.
Not a hustler in the, like, taking stuff from you situation in the, like, I I move. I got get stuff done. Everybody go take the survey. Juiceboxpodcast.com/survey. And, of course, all of you listening who hate listening, don't forget to go take it and completely try to shit on me.
It'll make the numbers look more valuable. Because right now, what it looks like is positive impact on physical health, ninety nine percent of respondents said yes. Positive impact on their mental health, ninety seven percent said yes. Okay? Overall median well-being, seventy six a score of seventy six reported a one percent negative effect.
Any people that reported a negative effect, very low. And the only negative effects that people talk about, by the way, of listening or being involved is they it can help it can make them initially feel behind or judged compared to other people. But I'm gonna tell you that what that if you can fight through that, what that means is you realize there are other people doing better than you, and hopefully, that that becomes aspirational for you. Some people, twenty seven percent said that it's hard to know where to start or that they felt overloaded with information. That's fair.
They should try the podcast website, which should help them narrow that down. Content that didn't fit my situation, only 21%. That's awesome. Increased anxiety, 13%. I understand.
It's tough to find out that there's a lot of stuff that you don't know. Diabetes now takes up more mental space, only 13%. Content that conflicted with my care team, only 12%. That's good news for your care teams out there because, you know, it used to be that used to be a bigger number.
I've
had negative interactions in the community. 11 people said they have. 11 out of a 150, not bad. Oh, we also don't know what their negative and you've been in that group. That group is an overwhelmingly positive place.
Feeling behind or judged compared to others, one person said that.
So
again, try the podcast. It'll help you. Pro tips, bold beginnings, small sips. If you don't wanna listen to such long stuff, check out the website. There's ton of information there for you.
Take the survey. Thank you very much, Marla. Hold on one second for me. 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 a prescription and is indicated for people with type one diabetes six and older. Arden has been getting her diabetes supplies from US Med for years. You can as well. Usmed.com/juicebox or call (888) 721-1514.
Many thanks to US Med for sponsoring this episode and for being and for being longtime sponsors of the juice box podcast. There are links in the show notes and links at juiceboxpodcast.com to US Med, Twist, and today's other awesome sponsor, the Eversense CGM. They make of course the Eversense three sixty five and that thing lasts an entire year. One insertion every year. Come on.
You probably feel like I'm messing with you, but I'm not. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox. Check it out. Let's face it. Diabetes is tough, but it's easier when you have a community around you.
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