#1253 Can GLP Meds Impact Mental Health?

A mother of a 14-year-old with type 1 diabetes and bipolar disorder shares their journey, emphasizing the transformative impact of GLP-1 medications on her daughter's mental health and overall well-being.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1254 of the Juicebox Podcast

I guess today is going to remain anonymous. She is the mother of a 14 year old child with type one diabetes who is bipolar. And she's here to tell us the story of what GLP medications did for her daughter. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan are becoming bold with insulin. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box. If you are a loved one has type one diabetes and you're a US resident, please consider going to T one d exchange.org/juicebox and completing the survey. That's all I need you to do. Head to the link. Join the registry complete the survey takes about 10 minutes and you will be helping type one diabetes research T one D exchange.org/juicebox. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome type one type two gestational loved ones, it doesn't matter to me. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by touched by type one touched by type one.org. And find them on Facebook and Instagram touched by type one is an organization dedicated to helping people living with type one diabetes. And they have so many different programs that are doing just that check them out at touched by type one.org. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom dexcom.com/juice box get the brand new Dexcom G seven with my link and get started today. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing together people who are redefining what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Mark, he was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 28. He's 47. Now he's going to tell you a little bit about his story. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box and check out the Medtronic champion hashtag on social media.

Anonymous Female Speaker 2:39
Hi, I am a mom of a kiddo with type one diabetes. She was diagnosed at three and she is now 14. And we have been on quite a journey that involves both mental health and the way her metabolism works. And we've been through a lot and I just wanted to share our story. Cool.

Scott Benner 3:01
All right. We're just gonna talk around the fact that you don't have a name we discussed before we started recording whether or not you would have a fake name or not. We're not doing fake names today. Your daughter is what how many kids? Do you have only child one of how many? I

Anonymous Female Speaker 3:16
have three kids, my 14 year old is the oldest. Okay, and so she has a she has a 12 year old and 10 year old siblings, any

Scott Benner 3:23
autoimmune stuff or other stuff going on with a 12 or 10 year olds, they

Anonymous Female Speaker 3:28
have a lot of stuff going on. Both of them are on the autism spectrum. And, and have ADHD.

Scott Benner 3:35
Okay, how about you? Do you have any stuff?

Anonymous Female Speaker 3:38
I don't have any official diagnoses

Scott Benner 3:42
you have any you'd like to make with Google and just your free time,

Anonymous Female Speaker 3:45
I find some of my tendencies that I would possibly be on the autism spectrum. I don't I don't have an official diagnosis. And I don't even know if they would give me one if I tried to get it now. You know, in the 80s, I was labeled a gifted child, which I think is almost synonymous with being on the autism spectrum now. So who knows? Yeah, there's a lot of overlap there.

Scott Benner 4:08
Do you have any implications in your life that stick out to you?

Anonymous Female Speaker 4:12
One of the biggest things for me is that when I was little, I was very sensitive about fabrics and clothing. And, you know, my parents didn't know what it was. And they just teased me about it my whole life. Pretty much everyone has always teased me about it as if I'm just crazy. But now, you know, there's manufacturers like the target brand has a whole brand of clothing that seamless for kiddos that are on the spectrum or have sensitivities to fabric. So it's just validating to know that it's a real thing and I still kind of have it and it's small. It doesn't affect my life that much. I say,

Scott Benner 4:47
Okay, how about your husband? Any medical issues or stuff like that? Or ex husband? Sorry, I didn't ask.

Anonymous Female Speaker 4:55
No, no, no, no, no other medical issues.

Scott Benner 4:57
The kid's father, the guy I'm not Hear what I was supposed to say there? I apologize.

Anonymous Female Speaker 5:01
Yeah. Sorry. The kid's father. Also my husband, same person. Oh, okay. She has no medical issues. Okay.

Scott Benner 5:08
All right. So how about like autoimmune throughout your family line, his side your side.

Anonymous Female Speaker 5:13
When we had kids, we would have told you that we didn't have any amount of autoimmune stuff in our family. After our daughter was diagnosed with type one. We recalled, I have a great aunt who had type one. Okay.

Scott Benner 5:26
All right. Let's see, did the kids have any other autoimmune stuff like celiac or thyroid or anything like that?

Anonymous Female Speaker 5:32
My diabetic kiddo, she just started having a low performing thyroid and as on levothyroxine for that. Oh, actually, my husband does have that

Scott Benner 5:42
too. Oh, this is Hashimotos? Or do we not? No, no, I

Anonymous Female Speaker 5:46
don't think so. He doesn't have a Hashimotos diagnosis. And seems fine.

Scott Benner 5:52
I have been described as low performing by my wife at times. Listen, the biggest problem you and I are gonna have today is that I changed my room around. And the thing I used to put my feet on when I was recording as I moved it now I'm sitting here and all I can think is like Why did you move that? You know? Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna do. We need to take a break and

Unknown Speaker 6:13
get you know,

Scott Benner 6:15
I'll make do don't worry. So, you said you wanted to come on the podcast to share your story? What drew you to that idea?

Anonymous Female Speaker 6:22
What drew me to that idea? Is that what you said? Yeah, like what? Yeah,

Scott Benner 6:26
what makes you think like, I'd like to tell a lot of other people about what's happening.

Anonymous Female Speaker 6:29
So a year ago, my my type one kiddo started a GLP. One. She's on Wigo v. And I knew that that was pretty novel, for, you know, a young teenager that with type one. But we were desperate because we were really suffering in a lot of ways that I can get into in detail. Yeah. And I was starting to research it. And I was starting to see it sort of, and when I say research, you know, I just mean Google. I was starting to see it pop up on on different different support groups and in different articles, a little bit of research articles about it, but not a lot. And then I heard your podcast with another mom, whose daughter with type one was a teenager and was put on GLP. One and the success that they were having and her explanation and your explanation of sharing the story just so people know what's going on. Because I do think that this drug is going to revolutionize every area of healthcare, at least in our country. And it needs to be affordable. We are on our third appeal with health insurance to get this paid for. We have to sacrifice so much in our life just to pay for the medicine. And we already went through this five years ago when insulin prices were sky high.

Scott Benner 7:48
That's all very interesting. I can't wait to pick through every bit of it. So for clarity you listen to the episode called 15 year old on GLP. Yes, I did. And what about your daughter situation made you think about a GLP medication Dexcom g7 offers an easier way to manage diabetes without finger sticks. It is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone, your smartwatch. And it effortlessly allows you to see your glucose levels and where they're headed. My daughter is wearing a Dexcom g7 Right now, and I can't recommend it enough. Whether you have commercial insurance, Medicare coverage, or no CGM coverage at all Dexcom can help you go to my link dexcom.com/juicebox and look for that button that says Get a free benefits check. That'll get you going with Dexcom. When you're there, check out the Dexcom clarity app where the follow Did you know that people can follow your Dexcom up to 10 people can follow you. Right now I'm following my daughter but my wife is also following her. Her roommates at school are following her. So I guess Arden is being followed right now by five people who are concerned for her health and welfare. And you can do the same thing. School Nurses, your neighbor, people in your family. Everyone can have access to that information if you want them to have it. Or if you're an adult, and you don't want anyone to know, you don't have to share with anybody. It's completely up to you. dexcom.com slashed use Box links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. And when you use my link to learn about Dexcom you're supporting the podcast. Right now we're going to hear from a member of the Medtronic champion community. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. And this is Mark.

David 9:37
I use injections for about six months and then my endocrinologist at a navy recommended a pump. How long

Scott Benner 9:43
had you been in the Navy? Eight years up to that point? I've interviewed a number of people who have been diagnosed during service and most of the time they're discharged What happened to you?

David 9:53
I was medically discharged. Yes, six months after my diagnosis. Was

Scott Benner 9:56
it your goal to stay in the Navy for your whole life your career That was Yeah,

David 10:01
yeah. In fact, I think a few months before my diagnosis, my wife and I had that discussion about, you know, staying in for the long term. And, you know, we made the decision despite all the hardships and time away from home, that was what we loved the

Scott Benner 10:14
most. Was the Navy, like a lifetime goal of yours. lifetime goal.

David 10:18
I mean, as my earliest childhood memories, were flying, being a fighter pilot,

Scott Benner 10:23
how did your diagnosis impact your lifelong dream?

David 10:26
It was devastating. Everything I had done in life, everything I'd worked up to up to that point was just taken away in an instant, I was not prepared for that at all. What does your support system look like? friends, your family caregivers, you know, for me to Medtronic, champions, community, you know, all those resources that are out there to help guide the way but then help keep abreast on you know, the new things that are coming down the pike and to give you hope for eventually, that we can find a cure.

Scott Benner 10:51
And you can hear more stories from Medtronic champions and share your own story at Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box.

Anonymous Female Speaker 11:01
She has kind of a long story was she was diagnosed at three with diabetes, she was always very spunky and spirited. By the time she was five. It was concerning to me. And I asked her endocrinologist about her behaviors. And he said, he basically said I was being a bad parent, and that we just needed to be more strict with her. And he said this to me, there's no correlation between behavior and blood sugar. No. Fascinating. So I knew that was not true. And we got a new endocrinologist immediately. Yeah. But then it was like, okay, so we know when you're gonna when her blood sugar's low, or high or going up or down pretty quick. She's moody, okay, we get that. And we we lived with it through early elementary school. And it was hard, but it wasn't, didn't affect life too drastically, when she hit puberty at the age of 10. Everything hit the ceiling, fan.

Scott Benner 11:58
Everything, all of it. All of it. What happened, the

Anonymous Female Speaker 12:02
very first thing it was a month before COVID hit. And she was in fourth grade. And we found her laying on the floor in the middle of the elementary school just like really depressed and was like, I don't want to live anymore. And she's this tiny little fourth grader. And she was also was a boundary pusher. So our first reaction was all it was our reactions with her at the time, which was like get up, stop misbehaving, what are you doing? Which is not really how you should behave when someone is suffering from depression.

Scott Benner 12:36
That's not what you thought it was at the moment. Right?

Anonymous Female Speaker 12:39
Right. We really didn't. So then COVID hit the next month. We really, you know, we were trying to see providers, everything was on Zoom. Nothing was helpful. By December of 2020. We were finally seeing a pediatric psychiatrist. My child has walked in there, she has grown like a lot. She, you know, she's like five, three, by this point, she has gained a lot of weight. Not like in a sense that I would have put her on a Goby at that point. It was just enough to affect, you know how you're visually surprised. And I'm sure it was affecting her self esteem. Okay, and she dyed her hair black, and she just was drawing like sort of Goth makeup on all the time. She was looking down. She wasn't making eye contact. She was talking severely depressed. The opposite of you know, her personality a year before that. It just got worse. Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:32
So at this point, are you? I mean, it's obviously it's beyond like blood sugar fluctuations. And yeah, right. And you're thinking, depression at that point?

Anonymous Female Speaker 13:41
Yes, we're thinking depression. What do

Scott Benner 13:43
you do then? And have you been depressed or your husband in the past, or now

Anonymous Female Speaker 13:47
neither one of us had ever suffered from any type of mental health issue at that time? So it was all very new to us at that time. At that time?

Scott Benner 13:55
Like, don't worry, I'm working on one right now. Right,

Anonymous Female Speaker 13:58
right. Well, from COVID on when my daughter was really sick, I was depressed and had to get some help for that, because it was just so hard to deal with. She was requiring 24 hour care, we got to a point where she was a lot of suicidal ideation. She was trying to kill herself daily,

Scott Benner 14:16
like real I'm sorry, I hate to put it like this. But like real genuine attempts are like walking through the house going, I'm gonna run into traffic like what like, what level of?

Anonymous Female Speaker 14:26
Yeah, no, it was it was real. She'd always done this thing that we called going dark. Like her eyes would just kind of be vacant, and she wouldn't be there. And she would do an extreme behavior. And when she was little, it was like, she would lay on the ground and kick and scream right? By the time she hit puberty, and she was depressed. It was like cutting or I'm going to jump off this balcony. Or I'm gonna go jump off a bridge. Yeah, it was very, it was very severe. It was very hard to keep her safe. I mean, of course, she was in the hospitals a lot. But when she was home, we had to kind of be 24 hour vigilance with her. So you live 24

Scott Benner 15:04
hours like if you looked away, she was going to hurt herself. And it wasn't going to be something she had come back from. Yeah.

Anonymous Female Speaker 15:10
One day I was, you know, having dinner like serving dinner to my younger kids and she snuck into my room, took my blow dryer, took it up to her room and put it in the bathtub with her.

Scott Benner 15:22
How did that not hurt her? What ended up happening?

Anonymous Female Speaker 15:24
I think she forgot to turn it on. Every time there was an attempt. There's always like a silly undercurrent because she's a child, right? Like the first time. I think she tried to overdose on medication. She used something I can't remember it was but it was something silly. It was like that they won't kill you

Scott Benner 15:42
should just pick something that wasn't lethal. Right?

Anonymous Female Speaker 15:44
But not on purpose. She just didn't even know what she was picking. Right. One point. She was at her grandparents house and she overdosed she took a whole bottle of lithium. So like, some of it was very, very dangerous. Grandparents,

Scott Benner 15:56
somebody in your one of the grandparents is using lithium. Yes.

Anonymous Female Speaker 16:01
I haven't said that. We have a grandparent who is bipolar and is on lithium. Okay. So we eventually got my daughter a bipolar diagnosis. When we started seeing a flip between mania and depression. Mania looking like crazy nervous energy running around writing stories that were you know, 20 pages long doing art projects in the middle of night. hypersexual fetishes. And we're talking she was 1011 years old, say at what age? Yeah. Really, really strange and disturbing. And awful. Do

Scott Benner 16:42
you think that it's possible that my podcast will significantly decrease the population of the people who listened to because I always think that not just your episode, by the way, but when people are talking about their lives. I'm like, No one must like have babies after they listen to this stuff. Like, everybody just must be like, Wait, what did she just say? You know what? Forget it.

Anonymous Female Speaker 17:02
I hope that everyone thinks exactly what I would have thought which is, that's terrible for that person. I'm glad it can never happen to me. I mean, that is the funniest thing. When I think about my husband, I when we got married, when we started having kids, we were like, Oh, we are so lucky to not have any health issues. Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:21
we're gonna cruise to this thing. If we can just make a little bit of money we might get might get a beach house out of this. Yeah, right now. Yeah, no one tells you, you're gonna spend all of your free time learning what Pre-Bolus thing means? Or what sexual mania looks like in a 10 year old.

Anonymous Female Speaker 17:40
Terrible, terrible things no one should have to know. Which is why I want to talk about what has worked for her, right. I want it to work for other people. But really, I want to be able to afford it.

Scott Benner 17:50
And she's in a different situation now, obviously. Yes. Okay. She's

Anonymous Female Speaker 17:54
in a different situation now, which is the only reason I would be on a podcast or really the only reason I can talk about it without just crying. I'm just

Scott Benner 18:00
gonna say you're just be banging your head on something if for you, if you're if you were still going through it. I've actually talked to people in the middle of things. And they don't frequently joke about it. So that's, that's usually the the people who feel like they've moved through it a little bit. So okay, so like, all this is happening, you get that? That bipolar diagnosis? What do you like? How do you get her to a different situation? Because I'm trying to tell you, like, I genuinely don't know what you're going to say, You did this thing. I don't know if you know, the phrase tickled my ass with a feather earlier. Because you said like, you were like GRPs are gonna revolutionize everything. And now I'm just sitting here like wildly wondering, how is that going to tie into what you're saying right now. But don't rush ahead. Like you're doing a good job telling the story, but I just, I can't wait. Super excited. Good.

Anonymous Female Speaker 18:49
You know, my husband and I are are pretty well educated. And we had a lot of resources available to us. So, you know, we were lucky in that respect. We did live in kind of a more rural area at the time. And so it was a lot of driving to get to the providers, but they were assessable. So we started seeing everybody, right, obviously we have our endocrinology, we have our pediatric psychiatrist. We had all kinds of different therapists, we were doing something called dialectical behavior therapy. The abbreviation is D as in dog DBT, which is the recommended therapy for folks with bipolar. This child was in and out of inpatient hospital stays, she did a residential stay for 15 weeks. At a long term facility that's a third of a year. Yeah, it was a very long time. And I will tell you when she came home, she was a little bit better but not really better. Oh, and

Scott Benner 19:44
what size cardboard boxes you have to move into after paying for that

Anonymous Female Speaker 19:49
exam? Exactly. We have not had the best of luck with insurance but in that time, we were lucky insurance did cover that patients day. So they they covered that and they covered the hospital stays, but they weren't covering therapy, which we had to do all of the time. And everything was just out of pocket. So it's like, you know, $200 a session, two sessions a week driving

Scott Benner 20:10
to and from. Yeah, taking off time from work. I imagined to make time for everything that comes with all that. Yes,

Anonymous Female Speaker 20:18
she's alright. Okay. I was I actually was home with my kids, for many years, about eight years. So I was home with them during that time. Oh, I see. I'm back at work now. Which is part of the story. I bet

Scott Benner 20:35
you are. I bet you were like, hey, hey, my long term and short term to do list is get out of the house.

Anonymous Female Speaker 20:40
Yes. Yes, it is. Yes. Feels like a summer vacation.

Scott Benner 20:44
People are going to work going is fantastic. Yes, so long term stay facility. marginable. Like improvement, nothing like you weren't like, wow, this was worth three, four months. Like that. It was

Anonymous Female Speaker 21:01
worth four months, because she did learn some skills. And my husband and I did get a break. Okay. Which is terrible. Because you miss your kid when they're away and not supposed to be away. I mean, she was only 12. A lot of the care and the training that we got was that, you know, the caretakers have to have respite? The caretakers have to have time to breathe. You can't you can't care for a kid 24 hours a day, nonstop.

Scott Benner 21:23
Do you have any guilt during that time? Because I'm assuming? Yeah, I'm assuming at some point during it, you're like, This is better like this. And but she's still somewhere struggling and, and you know, she's gonna come back. So like, yeah, that would make? I mean, did that happen to the guilt? Yeah. For being relieved when she wasn't there is when I was

Anonymous Female Speaker 21:42
really? Absolutely. I mean, I had, so I had so much guilt to work through. One of the things with my daughter is that early on in our diabetes, we had tried kind of a low carb lifestyle. She just increasingly started hiding and sneaking foods. You know, once I realized that was what was going on, we stopped the low carb, but it didn't stop her behaviors. And she is a huge binge eater, especially, especially when her mental health deteriorated, and she was going into mania. Like she would just like she was just jonesing to get into a pantry and write it, like just completely addicted to binge eating.

Scott Benner 22:23
I have to ask you something. And I don't want to ask this as a leading question. But I keep waiting for somebody to say they want to come on the podcast because they chose an eating style. And it led to something that they didn't expect. Do you mean, obviously you don't know for sure she's got other issues. But do you have that? wondering like did low carb make her be like, Oh, I'm just gonna get a cupcake somewhere else?

Anonymous Female Speaker 22:50
Yes. You feel like it did? Yes. And you're right, she does have other issues. And her relationship with sugar is i It is not the same as what I've seen and other folks with type one and that they don't have these mental health issues. she I think she just has that addiction piece of her brain. And sugar fills it any kind of dopamine. Gotcha. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 23:13
mean, I don't genuinely don't mean to say like, you know, eat low carb, you're gonna end up binge eating. Like, I'm not saying that. But I have always in the back of my head thought. I guess someone gonna one day be like, you know, I tried to make my kid be a vegetarian. And now they just eat hamburgers on top of hamburgers or like you like that kind of an idea. And then you felt like you almost said that. And I just I wanted to make sure that we picked through. And that's

Anonymous Female Speaker 23:36
how I feel about my child. I definitely have guilt that I tried to get her to do this. You know, basically, diet that maybe wasn't best for her mental health. Definitely would have been great for her physical health, but was not good for her mental her mental health. Okay, you know, if people say they're going low carb, I don't say don't do it. You know, they'll be binge eating right, but it does hurt my heart a little bit. Be like, Oh, is that worth? What if? What if there? What if their mental health is more fragile than you realize?

Scott Benner 24:05
Yeah, right. Like, I see what you're saying. And I'm very listen, I'm very careful about it for a couple of reasons. One, because it's not talking about how people eat is just like talking about Jesus or politics to them. You don't I mean, and I don't have that feeling about it. Like, I don't care how people eat at all. I don't want to give the idea that, you know, I'm like, Oh, don't do this or anything because of that, because I don't think that's true, but you know, interesting outcome for her at the very least. Okay, so she now she's so she's binge eating. And you're like, Oh, hey, you can have carbs back. But that doesn't stop

Anonymous Female Speaker 24:40
it after that. Right and we took cards carbs back in first or second grade. So it was a long time before the mental health deterioration, so Okay, all right, all through elementary school, different types of binge eating. She always had really weird reactions to ice cream. Ice cream always made her quote, go dark. To us

Scott Benner 25:00
pretty much just eating it or talking about it or what are you saying? Yeah,

Anonymous Female Speaker 25:04
eating it. The effect on her blood sugar no matter how we dosed for it, even if we didn't even see her blood sugar change on the CGM. Whenever she ate ice cream, she would go dark.

Scott Benner 25:15
Yeah. Is that something that you've talked about subsequently with healthcare professionals about? Like, what's that going dark thing is?

Anonymous Female Speaker 25:21
Yeah, yeah, not in depth. I mean, we've mentioned it to the psychiatrist. There's just so much going on with her. I've told the psychiatrist, so many things. I finally now have a psychiatrists that kind of believes what I'm saying. My last two did not believe.

Scott Benner 25:36
Oh, what did they not accept from you when you were sharing?

Anonymous Female Speaker 25:42
They all thought it was just like parenting techniques,

Scott Benner 25:45
or your other two kids struggling with things like I mean, you don't mean like this, but could you step back and go, maybe I am making a mistake somewhere. Did you try looking at it?

Anonymous Female Speaker 25:54
Yeah, no, I mean, I've read I read a parenting book a week. It is. My friends making so much fun of me. I read a parenting book a week, and maybe it's my coping mechanism. And when I got sick, my husband and I completely changed the way we parented, we follow this thing called the nurtured heart approach. Just it's really, really a lovely way to think about children, and to always give your energy to their positive actions and not give any energy to their negative actions. Not that they get away with everything. It's just that you don't freak out when something bad happens. You just do the like calm consequence. Right? And then as soon as you're good again, you start heaping positive energy on them again. Okay,

Scott Benner 26:37
so you went with the gentle parenting? Yes, that's a little bit in the world right now. That's why it's under fire a little bit in the world. Yeah, there's a push back on it. Now, what was your finding? Doing it? That's why I'm asking what would you learn from it? Even

Anonymous Female Speaker 26:55
when our daughter was sick over the last few years after we changed our parenting approach, she and I and my husband have the best relationship. Okay, like, when her brain is not on fire from this illness, she is the best kid, like, loves to hang out with us is funny is caring is nurturing. Like, she takes care of like, she loves to take care of like little three and four year olds that we have with family friends, she's just to make straight A's now, like she is just wonderful. When her brain is

Scott Benner 27:27
not looking for a bridge to leap off of anymore. Nothing like that's happening now. Not

Anonymous Female Speaker 27:32
anymore. It did happen last up until last year. Okay. All of that was still happening. But when in when she was having episodes, but when she wasn't having episodes, the parenting techniques were working like she was lovely. We had a great relationship.

Scott Benner 27:46
I am so like, you are you're so good at this. I don't know if you're doing this on purpose or not. But like I have, so I have something in my head right now. And I'm like, is she gonna say this happened? And then this happened. And then that happened? Like I haven't, I should write it down so that I look like hold on a second. I don't want to look like I'm, there's no way for me to prove what I'm writing down right now. But I'm gonna write down what I think you're gonna say, Hold on. Okay, one lead to

Speaker 1 28:11
lead to. Okay,

Scott Benner 28:15
I've written down what I think you're going to say. And if that's what you're gonna say, I'm gonna go get the cat here when you say just so you know. And then I'm gonna say, you should say that. Okay, all right. By the way, what are you a storyteller for? Like, like, our profession or something like that? I'm like, is this whichever going to eat the little kids or not? This is crazy. Seriously, doing that. Have you ever been on a podcast before?

Anonymous Female Speaker 28:38
I guess I have technically been on a podcast. I ran for office like a long time.

Scott Benner 28:43
You know how to talk to people. Okay, all right. So

Anonymous Female Speaker 28:47
but I don't think I'm that great at it. No, listen,

Scott Benner 28:49
you're doing great for me. Ah, thank you. I have none of that. Like you have to talk pressure switch. Which no offense to the people where I have that that fracture, but I enjoy not having it once in a while to. Alright, I'm sorry. Keep going.

Anonymous Female Speaker 29:03
It's okay. We've just been through so much. There's so much to say. Yeah. And I think I've I've practiced telling this story, because I've had to write the appeals to the insurance company so much.

Scott Benner 29:13
Well, that's interesting. Yeah. And you had to repeat it to doctors who didn't believe you over and over again to

Anonymous Female Speaker 29:17
Yes. Which is mentally exhausting.

Scott Benner 29:21
Especially if you're right, like, I mean, it would be different if like somebody like, got you one day and you're like, you know what, they're right. I'm not, I'm getting this wrong here. But like when you keep saying like, look, this happened, and this happened and this habit, it does make you feel like you're out of your mind.

Anonymous Female Speaker 29:35
Yeah, yeah, you know, really hard and my husband is great. And we're on the same page. But when we started this new parenting technique and approach, he basically didn't talk for like two or three months. He was like, I don't know how to talk to her without just correcting her constantly, because she was so fiery and oppositional and

Scott Benner 29:57
hard to talk to you. Yeah. Fiery.

Anonymous Female Speaker 29:58
What a great word. On top of all of that, she had, you know, she had a pump and her CGM. And she did not. She was just more than burned out on diabetes care. And we could not get her blood sugar's under control, because I don't know how to put this as she wouldn't allow us. Like, she wouldn't tell us what she was eating. She would hide food, she would constantly constantly eat food and it deny it and not dose for it. And I mean, we were just battling 400 blood sugars all the time.

Scott Benner 30:31
Was she able to weaponize her mental health issues? Yes, to keep you away, like almost like a little terrorist. Yes, like, absolutely do this. We're gonna do that. That kind of thing.

Anonymous Female Speaker 30:41
Absolutely. And then as she got more sick, she weaponized her pump. Two times she tried to kill herself by overdosing on insulin.

Scott Benner 30:50
She get did she get the insulin in? II? Yes, yeah. Then we'll How did you manage it?

Anonymous Female Speaker 30:55
We might have used glucagon one time, and food the other time, okay. Because once she got really low, she kind of lost the urge to die. So she's just like, I feel like crap make me feel better.

Scott Benner 31:07
That makes it go away pretty quickly. The Yeah. No, that's interesting. Isn't it? Wasn't that interesting? Because isn't that really interesting? You know, like, like, cuz if someone's trying to take their own life, it's gonna happen instantaneously, normally, right? But I guess if you do it in a, in a way that gives you time to re reconsider. Maybe there's that part of your body, that part of your brain wants to be alive. It's like, whoa, hold on. I don't want to feel like this anymore. It's is

Anonymous Female Speaker 31:35
that right? It's like death. It's fine. But feeling bad right now is terrible. Okay, interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah. So she did that. And then a couple times, we'll often when she was at these hospitals, you know, these hospitals are busy. The Child Nurse ratio is not very good. So she could get away with a lot. So like one night, we sent her to a hospital. And every time I had to fight to keep her pump on, of course. And then the pump had a lock that she wasn't supposed to know. And then inevitably, she would watch a nurse put in the lock, and so she would get it. So we'd have to warn them not to let her watch that. And then one night, she went to a facility. I told them she binge eat, they needed to control how she has access to food. So they're like, oh, yeah, we're still on COVID protocols. She just gets a tray. It's fine. Well, the tray was actually a cart with like three kids foods, and like all these condiments, so she drank a glass of maple syrup for dinner. Without dosing for it, by the way. Yeah. And then actually, for some reason, though, yeah, they made us think that was the time they made us take her pump off. So she was back on Lantis. Before the syrup, the nurse she was low, and the nurse didn't give her Lantis because she was low. So I had already called multiple times trying to fix that misunderstanding. The endocrinologist had faxed the place, they still wouldn't give her Lantis I said, You're going to kill her, you're gonna send her to the hospital to like the ER. This happened all night long. And then she woke up and then she had the glass of maple syrup for dinner. I think she even then ate the dinner on top of that. And then she of course, she woke up at like seven in the morning, and her blood sugar was over 500. And they're like, Oh, we're gonna send her to the ER now.

Scott Benner 33:21
Yeah, they didn't want to be involved. Right? Yeah. And they didn't understand the Lantis was the background and so on. And what they were fearful about during the low would have been the fast acting, not that etc. Like, none of that exactly. made any sense to them. And then then once the number hits a certain thing, they're like, Oh, we're out of this. We can go put this on somebody else.

Anonymous Female Speaker 33:39
Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. That's probably what's going through their heads. But I mean, we've been through this before. And we were at the point where we didn't want the child in an ambulance anymore, because none of the ambulance bills are covered by insurance. And so and they just go Drupal charge what they should for them, right?

Scott Benner 33:56
Yeah, suddenly, it's a $700. Uber, urine. Yes,

Anonymous Female Speaker 33:59
it's exactly what it is. Like, so we were not happy about that outcome. So she she did weaponize her pump and her insulin. And then when she was at her 15 weeks, say, at a residential facility, she refused insulin. And I don't know, they were like, well, we can't make her take it. If she refuses it. We can't force her to how

Scott Benner 34:21
old was she? 12. Well, Why could they not force her to take it?

Anonymous Female Speaker 34:27
I don't know. They seem to think it was a legal liability.

Scott Benner 34:30
This is the other by the way. Over the years, the conversations I've had around mental health facilities and type one have never been uplifting. You know, like, even if you're lucky somebody let her in. From what I understand, you know, well, and I

Anonymous Female Speaker 34:44
will let me tell you this, this. So this facility we're at, I actually think it's a very good one. One of the kind of the vice president folks has type one and is on a pump. And she has been an amazing advocate for the kids with type one and they have A lot of type one patients and they let them bring their pumps in. Okay. So that was amazing. But that's when I started noticing this overlap between kids with these extreme behavioral issues and type one type one was that there shouldn't be that many type one kids here, there's only 20 kids here. And

Scott Benner 35:18
word gets out that we let type one kids in here. And then you get them all together and you start thinking like, man, their issues all seem so similar.

Anonymous Female Speaker 35:26
Yeah, yeah. But of course, everything's private, so I can't really, yeah. Right. But I'm just noticing it right, we're just noticing as we go along, and it's clear that her behaviors and her blood sugar are extremely related. And it's also clear that her behaviors with high and low blood sugars are not the same as my nephew also has type one. How long has your nephew had type one for? He was diagnosed two and a half years ago? Just recently

Scott Benner 35:53
and nephew? On your husband's side or on your side?

Anonymous Female Speaker 35:56
This is on my side?

Scott Benner 35:59
And then the bipolar grandfather's yours?

Anonymous Female Speaker 36:03
Nope. Husband.

Scott Benner 36:04
Oh, you got the you got the stew. You got the I see what happens. Okay, so lucky. Yeah. Boy, this should have been in the questionnaire on your first date. Yeah, don't put me in charge of dating. It won't be as sexy. I'd be like, Well, you got a great grandmother with celiac. My father and my great grandfather's got now I'm not having a baby with you. Nevermind. No, no, we can date if you want. We're not getting married having kids. I don't like the way this is looking between the celiac and the I got I got a little inflammation over here with the with the bipolar thing. And then I got I got I got thyroid thing with my mom. I know that we're good. No, no,

Anonymous Female Speaker 36:48
no, thank you. You laugh, but that guilt hitch hits you

Scott Benner 36:52
to God damn. Right. It does. And I'm just telling you give me a time machine. I run Kelly through a real quick questionnaire. And I'm like, we can still go to this movie if you want. But I'm not paying.

Anonymous Female Speaker 37:06
Adoption for us people. Yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 37:08
I'm going to do something very, very, very upsetting in the middle of this movie. So you never want to go out with me again. Oh, I did that. Not even on purpose. It just happened. And anyway, it's such an odd thing to think you meet fall in love with somebody. And, you know, no kidding. Like, on their side, there's this and on your side, there's that and then one day this is gonna happen. And there's a reasonable likelihood that all of that led to it. Just such a

Anonymous Female Speaker 37:35
strange thing. You don't I mean, it's it is so strange. And I know everyone probably thinks this about their child, but my child is. She's super woman like she is a force to be reckoned with. Yeah. And the fact that she's overcoming all of these things in her life, you know, that just adds to your character? No, of course. Not that I would wish it upon her. The other

Scott Benner 37:59
side of what I just said, but I hear what you're getting at. Yeah, no, it's I mean, you caught her fiery, I couldn't tell if you were like, You have no idea. Or if what you meant was like, you know, she's got a lot of like backbone and spirit, or maybe it's a mix

Anonymous Female Speaker 38:12
all of those things. Yeah. All of those things. So you know, her her grandfather, who does have Bipolar, he was not diagnosed until he was retired. He just he was just a very successful happy person, you know, had a surgery and then fell into depression. And that's when they figured out

Scott Benner 38:33
no way so never never had any mental health issues through his entire life. Right after he retires has a surgery can I can I know a little bit about that? Is it heart heart related? No.

Anonymous Female Speaker 38:47
I don't remember what it was. It wasn't it wasn't even a big deal. It was just the fact that he went under like it can trigger something

Scott Benner 38:55
rather came back out a different person. Yeah. Yeah, keep your Biden's kids. No, I'm just gonna

Anonymous Female Speaker 39:02
write honestly to him. Like once you get treated he takes his medication. He does not really he does. Okay, deal thinks it might be a misdiagnosis. Just Oh,

Scott Benner 39:13
he thinks he might be misdiagnosed as bipolar. Right. That's what he's that's how he feels. I gotcha. Well, I don't know. All this medication works for him. Great. So perfect. I'm sorry. You were saying something and I waylaid you. I apologize.

Anonymous Female Speaker 39:28
Oh, that's okay. Yeah. So he, he has bipolar and he doesn't have any autoimmune issues. But his relationship with sugar is interesting. It's always you know, he's he has a sweet tooth. That's what we say. Right? As a sweet tooth, but it's a pretty intense sweet tooth. And he was the first person I knew to go on bulgogi.

Scott Benner 39:50
Okay, so he had a weight issue at that point. Yes. Okay. And he starts taking we go refer for weight. How long goes it has to be in the last couple of years, right? Yeah,

Anonymous Female Speaker 39:58
he was the first person so it's like Three years ago, okay, like he was he has really great doctors and they're like, oh, it's new. It's groundbreaking. So he went on that and very good for him very successful in terms of weight loss. You know, all of you've heard all these stories, all of his blood work came back better. He couldn't walk his ankles, his knees hurt. All of that went away. Now he could walk happily. He was pre diabetic. He's not pre diabetic anymore.

Scott Benner 40:23
Yeah, partially speaking. I have that story. Like, you know, something. I'm literally sitting here right now, in a pair of shorts, looking down and thinking, whose legs are those? I'm still in that part where all my guys still gonna look like me. You know? Yeah, no, it's not. So he goes through the process as you do you, you start slow. They ramp him up. He loses, you know how much weight he lost over time?

Anonymous Female Speaker 40:49
I don't, I would guess maybe in the 60 to 80 pound range. Okay.

Scott Benner 40:54
And he now looks like average build or do you? Do you look at him and think, Wow, that was a lot of weight you lost but if he lost more, it would still be

Anonymous Female Speaker 41:01
okay. Yeah, he's just average bill is Average Bill tall. He's a tall, big person. So but yeah, like average, like not, not overweight, and he's

Scott Benner 41:09
still honored as maintenance. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. And so what do you think? Did he have any other changes in his life besides his white?

Anonymous Female Speaker 41:20
Do you feel a lot happier now? He's always a happy person. But he's a lot happier now.

Scott Benner 41:28
Interesting. Do you think just because he feels and looks differently? Or do you think there's something else?

Anonymous Female Speaker 41:34
I don't know. All right. I mean, definitely feels and looks different. Right. Like that definitely helps. And I do think he was getting depressed because he couldn't walk. Yeah. I don't know if there's something else happening. I know with my daughter there is. I don't know about him.

Scott Benner 41:49
So you see him have this experience with the widow of a your daughter has similar situation with the I'm assuming you also saw with him the arresting of the desire for the sugar, right? Yes. That's got to be what attracted you first for your daughter? Yes.

Anonymous Female Speaker 42:07
Yes. So I saw him go on it. And then I have two very good friends. A close group group of girlfriends. Two of them went on GLP ones. Both of them really struggled with food noise.

Scott Benner 42:22
Do you know that term? My wife uses that term? Yeah,

Anonymous Female Speaker 42:25
yeah, yeah, food toys. Like I just always want them to always think about my next meal. I'm just kind of kind of obsessed with it. That was the big thing. This medicine cuts down on my food noise. I don't think about it that much. And oh, this other friend stopped biting her fingernails because it just takes away like your compulsivity, your impulsivity, interesting, or compulsions. And that's my daughter is extremely was extremely impulsive, and compelled to do crazy things. In the moment. When she was really sick. She was pushing boundaries. Like, one day when she was really little. She said, What's hitchhiking? And we were like, Oh, this is hitchhiking. But it's pretty dangerous. So people don't do it anymore. You know, you can't do it. And the next day, she went out in our neighborhood and hitchhiked, did she get picked up? Luckily, it was a neighbor's husband, who

Scott Benner 43:07
was like, I don't know if you've heard the stories about the house up the street, but I got the little girls out in the road, trying to thumb her ride. So I'm going to pick her up. Yeah, take her home. I got you know, I It's nice. You take her for a lap first, and you just bring it right in?

Anonymous Female Speaker 43:21
Oh my gosh. Well, he was just kind of like, shy and awkward and just dropped her off. And then the wife called me later and said, I'm so sorry. You didn't come in. You know, I just wanted to let you know what happened because I had no idea. I didn't know she was gone. And then she'd come back. It was so quick. I love

Scott Benner 43:34
that you can do the voice for women apologize for their husbands. I didn't realize that was a voice that people could just snap into. I'm sorry. He didn't come in. He's He's feral. He didn't know he just he did push her out of the car gently in case you're right. Yeah. So ridiculous. So you have two friends started GLP is they had these. They lost weight as well. They had dissociation change.

Anonymous Female Speaker 43:56
They lost weight. One of them was having problem with their liver. The liver enzymes were better or the cholesterol was better. One of them has like a kidney disease. The numbers for the kidneys were better.

Scott Benner 44:05
Yeah, everything you should see my bloodwork. It's legit. Yeah, it really does. The doctor. She mumbles to herself looks perfect. It's beautiful. Like it's like a kid she said last time I was like in my ear. I was like too sexy back up a little bit. Cuz she was like listening to my heart. She's listening to my heart and she goes like a kid. And I was like, yeah, like see, it was just really like Fantastic. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. Keep going. What else did you figure Okay, so

Anonymous Female Speaker 44:33
So my my kiddo is suffering. They are bipolar. They are manic, depressed, manic depressed, hypomanic. All these all these things we cannot get under control. You add the blood sugars on top of that. We can't get them under control. It's just it's just impossible. You know, like we know all the techniques. We've listened to all of your podcasts wherever at all the books like I know how to manage diabetes. My poor nephew when he got diagnosed, we were able to to help help their family Lee, no problem

Scott Benner 45:00
because you had the tools. He knew this stuff it worked on him wouldn't work for your daughter. Exactly. You are you are embroiled in what is classically known as either a show or a dumpster fire. Am I right?

Anonymous Female Speaker 45:13
That is exactly right, gotcha. That's exactly what was happening. Okay. So of course, in the mental health space, we're trying different medications, you know, they put them on mood stabilizers and antidepressants and different things to bring down mood and bring up mood, and most of them increase the appetite. So we know that we're like, we don't care about appetite. Right now, we just want this kid to feel better. Sure. So so we couldn't find any medication that would work. It was like it would dull her spirit a little bit. And there are some that would make her so drowsy, she would sleep a lot, but nothing was like carrying the darkness, and the mania and the depression. Like nothing was touching it. Lithium had worked for our family member, so I was fighting to get her on lithium. Doctors do not like to prescribe that for young people. Doctors don't even like to diagnose bipolar in young people. There's a debate on if you can even have Bipolar as a young person. So look at

Scott Benner 46:06
all the stuff you've learned that you didn't want to know about. Right. And I've read

Anonymous Female Speaker 46:10
a lot of books on that. And I definitely did not want to read those books. So finally, we got her bipolar diagnosis. You know, I told you I had a psychiatrist who was not believing me and I was like, you know, this child is really sick today, this child, this is the day the child ran to jump off a bridge, I had the child in the car, they they pulled the steering wheel trying to run us off the road, like it's too dangerous us. I need something and we need to change the medicine. We need to change the medicine. And the doctor would say, Do you really think a pill is going to fix all this? Did

Scott Benner 46:37
you just go? I don't know. But don't you think we should try something?

Anonymous Female Speaker 46:42
What do you want me to try? Because we've tried everything. We've tried every parenting method. We've tried every type of therapy. I

Scott Benner 46:48
just wrestled a steering wheel out of an 11 year olds and can we let's go for that here. Because I mean, yeah, living in a cave is my next idea. It was,

Anonymous Female Speaker 46:58
I mean, the plan, it was like, because because at this point, my child is full grown, right? Like she is strong and my size. And if she's dark, and she wants to do something, I can't physically restrain her for a year, I was physically restraining her from jumping out windows. Yeah. And this is not just like being bratty or going to jump out the window. This was like, I need no, I need to do this right now. I need to kill myself and be out this window. She snack or something. And nobody understood it until they're in the moment. I remember being at a festival with my brother and best friend. And they had never seen my child go dark. And she went dark. And she just walked down into this lake. That was not a lake that people's women, like everyone was wearing clothing at a festival. And she just walked in the lake and just sat there and stared into space.

Scott Benner 47:46
Those people were like, Oh, is this what you've been talking about? Yeah. And they go, you should get a therapist right now for yourself. Because that's what I would have

Anonymous Female Speaker 47:55
said yes, everyone. Everyone said that. And I did very, very happily. Yeah, there was a lot of what do you guys doing for yourself? My husband and I had to figure out self care, because really, before that we'd been spoiled. And you know, I

Scott Benner 48:09
know I take your point. Cheese. All right, listen, go ahead, do it. Say the thing.

Anonymous Female Speaker 48:18
So I'm fighting I'm fighting for lithium child is getting sicker and sicker and more dangerous behaviors, binge eating, she weighs. Probably one point. She was like, 240. At what height and what age? She was 5657 and 13.

Scott Benner 48:39
Okay, so she was significantly overweight, then. Yes, yeah.

Anonymous Female Speaker 48:44
Okay. Yes. My husband's not every way, but very tall dude. And his clothes weren't fitting her. And that was the first time she realized that she was very, very upsetting. So but we couldn't get her stable. Like, I didn't care about our weight. I just wanted her to feel. Of course, she wanted to be alive.

Scott Benner 49:00
I understand. Oh,

Anonymous Female Speaker 49:02
it was so hard. So last June, June of 2023, she went to another facility. And it was one we'd been to before. You know, the doctors. They see the child once the child, the child is there five to seven days, you know, they're not like a, like a primary care doctor. They don't see these children a lot. They're just trying to get them stable and out of there. They're usually not the best doctors. But this one actually listened to me. And I said, you know, we have a relative that lithium really works for him. Can we try lithium? And he said, Well, yeah, lithium is the gold standard for bipolar. I'll prescribe that for her right now. And about fell out of my chair. And we started the child on lithium and the suicidal ideation stopped. That's correct. It was great. It was really really great. Very scary because it felt like this is what I've been fighting for. And it was like the last poll suicidal ideation stopped but all the other behaviors didn't stop. Like she was still going dark and she was still really anxious and weird and binge eating and fidgety, and it's hard to describe.

Scott Benner 50:15
Now, I feel like you're doing a good job. Darn

Anonymous Female Speaker 50:18
Hey, so the other behaviors didn't stop. So she was not trying to jump off a bridge, which was great. But she was still like obsessive and would get crazy looks in her eyes and just be like Mom, mom, mom, mom, I really, really have to, I really have to do whatever the thing is. So the next month after that, I put her on we'll go V, the GLP one and July of 2023 By September, so two months later. So we're only on the second level dose of wiro

Scott Benner 50:48
V five at that point, right, you start point two five than point five, right? Okay.

Anonymous Female Speaker 50:55
By the by that point, she was a different person, how she was what I would say herself, she did not have that darkness. Her like, huge, wonderful, fiery personality was just there all the time without the darkness like she was just sweet and fun and could listen and talk and could go to school and and could function at school. She had missed basically all of sixth and seventh grade because anxiety would hit her within 30 minutes of being there and she'd be stalking the halls trying to find something to hurt herself or, or do or not feel good. So she'd Miss like all of sixth and seventh grade eighth grade. She went to school every single day.

Scott Benner 51:40
She losing weight at the same time. Yeah, she lost all the weight. Okay, can I read to you for a minute while you collect yourself from our computer overlords? Chat GPT 4.0. Hold on a second. I've asked it could GLP have a positive impact on bipolar as all acid GLP one receptor agonist agonist, commonly used for the treatment of type two diabetes and weight management have shown some promise in neuro psychiatric conditions including bipolar disorder. While the primary action of GLP is to regulate blood sugar levels and appetite. There is growing interest in its potential effects on the brain due to its neuro protective and anti inflammatory properties. So I wrote down, took GLP lead to less inflammation, reduce mental health burden. That was the three things I wrote down. I'm guessing it goes through what neuroprotection cognitive function mood regulation, inflammation reduction. Research is limited right now to animal studies, human studies or unlimited clinical trials, directly investigating the impacts GLP one receptor agonist on bipolar disorder, mechanical understanding potential mechanisms, the GLP, one receptor agonist in neuro psychiatric conditions are being explored. A comprehensive understanding is still lacking more research is needed to see how these medications interact with the brain and influence mood and cognitive function. But you not a doctor, not a researcher. You'd bet a couple of dollars that the GLP took care of what what do you think it did for?

Anonymous Female Speaker 53:15
Yes, I'm definitely not a doctor or researcher. And I don't even have any type of medical background. But my daughter was in constant flight fight or freeze mode. You could just tell like her nervous system constantly thought it was in danger. And she was reacting. And I do think that her brain was inflamed in some way. Every like holistic specialist I seen everyone was like, oh, everything's inflamed inflammation, inflammation, how do you get rid of that? You know, I couldn't do very much with her diet. And when she took this LPWAN was like, everything just worked the way it was supposed to work. The combination of these medicines, right so like, we did have a good mental health drug for her. She the lithium was was working to a certain extent. And then we added the GLP one and everything worked the way it was supposed to work. You could just tell like, she could just get up in the morning and do things and she wasn't agitated and she wasn't angry. And she was happy to be around people and social and normal and functioning. Like I said, she went to school every single day. She made straight A's. She loved learning. She was not obsessive about things. She would just eat food like a normal human, which is terrible to say but it was just so nice. Like for years I haven't been able to keep any type of prepackaged food in the house. Just rip through it. No matter what. Just grab it should just grab it grab and go. You know, it's hard to pack lunches for little kids when you can't have anything that's wrapped.

Scott Benner 54:50
Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying. Like you can't be like, it's not Little House on the Prairie. You can't make everything from scratch. Right? Yeah, believe me.

Anonymous Female Speaker 54:59
I tried Well,

Scott Benner 55:00
so the GLP wanes, it's not it's not really a seven day drug, you know what I mean? So like, do you notice any return of problems? Like day six or seven before the next injection? Yep,

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:14
you do? Yep. Oh, absolutely.

Scott Benner 55:18
Are you paying for this in cash?

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:20
Yes.

Scott Benner 55:21
Is it like $1,200 a month?

Unknown Speaker 55:23
Yes.

Scott Benner 55:24
Are you wealthy by any chance?

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:26
No. We,

Scott Benner 55:30
I just want to say, well, I could feel better

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:35
doing this, but it is. It is tough. It is tough. Wow. You know, we're in a position where we can make it work. But at the sacrifice of other things.

Scott Benner 55:43
She on the 2.4 1.7

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:48
gone all the way up, and then we went back down.

Scott Benner 55:50
How much weight did she lose?

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:53
Let's see. She went from 240 to 160.

Scott Benner 55:57
Jesus, good for her. She's a little skittish over where the chart wants her right now. 15 pounds, maybe? Am I right? Doing the math in my head. All right. Yeah, that's astonishing. Yeah. Oh, she's so happy.

Anonymous Female Speaker 56:12
She's so happy. She started a part time job last week as a cashier at the local grocery store for her. made me cry.

Scott Benner 56:22
I just cried. I hope everybody's

Anonymous Female Speaker 56:24
okay. You said it is the best.

Scott Benner 56:27
Okay. Wow. Wow. So in your heart of hearts, you'd inject it every five days if you could?

Anonymous Female Speaker 56:34
No, because we still deal with the other side effects of nausea and growing up and whatnot. I wonder

Scott Benner 56:41
if you see, this is where I would love for a doctor to like, be able to get a hold of this in a vial and you could mess around a little bit and try to figure out like, what's the right dose and the frequency to really balance the nausea with the with the impact you're getting? Yes, this

Anonymous Female Speaker 56:58
is why I'm saying five years from now. That's what's gonna be going on. Right? Don't you think they're just gonna be like, here's a vial is valid, but you need to help with this. And like if, like I want her to keep taking it, but I don't want her to shrink.

Scott Benner 57:10
Yeah, I'm gonna have like a Mad Max vest with it on I think in about five years and he's just gonna put in tiny little bits of it when I need it. Well, if that's a reference, anybody gets her not. By the way, we go via an inflammation reduction back to our chat GPU overlords. We go V is a brand name for someone we know what that is GLP receptor agonist blah, blah, blah, mechanisms of inflammation reduction, modulation of immune response semaglutide and other GLP receptor agonists can modulate the immune system by influencing the activity of various immune cells, including macrophages and T cells, T cells sounds like a cancer thing, doesn't it? This modulation can I get to find out what a T cell is. Modulation can lead to a reduction in pro inflammatory cytokines and an increase in anti inflammatory cytokines. Reduction of oxidative stress oxidative stress GLP receptor agonist has been shown to reduce oxidative stress which is closely linked to inflammation. By dis creasing oxidative stress these medications can mitigate the inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation in the brain known as neuro inflammation is associated with various neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. semaglutide has demonstrated the ability to reduce neuro inflammation in animal models suggesting potential benefits for conditions like Alzheimer's disease and bipolar disorder, and metabolic inflammation. obesity, type two diabetes are often accompanied by chronic low grade inflammation semaglutide helps reduce this metabolic inflammation by promoting weight loss, improving insulin sensitivity and reducing the levels of inflammatory markers such as C reactive protein. I'll be God Damn,

Anonymous Female Speaker 58:46
look at what it did

Scott Benner 58:48
health care about that? Yeah, yeah. You know who you're gonna hear talking about this except for you on this podcast? No one No one's gonna talk about this. I took I took it pretty hard in the last week for having a guy on who had type one for eight years. He's diagnosed by his doctor type one eight years. 50 years old, diagnosed 58 years old now hasn't taken insulin in like two years because he's on Manjaro and people come on he doesn't have type one diabetes. I'm like he's got he's got this testing. He does. He's got a he's got one of the markers for type one like, and people like well, it's moody. It's it's Lada. It's on like, I don't give a what you call it. The guy was using all the insulin, and now he's not using any of it. And whether this lasts for a week, a month or five years, what do you care? Big picture baby, like Jesus Christ, step back and see the big picture. I got doctors coming at me online. This is very, gotta be careful. You tell them people with type one they don't need and so I said I can say that. I said this is the guy story. Go listen to it. And I think we even said in there it's not a cure. He definitely thinks it's possible that he's gonna have to go back on it. sauna at some point, like, you know, like, maybe he is just in the middle of a very long honeymoon, we all appreciate that. But for the love of God, he took it. He takes an injection once a week, and he stopped taking insulin. And the little girl that you referenced from the other episode, she was using 70 units of insulin a day, and now uses four units of basil only, there's not currently bolusing for her meals. Like what the hell like I love how people's brains work. They're like, don't say that. I'm like, don't say that. We should be screaming this at everybody. Yeah, we shouldn't be telling people, Hey, this lady's kid was in can trouble. And now she's not. And someone go find out what happened. You only mean like, so we can duplicate it for people. I didn't mean to curse that

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:00:50
much. And that's what it is. It's not a cure. No, but it's definitely going to revolutionize how we take care of these things. It's

Scott Benner 1:00:56
doing like, glisten. It's doing something for your daughter right now. And it's an incredibly positive, you were talking about a kid who binge eating, who's trying to kill herself. He's wandered into a lake to stare. You don't Amy and like, like having moments that her parents are identifying as, like, going dark. You try living through that? Seriously, like as her or as you and your husband or your poor kids. The other two, who I assumed lived for a couple years in a corner covering their head. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, there's a lot going on, right? I'm not wrong, right? Yeah. Like, and she gets this and look at all it's doing for and I'm gonna bet you're gonna tell me you've explained this all backwards and forwards to your insurance company. And they told you to shut up and go paying cash. Is that right?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:01:44
Yes, they did. Yeah, that's what they said. They said, but we don't pay for weight loss drugs. I was like, I don't care. It's not a weight loss drug.

Scott Benner 1:01:52
Does the doctor believe that? This is what's happened? Yes,

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:01:55
our doctors are fabulous. And both our psychiatrist and endo wrote letters, saying as much I'm

Scott Benner 1:02:02
tired of people not being able to think like I get the insurance company. They're just trying to get out of spending the money. That's

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:02:07
the thing I'm gonna do. Do you know how much you insurance companies spent on hospital stays for this child in the last two years? Oh, thank you more than this medication cost? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:02:15
that one that is probably your only pathway to this. Hey, let me ask you one simple question. Who are you getting the the insurance through? Is it your or your husband's company? Right now? It's

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:02:27
mine. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:02:28
Is it a big company? Is it possible, they're a cash payer? It is not a big company. Now, I'm sorry, because a cash paying company could override what has been set up in the plan.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:02:40
You know, that's a good point, both my husband and I work for small businesses, he owns a small business and I work for a small business. So yeah,

Scott Benner 1:02:47
his small business is probably making safe rooms, I would imagine, because he probably did that a few years ago, he's, he's like, we're gonna need a safe place to go at some point. So we did go into business for ourselves here, we'll build the first one in the house, it'd be the prototype, this is where the sales will go on. And then we'll do it for other people. People who live or work for really big companies, I try to go over this as much as I can a cash pay employer would mean that they're such a big company that they really just use the insurance company to facilitate the payments, they set up what's covered at the beginning of the year. And the insurance company really just does what they tell them, like, and so you can go to your company and be like, listen, put this on the on the formulary, please. And they can make that change if they want or they can check off an exception, they can literally just call your insurance carrier and go, Hey, listen, this lady is going to call you later today. This is their name, this is her kids thing, we're going to cover the week OB for her, and they'll go okay, and that's it because they're only doing what the company told them to do. In your situation, you're probably not in that situation. And the company is probably paying a one time VIG to the insurance company, and then they're done out there. So you got to find out if you're a cash pay or not. Does that make sense? It does.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:04:02
It does. I could definitely find that.

Scott Benner 1:04:04
I mean, it's worth a look. And you know, because instead of like, you're, basically you're calling somebody who's been told these are the rules and you're saying don't follow the rules. And they're saying, Sorry, don't care, because your company either paid us for this, or is telling us to do this. Now, if your company is willing to like, go that extra mile for you than they might be now. What does that mean? Like in a cash pay situation? You're talking about another $24,000 a year maybe or more to cover your kids medication? A big company laughed at that amount of money and says yeah, sure, no problem. Right. Like a small company says I'm sorry, you're gonna bankrupt us. I can't do that for you. So you got to you gotta see who you are and that situation, personal experience. My wife's company when Arden was little paid for like a $10,000 extraction of teeth to happen in a a hospital setting because we couldn't find a dentist who was covered put comfortable putting Arden under while she was on insulin. Really? Yeah, they wanted to do it in the hospital. Yeah, yeah, our insurance was like, this is Dental. We're not paying for this. We were faced with a $10,000 bill. And I went to the company and said, Look, just cover this. And they were like, Yeah, sure, no problem. It was, it was over like an hour. You know what I mean? It was interesting. That's great. But again, a big company to whom, which I think $10,000 wasn't a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Nevertheless, it was a problem for us.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:05:35
Yeah. Right. I mean, it makes me want to want to change my job path.

Scott Benner 1:05:41
Yeah, well, I mean, at least to accompany who will cover we go up for weight loss, because you're covered there. Yeah, on that. Also, what happened to her diabetes? How how's the insulin use? Did it go down at all?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:05:52
I cannot believe we haven't talked about this yet. Of course, her agency is better, right? Of course, her agency, when we were really, really tightly managing it, we could get it down to like, 6.8. But when she was sick, it mostly hovered around 7.5. And then now it's 5.80.

Scott Benner 1:06:12
Good for you. Just you use less insulin in a day than she did before.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:06:17
Oh, my gosh, yes.

Scott Benner 1:06:20
Did that happen immediately when you injected it? Or did it? Is it some of the it's also the weight loss, too?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:06:27
I mean, definitely does. I'm sure weight loss has something to do with it, right? Obviously, when you lose weight, you're probably going to eat less, you're going to use less insulin. So there's definitely that piece of it. But there's this other piece where her body just seems to be receiving the insulin better. Yeah, you could just use it more efficiently.

Scott Benner 1:06:44
Does it really smash like mealtime spikes down to different animals?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:06:49
To the point that she's on a T slim? We use Control IQ with our Dexcom. And she, in fact, we switched to the T slim to get control IQ because that was before the Omni pod to had their I don't know what they call it. Their version of the logarithm.

Scott Benner 1:07:09
Control like you? Oh, no, on the pods is on the pod five?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:07:13
On the right. Yeah, it was before the new iPads came out. So we switched to the T slim to get the control IQ. And that did help us even though she was still very sick. So we're on the T slim with the control IQ and part of her mental health issue was the the burnout from the diabetes care. And even on the T slim, she just wasn't entering her food and what led us into her food. And you know, it was the whole thing. We couldn't even say, tell us what the blood sugar is, or check the blood sugar. And we took off all of our, you know, our phones used to receive her blood sugar too. We took all of that off, because we all just needed to take a step back and not be obsessed with her blood sugar. Yeah. Because that was causing a lot of tension. My husband and I both like to control things. And we wanted to control the diabetes all the time. And that was her big thing pushing against any type of control, right? Look at Oh, we'd all laid back. We have the control IQ going since probably October. So even in October, she'd lost a significant amount of weight. And she was eating a lot less. But she's still eating. You know, she's kind of just normally eating. We just like control like you take it we never dose for anything.

Scott Benner 1:08:23
How about that? I just watched Artemisa Pre-Bolus, like 45 minutes ago and her blood sugar went to like 116 jump right back down to 114. It's coming down steadily right now. And without a Pre-Bolus like and without a GLP she would have been more like 181 8190 and that situation? Yeah, it's really something like, yeah, good for you. Listen,

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:08:47
it's amazing. I

Scott Benner 1:08:48
can't thank you enough for doing this. This is fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing your story. And getting through all the hurdles that you got through. So you have the story to share. Because you could have given up at any moment in time, I wouldn't have blamed you. And instead you you fought through and you got a real answer. Do you feel accomplished? We're just happy it's over.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:09:09
I mean, we still have things to deal with. But we are so happy that our daughter feels better and that she can be a functioning 14 year old. I mean, I know you're always proud of your kid, but you know what to watch a kid graduate from eighth grade who has gone through so much and I mean, couldn't even go to sixth grade. I homeschooled for a whole semester, because she couldn't even make it there. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:09:35
It makes sure people really understand like, you had to pull her out of open windows, right?

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:09:40
Yeah, yeah. She was jumping out of well, you know, after a few of the windows, we had to nail every window in our house shut.

Scott Benner 1:09:47
Okay. Well, there that's a clear description. Okay, so

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:09:53
I couldn't take her in a car. Cars were very unsafe. My whole family and the five of us we didn't go in one car. For two years, because she couldn't be in a car with that many people. Yeah, it was tough. Yeah, it was tough. And now, you know, she's going to school and participating and doing homework and taking guitar lessons and got them

Scott Benner 1:10:16
good for her. All right. Now, this was wonderful of you, I really, I can't thank you enough for reaching out. I can't thank you enough for, you know, shouting out the podcast about where it was helpful and everything like that. But I'm really thrilled that because I took a lot, and I am taking a fair amount of crap for talking about GRPs. And, you know, not from forward thinking people, obviously, but from people who are, you know, anywhere on the spectrum from, gosh, like, you know, you're pushing the GLP agenda. I've heard that was lovely to, you can't say this. By the way, in case you wonder how I measure when I'm doing well, when somebody says, You can't say that, I think, Oh, I must be on to something. So it said a couple of times in my life, but this podcast people in the diabetes community, I'm making quotes, because just because you say you're in it doesn't mean you're in it, have told me that, you know, what I'm doing is wrong and hurtful for people. I disagree. So, I've been told you can't tell people how you manage your daughter's blood sugar, because that's dangerous. That turned out to be wrong. Yeah, I'm looking at. When I get done here, I'm looking at a post from a person in the private Facebook group and adult who had a significant low blood sugar incident at work, and came to the Podcast, the podcast, private Facebook group to share the story. It's a harrowing story. But what I learned from just skimming it with my eyes, is that this person had glucagon with them, they had a G voc hypo pen with them, that they would not have had had they not listened to the podcast. Wow. Yeah. And so to those people out there who say don't talk about this stuff, until it's 100%, you know, till the FDA says for 10 years, and it's okay, and blah, blah, like you're missing the point about how we get to these things. You know what I mean? People have to hear these stories, they have to go find out for themselves. I'm not telling anyone what to do. This isn't like, what is this kindergarten, I'm not in charge of people. You don't mean like, nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, you know, like, go take care of yourself. But where are you going to hear a story about a lady who struggled to help her kid for all these years that had all the problems your daughter had? And Bing, bang, boom, at the end? She's doing a lot better. And it's because of lithium and GLP. No one would have thought that, right? Yeah. And I'm, I'm over here banging this Gong about. I'm like, Hey, inflammation, inflammation, autoimmune. Right? Like, there's no just no one. Remember? Maybe no one does. Remember, back when I was writing the blog. There used to be this messaging out of some out of some researchers about type one diabetes, and the messaging was always, hey, I know you think the beta cells in your pancreas are dead, but they're not dead. They're just inflamed. And they're frozen. They can't move because they're so swollen. That was the like, blue collar way I had it explained to me like 15 years ago. What if there's something to that? Like, what if they were on to something but they didn't know how to impact it? Right? And so let's say that all the cells in your pancreas are just inflamed. And because of that, they can't function. And then you take the inflammation out and they start working better. Like is that's not crazy? Is it? Yeah, wow. So you know, because right now we say things like, her insulin sensitivity has gone down, or the insulin seems to work so much better now. Or blah, blah, blah, but what if what is really happening as information is leaving the pancreas and, like, I don't know, like, you don't want to ask me because I'm, I want to be clear. I'm a fucking idiot. Okay? Like, like, you don't, you don't want to ask me I barely and I mean this with all sincerity, barely scraped through high school. I know how to listen to people. And I know how to hold a lot ideas in my head and draw lines. And there are lines to be drawn here. So I'm going to help people tell their stories so other people can draw the lines and then I'll sit back later while everybody else takes credit for it and yeah, that'd be fine. Anyways, Fine,

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:14:32
let's just get it done.

Scott Benner 1:14:33
I don't care who gets as long as it happens as long as as long as they start covering it for your kid. So you don't go broke. Right? I mean, between the GLP and feeding that dog, Jesus Christ, I don't know how you people are existing. Go got that dog must eat like a cat a day or something like that is what I'm imagining. So anyway, you were

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:14:56
your body shaming my poor dog. Listen Alright, that's fine. He knows. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:15:04
Listen, if he knows, send them my way. I apologize.

Anonymous Female Speaker 1:15:09
I thought I'd give them a GLP one. You're like, Listen,

Scott Benner 1:15:11
man, I can't help who you are. If I didn't know you and you could hear me. Anyway. Alright, thank you so much. Hold on, hold on one second for me. Yeah, thanks.

A huge thanks to Dexcom for supporting the podcast and for sponsoring this episode dexcom.com/juicebox Go get yourself a Dexcom g7 right now using my link. Mark is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes, you show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes to find you. And that is what the Medtronic champion community is all about. Each of us is strong, and together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community where to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 In your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com. And click on bold beginnings in the menu. I'm going on vacation and I'm bringing you all with me juicebox podcast.com, scroll down to the juice cruise banner, click on it and get all the details. A diabetes diagnosis comes with a lot of new terms and you're not going to understand most of them. That's why we made defining diabetes. Go to juicebox podcast.com up into the menu and click on defining diabetes to find the series that will tell you what all of those words mean. Short, fun and informative. That's the finding diabetes

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#1252 Weekly News 7/8/24

Weekly News 7/8/24

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1252 of the Juicebox Podcast

Welcome back this is some diabetes news for you from the week of July 8 2024. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year's supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box. If you'd like to save 30% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout I dried myself just recently with some beautiful waffle towels from cozy Earth and my baits and my bagels were all very happy about it. Yours could be to pat yourself dry and comfort and quality cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box. I don't they don't tell me what to say by the way I just I say whatever comes to my head. And listen if you have type one diabetes or you're the caregiver of someone with type one and you're a US resident, You'd be doing me you and pretty much the whole world a favor if you went to T one D exchange.org/juicebox joined the registry and completed the survey take you about 10 minutes T one D exchange.org/juicebox podcast this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by me because I'm here to tell you about the juice cruise 2025 That's right. I have introduced a vacation for all of us with diabetes. Families I say all of us because I'm the father of someone with type one. So we're looking for families or adults. People with type two diabetes gestational if you have a connection to diabetes, and you want to go on a vacation was with a bunch of cool people who are going to really understand your life. Get a tan see Mexico hang out talk diabetes, go to Q and A's all this cool stuff. juicebox podcast.com Scroll down just a little bit to the juice crews banner, click on it there you'll find out all about registration. I think there's an early bird, bird, right? Why can I say early bird early bird special if you sign up? I think you gotta put your deposit down before August 1 To save something. You'll see it when you get there. juicebox podcast.com Just scroll down a little bit click on the banner. What's up kids? We're gonna do a news thing for you. Today is July 12. It's got his birthday, and I'm gonna read you the news. Let's start with this article. Distinct T cell signatures identified in children with type one diabetes. This is from News Medical Life Sciences. I don't know news dash medical.net. So here's the here's the skinny right. A recent study published in news dash medical has identified distinct T cell signatures in children with type one diabetes. T cells are a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial ro ro role in the immune response. I'm not getting that out. This study discovered unique patterns of T cell activity in children with type one diabetes, as compared to healthy children or kids who don't have type one. Research conducted detailed analysis of blood samples from children with type one and those without they used advanced techniques to identify and compare T cell populations and their activity levels. And the study found that specific T cell subsets were more prevalent and active in children with type one diabetes. Now, the implications of that are this. The findings suggest that certain T cells may contribute to the development and progression of type one. And they think that understanding T cell signatures could lead to new diagnostic tools, and maybe even allow for earlier detection of diabetes. This of course, might pave the way for targeted therapies aimed at modulating the immune response to prevent or slow down the destruction of beta cells. Pretty cool. Now, you're saying but Scott, what is a T cell? Okay, so a T cell or a T lymphocyte lymph cell lymphoma cell? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I'm just interpreting the news. These T cells are essential for the adaptive immune response, which is the body's targeted defense against specific pathogens they help recognize and eliminate infected or cancerous cells. There are hyper T cells. The cells assist other white blood cells in immunological immunologic processes, including the activation of B cells to secrete antibodies and macrophages. Okay, to destroy ingested microbes. ingest the microbe, they go get it. What's a microbe we can deep dive if you want to, but cytotoxic T cells are another one these cells directly attack and destroy infected or cancerous cells and regulatory T cells help regulate or suppress other cells. To the immune system preventing autoimmune diseases. Okay, so that's what a T cell is. Now go back up to the study. The lead researcher emphasizes the importance of the findings in understanding the immune landscape for type one. And they noted that this research could help identify at risk individuals before clinical symptoms appear. I'd be very cool for early intervention. The study is a significant step forward in the quest to unravel the complexities of type one diabetes, continued research in this area holds promise for developing better diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. And of course, maybe more will come one day. Pretty cool, right? That's not bad. So that's that article. Now let me get rid of that one and get to the next one that I thought we'd talk about. Okay. There's a trial that you can get involved in the V x two, six. Why are people texting me while I'm trying to talk to you about the news? It's just a reminder to pick up a prescription, which is what I'm going to do when I'm done here. Now I'm going to be later because of the text. Ironic, no. Okay, the VX 264 trial. Let's find out more about it. This trial is researching Iceland cell transplants. Hmm, okay. Let me get you that info Meishan and where to go check it out vert. This is vertex by the way. And let's see where can you find out of this find out more about the trial? Yes, I will. Okay. So it is 264 dot t one study.com. By the way, I have no affiliation with this study. investigational therapies for type one so this is a study you might be able to get involved in. I thought this might be interesting to you. 264 dot t one study.com. The upward study is looking for individuals living with type one diabetes to participate in a study of an investigational cell based therapy. This is right from the website. The investigational therapy consists of cells designed to produce insulin contained within devices designed to protect the cells from the immune system sounds like a pouch kind of thing. investigational devices are implanted in the space behind the muscle of the abdomen wall. researchers are studying the safety tolerability and effectiveness of international health. Well, if you're interested in this, go check it out. It's the upward study type one diabetes clinical trial. And I've read you the the link a couple of times. I'm not gonna lie to you. I won't be putting the link in the show notes. But you can go back and listen and type it in for yourself if you'd like to learn more. When let me see if I can learn a little bit more about the upward study. All right. The upward study is investigating and investigational cell based therapy for type one diabetes, the eligibility is 18 to 65 years old diagnosed with type one diabetes, requiring insulin injections or pumps. Well, okay, well, I can probably most of you. Go check it out and see what you think. You know, if you get involved in the study, let me know he just looks like he just has like a three step process to find out if you're eligible. Go check it out. I've had people on who have done implantable studies before and had really great success. I'd be happy to tell you what episode that is, but I really don't remember. I know you're like well, if he told me it's got to go listen to it, but I don't have that kind of time today. All right, what else did we see in the news today around the type one diabetes? Oh. How about this one? This little ditty. GLP drugs like ozempic may reduce the risk of these 10 cancers. 10 Let's find out more. Oh, there's so much reading here. Watch how I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna paste it and say, give me bullet points. Let Chad GPT read that link. It's read. And now. Bada bing. Here comes the bullet points. It's that fast live. Let's see what we have here. Okay, a study overview. Here's the study over you researchers analyzed over a decade of medical records from nearly 1.7 million people with type two diabetes to investigate the effects of GLP one drugs on cancer risk.

significant risk reduction. Check this out, kiddies. Gallbladder cancer reduced by 65% minute Jimmy OMYA by 63%. I probably didn't pronounce that right. Pancreatic cancer reduced by 59%. Well, that's lovely. Liver cancer reduced by 53 Ovarian by 48 colorectal. I only know how to say that because of commercials where they say colorectal cancer reduced by 46% because it looks like color Actel you know what I mean? Multiple Myeloma bone marrow cancer reduced by 41%. esophageal cancer 40 percents just hear me just roll out esophageal like it was nothing. endometrial cancer of the uterine lining reduced by 26%. Oh gosh, kidney cancer reduced by 24. Wow, it did not seem to significantly reduce the risk for postmenopausal breast cancer, stomach cancer or thyroid cancer. It says here the reduction cancer risk is thought to be linked to the GLP ones drugs effects on insulin production, chronic inflammation and hormone levels, which are factors involved in cancer development. God damn right. How about that? Should we be clapping? Now the study did face limitations due to its retrospective nature and reliance on electronic health records, which can include diagnostic inaccuracies and uncontrolled variables. Further research is needed. Boy, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what I got up this morning weighed myself. This is the lowest I've weighed since I started a GLP. Med a year and a half ago. On my birthday, it was a nice little nice little birthday surprise. Before I get to the last story, I just want to jump in to tell you this. I'm hosting a cruise in June of 2025. It's called just cruise 2025. Go to juicebox podcast.com. Scroll down a little bit, click on the banner, it will take you right to the website where you can find out the itinerary, all the cruise information and put a deposit down in your cabin if you like. It's selling very well. And there are limited spaces. So if you're actually interested, you putting your deposit down now of course would be the way to go. We were only able to secure a certain number of cabins and a certain number of spaces. There's going to be me Eric is coming working on getting you one other person for talks. So there'll be conversations around type one diabetes, we'll be giving talks like straight from the podcast, and of course answering questions, tons of q&a, working on having some people there from different companies to answer questions for you about devices. And other than that sun and fun around Mexico. Getting a tan with a bunch of cool people have diabetes. So check it out. Go to juicebox podcast.com. Just scroll down a little and click on the banner for the Juicebox Podcast cruise. Doesn't matter if you're a family with type one or an adult everyone's welcome. You have type two, come on. Let's go you got diabetes. We want to meet you. There is a $25 on Boyd on Boyd onboard credit per state room if you register by August 1. I thought this NPR article was interesting. I'm going to share it with you it's from June 2024. It's called your gut microbes may influence how you handle stress. Here's some key points from it. A study published in natural Mental Health found distinct biological signatures in the microbiomes of individuals who are highly resilient to stress. You may recognize the word resilient here, I just put up a four part series with Erica Forsythe about resilience. And that's why this caught my eye. Hi resilio resilience was linked to anti inflammatory microbes and improved gut barrier integrity. The gut microbiome communicates with the brain via the immune system, vagus nerve neurotransmitters and short chain fatty acids. And that's really cool, isn't it? Like there's not much more to it than that. But that's I thought that was kind of awesome. It says future research aims to develop microbiome based therapies to mitigate stress and mental health disorders. Oh, I thought that was awesome. It's called your gut microbes may be influencing how you handle stress. If you want to Google it. It's bile. Let's see. I'm wonder if I could. Yeah, I think this is pretty cool. I don't know I'm interested in stuff like this. I thought you would be too. Alright, that made me go find this article. This is Medical News. Today. It's a year or so old, but it's called the role of the gut microbiome. Actually, what's the article called? Type Two diabetes researchers identify gut bacteria linked to insulin sensitivity. Among other things, it says cedar cyanide researchers found that people with higher levels of gut bacteria from a group called copra caucus tend to have higher insulin sensitivity. Additionally, they discovered the gut microbiomes with higher levels of flavor. Oh, I Fraktur tended to have lower insulin tended to have lower insulin sensitivity in that in that interesting, like, how could you get more? Alright, let me ask the chat. GPT. Overlord, how can I get more copper caucus in my gut? To increase copper caucus in your gut, you can try the following methods diet consumer diet rich and fiber including fruits. Okay, probiotics, prebiotics, limited processed foods, regular exercise, avoid antibiotics, okay, I feel like that stuff we already know. But can I just like, is there a way to give myself a let's call On a turbo boost of copper caucus. There isn't a specific guaranteed method for rapidly increasing the levels. He sends me right back to this. Where is copper caucus found? I'm mispronouncing it. By the way, type of bacteria commonly found in the human gut plays a role in producing short chain fatty acids, important for gut health. This bacterium thrives in environments such as dietary fiber, so consuming High fiber foods can support its growth. And doesn't say it's not like eat this thing and you'll get it. Is it found in any supplements? It's thinking it's not commonly found in commercial probiotics. I'll be damned. Well, let's get on that. Should we? Anyway, interesting article. Like I said, Medical News Today type two diabetes researchers identified gut bacteria LinkedIn insensitivity. All right, everybody. That was fun. I'll be back next week with another one of these I got a lot of emails from people who said they were enjoying these. I appreciate you guys listening. I'll find you some more stuff to talk about next week.

Scott reads the news was brought to you by juice Cruz 2025 Go to juicebox podcast.com. Scroll down and click on that juice cruise banner and put down your deposit comes cruising with me. And all my friends. We're gonna meet, chat, have fun, relax, make lifelong. Maybe somebody will get married from the cruise or have a baby. I'm finally gonna get a baby named after me. juicebox podcast.com gmail.com Don't put an R in there. juicebox podcast.com Go check out the juice cruise. I hope to see you on the ship in June 2025.

If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are gonna answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 In your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me. If you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community check out Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook

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#1251 After Dark: Multiple Personalities

Ben is 30 and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. He talks about his experiences with bipolar disorder, addiction, and multiple personalities, sharing his journey through mental health challenges and managing diabetes.

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

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1251 of the Juicebox Podcast.

So today we're going to talk to Ben. He's a 30 year old systems administrator who was diagnosed with type one diabetes about two years ago. Ben has a number of different issues that we're going to speak about today, bipolar disorder, addiction, multiple personalities. And a little bit more is one maybe didn't have to be after dark but Ben cursed a lot in it. And so the intent is there even though the curses aren't. And for that reason, today's another episode of The afterdark series from the Juicebox Podcast. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. Alright, for those of you listening on the day that the episode came out, it's Friday, it's a perfect time to sit back with your phone and take the survey AT T one D exchange.org/juice. box I know you're at your desk pretending to work, go help out with type one diabetes research, they're looking for US residents who have type one diabetes or are the caregivers of someone with type one, t one D exchange.org/juicebox. And then go become a member of the private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes

this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med U S med.com/juice box or call 888721151 for us med is where my daughter gets her diabetes supplies from and you could to use the link or number to get your free benefit check and get started today with us met Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing together people who are redefining what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Mark. He was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 28. He's 47. Now he's going to tell you a little bit about his story. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story. Visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box and check out the Medtronic champion hashtag on social media. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G voc hypo Penn. Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash juicebox. Hey

Ben 2:38
Scott. I'm Ben Jensen. I'm a 30 year old systems administrator living in Nampa. Idaho. I was diagnosed with type one diabetes when I was 28.

Scott Benner 2:46
Two years ago. Yes. All right. Any other autoimmune or diabetes in your family? autoimmune

Ben 2:55
issues up the wazoo? I come from a family of females just about every single one of them has a thyroid problem. I couldn't tell you whether it was hypo or hyper. But yes, tons of it. My mom's side of the family. Okay, on your mom's side.

Scott Benner 3:11
You don't have hypothyroidism? No,

Ben 3:13
but I'm actually getting tested. My nurse practitioner, she just ordered a full thyroid panel. interest on I'm getting the labs drawn for that tomorrow. Interestingly enough, I just watched a tick tock video where bipolar type one can be confused with a thyroid issue. So that's why she ordered the test.

Scott Benner 3:31
So you had a little bit of an audio issue in the beginning, Ben. So the first time you introduced yourself you told people you had bipolar but you didn't the second time. So how long have you had the diagnosis

Ben 3:42
since July of this year, and it is currently November 13?

Scott Benner 3:47
Ben prior to that any psychological issues at all?

Ben 3:51
No, I was a normal guy. I kicked ass at my job. I did have addictions to and his twins at certain points that turned into binge drinking but I was able to I was a functioning addict of sorts. At work. I worked for the State Police I was one of the the lead infrastructure engineer so is there for three years.

Scott Benner 4:13
I don't know how to abuse antihistamines, can you tell me the

Ben 4:17
one that I abused was diaper diaper and hydrazine. It's commonly known as Benadryl and it's in the class of drug called a dissociative and I also believe that I have disassociative identity disorder that's formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Okay. When I would pop the antihistamines I would do them at such large doses. I would hear voices in my head, really? And yes, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. They were more like whispers that, you know, I knew where people but I couldn't quite understand if that makes sense.

Scott Benner 4:58
So while you do don't have a diagnosis before the bipolar six months ago or so. You were having issues that were concerning, but you thought they were related. Or they were related to the abuse. Is that possible?

Ben 5:13
So I didn't mention any abuse Scott. Oh, sorry. I meant

Scott Benner 5:17
I meant abusing the the antihistamines, but did I find something by mistake then?

Ben 5:22
You might have Scott, Freudian slip there. We'll get to that later, I guess. Okay.

Scott Benner 5:26
Do you think like, in hindsight, do you think that's mental health or do you think it was actually the impact from the histamine?

Ben 5:34
I think it was me coping. I found something that helped me cope. Okay. It was antihistamines, I knew that there was something wrong in my head. I believe I I've had bipolar my entire life. I've had di D my entire life. I've only become aware of these things. Since July 20. Of this year.

Scott Benner 5:51
How did it manifest earlier in your life? And what what? How did how was it written off?

Ben 5:58
Looking back on my earlier life. I believe the first personality that was born was my, my gamer personality. I was super manic into games my entire life. And everything about them like duck cones. I was on an old Flash game website back in the day, called a Pong game.com. I was super invested in the community. It just meant the world to me. World of Warcraft, I probably have, I don't know. 20,000 hours played in it. I probably had 7000 hours and Dota two. That was my first addiction. It was gaming.

Scott Benner 6:34
Actually, the the most stunning thing you've said so far is the Duck Hunt is still something a person who's 30 years old would have played That's

Ben 6:42
stupid. It was on it. I had to go downstairs in the basement. It was dark. I had to blow in the cartridge and everything. I was gonna

Scott Benner 6:49
say that. It's an old Nintendo game, isn't it? It is. Yeah,

Ben 6:53
my stepdad had it. SNES.

Scott Benner 6:58
That shocked me the rest of this is making sense. But the Duck Hunt exists and people still use it. I was like, Get out of here. So you hyper focused on those video games? I did. Okay, they were my life. And what did that do for you? Like, a lot of this is I think, in hindsight, I imagined these questions. But

Ben 7:18
what do I mean? I was a good student as well. I was in advanced placement classes during all of this. I had friends who were on the basketball team, I played soccer for like a prestigious club. I had a great upbringing. But at the same time, there was, you know, childhood abuse that I had recognized that I had been living with my entire lives. That was the cause of why I was doing all these things. What did they abuse look like? Viewers, Scott and I were talking before, and we were talking about how our day went. And I told Scott that my therapist fired me today. And he told me to save it for the air. So my therapist just fired me. Scott, where was I going with this?

Scott Benner 8:04
I well, I asked what about about the abuse? Oh, yeah,

Ben 8:10
about the abuse. Okay, so there's a scene in my head. My first memory is a child. This is my first memory. I don't know if you know what your first memory that you have on Earth, Scott. But my first memory is me in a room standing next to my brother who is now I know, he's been diagnosed with highly functioning Autism. I didn't know that until I was 30. Okay, so he has his own demons. It was me and him standing. Looking outside a window watching my dad dragged my mom down the front sidewalk of our house, down to the street. Oh my god. That's the only traumatic memory I have. I love both my mom and my dad. Mom is also related to my mental break. She's been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. And she's very quickly losing her ability to speak.

Scott Benner 9:06
How old is she? 57. Have you ever asked either your parents about that memory?

Ben 9:14
I talked with my mom about it when I was a kid. Maybe six or seven?

Scott Benner 9:18
Did she tell you what happened? She said it happened.

Ben 9:21
I talked to her about it again. Maybe a year or two ago. I was very drunk at the time. She said it was a bad night. Yeah, why would what? Let's hope that wasn't

Scott Benner 9:31
reminiscent of a good night for. Yep. It was a one time thing. And you were just unlucky enough to see it.

Ben 9:38
I never had the courage to go that deep enough with it with my mom got my mom lost her mind the same time I did. And by the time I came to it, I she she's not capable of having these kinds of conversations any longer. She's capable of telling you what she wants for breakfast or your parents together. So They're divorced. I thought maybe

Scott Benner 10:03
DC your father at all. If you take insulin or sulfonylureas you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most be ready with G voc hypo pen. My daughter carries G voc hypo pen everywhere she goes because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar and people with diabetes ages two and above that I trust. Low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, G voc hypo pen can be administered in two simple steps even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store Chivo Capo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use G Bo Capo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why G vo Capo pen is in Ardens diabetes toolkit at G voc glucagon.com/juicebox. G voc shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma. Or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma visit G voc glucagon.com/risk For safety information. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies and never had a good experience and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while actually for about three years now. Because that's how long we've been using us med us med.com/juice box or call 888721151 for us med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996. And they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping. US med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and Dexcom G seven. They accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau at us med.com/juice box or just call them at 888-721-1514. Get started right now. And you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do. I do. Have you spoken to him about any of this.

Ben 12:42
I texted him all this. I don't know if he read a text messages. But he hasn't returned. I basically confirmed the story with my brother that he saw maybe some he said he saw some. That's all he said. And I said I told my dad my first memory. And then I let him know I'm coming on your podcast. So I called him for his birthday. His birthday was November 9. He didn't answer the phone. He said he was in a meeting. So that's on him.

Scott Benner 13:12
Okay, gotcha. How old is he? Is he about your mom's age? Now

Ben 13:16
a little older? Not entirely sure. He might be close to 60 Little over.

Scott Benner 13:23
Does he have any problems with alcohol?

Ben 13:28
Not that I know of no. At the time I've heard stories that maybe he did. I know I'm a dick but I'm drunk. Stop drinking Ben is no. He's no fun guy to be around. Sometimes

Scott Benner 13:38
drinking Ben is not a fun Ben.

Ben 13:41
Well, he can be fun. If you get like, three and then once you get you know 12 He becomes a different guy. Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:49
You talked about binge drinking. You move to that after the Benadryl.

Ben 13:54
I did. Benadryl wasn't working anymore, was looking for something different. So eventually, what the Benadryl manifested into was a feeling of just impending doom. That's what I would feel when I would do these large doses of it. I'm talking I would be popping bottles of this Scott on a daily basis until my hand shook. Just

Scott Benner 14:16
drink. Is this what the kids call scissor? Sizzle? What am I doing? I'd have it wrong. Am I right? Or no?

Ben 14:22
I don't think I'm a kid anymore. Scott and Luke just as much as you are.

Scott Benner 14:26
You think you think you're more out of the loop than I am? Okay. I'm pretty sure that's not true. I'm up to the point in my life now where I'm asking waitresses, how old I look. Like, hey, we don't know each other. You've already gotten your tip just real quick. How do I look?

Ben 14:46
At your wife Scott.

Scott Benner 14:47
I do because I've I've held on to my dark hair. And so I think this might be the only thing saving me and I'm trying to figure out I'm going to stop going to people who are expecting tips from me start asking just random strangers on the street, maybe? I'm trying to assess my might. I don't know how I guess how old I look. Anyway, I don't think that's the thing that young people do. I don't think young people are like, Hey, I don't look 32 I, I've had a number of these conversations, people with bipolar like, like those kinds of issues. You know, I have my own thoughts that are rooted in absolutely no science, but seems like people who deal with inflammation issues seem to run into bipolar issues as well. Not with a lot of frequency. But I've always been kind of stunned by how many people when you ask them was their auto immune your family, what else is going on? And they eventually get to a bipolar Uncle, you know, it doesn't take too long, in a lot of these conversations. So especially now your mom has Alzheimer's, which I believe people call diabetes type something right? Aren't they saying?

Ben 15:52
I've heard that? Yeah.

Scott Benner 15:54
Hold on a second. Does your mom have type two by any chance?

Ben 15:57
Yes, she does. So when she was down, last time, I saw her I slapped the g7 Honor, we diagnosed it.

Scott Benner 16:06
The exact connection between Alzheimer's and type two diabetes is still in debate. However, poorly controlled blood sugar may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's. The relationship is so strong that some of called Alzheimer's, the diabetes of the brain or type three diabetes, that's from the NIH just like three years ago, my point overall is, you know, inflammation and things go wonky. I have to be honest with you, before you gave me your backstory about how long you think you've been struggling like through your entire life, part of me was just thought like, gosh, maybe you've had a big shift because of your thyroid, maybe you're gonna find out your thyroid, your TSH is like eight or nine or something crazy high. And that because thyroid is really one of the ways that one of the symptoms of thyroid can be like really strange behavior, and like aggressiveness and agitation, that kind of stuff. And I thought I wonder if that doesn't look like bipolar, but then you said this has been going on for most of your life. And I kind of let that thought go after that. Okay,

Ben 17:08
I mean, I'm excited just to get the bloodwork done, just to see where I'm at knowing that, you know, every female in my family has a problem. So I

Scott Benner 17:17
think just making everything as well regulated as possible only can be good news for you. So yeah, it's definitely worth doing. You've never had it done before. No, no, no,

Ben 17:26
I don't I guess not. Yeah, you've only

Scott Benner 17:28
had diabetes for two years, too. How do you make out with the type one? Is that something like in the middle of all this? Are you like doing well with it? Are you struggling with that as well?

Ben 17:37
After I was diagnosed, I went from a 12 B, one C to a 4.6 and three months. Oh, and I maintain that for two years until my mental break. I'm at a 6.0 right now.

Scott Benner 17:48
What were you doing to get in the Force?

Ben 17:50
I was Scott Benner. And I can just was bowled with insulin dude. And I paid super strict attention to it. Okay,

Scott Benner 17:59
super good at it. I was manic about diabetes. Okay. Oh, so you you kind of you took that energy, and you focused it at the type one? Yep. Okay, well, it worked. Till didn't I guess

Ben 18:15
it can did. I was good at it.

Scott Benner 18:21
Did you know? While while you were doing that, while you had this incredible Uber focus about diabetes, and you had your agency in the fours? Is there any part of you that says, I have a mental instability? And I'm just using it for good right now? Or did you just think, Wow, I'm doing amazing at this?

Ben 18:39
Well, no, I knew my life was. And I would say it out loud all the time. involuntarily. I would say things like I hated my life. And it took me a while to realize that it wasn't me saying it. It was the other personalities inside of me. It was Dr. Bennett was philosopher Ben, they were saying that they hated the current state of things. So I was I was always aware that I was not happy. Okay, I just didn't I didn't see a way out.

Scott Benner 19:07
The DI D can you give more context to what that is for people.

Ben 19:12
It's a disassociative disorder where there's parts, I guess. I'll try to describe my experience of it. There are thoughts in my head that I recognize that are not my own. And there are times in my life where I know something else is dictating what I'm doing with my body. Be that sending a text message or navigating me to a crowded room to read something very important to me at the time. Everything just seems perfectly orchestrated to well orchestrated that I know that it's not me actually doing it. It's something else. The main personality primarily associated with controlling my body I believe as Mr. Congeniality he's he's my tech visionary. In addition to having all of these mental illnesses, I believe that I am becoming the visionary behind artificial general intelligence and faster than light, speed travel.

Scott Benner 20:16
Are these different personalities all together at the same time? Or do they get their moment in the sun?

Ben 20:23
They definitely get their moment in the sun like philosopher Ben, he loves seeing why and Work Chat, or maybe sending a quirky text while he's taking a Mr. Congeniality loves inspiring people to get excited about technology.

Scott Benner 20:38
Did you just say a second ago that there's a personality inside of you that believes it's the driving force behind AI technology?

Ben 20:46
Yeah, that's Mr. C.

Scott Benner 20:49
And you can you can sit with me right now and speak about that other personality as if it's another person. Correct. But if, if the dice landed in a certain way today, and he was the one who got on the call, would he talk about Ben?

Ben 21:08
I'm not sure that's a great question.

Scott Benner 21:10
Are you not aware of when other like you right now that I'm speaking to? I'm going to call you, Ben. I'm trying to understand how this works. Are there long swathes of time, or even hours or minutes where someone else is in control? And then like a movie, you come back and you don't remember what happened?

Ben 21:28
I have selected amnesia sometimes. Most of the time. It's like I'm viewing a movie. Okay, and I'm feeling I'm feeling Mr. C's feelings. I'm, I'm experiencing his thoughts through the text messages that he's sending. I say, he's on his own. He's only had a few phone calls. He hasn't spoken to many people yet.

Scott Benner 21:52
And it's not possible that you are actually working on AI on a computer somewhere. You don't know it.

Ben 21:57
That would be bitchin. But I don't think that's

Scott Benner 22:01
actually happening. It's just it's just this belief. This certain part of your mind believes that that's happening sometimes when that part of you. Yeah, so

Ben 22:13
he's convinced me, Mr. C has convinced Ben Jensen, that this is happening, and I'm along for the ride.

Scott Benner 22:20
And so you had the wherewithal to say, Everything's upside down. I'm gonna go get a therapist. I need to figure something out. But I don't understand. I'm so afraid that you're gonna tell me your therapist fired you because you're coming on a podcast.

Ben 22:34
The main reason he fired me was because he didn't like video calls.

Scott Benner 22:38
He didn't like video call like you wanted to see him over like zoom. But he wants to just see you in person. Correct?

Ben 22:44
Yeah, I'm not really busy guy. Like, I did not want to dedicate, like, freakin four hours a day. Like, you know, it'd be like four hours for an appointment on Monday morning,

Scott Benner 22:55
dude. But the traffic here because you're driving somewhere, and then you got to get there and yeah, in rush

Ben 22:59
hour. Right, right.

Scott Benner 23:00
He didn't want to do it over video. Yeah. And are you comfortable with? That's the real reason? Or is it possible that you that one of you, I don't know how to talk about this, but one of your personalities did something that was so egregious that he wanted to get away from you or made up an excuse to get away?

Ben 23:17
No, he also was an addiction therapist, and he wanted me to check myself into a 12 step program.

Scott Benner 23:27
And you're thinking your mental health needs to be addressed before the because you're drinking still. No,

Ben 23:32
I'm not drinking. You're not I haven't drank since I started smoking marijuana, Scott. Okay,

Scott Benner 23:38
so you're, you're what they call California silver. I guess. Okay. I learned so much on this podcast. Fantastic. So I pretty sure that a lot of people are going to tell you that smoking too much weed with Bipolar is not a good idea. Is that not right?

Ben 23:56
That is right. But my I mean, my life is going great right now, Scott,

Scott Benner 24:01
what is your level of expectation for your life, then?

Ben 24:04
I want to have a fulfilling day at work, where I build technology that helps people and then I want to come home and watch some ditch and ask TV with my wife and pet my dog.

Scott Benner 24:16
I can't believe it took you 23 minutes. Tell me you're married. Okay. How long have you been married?

Ben 24:21
Three years. This October. So this lucky

Scott Benner 24:25
girl got you one year before your meltdown. One year before your diabetes?

Ben 24:30
Yeah, yeah. So we got married, and we got married during COVID. And like 2020 Our plan was to go to Japan. That ended up not happening. And then we buy a house and then the month after we moved into the house, I immediately get diagnosed with diabetes. And yeah, she didn't immediately leave. She's the best.

Scott Benner 24:50
Yeah, that was her mistake then but okay, so she hung around. I don't imagine that many people think it's appropriate or possible to have a conversation like this and joke around the same time, but I disagree. She hangs around, but then it's not much longer before it like, let me ask you this. The person you married, does that person know you're having any issues with mental health? Oh,

Ben 25:17
yes, she's completely aware. And she's the most nurturing soul in the world. She's the reason I'm alive.

Scott Benner 25:23
Okay. Does she have any mental health issues?

Ben 25:26
I don't think she does. She is solid as a rock. I cannot wait to have a child with this woman. And because all of my bad genes will just be eaten by her rock solid jeans

Scott Benner 25:35
type. And I don't know if that's how that works. We might want to like, hold off on that idea until we have some more answers. But, but I hear what you're saying. She's She's She's legit person. Yeah. And very supportive and helpful. So how does she help you? Like, is she the person you go to? And you say, I think I'm having a breakdown here. And here's what's happening. Yeah, she's

Ben 25:55
my best friend. Yeah. And

Scott Benner 25:56
what how does she help you in that moment?

Ben 26:00
She let me freak out. She let me spend some money. Um, she let me try to organize the best World of Warcraft raid of all time.

Scott Benner 26:10
And the magic card might work for a while. Yes,

Ben 26:14
yeah, she let me have my fun. Right now we're going

Scott Benner 26:18
to hear from a member of the Medtronic champion community. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. And this is Mark.

David 26:27
I use injections for about six months. And then my endocrinologist at a navy recommended a pump. How

Scott Benner 26:33
long had you been in the Navy? Eight years up to that point? I've interviewed a number of people who have been diagnosed during service and most of the time they're discharged. What happened to you?

David 26:42
I was medically discharged. Yeah, six months after my diagnosis.

Scott Benner 26:46
Was it your goal to stay in the Navy for your whole life? Your career was? Yeah,

David 26:50
yeah. In fact, I think a few months before my diagnosis, my wife and I had that discussion about, you know, staying in for the long term. And, you know, we made the decision despite all the hardships and time away from home, that was what we loved the most.

Scott Benner 27:03
Was the Navy, like a lifetime goal of yours?

David 27:07
lifetime goal. I mean, as my earliest childhood memories, were flying, being a fighter pilot,

Scott Benner 27:13
how did your diagnosis impact your lifelong dream?

David 27:16
It was devastating. Everything I had done in life, everything I'd worked up to up to that point was just taken away in an instant. I was not prepared for that at all. What does your support system look like? friends, your family caregivers, you know, for me to Medtronic, champions, community, you know, all those resources that are out there to help guide away but then help keep abreast on you know, the new things that are coming down the pike and to give you hope for eventually that we can find a cure.

Scott Benner 27:41
You can hear more stories from Medtronic champions, and share your own story at Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box.

Ben 27:49
And then what I did to initially get myself checked into the hospital the first time was I I called my friend and I tried to recruit him for this tech company to build AI. It was Mr. Congeniality first phone call. And right after that phone call, my friend told me I needed to go to the emergency room. So that's when I told my wife with my friend Daniel said, and my friend, Daniel hit, his mom had bipolar. So he knew quite a bit about it. Yeah, he recognized. Yeah, he recognized it immediately. So he was the good friend that had the check myself in.

Scott Benner 28:28
That's lovely. Good for him. Yeah, that's nice of you, too. It's nice that you were able to listen to him and, and, and that he was willing to speak up and say something. Yeah, he

Ben 28:36
he recognized it immediately.

Scott Benner 28:38
Do you remember that phone call? I do. What were you What do you think you said that made him go up.

Ben 28:46
It was just my it was my intonation. It was how intense I was. It was the things I was saying. I want to whip out my skin Pisidian Swan River Scott. That's my inspiration for space travel.

Scott Benner 29:00
That's what you said. He went, Oh, yeah. Yeah, I recognize this from my mom. I'm so my mom wants. My mom once said she was gonna urinate into a stream to change how coupons were used. And I thought, oh, yeah, I've heard this before. Okay, so he tells you you turn right to your wife and say my friend Daniel just told me I don't seem well. Yeah, I need to go to the ER immediately. She didn't know you didn't sound well.

Ben 29:32
She was outside when the phone call was happening. So she did not hear it and I did I lost it. I screamed and she heard the scream.

Scott Benner 29:44
Was he the first person that ever intimated to you that you have a mental health issue? Yes. As upsetting

Ben 29:52
were relieving, relieving that I hit it so well, I guess. Oh, I see.

Scott Benner 29:57
You're like I can't believe he's the first person that said figure this out.

Ben 30:02
I mean, I didn't even I didn't know there was, you know, at the top. I didn't know any of this was going on. I wish somebody else would have said something. I heard he was the first guy that said something, you know? Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:11
no, I understand your jump to your brother for a second highly functioning. Autism. Yeah. Okay. Does he have any other issues? Or is that that I'm aware of?

Ben 30:25
No, you speak. Yeah, he can speak he holds down a job. He's a he's a sous chef at a good country club.

Scott Benner 30:31
I'm sorry. I meant to you to speak. Do you have a relationship? Yeah, yeah. We have a relationship. Okay. And you told him about this. Oh,

Ben 30:40
about Yeah, he knows about Mr. Congeniality and like my plans and my companies and all that stuff.

Scott Benner 30:47
He was probably pissed when he realized you guys bought a business together and you don't even remember it. He's probably like, over my head when we were not packing startups into diamonds. I thought we were going to be rich. But I have the recipe right here to start us insulin urine. Pressure, like you told me this was gonna work. So are you on any medications for any of this?

Ben 31:13
Yeah, I'm on like half of the pharmacy. But where do you want to start? Well,

Scott Benner 31:17
who's prescribing it?

Ben 31:18
My psychiatric nurse practitioner.

Scott Benner 31:21
Okay. What did you start with that didn't help what did you move to what's been happening so

Ben 31:26
they started me on Seroquel, which hits me like a brick get house got, and it'll just knock me out. And that's about all it does. It didn't really do anything to help the manic behavior. Okay, that was at the first Psychiatric Hospital where I feel like they mismanaged my diabetes. For the first hospital stay, they had me only on Seroquel. And they only got the dosage up to 200 milligrams, they were worried about pushing it higher because of type one, it really set my appetite

Scott Benner 31:58
gotcha to, hey, this is gonna seem like a weird detour for a second. But, you know, let me do this. I hear this happens a lot. And I'm just going to this is my opportunity to make a stand in the world. You've misused the term brick shithouse printed house specifically is speaking about a woman whose bust to waist to hip ratio is a certain way. So if you're a chesty, hippie with a thin waist, you may be built like a brick house. I know this is not important to the conversation. But I just felt weird that you'd be going through life not knowing that. So it's

Ben 32:32
interesting. I'm going to type it into Google a little later and get a better you check

Scott Benner 32:35
me if you want, Ben, but trust me. I grew up around a person who used that phrase a lot. It's not one of my parents, in case somebody's wondering. And that is definitely what that means. I can't believe I just I was like, we can't let this go. An article built more robustly than its function requires implies an element of indestructibility. Yeah, that's not how I heard it was how it goes. It's isn't that interesting? I have an ear of voluptuous woman with large round buttocks and bust. Yeah, that's how I knew it. Okay, that's that we're moving on now. Then. You start with this medication hits you really hard and makes you tired, but doesn't do anything. Other than that, they add something else after that?

Ben 33:20
No, my wife had to break me out of the psych ward, because they were mismanaging my diabetes. Okay, so that happened, and then get out. And then I start manically texting my old supervisor at the State Police. Because I didn't really trust anybody in the government. I was very paranoid at this point, Scott. And I was like, trying to get him to send me a cop car. That could take me to a hospital that was going to treat me better. Okay, so he ended up calling it a wellness check. And then that that wellness check brought me to the second hospital

Scott Benner 33:57
is that when you lost your job, so or no, or did that? No,

Ben 34:02
no. My wife is the most nurturing soul in the world through this entire time. She put like she did all the necessary paperwork to getting filed with short term disability. I was receiving my full paycheck.

Scott Benner 34:12
Are you back at that job? No.

Ben 34:13
I am no good. Yes, I've been back since October 16. Wow.

Scott Benner 34:17
Congratulations. That's a that's a lot to get through to get back to that place.

Ben 34:21
And I'm up for a promotion, Scott first year. Yeah. Well,

Scott Benner 34:24
I mean, as far as you know, unless somebody in your head is just telling you that and it's not really happening.

Ben 34:30
You know, that would be unfortunate. But that's the reality I live in. I

Scott Benner 34:33
guess. Ben goes into the office one day he goes my check looks exactly the same as last month. I don't understand. I'm the grand Pooh bah. Now why am I not being paid better? The

Ben 34:43
Grand Tour. I had a I had a supervisor his name was used to say that.

Scott Benner 34:50
It's amazing. Also to the editor, why don't we take out the man's last name just in case? That's okay. So he had some Flintstones right. Friends I think you're way too young for that.

Ben 35:03
Now I watched the Flintstones Did you? Maybe too, like I was too young to understand the Flintstones but I saw the Flintstones you know I saw the pictures on the screen. I

Scott Benner 35:14
don't know if Fred was the grant No there was oh my god this is a rabbit hole. I don't think he's healthy for you or I but I think the Grand Poobah was the guy who ran the club. And it was the water buff. Oh, alright, I'm gonna figure this out. Let's

Ben 35:30
deep dive this dude.

Scott Benner 35:34
I assume there's a part of your personality that is just like Yes. Let's find out more about this is how I fix

Ben 35:41
problems at work, Scott when Microsoft consultants I Google things. Alright,

Scott Benner 35:45
so Fred and Barney belong to like a gentleman's club called the loyal order of the water buffaloes. And this is actually still from my memory. And then the Grand Poobah was like the person who like the ranking member of the loader, the loyal order of the water buffaloes. That's I think that might be the only that might be where that phrase is from. Oh my god, do you want to know the the poor Boss Name It was Sam slag heap. That was the character that given the cartoon. And you know what

Ben 36:19
I realized? I didn't I didn't I don't want to know any of this. No

Scott Benner 36:23
one does. No one does. The Flintstones was the cartoon rip off of the honeymooners.

Ben 36:29
Did you know that the honeymooners I'll have to Google this one as well, Scott. Okay.

Scott Benner 36:33
All right. Yeah, you're pretty young. Alright. So let's get back to you. What's life like right now?

Ben 36:39
Life is amazing. I'm going to work. We're kind of in a holding pattern right now. Actually. The wife's FMLA is coming up. And it seems like we're going to have to be moving at some point to help take care of mom who has Alzheimer's. The wife has volunteered to be her primary caretaker. She's the most nurturing soul in the world. And she actually has experience in dementia care. It's what she did before. She became a phlebotomist.

Scott Benner 37:13
Interesting. So she is not phlebotomy rising people right now, which just means drawing their blood. And why is she on FMLA? To help you she was yes to help me. Okay, she's out on FMLA to help you that's coming up on being done now. And you're thinking maybe she'll leave her job or work at part time and then sit with your mom.

Ben 37:32
She's gonna go back to work after her FMLA is over. Okay. She's currently driving me to work right now. And to all my appointments, I'm not allowed to drive on some of the medication that I'm on. She's wooburn. You. Yes,

Scott Benner 37:47
you should make her an Uber driver. I don't want to tell you how to get around tax problems, but make her an Uber driver, You're her only client. And then the anyway, there's a way in there to save some money, but it would probably be a lot of work. She's gonna go are you going to be able to drive again soon.

Ben 38:02
So the the main medication preventing me from driving Xanax. And I think I have my anxiety to the point where I don't need it during the day. I'm currently only using it to help my sleep. I'm kind of a chronic insomniac. And it has been helping me on nights where I get up after you know, sleeping for three hours, and I can't get back to sleep, or one of those will just knock me out. So as long as I'm not on it during the day, I should be able to drive myself but I also have accommodations from I have all the paperwork submitted for work to exempt me from driving, in case so I can be 100% remote if I want to be

Scott Benner 38:43
I say I understand. Do you deal with the multiple personalities like on a daily basis? Or is that a thing? It's not happening right now?

Ben 38:51
It's something that you don't I try not to pay attention to. It's just it just happens. They get triggered and they pop out. Okay. You know,

Scott Benner 39:00
does it feel like a part of your personality is just stronger in that moment? Or does it literally feel like, like an exorcist situation where you're in a dark closet and somebody else is controlling? You know,

Ben 39:13
I feel I feel like I am then I say

Scott Benner 39:17
okay, that's who you are. Now, you now have all this? Yeah, energy or ideas or whatever. Can you do you have it down? Did you know how many there are?

Ben 39:27
So we have philosopher Ben, Dr. Ben, Mr. Congeniality and gamer Ben.

Scott Benner 39:36
Do they name themselves or do you name them?

Ben 39:38
I named them Mr. Congeniality. He's natural name was the schemer because he would just sit there and troll my vape and then send like 1000 Discord messages. So he was pretty creepy guy. So I renamed him to Mr. Congeniality after one of my favorite chick flicks.

Scott Benner 39:55
Okay, with Sandra Bullock. Yes. course. Right? And they, Oh,

Ben 40:02
I almost this is how I slayed at the psych ward Scott It was nothing but 40 year old women, and they all loved my favorite movies

Scott Benner 40:13
where you weren't picking these ladies up or you know, well,

Ben 40:17
I was just talking to him. Okay, okay. I just wanted to be sure. I

Scott Benner 40:20
want to be clear. You don't have any weird thoughts about me? You don't hear me in your head or anything like that ever? No. Okay. If you do you please don't tell me okay? Please don't. Don't send me a message that says that. I swear to you bad if you've ever sent me a message that says, I heard you last night. And I'm on my way to make the star das diamonds. I'm gonna, I'm gonna block you. I just want you to be clear. All

Ben 40:43
right, keep that in mind. I'll send an internal memo about

Scott Benner 40:47
No, no problem at all. It's interesting, man. How are you? How are you so good natured about all this?

Ben 40:53
I just have to keep up my end of the bargain. Dude, I have to keep going. Because because I believe in Mr. C, I believe in his vision. I believe that I can be on the team that that solves the problem of human consciousness. What is the problem? How do you put life in the software? Okay,

Scott Benner 41:16
how do you how do you make it so that something that I'm interacting with on a computer is sentient? Yes. And that's important why?

Ben 41:29
To solve complex problems? For example, timers disease.

Scott Benner 41:33
Yeah. Okay. I was gonna say for example, what is it you're looking for to solve? Alzheimer's

Ben 41:38
disease is the big one. Right?

Scott Benner 41:41
It's very relevant to me. Yeah, of course. grand plans is part of some mental illness isn't part of yours. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Did you have thoughts like that when you were younger?

Ben 41:55
When I was younger, I idolized Steve Jobs. Yeah, I did.

Scott Benner 42:03
So like, do big things change the world? That kind of stuff? Yep. Think different. Has anybody ever said grandiose delusional disorder to you know,

Ben 42:12
you're the first person does that shock? You?

Scott Benner 42:14
Know, I could because I am an idiot. I might be 100%. Wrong. I might not know anything of what I'm talking about. All right. Yeah. I just wondered if the if it was something had ever come up that? Well, I guess my question is, are you actually doing anything that would impact AI? Not

Ben 42:29
currently. No, I'm right now getting myself mentally fit to even get into the field.

Scott Benner 42:37
I see. Okay. You don't have this delusion right now that you are currently working towards making AI sentient? You just think it would be a thing you'd like to get involved in?

Ben 42:48
Correct. Got it. And I think I've already identified the people that I want to do it with. Is

Scott Benner 42:53
Daniel one of them? Yes. Is he still returning your halls?

Ben 42:57
He is. One of my best friends are

Scott Benner 43:00
good guy. That's excellent. So have you had that conversation since your diagnosis and and getting on some medications and getting back to the part where you aren't now? Have you actually spoken to Daniel and said, Look, when I'm getting myself together? This is what I want to do. And he said, Yeah, man I'm in.

Ben 43:14
He's not in. That's I'll always be courting Daniel, but he's down with me following my own dreams.

Scott Benner 43:23
Nice. Very nice. Okay, how do you manage your diabetes with all this going on?

Ben 43:29
I've been doing a pretty good job at it with the six a one C for at least for me. Part of that is due to medication circle does make me hungry. Part of that is just binge eating. Part of it is also just not hyper focusing on it, which I think is probably healthy for me. To a point. Oh, for sure. You know, seeing that 681 C yesterday. I do want to get

Scott Benner 43:53
you like to see in the fives. Are you seeing spikes? After meals? What do you think? What do you think caused the rise in your agency?

Ben 44:01
So after my experience at the first hospital, I'm just like, super sketchy to have a bunch of insulin in my system at night. So I've been just kind of Binging at night and not dosing properly for it eating later

Scott Benner 44:15
at night not covering it with insulin, making your blood sugar higher brain up here, I want to say yeah, and in the hospital, they gave you too much. Did you have a seizure?

Ben 44:23
No, but I had to keep shoveling food at a time where I didn't want to eat. It was very distressing. I stayed up for five days straight and at first hospital. Geez. On

Scott Benner 44:35
purpose. Yeah. Or was it just part of the manic thing or were you trying not to like go to so it was

Ben 44:41
definitely related to the mania but it was also motivated by fear. I thought that I was going to go low. And the I mean, the blood sugar logs prove it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 44:49
they don't it's you know, a number of people know over exaggeration. A number of people have come on the podcast and talked about having children with type one who have needed institutional eyes, a number of different kinds, and how hard it is to get an institution that will take responsibility for diabetes even.

Ben 45:07
Yeah, it's the last thing they want to take care of man. Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:11
maybe you understand, but when you need the care, you need the care. So it's hard. It's hard to accept that they're just like diabetes. No, no, thank you. You can't come here. But I mean, at least found a place to take you. But how long were you there before your wife sprung you?

Ben 45:27
It was only like five days. It help it all. That first place did not help me at all. Okay. I met some good people. But like, I love the people at the sideboard. There's a couple of nurses I really related to as well. One reminded me and my grandmother. But no, I don't have many good memories from the first sideboard. Okay.

Scott Benner 45:49
So the second thing you tried was more valuable, or was that just the nurse practitioner that you're seeing now?

Ben 45:56
So I went to the hospital again. So after I got sprung out, and I was basically texting my boss, and then I checked myself in the ER again, and they got me into a local hot

Scott Benner 46:07
boss helped you with a wellness check. And then that got you. Okay, yeah,

Ben 46:10
that got you where you are now, which I have on video. By the way, if you want to watch Scott,

Scott Benner 46:14
wait, you have wait. You have first of all, I do not want to see but what do you have on video? The wellness check. You have? Were you videoing them when they were there? No, they have their dashcam on? Oh, have you watched it? Yes. Do you look out of your mind? Yes. Is it wasn't surprising to to see yourself that way? Yes,

Ben 46:36
there's some footage at the hospital is very shocking. To watch.

Scott Benner 46:39
What how so? Were you trying to fly it? No,

Ben 46:42
it's just me screaming at the sky talking about like saying Dix every three three words

Scott Benner 46:48
saying terrible things. You didn't ask them to be part of the AI contingent?

Ben 46:52
No, I'm not sure that entered into the equation. I was trying to get them over to a barbecue at my house. Actually,

Scott Benner 46:58
wait a minute, you're yelling. First of all, you can't call a guy dick and then expect them to go to a barbecue with you. But so you were trying to get him to come to a barbecue? Yeah,

Ben 47:06
I was throwing a huge party because we because I discovered artificial intelligence. I wanted him to come to my house that Saturday.

Scott Benner 47:11
Oh, wow. Do you think that's what you'd actually do? First of all, I don't want to say this. It might break your heart. They're already working on AI. You're not going to be discovering anything, but But you were telling him that you broke the code on this sentient being. And in real barbecue is how you're gonna see now you've got me stuck. We don't want to go out to my steak, get a nice red, go to a restaurant have a steak, something like that. So we're gonna be a barbecue.

Ben 47:34
It was gonna be a Twitch stream. I was gonna stream it on Twitch. It had to be at my house where I had internet. That's

Scott Benner 47:39
when you knew you were out of your mind? Yes. Okay.

Ben 47:42
I mean, like, I'm thinking of all this while while they're driving me to the hospital. So clearly, none of it was going to happen. Right? So you

Scott Benner 47:49
were actually trying to come up with a way to get him to go like so even though you kind of gave yourself over to the process immediately. You're trying to get out of it. Well, I'm sitting there, just the guy. Okay. And that's his life. Yeah, and you feel bad now looking back at it? Yes. Yeah. He chose the job. But yeah, you don't I mean, it's nice. I

Ben 48:10
think he had he had a good time. There were some good moments in that video.

Scott Benner 48:13
You think you look back you see him having fun a little bit? There. Were

Ben 48:17
there were a few there were some giggles we had some laughs would

Scott Benner 48:20
you be chalk holing? My my burger or gas or how do you cook at the barbecue?

Ben 48:26
For burgers? Definitely gas but for for the steaks, 100% charcoal, you know smoke though? Just the charcoal. So we smoke on a Trager and not very well mind you. We haven't gotten the pork but quite right.

Scott Benner 48:41
Now it's about time, man. Low and slow. Low temperatures long time. That's what takes care of it. The seasonings here. They're just it's not you don't have to put a lot on the port but this season. Have you tried it? Why don't you just go? Oh god, what's his name? Aaron. He's got a video online about smoking and pork, but I'll think of it later and tell you Well, how'd you find the podcast? I found you in the hospital when I got diagnosed with type one. Yep. Okay, so you just digging around like you do like Googling, trying to figure out how do I help myself? Find a podcast start listening to it. You enjoy it or it just has good information and you think I was just this is wrong. Am I good information

Ben 49:29
for Oh, no. I loved the podcasts. I love the after dark series. All the tips. I listened to many episodes. Okay. Very cool. Yeah. Like the I think the episode that you did with Jonathan. I listened to that before I had bipolar and I still think it's one of your best episodes.

Scott Benner 49:43
It was good, wasn't it?

Ben 49:45
I haven't heard from Jonathan a while. Something special happened in that episode.

Scott Benner 49:49
Every once in a while he sends me a message and just tells me he's okay. But then he won't respond. So let's get to know here. Is that weird to look back you were listening to somebody who had bipolar. You probably had it and didn't know it. It is weird. Yeah. I can imagine like when you think back on it now, does it make you feel any certain way?

Ben 50:14
I'll have to maybe re listen to the episode. But yeah, I definitely. It definitely makes sense that. Like, I remembered the episode. Like it stuck with me. Yeah. Like when I got the diagnosis. I remember Jonathan. Well, when

Scott Benner 50:30
you were listening, you didn't think I recognize this in myself? No,

Ben 50:34
I didn't at all. I just I love this story. Yeah. And I love how you got it out of them.

Scott Benner 50:39
Thank you. It was hard. If I remember correctly, he was did an amazing job. Thank you. He was quiet. You have a ton of energy today. I don't really need to do a whole lot then. So you're making this easy on me. I appreciate that. By the way, especially on a Monday, although you came at me pretty manically online, you know that? I did. You're very like it was friendly. But you were aggressive, friendly. Like I am going to be on the podcast, I have this going on. I want to be on the podcast. And I was like, Alright, and then I had this, like, normally, you would have gotten a link that would have found you would have found availability sometime in August of next year in 2024. And instead, I sent you the VIP link, because I wasn't sure how long you were going to have that energy. So I wanted to get you on fast.

Ben 51:25
Oh, wow. Well, I really appreciate it.

Scott Benner 51:27
No, that's cool. I just I was managing you. I'm being honest with you. I was managing you because I wasn't sure how long this part would last for you. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. So I just have enough experience with this to know that if I hit you at the wrong time, then you're going to like cancel or reschedule or not show up or something like that. Or maybe you won't, maybe you're maybe got your medications in a good spot. And maybe you'll ride this for ever and ever, which would be

Ben 51:55
amazing. I feel like my meds are perfect. So I'm just ready to kill it.

Scott Benner 51:59
Yeah, no, I actually think that because you're on here talking about what you're specifically talking about. The conversation has that flavor. I also believe that you could have come on here and said like, Hey, Scott, I want to talk about I don't know, Pre-Bolus thing. And we could have like, dug into it and had a conversation. And at no point I would have thought like, I think Ben might have like some mental health issues. Like do you understand what I mean by that?

Ben 52:24
Yeah, I could have given shown you a different side of me if I if I wanted to. It feels

Scott Benner 52:29
like you could you that that that is my point. Whereas there are some people I've had on who I don't think could have hidden it with a tarp and you know, I don't know like it just sometimes I think it's not as high level as it is other times.

Ben 52:45
I let all my co workers know how bad nuts I am. And they still love me. How did you let them know? Each one had their own individual way? It's probably too cute to describe.

Scott Benner 52:57
Wait, just give me one of them. Equity me too cute.

Ben 53:01
Let me I'd have to log in my work computer.

Scott Benner 53:03
You can't remember this. You want to read me something? Yes, I would have to read you a message. You don't have to do that. It's okay. Basically,

Ben 53:13
there's a network admin at work who craves a patwon Daniel is my patwon at work, okay. He's also one of my best friends. And there's a network guy at my job that craves that relationship. And I identified at the company, somebody that could be his patwon.

Scott Benner 53:36
And I

Ben 53:38
picked up so Mr. C, picked up on a word that this man said the word was subnet. And I bounced on that. Like, I wasn't like, Oh, dude, I just jumped on him. And I got him hyped up and he fixed the printer ticket. And then all he wanted was a shot to be on Cameron's team. And I think I gave it to a man I put his name in Cameron's mind. And he closed the ticket for me. And then he gave me at work. We have these things called impressions. It's like when you've touched somebody's day you they they'll give you an impression and be like, Oh, Scott, you know, he helped me with this today. Thank you, Scott. And then everybody sees it and there's a big leaderboard, dude. And before I went on short term disability, I was at the top of that leaderboard, something I was very proud of because I was always farming these impressions from people. Were

Scott Benner 54:35
you trying to get them or do you think you were just helpful and they just wanted to give them to you? Oh,

Ben 54:40
both. I wanted them but I was also the most helpful guy in the room.

Scott Benner 54:46
Okay, because of that energy you think because energy right? But you were also kind of hyper focused on winning the leaderboard? Yes, God very much so is That's still a concern for you guys. When you going back?

Ben 55:04
What do you mean a concern?

Scott Benner 55:05
Like, are you gonna go back and try to be that person again? Or just? Are you just going to let things shake out and be how they're gonna be?

Ben 55:10
Oh, no, I'm still gonna be myself. I still want to be at the top of that leaderboard. I still want to be the most helpful guy in the company. Nice. Getting money for the No, but you get your name put in a hat. And every year you might be flown out on an all expense. Paid trip vacation.

Scott Benner 55:25
Oh, so every time somebody what is that weekly? Now it's a yearly thing. But I mean, like, how many names go into the hat at the end of the year?

Ben 55:34
I'm not really sure. I think it's however many impressions there are. Oh, so like, if I get 30 I get 30 tickets.

Scott Benner 55:40
Oh, and then they pull one out and whoever wins the trip? Yeah. Nice. I would do that. I help a lot of people. How come nobody sent me on a trip?

Ben 55:51
Well, you're self employed. You can send yourself on a trip. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:55
I mean, I see what you're saying. Now I am. I do work on myself. But nevermind, I don't know what I meant. I just think I wanted to free. I don't even have a point. I was just like, oh, I would like to go away. I never leave this room. You know, I heard somebody say something the other day about health that really was overly simplified and yet struck me hard. He said sitting is the new smoking. And I thought oh, and I'm dead. Because I sit here and make this podcast a

Ben 56:22
lot. You got to get a standing desk, bro. I've been standing up this whole time. You're

Scott Benner 56:26
standing. Yes. I have a standing desk. I just don't like I've never done a county use it man. So our homeless I get. So I've never done this before. I had

Ben 56:38
a comfortable Hi, hold on.

Scott Benner 56:42
It's going up. I actually I have a standing desk. I never use it. Alright, hold on. It's gonna go. You were not prepared for this. I'm sorry. You'll get here. Alright, so it's getting up pretty high now. Wow. Look how high it goes. All right, then I'd have to stand up. doesn't feel like it's gonna be healthy. But okay, so I'm standing up. I'm gonna move my microphone.

Ben 57:09
You sound like a new man.

Scott Benner 57:10
Okay, do I sound the same? You know?

Ben 57:13
You sound better of me. I think I think you do.

Scott Benner 57:20
Okay, so I am standing my hands behind my back.

Ben 57:23
Does it feel good? It doesn't

Scott Benner 57:25
feel any different. Just feels like I'm standing. I think the problem is the reason I've never thought to do it is because if during the conversation, I want to sit down then I got to like, readjust the desk and you heard all the noise. It makes it everything. And I think that would just be like, not a good idea. Yeah. Other than that, do I feel weird? I do feel a little strange. I've never done this before. Standing and also

Ben 57:52
is your mic like attached to your desk? Yeah. Okay, so I see I opted for a headset. This conversation is not encumbered.

Scott Benner 58:02
Well, that's a good idea. That's a good idea for a layman. But I'm I'm speaking into a pretty expensive microphone.

Ben 58:08
Like I can't I didn't imagine what's on the other side. I'm a visionary Scott. Yeah.

Scott Benner 58:12
Oh, you can't imagine it because of your vision. Actually, I wish it was higher. And if I go a little higher than this thing will fall off. Anyway. God dammit then. All right, I'm gonna do the rest of the interview standing up. But this is probably the last time this is ever going to happen. Because now I'm already like spreading my legs apart to make my height different. And the thing with my hands behind my back is freaking me out does it? I've gotten Scott Benner uncomfortable. So yes, yeah, I am uncomfortable. Oh, wow. It really does throw me off. It's interesting. Okay. What have we not talked about that

Ben 58:44
we should have? I think I got everything I wanted to say out you did? I'm gonna look I did not

Scott Benner 58:50
look at your notes Hold on. Stories from the psych ward. drug and alcohol abuse use emotional trauma. bipolar diagnosis. Alright. We are well, yeah, do well, right. We did. Well, we did good as non English as we did. Well, yeah. Also, I've now figured out that I care about fewer and less in when people like, as an example, like counting something like there are here there's six pens in front of me. If I take one away, I have fewer pens, not less pens, but I have a bottle of water in front of me. And if I take a drink out of it, I have less water, not fewer water. And Ultra aware of people using that incorrectly all of a sudden.

Ben 59:40
Are you sure you don't have a mental illness? Scott?

Scott Benner 59:41
Fine. Actually, I'm just yeah, I'm over exaggerating things about my life so that I can talk about them on podcast and just trying to explain Hey, yeah, gotcha. Yeah, I don't hear any voices gonna go over the things that don't happen to me Ben. I like when some people say what I find if you want to like really no. Is when when people want to reach out to me to tell me that I seem like I have ADHD or Scott, are you sure you don't have autism? Or Scott, are you sure? Like, I think they're just projecting mostly. Does that make sense? It does.

Ben 1:00:15
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Because that's what I was doing right there.

Scott Benner 1:00:18
The Oh, for sure. Yeah. But I'm just also, I mean, I don't have any of the issues that would go along with those ideas. Like just be you know, like, people are like, Scott jumps around in the in the conversation, sometimes I really just follow the conversation. Yours and my conversation would seem to other people to jump around. But that's just me realizing that if I tried to put our conversation on a path that I think it would be best on, you're going to struggle with it. So I follow your path. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. And when I talked to like, you know, like a, like a middle aged mom from the middle of the country whose life is ultra normal. And she's used to telling chronological stories, though, you've talked to a hell of a lot of people at this point. Yeah. Then I follow their they follow their path. And I ask questions that keep them on the path that they're comfortable with, if that makes sense. Does Yeah. So I don't want to give away too many of the backroom secrets of my incredible success, Ben, but that is one of them right there. Ben, can I say something that I have no business saying? You're welcome. I am Welcome to say it. You're welcome. Okay. I want you to get the blessing of three people you trust before you get pregnant. Okay, Does that seem fair? That seems fair. Okay. You might not be the best arbiter of whether or not that's a good decision or not. And if you bring another person into it, it's a lifelong situation. So if you are my son, which you are not, but ironically, I am old enough to be your father, right? You're 30? Yes. If I had a baby when I was 22, it could be you, Ben. Okay. So I would tell you like real sincerely, that you need to find a couple of people who you love and trust who love you, who are as honest as Daniel is with you. And when you go to make this decision, say to them, this is what I'm thinking of doing it. And I really want an outside perspective is I don't know your wife. And it's fine. She's rock solid. I trust you and your assessment of her. But she might be trying to make you happy, too. And I don't know, it's just it would be you seem like a really sweet person. And I think you would hold it against yourself, if anything happening with you impacted a baby or if it was transferred, I think I think it would, it would be bothersome to you. So I want to make sure that that's not your situation before you do something like that. That fair. That sounds fair to me. All right. It really is none of my business. And I feel badly saying it. But I'm actually going to apologize. But it still felt like there are times I have these conversations and I want to make sure I say the things I'm thinking so

Ben 1:03:10
anyway. I mean, that's why I came on dude, I came on to talk to Scott Benner, you want to get a little bit of my? Yeah, I only call them on here tonight. hear your opinion?

Scott Benner 1:03:20
Ben, do you know I'm thinking of starting a second podcast? Yeah, I'm thinking of starting a second podcast where I can put the conversations that don't fit into here. And I've just been told by this is gonna sound pompous. But I've been told by a lot of people that this is their favorite podcast, not their favorite diabetes podcast. Does that make sense? No,

Ben 1:03:42
I totally understand. I think the same is true with me like I come here for you not diabetes. Thank you. And I come for the conversations that you have

Scott Benner 1:03:50
with people. Yeah. And so I'm thinking of starting another podcast that just that is not contingent on you having diabetes for for me to have a conversation with somebody. I

Ben 1:04:01
think that's amazing.

Scott Benner 1:04:02
Thank you. Can I share the title I'm considering with you? You can't. Okay. So first of all, there are a lot of podcasts. And because of that every title you can almost think of has already been soaked up by somebody or in some situations, multiple times. There are a shortage of words even to use in your titles because people overuse words, like I said to somebody like Hey, I think I'm making to make a secondary podcast. What should I call it and then I call call juicebox. uncensored, or like the words like uncensored, untethered, like stuff like that have been used over and over and over again, like it would just, you'd get lost. So I was first on what matters, because it was the thing my kids used to say, when they were like both of my children use the phrase what matters when what they meant was that like, you can never kind of tell what they meant. Like it was See, they're like, that doesn't matter. Why does that matter? But when they were super young, they go what matters? And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. We'll do that. But a quick, quick search tells me 123456 At least the nine podcasts use that phrase in their title. Sounds like I can't do that. So here's what I came up with. I'm gonna go with maybe I'm workshopping it with you right now. I'm trying to think the best I've got so far. Because I mean, I like it. Yeah, it's not great, though. You know which one's the best right now? smartlace. It's such a simple, not word word that sticks in your head. You know what I mean? Like, do you listen to smartlace podcast? I don't know. I don't but you're aware of it, though. I'm not You're not.

Ben 1:05:54
I'm not. No,

Scott Benner 1:05:56
I'm sorry. Don't worry about it. It's a Jason Bateman. You know Jason Bateman. Movie Star, right. Yeah, him and two of his friends who are also famous. Make this podcast. I knew it. I just think the name is smart. Like Smartlist is like, Oh, smartlace sticks in your head. It's funny kind of has a couple of different meanings. Anyway, trying to think is from a three stooges skit. You know who the Three Stooges are? I do. All right. And I think curly goes, I'm trying to think but nothing's happening. I just think that's hilarious. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I can't come up with anything. Right now. What's holding me back from doing this is that I can't find a name for it.

Ben 1:06:39
That's the worst part about it is naming things. Is it really? Yeah, I think trying to think is good. Because it, there's kind of a message of always improving behind it. Right?

Scott Benner 1:06:51
That's what I land on is that it's like, hey, I want to I want to try to think about this, or I want to try to expand myself on this. I'm trying to think but it's hard. Yeah.

Ben 1:06:59
And what conversations do you envision having just anything? Like you'll you'll just talk to anybody?

Scott Benner 1:07:04
I think so I think I'm just going to open the podcast up to anybody who wants to have a conversation about anything. And just talk, I am really of the belief that people's stories are interesting. And that they don't have to be famous or of note for people to listen to them. I think that the things that are popular are people who you've heard of, right, like, you know, comedians get very popular. A lot of comedians that have podcasts, for example, right. They go on each other's podcasts all the time, they basically make each other famous by like going back and forth on their podcasts that they build their name recognition that way, but I go listen to them. And I'm not that interested in what they're saying. And then I talked to somebody like you, or Jonathan, or just some, you know, I put up an episode today called celiac shock. It's called celiac shock, because I'm interviewing this woman who's got three kids, one of them has type one, the kids got celiac. And when they go to the doctor, the doctor says, hey, well, we should test you and your husband who for celiac disease, and that process of bringing him into the doctor's office shows that he is an insane alcoholic. She's unaware of it. And he's got cirrhosis, and he's in kidney like encroaching on kidney failure. If I'm if I'm remembering correctly, and this kid celiac diagnosis saves this guy's life. Because they said he was on his way out from the drinking, like, believe it or not Miss 30s, right. And she's telling this whole story. And I think I don't care that nobody knows her name. Like this is interesting, and impactful and meaningful to people. And I just think you get better conversations out of people who are just normal people, if you know how to talk to them. I think that a lot of people don't interview normal people because their interviewing skills suck. And they need a famous person who already knows how to talk when they're being recorded. Does that make sense? It makes complete sense area. So I think you can have these conversations with anybody. And that's what I'm going to try to do. Just pick random people and figure out their stories. Like you didn't tell me you were abused. That wasn't in your notes and I don't know that you were gonna say it or not, but like I got to it, and I think I can do that with other stuff as well.

Ben 1:09:22
I agree. Yeah, it's not you can I

Scott Benner 1:09:23
don't think I'm going to turn like a computer into a sentient being and save everybody but I'm also more stable in your

Ben 1:09:32
that is true. That is definitely true.

Scott Benner 1:09:34
Is there a world where where this goes backwards? Could you one day be 55 years old and look back as oh my god you remember that time in my 30s when this was happening to me, but I'm just not that I'm not there anymore. Like I'm I'm more of what you might consider normal at this point. Oh 100%

Ben 1:09:55
I have I would like to think I have one of the most open minds in the world.

Scott Benner 1:10:00
What do you think gets you to that? Is it therapy? Is it medication? Is it health changes? Like have you changed your diet? Have you gone down like bro science and been like I'm taking out like, butter. It's not grass fed or like, you know, you're doing it that stuff.

Ben 1:10:15
Daniels recommended meditation. So um, you know, I'm doing that I'm also, you know, just trying to read books, generally go on long walks, just things that that helped me calm down. So I'm kind of going down the self improvement path right now.

Scott Benner 1:10:33
I will say this, when you get your TSH back, would you email it to me? Sure. Yes. If it's out of whack, I'd like to, I'd like to put that in the podcast. Okay, yeah. Just because, you know, I mean, my son has a hypothyroidism Hashimotos. And part of the diagnosis was six months before we got the diagnosis. I said to my wife, hey, he's acting really strange. Like his personality was off. And he was just agitated, aggressive for no reason sometimes around like, even in conversationally, you don't mean like, you start talking about something he just like, felt like he was out of his mind for a second. You're like what's going on, man? And that is something that can happen to a person who's you know, got like, bad thyroid labs. I just want to know if that's part of it. But even just eating clean, and like, I don't want to come off as like a hippie, but like, addressing like gut health. Like, do you think your gut works? Well, do you like the way you digest and eliminate?

Ben 1:11:31
Digested eliminate has been great since I started? Since I stopped drinking? Yeah, the diet can definitely be cleaned up. I've just been binging on sweets lately.

Scott Benner 1:11:41
Yeah, maybe get rid of the sugar. See if that doesn't help you that kind of stuff? For sure.

Ben 1:11:45
I mean, and I've gone on low carb, lower carb diets before, and I've done them with great success.

Scott Benner 1:11:52
So maybe there's more things to do for yourself. Just from a nutrition standpoint, that might be helpful. I'm saying even with your mental health. Yeah, yeah.

Ben 1:11:59
And that, you know, that that's something that every doctor I talked to emphasizes is that diabetes affects the mind. That's why they're very careful with my medication. They have this crazy program. I have a doctor just for my pills. That's her only job. She has this crazy program that just runs all these calculations and figures out what medication is safe for me based off all these side effects. That's interesting. So I'm on a very tailored medication dose for me. And this is kind of where we're at.

Scott Benner 1:12:29
Good for you. Oh, that's good. I'm glad you're getting that kind of care. That's excellent. Yeah,

Ben 1:12:34
she's one of my favorite doctors.

Scott Benner 1:12:35
Yeah, no kidding. Well, that's a great idea. I didn't know that people did that. It's it's a lot to keep track of for the regular practitioner and you see a bunch of diff practitioners, so why not have one person whose responsibility it is? Yeah, they're called mid managers. Oh, wow. That's good for you. Oh, good, good. Good. All right. Well, then I'm going to wish you well, and if we have talked about everything, I appreciate you going over my flight of fancy at the end here about maybe I'll start another podcast. Yeah. Good luck with that, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. I seriously the name thing is the hardest part, which is ridiculous, because it doesn't really matter.

Ben 1:13:13
We'll see. Like, you're big enough. Don't you have guys at this point? People like advertising guys. Like you'd be like, hey, Ken, like you don't have a guy you can just like run a brand name by they're

Scott Benner 1:13:23
all gonna do the same thing. They're gonna pick words. They're gonna pick buzzwords and keywords, and they're just gonna like in your Melton to everybody else.

Ben 1:13:30
You think so? Dude,

Scott Benner 1:13:32
I started this podcast right? 2015 January, when I started it, the words juice box did not appear in podcast titles. And now there's like nine of them. Your trendsetter? Know, it's when you get popular people knock off the words in your title to try to like to try to get some of your juice. It's just, I didn't mean that. But you know what I mean? So like, if I typed I have a, I'm not going to tell you what, what site I use. But when I type just the word juice in to a place where I can track all podcasts. There are 1-234-567-8910 returns. I'm one of them. The minute you add a B to juice. There are now 369 11 returns that all use the word juice box. And they're called the Juicebox Podcast. So mind Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes. When I first started it, it was just Juicebox Podcast. I added the type one for search reasons. But there's juice box juice box radio, the juice box juice box with a capital J and a capital B podcast. Then there's Juicebox Podcast with no space between box and podcast. There's the Juicebox Podcast, the Juicebox Podcast, one word, juice box a musical. Good that's how many times how many.

Ben 1:14:51
How developed are these podcasts like they also

Scott Benner 1:14:55
let's pick one that I've seen forever. Here's one the Juicebox Podcast, all they did was add the word VA. They have not put out an episode since 2020. Do you think they're making any money off of that? No, they're not. The Juicebox Podcast all one word. So that now this is somebody took that and put it in front of my title. And now these people took the Juicebox Podcast and squish it together to one word, they haven't put up a post since 2021. Doesn't look like they ever had enough to attract an advertiser. Here's a new one Juicebox Podcast one word. And this person is has put up four episodes, but hasn't put one up in five months. So that's over already. My goal for this podcast is to help people grow and to also grow myself, I feel the best way to do that is by seeing other people's perspectives. Oh, sounds like a 21 year old. On we found how to make a podcast let's see here.

Ben 1:16:09
That could have been something I wrote. Trust

Scott Benner 1:16:11
me, a lot of these could be the juice box hasn't had an episode since 2020. It just goes on and on. So my goal here of like when I picking a new title, is I type something in here like like I told you what matters earlier. I was like, I can't do that. There's like eight people using it. But trying just the word trying. That's a big one. Adding think to it. There's nothing there.

Ben 1:16:43
And you think the search problem is such a big one, that the name is really that important?

Scott Benner 1:16:48
No. I think that if I pick a word that everybody else uses, then my idea for my podcast is pedestrian.

Ben 1:16:55
You're that attached to the just the name. The

Scott Benner 1:16:59
name is more of an indication of my idea than anything else. Does that make sense? It

Ben 1:17:05
makes no sense to me. Yeah. It seems like you're you're very fixated on the name, though, in a way I can appreciate.

Scott Benner 1:17:11
I don't want to have an idea that everybody else is happening. Because then what's the point? Like? Why is my podcast popular? Why do you think Ben?

Ben 1:17:23
I think it's because you know how to talk to people. Probably

Scott Benner 1:17:26
a big part of it. But that's not that's what makes it good. Not what makes it popular. What made it popular was I was first. And I separated myself from other diabetes content by not using the word diabetes in my title. That's why I'm popular first and unique. I have longevity because I'm good at it. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. So as I'm trying to consider about putting up another podcast, if I can't figure out a way to be those things, then it won't work. Then why don't I just like, Yeah, I don't know.

Ben 1:18:04
Put those episodes. You're not starting from scratch on the platform, right? Oh, not

Scott Benner 1:18:08
at all. Like I'm gonna and this is the only way I'll tell people about it. By the way is I'll just, I'll get on the podcast one day, and I'll say, Hey, guys, I started another podcast. It's not about diabetes. This is the title, you can check it out if you want to. That's all I'm going to do. Because growth, boom growth isn't good for this. For me, if I was famous than it would be, then you'd want boom growth. And you'd want to walk around going like I don't know. I'm Tom singer, and Bert kreischer And listen to two bears one cave, because everyone does, you know, and you'd be like, yeah, the machine. I know that guy. And then you go listen, right? And like that, that works for that. Because it's comedy, and it's just conversational, and comedy, and you know them. They're famous. But I need people who like me to listen to me, because that's how they tell other people about it. Because I can't just go out and say, I'm Scott, listen to my podcast. I'm not big enough for that. I'll never be big enough for that. So my growth is going to come through word of mouth. Does that make sense? Of course it does. Yeah, that's the only way it works. When you're not famous. When you're famous. You just do it. That's

Ben 1:19:11
how I found you on Reddit was word of word of mouth. Somebody else recommended you I have to

Scott Benner 1:19:15
say I'm, I always take a moment to say this. I'm very grateful for how red it is red. It's really supportive the podcast. And I always really appreciate because I'm not a Reddit person. And I don't I don't go there for no reason other than I just don't. But when people come into the private Facebook group, I heard about you on Reddit is one of the major ways that I see people come into the private Facebook group. So yeah, they've always been really good to me. I appreciate it. Thank you, Reddit. Because you don't want people on Reddit to be angry at you because it goes the wrong

Ben 1:19:45
way or no, definitely not.

Scott Benner 1:19:49
But yeah, no, I sincerely I've always appreciate that. All right, Ben. So I don't know if I'll ever make a second podcast or not, but if I do, it'll have a weird name and it'll be different and Got a little obtuse? Well,

Ben 1:20:02
I'm excited for it. Do not listen. Thank

Scott Benner 1:20:03
you, I appreciate it. And I want to wish you a ton of luck. It sounds like you're on a on a better path and, and you got good support around you. Don't let the thing with your mom. That's gonna be a lot of pressure and stress but do your best not to not to absorb it if you can do it. Well, thank you. Of course. Hold on for me one second. Okay. Good. Mark is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes. You show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes to find you. And that is what the Medtronic champion community is all about. Each of us is strong, and together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community where to share your own story. Visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juice Box A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, G voc glucagon, find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGLUC AG o n.com. Forward slash juice box. A huge thanks to us med for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Don't forget us med.com/juice box this is where we get our diabetes supplies from you can as well use the link or call 888721151 for use the link or call the number get your free benefits check so that you can start getting your diabetes supplies the way we do from us med if you're living with type one diabetes, the afterdark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about. From drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction, and so much more. Go to juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark. There you'll see a full list of all of the afterdark episodes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com

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