#1331 Deck My Diabetes

Andrew Hollis from Deck My Diabetes has a daughter with type 1.

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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 back to the next episode of The juicebox Podcast.

Today, we'll be speaking with Andrew, who is the owner of deck my diabetes, and the father of a daughter who was diagnosed with type one diabetes right when the covid lockdown began, nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. 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. You juicebox.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. This is my favorite diabetes organization, and I'm just asking you to check them out at touched by type one.org on Facebook and Instagram. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juicebox, get started today using this link, and you'll not only be doing something great for yourself, you'll be supporting the juicebox podcast.

Andrew 2:01
My name is Andrew. I'm the father of a daughter with type one, and the owner of deck my diabetes. My wife and I started that company in 2020 and it has sort of become our new identity, if you will.

Scott Benner 2:16
Is it a full time job now or or is it still something you do to supplement your your work. So

Andrew 2:21
I do work a full time job in another career. I won't say it's not a full time job, because it has kind of grown into that. But it is not our main revenue stream, if you will, right? So we do that on the side. So tell me

Scott Benner 2:34
a little bit about your family. There's you, your wife, your daughter. Is there anybody else?

Andrew 2:38
Uh, nope, just the three of us, and we have three dogs as well. So my wife said, after our daughter was diagnosed, she said, I think I'm done. There's just, there's just so much stress involved in raising a child with type one that she want to be able to put all of her focus and effort into making sure my daughter has the best, you know, the best care possible, and she doesn't want to have to split her attention. So I agree with her wholeheartedly. You know, as well as I do that, raising a child with type one, there's a lot of hurdles to encounter, fair amount

Scott Benner 3:12
of work, that's for sure. How old is your daughter?

Andrew 3:15
She is seven. She'll be eight in October. When was she diagnosed? May of 2020, and it was the week that they announced covid lockdown here in Michigan, where we're from, so that that added a whole new level of stress beyond just the diagnosis, but also the limitations put on the hospitals at the time, for one parent in at a time and that kind of thing. So definitely made it complicated for us. Am

Scott Benner 3:40
I losing my mind on years? Was covid? Not 2019?

Andrew 3:44
In 2020? Is when, when our covid lockdowns hit here. I think, you know, depending on what part of country. And I think there were different there were different lockdown restrictions at different times.

Scott Benner 3:53
But oh yeah, you might have got a Midwest lockdown. I got an East Coast lockdown, yeah, yeah. Immediately they were like, what's that get in your house? I'm like, Uh, okay, yeah, no, no, yeah.

Andrew 4:03
For us, it was kind of like, hey, it's spreading. Hey, you know, we're looking at all these, these other states that are having lockdowns. And then finally, there they said, Okay, now there's mass panic. People are mass buying bread and milk, and the stores are empty, so inside for a little bit. Yeah, that's when they started that, and I work in the transportation industry, so we, you know, for for my career job, and we were considered essential personnel. So I, you know, I still had to venture out and about, even amongst all of that mess.

Scott Benner 4:32
So she's diagnosed just as this lockdown is happening, yes,

Andrew 4:36
so the kind of leading up to the diagnosis, my wife had said, hey, you know, I'm seeing these signs. Our daughter is she's drinking a lot, she's going to the bathroom a lot, she's just doesn't look healthy. And I said, Oh, she's probably just growing. I did the dad thing, you know, you brush it off a little bit. Say, yeah, it's, it's, it's normal. She's just growing, and she's hydrating. It's no big deal. And I was. Is at my day job, working overtime on a Saturday, and she sent me a photo of my daughter, and her face is white and her eyes are sunk in. She's got black circles, and she said, Something's not right. I said, Okay, I'm leaving work now call the pediatrician and see if they can get us in on a Saturday. So my wife called. They said, we'll meet you at the office. So I drove home, grab my wife, my daughter, we jump in the car, drive directly to the pediatrics office. The doctor meets us in the room and says, I can smell ketones from the door. He said, I'm pretty sure that we're dealing with diabetes. Let's do a blood test just to check and their test me. Their meter came back and said, Hi. She said, Okay, go get in the car. Don't go home. Go straight to the hospital. Go straight to the ER. And then they'll they'll do a battery test there and confirm, but I'm pretty sure it's diabetes. So we jump in the car. Had to reach the hospital. My daughter didn't even have shoes on because we weren't expecting to have to go anywhere. We were ill prepared. Didn't plan for anything. Show up at the door and they say, Oh, no one adult.

Scott Benner 6:05
It was panic. But could you put issues on one of these people?

Andrew 6:10
Right? Right? So, yeah. So my my wife, of course, she's, you know, at the time, my wife and my daughter really have the special bond. And, you know, as mothers typically do. And so my wife decided to take her into the ER and I waited out in the parking lot for hours, probably eight hours, waiting to, you know, kind of get an idea what's going on. She's keeping me updated via text. Thank goodness for technology. Then I ended up leaving to go get her an overnight bag. As soon as they admitted my daughter. I said, Okay, what do you need? Send me a list. I went and got, you know, got my wife a change of clothes and all snacks and stuff, and went and got some cash so she could use the vending machines if she needed. And picked up dinner on the way back through, they had a nurse come down and meet me at the door, and then they carted it all up to the room for me. So, yeah, it was very complicated. No

Scott Benner 6:59
kidding. Oh, so how quickly do you I mean, that's just a handful of years ago. So what happens that makes you think, like, I'm gonna start a, like, a, I don't know a company that like, make adhesives for you know, that's just an interesting leap. I'm trying to figure out how that, yeah. So,

Andrew 7:18
so the LEAP started something like this. We get back from our diagnosis. We're a month in. We are fortunate enough to be given the Dexcom g6 as the CGM, and my daughter goes to put it on. She puts the first one on. She's three years old at the time, and she looks at it and she says, I can't go anywhere with this on. I said, What are you talking about? She said, people are gonna look at me funny. Look at me funny. I have this thing on my arm. Nobody else my age has this thing on their arm. I try to coach her. And you know what? We try to teach her. Everybody has something they're dealing with, and this just happens to be what your thing is, and it's manageable. And this is a great piece of technology. It's gonna help people try explaining that to a three year old. So I ended up finding a version of a shield online, and I had a three printer. So I printed one. I printed it out of purple material, and as soon as I showed her that, her reaction to putting her Dexcom on completely changed. She went from I don't want to wear that to showing everybody pointing to it. Check this out. I got I got purple. I got a yellow one. My dad's gonna make me more colors. And it just seeing the attitude shift, I knew that there was something to this shield, okay? And so I reached out to the maker of the shield and said, Hey, I really like your product and and your your design is something that that I would like to be able to sell. And he said, Yeah, no, this is kind of my thing. You go make your own. So my wife and I went back to the drawing board. We redesigned from the ground up and and essentially we believe we created the better mousetrap with the g6 design. And shortly after posting, Facebook blew up, hey, can you make my kid one? Can you make my kid one? So it started as a hobby, and we were just, yeah, you could pay pals a few dollars make it one. No big deal. And then we had people asking for one, for the OmniPod and for the Libre system, and it just kind of exploded. From there, we went from one printer to 16, 3d printers currently,

Scott Benner 9:10
jeez. Did they just run constantly, almost,

Andrew 9:13
almost so the the issue with manufacturing, withd printing, is that you have limitations for how much you can fit on a print bed or at a time, and then you have to go down there and manually move, you know, remove those items, and then you can print more. And what we've got now with the 16 of them is we kind of have this flow where we have a set number of stock we have on on the wall so we can fulfill orders. We have enough colors now that as the wall starts to empty out on a particular color I'll go load that on one of the printers. My wife runs them during the day, and then I do all the maintenance and things in the evening after my daughter goes to bed.

Scott Benner 9:49
Today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by Dexcom, and I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom G set. In the Dexcom g7 is small, it is accurate, and it is easy to use and wear. Arden has been wearing a Dexcom g7 since almost day one of when they came out, and she's having a fantastic experience with it. We love the g6 but man, is the g7 small, the profile so much closer to your body, the weight, you can't really feel it. And that's coming from me. And I've worn one, I've worn a g6 I've worn a g7 I found both of the experiences to be lovely, but my gosh, is that g7 tiny? And the accuracy has been fantastic. Arden's a 1c. Are right where we expect them to be. And we actually use the Dexcom clarity app to keep track of those things. That app is built right in to Arden's Dexcom g7 app on her iPhone. Oh, did you not know about that? You can use an iPhone or an Android device to see your Dexcom data. If you have a compatible phone, your Dexcom goes right to the Dexcom app. You don't have to carry the receiver, but if you don't want to use the phone, that's fine. Use the Dexcom receiver. It's up to you. Choice is yours with Dexcom, dexcom.com/juicebox who does the order processing and the shipping and everything

Andrew 11:15
we do, we kind of tag team it. We're finding as we grow and we're getting on more platforms, like we have our product now on Amazon and on Etsy and our website, but with like, Amazon orders, as we as we grow, the orders are coming in so rapidly that we're now we're packing daily. We used to pack, like, twice a week, but if we do that, we'd be loading our mail carrier with, you know, two, 300 items, and that's not fair to them, and it's not fair to our customers either. We find out to have to wait. We really want, yeah, we really want to get these to people as soon as possible. So we're typically, if you order, you know, sometime between 9pm Eastern Time, or, yeah, 9pm Eastern Time and about 10am the next day. We're packing it to be shipped that day, that 10am day, right? So if you order on Friday at 9pm between Saturday, Friday at 9pm and Saturday at 10am it's probably going out Saturday at 11. Oh, wow. Mail Carrier comes. We see the change in what this does for kids and for parents and, you know, making diabetic living a little easier. And we don't want them to have to wait a week for us to process. So we typically don't.

Scott Benner 12:21
So you, you make the grip the grip shields. The first one is that,

Andrew 12:25
right? The g6 grip shield is the very first, yeah, the very first one that we made. And we've, you know, tweaked the design several times, and then, yeah. And then we evolved and got into OmniPod grip shield, the libre two grip shield. And then, as technologies progress with CGMS, we've also moved into, you know, the new CGMS, libre three, the g7 there's some additional new products that are coming to market, especially in the European market right now. We're trying to get our hands on some of those so we can design around them. Yeah, because there's, there's obviously a need like

Scott Benner 12:56
so I've my daughter's worn OmniPod OmniPod arrows, OmniPod dash, OmniPod five, she's worn g6 She's worn g4 She's worn g5 She's worn g7 in my life, I've never thought that any of this was necessary, but I see people wearing it constantly. So what is it doing for people that I guess we don't seem to see the need for? Because it has to be something, yeah, tell me about it, please. Yeah,

Andrew 13:22
yeah. So there's, there's really three things that I make the claim our grip shield does, and then there's a fourth item out there that our customers claim that I have no data to back up, so I won't make the claim, but I'll tell you what it is anyway. So the three things that I make the claim that we claim our product does, and that our customers see benefit from. One, it provides the ability to change an over patch anytime throughout a cycle without accidentally tearing off your device. Because the way the flange on our grip shield sits over the adhesive for a device, your over patch will never touch your device, which means if you're out swimming and the patch starts to peel and looks kind of ratty and not very good looking, then you can just peel it off. Grip shield comes with it. You put the grip shield back on, put a new patch. You're fresh and set to go. Oh, I see. So, so there's a huge benefit for people that work outdoors, for people that are that are, you know, sweating a lot, that swim a lot. Summertime is obviously our busiest season just because of that. Yeah, but there's that's one benefit. Well, that makes

Scott Benner 14:21
complete sense. I don't even know why. I couldn't think of that by looking at it, but sure. But yeah. So, yeah. So it basically goes over top and creates this like exTO skeleton shell around the device. And then you're basically, when you put an over patch on, then you're really holding that down, not touching the device at all. So if you want to rip that off and put a new one on because it got wet or because it started to get dingy or whatever, you're never ripping at the device. Okay. Oh, that makes complete sense. How about that?

Andrew 14:50
Yeah, so that's one, one benefit. So the second claim that we make is that we is it provides bump protection. So we, we can't tell you how many times people say, Hey, I bump. My Dexcom off on the door of my car, or I was putting my shirt on, and I ripped it off on accident, got caught and snagged on my shirt. So the grip shield has this vertical wall that is about the same height as the as the Dexcom or the device, the CGM or the pod, and it disperses that bump, that that accidental bump, so that you don't dislodge the device. So OmniPod, you know, is can be pretty bulky depending on where you put it, and so it would kind of glance that blow and prevent you from tearing it off. So that's the second thing, which is great for young kids who are rambunctious and playing. And that's kind of what we geared that one toward.

Scott Benner 15:38
Okay, did you say there were three things, yeah, yeah. The

Andrew 15:41
third thing is, it adds a nice pop of color. That's really the third one is, we offer, you know, right now, I think we offer 12 colors so you can color coordinate. And then we started last year doing multi color so you can actually customize your grip shield to whatever you want. So we've seen, like, people order colors for Clemson, and we're like, I wonder if this is going to go to somebody that's, that's a Clemson fan, because it's going toward, you know, South Carolina area, and it's their colors. Or, you know, in we see orange and blue coming all the time for, for people that are in Florida. I'm assuming that's the Florida Gators, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 16:14
how about that? Oh, that's super interesting. Then you have a couple of other items too. Like, you're the wall mounted insulin caddy for the for the refrigerator. I feel like I've seen that. I feel like I can't get away from that. Actually, on social media

Andrew 16:26
so that that product there stems specifically from another It was another Facebook post where somebody had showed a picture of their insulin vial on the floor. Their kid had left the butter door compartment door open, and they swung the door open really fast, and the insulin bottle hit the floor and broke, and they were you know, of course, insulin, insulin is not cheap, and there was a kind of a complaint online about that, and and a lot of people chiming in and saying how bad they felt about it. And I looked at my wife, and I said, Why do we store it in the butter door? I don't understand why it goes in that compartment. I mean, I know why I can't go anywhere else, because it gets shuffled around the refrigerator. You don't be able to find it. But how come there's nothing out there? So I started doing some research, and found out there's lots of organization things that people have created. And I don't want to negate any of the any of the makers out there, like there's since three printings become very popular, you could go to any craft site and find, you know, a tray that goes inside the on a shelf or inside the butter compartment, and you can find things that hang on the door shelf of your refrigerator. There's all kinds of options, but there was nothing that was easy and simple to organize to so I created one with a flat back that you can adhere to the wall of the refrigerator and stick your insulin vials in it, and now you'll know exactly how many vials you have, where they're at. For us, we rotate them. So as I pull one out of the front, I push everything forward. So you know, first in, first out. So I'm always using the older vial of insulin first, yeah, and helps me keep organized. We know exactly where they're at. And that's kind of how that came about. It was really about convenience for me. And then again, posted online, and people like, can you make us these? And we saw that there's a need for it, so we started making

Scott Benner 18:09
them. How long does it take to, I don't know, like a grip shield for an example. How long does it take for the printer to make it

Andrew 18:17
so for depending on the on the grip shield, obviously there's different sizes. So something like, something like a g7 is around a 20 minute print per g7 I typically do, like, six on a plate at a time, and so I it's, you know, it's right around an hour 15 to spit that whole plate out. If you get into something like an OmniPod, it goes up because it's a lot more material, it's a lot taller, and there's ways to, like, speed that up. We could make it faster, but then the quality goes down. Okay, so I don't want to sacrifice quality just to push more product out. I'd rather have a higher quality product. The end game is to get out of 3d printing altogether into let a manufacturer injection mold them for us, which will be an even higher quality it'll be faster, less time for me to do that, so I can focus on on growing our business and and working on all of the other background items that come along with owning a business and get Mike, it was

Scott Benner 19:14
absolutely going to be my next question, like, what? Why don't you get these made somewhere? Man,

Andrew 19:20
but yeah, there. But yeah. The issue, the issue that I see right now is that technology has has moved so rapidly, in the CGM, in the in the pods, well, pods have been kind of the same for a while. There's the same shape because OmniPod smart doesn't want to recreate, you know, the wheel from scratch. But as these products are coming out, every single time you want to have a mold made, it's it's 10s of 1000s of dollars to have a mold made. So there's a very high, expensive front, and I'm all I'm trying to figure out how to justify spending that without having to increase pricing, because I don't want to be more expensive. I want it to be affordable, that that's our that was our whole goal. We started this is, you know, I don't want to sell it for $25 that doesn't make sense to me. Logically, the value is probably there. But I don't need to make a million dollars off of one person my you know, I want the Walmart mentality where I make $1 off of everybody, and that's the way I'll make my money and make it affordable. So

Scott Benner 20:22
also they're not, it's not like they're disposable. They must last for a while, right? They

Andrew 20:27
do. They do. So my daughter, when she was on the g6 of course, we have one of every color, because we make them here, but she would know the guy, yeah, yeah. She she would rotate through them. And we had some that were three years old. She was still using the original ones on and so I have customers that that have them. They they had them for a year, year and a half, almost two years. I have one customer say she had hers for two years, and it finally broke on her, or got another customer said she had hers for a year, and the adhesive got so sticky, the buildup was gross, and she wanted to replace it. So they do last quite a while, and they're compatible with a lot of the patches that are already on the market. So like, we team up with the sugar patch out of Texas and given us their secret sauce recipe and how they manufacture the patches. So we can make the white ones and can can include them with our grip shields. But we also know that, like skin grip is another big name out there. They're compatible with our shields. We make our shields to be, I'd say, very narrow walled so that they're they can fit a lot of patches without trimming right out of the box.

Scott Benner 21:35
When I look at them and they have kind of like the fin cutouts around the border. Is that so that the adhesive can go there, or is that for flexibility?

Andrew 21:44
It's for flexibility and it's for breathability. If you had a solid flange there, that plastic, that context, your skin would get really sweaty and gross, and it just wouldn't be comfortable long term wear. So really, the gap there is to let moisture escape and then create that flexibility as well, so that we have freedom of motion. It's

Scott Benner 22:05
going to breathe through the overlay patch. Most of them correct. Some of them are thicker and not as breathable. I've seen a couple that, you know, are thicker.

Andrew 22:14
You know, I am the guy. I'm always in the pursuit of perfection. So we're constantly updating our designs, a little here and a little there. And as we get feedback from customers about, you know, I really wish that this, and so we may, we may go revisit that. If we hear it for two or three customers that are not talking to each other, right, that are totally strangers, and we hear that feedback, we take all of that feedback from a review, from a message to us, you know, from Facebook comments, as we're sorting through our groups that we're a part of, and we see people commenting about our product. We my wife and I will both look in and say, Huh? They said that. I never really thought about that. So, you know, some of them are tighter, like the libre three has smaller gaps in it than than, let's say, the jet Dexcom g7 right? And that's really because I haven't had anybody come back and complain about it, so I haven't made any changes yet.

Scott Benner 23:01
And the overlay patches that you sell on the site, they did, they come just in white, or are there colors there as well? So

Andrew 23:08
because we partner with the sugar patch, we have an agreement that out of our site, we will only sell them in white, and that's because they do a lot of a lot of custom printing like I think, I think Ashley there has, I think she said less, something like three, 4000 designs that she has available on her website you can pick. So I don't want to take their business. I just wanted to be able to supply a quality patch with our product. And that's the that's kind of the agreement we came up with was they would allow us to to include the patches we make, the white ones. And then if people want custom color or whatever, they would go to the sugar patch to get a refill. And you

Scott Benner 23:45
have those manufactured or you get them from sugar patch. Sometimes

Andrew 23:49
we get them from sugar patch, and sometimes we're cutting them here. Yeah, we have, we have a machine here that we can cut patches with. It just depends on, on how many hours are in a day and what I have going on, if I can, if I can manage to sit there and cut patches. In fact, I ended up having to contract my father in law to cut patches for all of our stock because we sell so many I can't keep up on my own. So he has, he comes over and cuts the patches. We include two with every single grip shield, and he'll cut them and pre pack them in our packaging, and then when the grip shields are ready, we'll stuff them into the bag and zip them up, heat seal them, and then ship

Scott Benner 24:27
them out. So this is not like, obviously, hand cut. You're not trimming with scissors, but, but although, boy, that would be you're not charging enough if you're doing that right. But I mean, somebody, is it like a press or how do you like? Is it a stamp? What? How do you cut them?

Andrew 24:45
It's a machine cutter. Think along the lines of a craft cutter, right? But obviously you got to know, there's a there's a lot involved. I don't want to go too far into detail, because it's kind of the like I said, It's the secret sauce for

Scott Benner 24:59
the sugar. No, no, don't. Have anything away. I'm just trying to imagine if your living room is full of machinery or something like that. No, no,

Andrew 25:04
no. So, so I live in Michigan, we have a basement, and I have a we have a pretty large area of our basement that is dedicated to deck my diabetes. So I've got shelves with printers on it. I've got shelves with stock on it. I've got a set, a setup for shipping. I just put up some slat wall, and we keep our our stock on. So, like, I keep an example, I keep like, 24 of our g7 any color g7 grip shield is on the wall at a time. So, you know, obviously there's just, just pegs full of them. Yeah, that room, and that's all it's dedicated for. I think, I think that pretty much explains it like, like we are, we spend a lot of time in that, in that office on a daily basis, if we're printing pretty heavy, you know, a printer is nice, because you can set it and forget it, like you said it, and then an hour you come back. Yeah. So throughout the day, we may, we might spend, you know, two hours total, but then we got to pack orders, and we have to prep the Amazon shipments for Prime and and so, I mean, realistically, in a week, we're between the two of us, we're probably spending 40 hours down there as, like, part time gig. So

Scott Benner 26:08
is this a thing you can continue to do? Like, is this a pace you can keep up? Yes,

Andrew 26:12
well, no, not really. And that's why we need to get into injection mold, because the three printing is the printing itself isn't a lot. It's the maintenance that comes with running a machine. As much as I do. You know, if I looked at some of these machines, I mean, I probably have racked up 1000s of hours of print time on each one about every six months. I basically have to refurb, refurb them, so they're like, on a schedule. So six months out, I'll do printer number one, and then I'll do printer number two the next month, and printer number three the next month, so that I'm kind of spreading it out, but yeah, yeah, we can't maintain our growth cycle if we continue to manufacture ourselves. And that's a to me, that's as a business, that's a good thing, but as a as a father of a diabetic, that makes me a little bit sad, because it tells me that the diagnosis are still ramping up and and, you know, there's a lot of families who are having those scary moments where they get the diagnosis and they weren't, you know, weren't ready for it, or, you know, their lives are being flipped upside down, and they're looking for support. So like I said, as a business is great. I honestly would hope that someday there's a cure for diabetes, and I don't have a business, then you know that that would be my ultimate goal. Of course.

Scott Benner 27:25
How does your daughter feel about like that? You're doing something around diabetes like this depends on

Andrew 27:31
what day you ask her. She loves the fact that we're helping people. In fact, she's very involved in the business. She will help us pack orders. She helps me with the with the doll products that we sell. So we sell like doll look alikes. They call them the warrior buddy line, which is really was designed as a coping mechanism for my daughter because she didn't want to rotate her Dexcom site to different spots. So now she can make her doll look like her and change the site at the same time. Andrew,

Scott Benner 27:56
let me. Let me help you a little bit with your Michigan accent there. Okay, yeah, doll. I'm afraid people are like, What is he talking about? Like, a wooden dowel, yeah?

Andrew 28:08
Sorry, yeah.

Scott Benner 28:10
So you have, oh, my god, so you have little, like devices for dolls, like, but it's everything. It's like a Jesus you have a Medtronic set. You have looks like a Dexcom OmniPod. You have them all. But that's insane. Yes, you know, we

Andrew 28:31
started with the g6 because that's what we were familiar with. That's what my daughter had. And, you know, again, it was one of those things like, Oh, hey, I bet you people would like this. So we put the g6 online, and suddenly we had questions, hey, can you make a libre one? Can you make it this one? Can you make it that one? Can you make a T slim and and we started growing them. And Medtronic is the guardian version is fairly new to us, because we had somebody ask, and I made a design and send it to them. And basically said, hey, I want some feedback. I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping. And I never heard anything back, so I just kind of let it sit. And we didn't think there was a big demand for it, but then we started getting these inquiries and emails from people saying, Hey, I don't see a Medtronic one, and my kids being left out because they're on Medtronic. That's what my insurance pays for. So I think last year we we finally redesigned and made it a little bit larger. Now they work with patches we used to use, like a double stick tape you we would send you, and it just wasn't quality. So now we actually use the same patch material that you would get with the sugar patch, and that sticks much better. Turns out, look at

Scott Benner 29:38
that. Hey, did the companies give you a problem with this, or no,

Andrew 29:43
no, we may need to address, you know, at some point changing the name to say, you know, look alike. I don't I have to look and see what the title says. Now, because, you know, because we were constantly changing things for SEO, but, yeah, I have not had any any issues with it for companies coming out. For us for using, using the name in the in the device name. I really think they should, most of them. Yeah, I think most of them are really looking at it as if we if it's more normal for a child to wear it, then they're more likely to select our product. So it's actually a benefit. It's to their benefit to have other things out there. I

Scott Benner 30:16
can't imagine they haven't tried to buy some of them from you by now. It's possible. Yeah, that's something look at that. It's so like, it's so adorable and tiny. Yeah,

Andrew 30:26
you know, really, what it came down to is trying to normalize wearing the device. If you look at our tagline, every once in a while in our website, you'll find our logo with a tagline on it, and it says, deck out and show off. And the goal here is really so that we can normalize the device wearing and stop hiding those devices, and make it, make it easier for kids to see that, that it's okay, right? But really, because we have a child, our mission is geared more towards children, yeah, and that's what the dial thing is for. And I can't tell you how many people email us and say I got your warrior buddy kit. My daughter is thrilled that her doll looks just like her and has a device like her, and she's doing device changes at the same time we are. We're gonna have to order more refill pack patches, because we keep moving the device around. It's wonderful. That's that's what we want to hear, because that's why we do it. Oh,

Scott Benner 31:19
it's fantastic. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, we've met before, am I right? Yes, yeah. We

Andrew 31:25
met. Well, early on, when, when our company first started, I had heard about the juicebox podcast and gave you a call. Oh,

Scott Benner 31:33
we talked, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that way, way, way

Andrew 31:36
back when we talked about, kind of, what the device, what this, what the space looks like, and diabetes in general, because we were only three months into it, you gave us a lot of really sound advice. We started listening to the podcast and picked up a lot of your catch phrases that we still use around the house, like crush it and catch it. You know, I if you don't have a T shirt line, Scott, you should have one. I

Scott Benner 31:57
don't know if I do or not. I think there's T shirts somewhere, but I don't pay a lot of attention to it. Yeah,

Andrew 32:02
yeah, but yeah. Then Then we met last year at touch by type one.

Scott Benner 32:06
That's, yeah, that's why I remember that for sure. Oh, it's wonderful. So I put this kind of, like, the call out, I think I did it on LinkedIn, and I was just like, if you have a company that helps people with diabetes, you know, you can come on the show and tell people about it. Because I started getting into this, like, headspace where I can't sell you. I sell ads to big companies. Like, if I try to sell you an ad the way they pay, like, you're selling things $12 at a time, you're not gonna, it's not gonna benefit you. You don't even mean, like, it's never gonna work out. And if we do something where it's like, I get a couple of pennies off of I'm like, I don't want to, I'm not involved. I don't care. And so, like, I don't want to do that either, but I would like to shine a light. But I also, like, I couldn't figure out how to do it, because I don't want, and I can't have the podcast turn into a billboard, like, for like, you know, it can't be two weeks of people, like, I make this and I make because it's just a, first of all, there's, it's never ending. Yeah, it'll never stop. Right, right, like, so. But I did just want to pick a couple of people out, and I and I kept looking around, and I thought, You know what? Let them pick themselves like. And so I like, just kind of put it up online honestly, truth be told, that's how beta bionics ended up on the show this week. Okay? Because they reached out, and they were like, we'd love to talk about our pump. And I was like, great, come on, you know? And I almost did that purposely, because I'm sometimes stunned that like companies that aren't advertisers don't want to be on the podcast, like, I wonder. I always wonder, like, did they think because I don't buy an ad, they don't want to like Scott doesn't want to talk about libraries or like something like that, like, because that's not the case. I don't know. It feels like maybe that's the idea in some people's minds. And I thought, oh, I'll just do this so I can say a couple of times, you know, if you want to come on, come on. It's absolutely fine. It gets to the point where people are like, why won't you have someone on to talk about this? And I'm like, What do you think I'm in charge of who asked to come on the podcast? It's like, I just, I can only answer the people who, who, you know, who reach out. And there are plenty of people. I'm like, No, I'm sorry. I'll tell you the one thing I can't do Andrew's books if I, I don't. If every person who wrote a children's book about diabetes, I the podcast would be over first, everybody be bored to tears, and then, like, you know, it would, it would be a book club. And I, and I just don't have, like, the, I don't have the content space for that. And that is one of those things. You don't realize how many people are doing that until you're one of them. You show one of them some kindness, and then all of a sudden, it's like, there's a line out. It feels like you, if I don't mean it like this, but it feels like you fed a cat tried to go out your back door the next day. You're like, whoa. Where'd you guys all come from? I'm really glad you did this. And I don't like, I don't have to keep you much longer. I just, I just wanted to hear about the business and hear about what it does and why you're doing it, and what it provides, and that's it. I just want to put it up, and hopefully people will come take a look for you. So it's deckmydiabetes.com Right,

Andrew 34:50
correct. Yep. You can find us@deckmydiabetes.com that would be our website. There's an About Us section. You can learn a little bit about our family. You can see. Photos of us, but attending some J ref events and things like that. And then there's a page for each one of our product lines. If you want to learn more about a specific product line, grip shields explains what it is, how it got its name, where your buddies, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, there's a shop now link and you can go visit the site and shop. And we're constantly running promotions and specials and and really just trying to find ways to market to different people that are in different stages of their life, right? So some people just don't have the finances or the income to afford things. So, you know, sometimes we run a sale and it'll be like a $10 grip shield, and I don't make anything when, when we do that, but it gets them out there for people to to try and wear, and they're not super expensive. So when we do something like that, that's all announced on our Facebook page,

Scott Benner 35:48
nice. So, so follow on Facebook, Instagram, stuff like that to get those kind of updates. Absolutely,

Andrew 35:54
yep, Facebook and Instagram are, are the two primary that we're on. We also have a Tiktok, but we are, I don't think we're super active in that. Emily, my wife, handles all of the social media stuff. I tell her, she's my marketing director. I like her as well as the boss, the CEO, the CFO, whatever else she wants to title herself, right?

Scott Benner 36:12
I chuckled under my breath a little while ago when you were like, you know, we have to change these things for SEO. And I thought I'd love to go back four years and say SEO to Andrew and see if he doesn't look at me and go, What are you talking about? Yes,

Andrew 36:23
well, and you know, what's crazy is like owning, owning a business, I've learned so many things that I didn't know I needed to learn. And one example, the warrior buddy line, the the toys that we produce, we we found out that if you produce a toy, you're supposed to get certified through the child protection safety agency or CPSC. I don't even know what the acronym is. There's a whole line of testing you're supposed to do on toys. When we first started, we didn't know that. So I had to go through a process and figure out, how do I get a third party tester to test the materials I'm using to make these and how do I ensure that they're safe? And so we, I mean, it was like a four month process, and we did finally get the CPSC certification. They're tested safe, they're lead, free, satellite free. And that's something I didn't know. I needed to know until, until we crossed that bridge. And so imagine that. But times the entire business, yeah, it's been an incredible growth as a as an owner of a business, I now understand more about how important reviews are. You know, I now like to leave reviews if I've had good service. Turns out people really like to leave bad reviews, but very few people like to leave good reviews that they don't see the need for you.

Scott Benner 37:33
Want me to read you my bad reviews, Andrew, they're hilarious. Yeah,

Andrew 37:38
and you, I mean, I'm sure you see it as, yeah, don't worry. You have a bad experience, you're probably 10 times more likely to leave a review that if you had a great experience, right? And unfortunately, that doesn't really give valid information as to whether or not the company met expectations of the majority of people. Yeah. And so it's, it's one of those things now, because I know that my behavior has changed. If I have really good service somewhere, I'm I'm leaving them a review. A great example, I just had some concrete board. The guys did a fantastic job. They're going to get a five star review, because I really appreciate the effort and the attention to detail they put into the

Scott Benner 38:13
concrete work. Yeah, they trust me. That's happened to me as well.

Andrew 38:16
I think, I think every small business, I think every business understands that. But if you don't have a business, you don't understand how important positive reviews are to a company and how they ultimately affect the growth of that company. Yeah, you know. So maybe a little shout out is, you know, if you, if you've had good experience with a company or or you really enjoy listening to Scott's podcast, leave a good review. That's you know, that will help other people find it. And it does. It changes the algorithm and how Facebook presents us, how Google presents us,

Scott Benner 38:47
yeah, the things I know now that I didn't know before about stuff that you would just be like, it's some of its mind, absolutely mind numbing down to, you know, I, I have, I put a post up the other day for end of the month, like, I do over, like, a review of the what was on the podcast this month. Because the truth is, like, I probably put out more content in 30 days than most diabetes places put out in a year. And so, like, they can get lost sometimes for people. So I'm like, Look, here's a recap of what's going on. And the person who compiles the recap list for me. Said, Hey, you haven't put that post up yet. I said, Oh no, I'm waiting for Thursday, because Thursday's a stronger Facebook day than other days, and you're and by the way, like my coverage on Facebook is very, very consistent. The podcast is. The podcast has a private Facebook group that is pretty much 24/7 busy, I guess ability or time to interact is different on certain days, like putting something up on Monday, you won't get a lot of responses from and then there are certain days of the week and certain times of the day and like that might sound obvious to people, but I didn't know that when I started doing this. Like, I like what you. I mean, like, it's better on Thursday after 4pm like, Are you kidding me? Like, I didn't even want to be on Facebook, right? Yeah. And, or the I got, I got an email this morning from someone like, you know, we want to pay you for these ads, but you have to pick a letter to your bank. And I'm like, I don't, why do you want me to do that? I'm like, I have other advertisers. No one else asked me to do that. Well, this is the anti phishing agenda that we're working on, and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, You think I like, it's just me. Like, I don't have right? You either get the podcast or I go to the bank and get the letter. I don't have both options available to me today. You know? I gotta package this stuff, or I gotta do this. That's the it's crazy,

Andrew 40:41
right? Well, our customers are very surprised to find that it's my wife and I that do this, like, yeah, for the for the for the way that the company is presented. We, you know, we intentionally try to give you the mom and pop attention, right? We want to be a mom pop shop, small business attention, but to give the big business experience, right? We want you to be able to come in and get a quality product, get a good price, be able to get all the information you want from the website, so you can make a wise decision. But ultimately, what comes down to it, it's if you send us a Facebook message or a email, it's my wife or I that are replying to you, you know? And it's the same thing, like, I can only do so much in a day and and sometimes we have to say, No. I had somebody the other day asked if we can make a custom color insulin mount. And I said, I'm sorry. I I do not have enough time in a day to do that, you know, I I

Scott Benner 41:33
don't know where my shoes are. I wore this pair of shoes last week, and I took them off, and I don't know where they're at. I don't have any time to even go look for those. I'm getting ready to do something with sanafi diabetes to, like, kind of raise attention about being tested for antibodies and stuff like that. And I was working with their PR company, and they said, like, you know, just give us everybody's email so we invite your whole staff to the meeting. And I was like, the what

Andrew 41:56
staff? What's that?

Scott Benner 41:57
I was like, Don't worry, you've invited everyone in the business. They're all, they're all coming already. She's like, you don't have a PR staff. And I was like, That's me. And she goes, What about content? I went, me. She goes, What about the ads? Like, who's gonna write that? I'm like, I'll do that. Yes, yeah. I'm glad it looks bigger from the outside, which is usually how I take it. I'm like, oh, it looks like a real business from the outside, you know, which is great, well.

Andrew 42:19
And you know, we found things like we have. I have to start unloading things because I I work 40 to 50 hours a week in my in my regular career, and then I'm doing that as well. And there's only, like you said, there's only so much hours, and it's so many hours in a day, and I don't want to spend all of it not spending time with my daughter. I only have a certain number of years before she's an adult, but I make sure to carve out time for her, specifically when she goes to bed, that's my time to kind of work on, yeah, on the business stuff. So, like, one of the things that I recently unloaded was our, a lot of our graphic design and I'm very fortunate that my sister in law is a graphic design artist, and so I contracted her business, her small business. You know, when you buy from our small business, you're supporting her small business. You're support you're supporting the sugar patch as a small business. I've told my father in law, he should probably make a business for all the stuff he does for me, and then he can write more stuff off. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of the way it works is, you know, as a small business, we like to support small businesses, and you help across the board. But yeah, I had to start unloading things because I just can't do

Scott Benner 43:20
it all right? I hadn't thought of it that way, but the person who edits the podcast is the father of a of a child with type one. So, you know, it's the money he makes to to edit the show goes to his family and his small business, really, you know, his recording studio. It's fantastic. I hope that I can get to the point where there are other people I can bring in like that, truthfully, you know, so it's always the goal. Absolutely, yeah, Andrew, did I forget to ask anything? Or we got did we cover Do you think I think

Andrew 43:50
we've covered everything? And I Scott, I really appreciate having me on and allowing me the opportunity to talk about, you know, what our what our mission is, and what our vision for our company is and how we can help people. You know, again, not to, not to negate, there's a ton of options out there. We know that diabetes is not a one size fits all or one size fits most, but hopefully, you know, the products that we offer can be helpful to some people, hopefully more more than less. But we, we really strive to be in the community, to walk alongside people as part of the community, and not, not just be a company that's going to be after the dollar, right? So again, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. Oh,

Scott Benner 44:33
it's my pleasure. Also, you're, you're, you hustle, Andrew, I love that because, you know, make hay while the sun shines. This offer ink forever. And, you know, like, and I kind of went out in the world, and I was like, I don't know if it didn't come across this way, but if you were here, what that, what that note actually said was, I'm in a pretty good mood right now, so I'm gonna ask for people to come on the podcast. Like, I don't need more content. Like, the only mean, like, so it's not, it's not a thing like, where I'm like, oh my god, I gotta get some people and so I have something to put up. Like, yeah. I don't have that problem. Yeah,

Andrew 45:00
we saw that. We saw your, your message go out. And I was like, I know that when I talk to you, probably it's been almost four years now, right? Almost four years ago, initially, pretty much the the conversation we had was, you know, you're just starting out, and I don't, I don't see the value in adding you to my show. And I was like, Well, I totally understand. I agree. And here we are, four years later, having a conversation. And that just goes to show how, how the growth in our company, and how we've been able to benefit people and make our business known as well. As you know, your generosity to opening that up and having this conversation,

Scott Benner 45:34
but, but you're very welcome. And by the way, it wasn't the value, it was the I just thought the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze for you. I didn't think you'd, I thought you'd spend money and not get it back. That's what I was concerned about. Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure. Because,

Andrew 45:49
well, that's, and that's probably was a true statement at the time. At the time we were, you know, we were just starting. We didn't have, we didn't have two nickels together. Everything basically goes back into the business anyway, of course.

Scott Benner 46:00
Well, listen, if you're ever looking for a marketing plan, and once you get, you know, get it out of your basement. You let me know, and we'll look at getting you some ads. So, yeah, absolutely all right. Hold on one second for me. Thank you so much.

The conversation you just heard was sponsored by Dexcom and the Dexcom g7 learn more and get started today at dexcom.com/juicebox touched by type one, sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org on Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d exchange.org/juicebox right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward, it will cost you nothing to help. Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less, a little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, if you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would, I think I see something here, but I can't be sure, once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the juicebox podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 when you support the juicebox podcast by clicking on the advertisers links, you are helping to keep the show free and plentiful. I am certainly not asking you to buy something that you don't want, but if you're going to buy something or use a device from one of the advertisers. Getting your purchases set up through my links is incredibly helpful. So if you have the desire or the need, please consider using juicebox podcast links to make your purchases the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way, recording.com, do.


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#1330 Weekly News 10/11/24

For the week of October 11, 2024

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

Scott Benner 0:00
OmniPod, Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of The juicebox Podcast. Today I'm going to do some new stories, but I'm behind on this, so I have a lot of them in front of me that I found interesting. So today I'm going to give you a brief overview and then send you off to find out more on your own. If that sounds good, we can get going you.

Music. These are the news stories that I found interesting this week. There are links in the show notes and links at juicebox podcast.com if you'd like to read the complete article. 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. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d exchange.org/juice box right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com 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/juicebox, I know that Facebook has a bad reputation, but please give the private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast, a healthy once over juicebox podcast type one diabetes. This story is a news medical.net it says here that despite high use of continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pump therapy, fear of hypoglycemia remains a significant barrier to physical activity and exercise for adults with type one diabetes. Now this is according to a new research study that will be presented at this year's Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of diabetes in Madrid. Looks like that already happened in September. Here's a quote from Dr Farrell from the University of Dundee in Scotland. Regular exercise can help individuals with diabetes to achieve their blood glucose goals, improve their body composition and fitness, as well as reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, which is higher in people with type one diabetes. Yet many people living with type one do not maintain a healthy body weight or manage to do the recommended amount of physical activity each week. If you want to learn more about that. There's a link in the show notes. And if you'd like to learn about exercising with type one diabetes, check out the diabetes Pro Tip series at diabetes pro tip.com they begin at Episode 1000 right here in the juicebox podcast. I have one here from let's see smoking cessation and weight gain. Dr Luba Yamin from the from UT Health Houston is investigating the link between smoking and weight gain. Many people fear gaining weight after quitting smoking, which, of course, can discourage them from trying to quit. So they're using glps with people who are trying to quit smoking. They are studying the GLP one agonist, which, of course, is a class of drugs commonly used for treating type two diabetes as a potential aid for quitting smoking while managing while also managing your weight. Initial trials showed promising results with a higher quit rate among participants who received the GLP one compared to the placebo. Those on the GLP one treatment also experience less weight gain. The doctor says they're trying to conduct larger scale clinical trials to further evaluate the effectiveness of GLP one again, for smoking. So now there's a mix here, like, is the GLP helping to take away your craving for smoking, or is it helping to cover for hunger when you remove the nicotine? It's an interesting question, and if you'd like to read the article, there's a link in the show notes. This one@htworld.co.uk says that 10s of 1000s of children and eligible adults living with type one diabetes across England are set to receive an artificial pancreas thanks to cost effective deals secured by the NHS with suppliers of the technology. If you're interested in learning more, there's a link in the show notes. This one's from sciencealert.com While some speculate that trigger for type one diabetes could be a virus, a new study led by researchers from Cardiff University in the UK, points in a different direction, type one diabetes, it says, might start with proteins on bacteria, sparking an omnipodous shift in the immune system. The quote here is type one diabetes, of course, is an autoimmune disease that usually affects children and young adults. That's not completely true at all. Now where the cells that produce insulin are attacked by the patient's own immune system? Okay, they got that, right. Let's see this leads to lack of insulin, yeah, okay, come on. What's the what's the part about the the bacteria, his colleagues link the loss of insulin producing cells with killer T cells, a class of white blood cells that kill certain other cells, including cancer cells or cells infected by a pathogen. Killer T cells seem to play a key role in causing type one diabetes as they kill off beta cells. This new study, the researcher, found that the killer T cells begin doing this when activated by bacterial proteins, specifically proteins from bacteria known to infect humans. Like word here that I can't pronounce. If you'd like to learn more, I will leave a link in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now, and the corresponding web page for this episode at juicebox podcast.com, this one is from wash.edu potential type one diabetes treatment may stem from outsmarting immune cells. Berkeley leads preclinical research with a $2.6 million grant from the Helmsley trust. There is a lot of scientific what I'm going to call Gabriel in this little thing here. If you want to hear more about what they're trying to do, of course, look in the show notes for the WashU link and read all about it. This one is more type two related out of India. The print dot i n fried bake and ultra processed foods are fueling India's diabetes epidemic. This new study, says, studies published in the internal Journal of Food Sciences and nutrition, says having foods low in advanced glycation end products can mitigate burden of obesity linked type two diabetes. This is out of New Delhi, foods such as cakes, chips, cookies, crackers and fried foods, mayonnaise, margin and ultra processed foods, which are rich in advanced like glycanation, glaation and N price eight GES are a leading cause behind India's India being the world's diabetic capital. It says these ages are reactive and potentially toxic. Compounds form when proteins or lipids are glycated or modified by Aldo sugars, which are carbohydrates with within the aldehyde group. This is a government funded trial, if you want to read more about it, I of course left links at the website and in your show notes staying on this path. This is at Food and wine.com these four Ultra processed foods raise your diabetes risk more than others, according to a new study. The study, which was published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe researched analyzed data from more than 300,000 people across eight European countries for an average of 10.9 years. They found that for every 10% increase in the amount of a person's diet made up by Ultra processed foods, that person had a 17% higher risk of developing type two diabetes. But within the ultra processed food category, some were worse than others for diabetes risks. This goes on to explain what Ultra processed foods are, what type two diabetes is. But here are the four things they came up with, savory snacks, like salty packaged snacks and chips. These are often loaded with unhealthy fats, salt and refined carbohydrates, which can contribute to insulin resistance, inflammation and ultimately a higher risk of developing type two diabetes. Ultra processed meats, uh oh, like bacon, sausage and lunch meats usually have higher levels of sodium, preservatives like nitrates and unhealthy fats ready to eat meats. What does that mean? These meals are convenient, but may not help your health. A lot of ready to eat meals will include ingredients that are high in saturated fats, added sugar and sodium. Ready to eat meals are also low in fiber, protein and essential nutrients. The lack of fiber and high calorie content can promote overeating ready to eat meals, I guess, like frozen food and stuff like that. And then sweetened drinks. The study found that drinks sweetened with added sugar as well those with artificial sugars raise the risk of type two diabetes. Sweetened drinks will include a lot of added sugar, and added sugar has been associated with increased inflammation in the body. While artificially sweetened drinks don't usually contain added sugar, they may disrupt the gut microbiome and trigger cravings for sugary foods. Okay, if you want to learn more about that, you know where to find the link. Tickets for the 2025 juice cruise are limited. I'm not just saying that they actually are limited. We have a certain window to sell them in, and then that's it. Juicebox podcast.com, scroll down to the juice cruise banner. Click on it, find a cabin that works for you, and register right now.

You are absolutely limited. Buy time on this one. I'm so sorry to say that it sounds pushy, but it's the absolute truth. Juice cruise 2025 I hope to see you there. We're gonna get a tan, talk about diabetes and meet a ton of great people who are living with diabetes. It's kind of gonna be like floating diabetes camp, but you won't have to sleep in a log cabin. You'll get a tan. And it's not just for adults or kids, it's for everybody. Introductory pricing probably will change on October 15, so if you're really interested, put your deposit down now. I hope to see you on the cruise. 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 CD CES, 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. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? I.

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#1329 Unpixelated

Jon is the creator of the Sugar Pixel. 

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon MusicGoogle Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio PublicAmazon 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
We are all together again friends for this next episode of The juicebox podcast.

Some of you may know John as the creator of the sugarpixel, and some of you might know him as John from episode 9081 way or the other, he's returning to have another titillating conversation with me about type one diabetes. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes, or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. 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. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com

this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, 87211514, get your supplies the same way we do from us med. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box.

Jon Fawcett 1:59
Hi, thanks for having me, Scott, this is John Fawcett. I'm the creator of sugarpixel, and then also loop follow app that many are using, and even the loop patches that a lot of loopers are using. So thanks for having me on the

Scott Benner 2:12
show. And John, you've been on the show before, right?

Jon Fawcett 2:15
Yes, I have. We talked about my daughter, Lily's change from being a looper for four to five years over to the OmniPod five. That's

Scott Benner 2:25
right, and your episode is smartly called from loop to OmniPod five. Episode 908. These people find you compelling and want to hear more. Thank you. Yeah, please. I enjoy talking to you very much. Now today, my my schedule's a little tighter, so I don't think we're gonna be able to go on and on like we did last time, John, I made a I'm going to tell you about it, because it's got to go somewhere. I don't know what happened to me, but a few weeks ago, I was like, I'm so tired of waiting for some of these other companies to contact me. Like, I get the idea that, like, OmniPod, for example, has been sponsoring the podcast since, like, you know, the very beginning. But I, I've always been baffled that, you know, tandem has never reached out. And been like, can we have somebody on your show? And I don't know why that is. And so I was like, All right, like, I'm just gonna put the call out. So I put up a post that was just like, hey, listen, if you have any kind of tech, or if you're helping people with diabetes or whatever, you can come on the show and tell people about it like, you know, contact me. Well, I think I've got an insulin coming, another device that reached out, which I thought was great, but mainly it was just like, more like entrepreneurs and people like you when I'm thrilled for you know what I mean. But anyway, so the last time you were on, we didn't really talk about the business of what you do very much. So tell people, give them like, a quick catch up. Like, how do you find yourself in this position?

Jon Fawcett 3:49
Yeah, so Lily was diagnosed when she was 12. She's 18 now, within weeks of her diagnosis, I had night scout up and running. We were using the spike gap at the time to get better alerts. And so I just dove in head first with all of the Hey, what's out there? What can I implement on our, you know, in our house, to make things easier for us managing this new diagnosis? So we were even tracking rudimentary, rudimentary tracking. Io be and see would be using night scouts built in decay just from manually entering that so we were using night Scout instead of that paper log book that they sent you home from the hospital with. And at the time, I also owned a company that made smartphone accessories, so I had all kinds of tech and product background, and at some point it just hit me that we're still waking her up for alerts overnight, and this was when she was 16, so she would sometimes wake up, but Mom and I still have. And our alerts set, and our alerts were going off all the time to get up and make sure she would have low carbs or take a correction for a high and I realized we're potentially only two years away from her moving out on her own, living in a dorm room, first time on her own, anything like that. Yeah, and I needed to solve the ability for her to wake up on her own, her alerts every single time. So that's how sugarpixel got started. I used my background in designing and manufacturing tech products to basically create a better alert system for her Dexcom, and it has so so a couple things that we added to it is the audio alerts peak around 105 decibels, so it's drastically louder than your alerts off the Dexcom app. But it also randomly creates the audio as it plays in real time. So there's a lot of studies. It's called Brain habituation. Clinically, we call it alert fatigue, where your brain hears the same sound repeatedly and then just literally starts to ignore it and you it just basically won't wake you up anymore because your brain has heard the sound too often. So we implemented that. And then we also have haptic alerts. So there's a vibration talk that you can put underneath your pillow to give vibration alerts also. And sort of like we're trying to combine as many things as possible to ensure that you're going to wake up to your alerts every single time reliably. So that's sort of the high level of what sugarpixel is and how I created it.

Scott Benner 6:45
That's amazing for people who may not know that you can, you know, like, how could this blaring alarm from your phone go off and it not wake you up? I will tell this brief story. I, as I've highlighted on the podcast, number of times, grew up very broke, and we lived in this place that was the front door was 12 steps from the sidewalk that butted up against a five lane highway. All right, so prime real estate, John, everybody was clamoring to be there, trucks like semis all day long, cars all. It's one I was literally 75 yards away from one of the top 10 most deadliest intersections in Pennsylvania when I grew up. Okay, that literally, I'm telling you. There was never not traffic moving, but every once in a while, that would go, and it would come and everything. But you lived there for a while, the trucks would go by, the building would shake. But I met my wife, and I was dating her, and she came over one time, and we were all sitting sort of in the living room watching television, and it was later at night, so the traffic had died down, but then a truck came cruising by, and the house shakes and does the whole thing, and the windows are rattling and everything. And she literally stands up off the sofa, like, what is happening? And I looked and my rest of my family, we didn't know what she was talking about. We had no idea what she was talking about. We're like, are you okay? What's wrong? She's like, why is the house shaking? What's that noise? And we're like, oh, that's a truck. Like, we never would have heard it. So I take your point. And you know, from my kid having diabetes, I've slept through an alarm or two, so yeah, yeah,

Jon Fawcett 8:32
not even just audio that your brain does that with. It's any stimulus. So a lot of people feel this is like phantom vibrations from their phone in their pocket where the phone didn't go off. It's because they're just so used to feeling that same vibration that it's tricking them. So even with the the vibration just it randomizes the vibration pattern, because your brain can get used to even the haptic alerts or the house shaking, or just about anything that it's a constant, repeated

Scott Benner 9:03
stimulus, that's amazing. And so you just have, like, I don't want to call it an algorithm, because everybody says everything's an algorithm, but it just randomly. It just randomly goes through and and makes changes to the vibration and to the sound, into the pitch, to the bot, like, the whole thing. If you take insulin or sofanylurias, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries G vo hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes, ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO khypoped. How to use it, they need to know how to use GVO kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke 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 gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. I don't know how you guys order your diabetes supplies, like CGMS, pumps and testing equipment, but at our house, we use us Med, and I'm gonna walk you through the entire process. Right now, I'm looking at the email from us med. It says it's time to refill your prescription, dear Arden, please click the button below to place your next order. Then you click the button that was it. Two days later, I got this email, thank you for your order from us. Med, we wanted to let you know that your order and it gives you an order number was shipped via UPS ground. You can track your package at any time using the link below, and then there was a link, and then it showed up at our house. Now I'm going to walk you through the entire chain of events. On the 29th which was a Saturday, I clicked on the email. On that Monday, the first I got an email that said the order had been sent four days later on the fifth the package arrived. If you can do it easier than that, you go get it. But if you can't, us, med.com/juice, box or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, get your diabetes supplies the same way we do.

Jon Fawcett 11:45
Yeah, every time. So sugar pixel runs on a millisecond loop, basically as it's doing the alerts, and every time it hits that, it says, Okay, pick a new tone, for instance, a new pitch for the audio and pick a new duration. And obviously we have some top and bottom parameters that it can choose from, but it's, it's sort of like saying, every time it loops, pick a random number from one to 10,000 okay, and you're never, you know, you're never going to get that same number, like same pattern of numbers, sequences matching in any repetition. That's

Scott Benner 12:26
pretty cool. We've done two things already. We've just said night scout out loud, as if somebody understands what that is. And so let's start with that. What do you think of night Scout as being like, I'm, people know I'm I'm tech savvy, but I don't understand back end stuff. So I know that night scout is on my phone. I know that Arden has a night Scout URL. I can tell you that Arden's vision AI, which is not a thing I've told people about, yet, runs off of her night Scout link. And yet, I don't honestly know what night scout is.

Jon Fawcett 12:58
Yeah, so night scout is, there's two pieces to it. One is just a database behind the scenes, running on a server somewhere. And when I say database, you can think of just like an Excel file to greatly simplify it. And this Excel file has Your blood glucose reading every five minutes that it's grabbing from dexcomber libre or wherever. Loop even uploading it and then it has your carb entries, your bolus entries, your basal changes, depending on what system you're using. Night scouts flexible from the database back inside to utilize all kinds of different capabilities. So for the DI wires, using a loop, it can grab all the data possible to the very simplest form that I mentioned. We were using it just with MDI. We were just manually going to the night Scout web page for my daughter and clicking a form and typing in 30 carbs and hitting submit, and it would save that. So it's not really on that end much different than just an Excel file sitting in the cloud that has all of the data and then the other half of it is a front front end, and the front end can vary drastically. So night Scout, in and of itself, like the open source project has a web based front end, so you just open the website link that's for your night Scout site, and it shows you, sort of like looking at your Dexcom graph or the follow after libre graph, but it has a bunch of other data with it, such as little dots for your carbs and dots for your boluses. But the ecosystem with night Scout has gotten pretty large to where you really don't even necessarily need to deal with the front end anymore, the website running and only looking at it in a browser most of the apps out there and download the night Scout data and display. Them in a different app. You can display them. You can sync your sugar pixel up tonight. Scout, to display it. You can sync the loop follow app that I mentioned earlier, that I wrote up tonight. Scout, not sure about like the sweet dreams app. Guru, I know you can sync up tonight. Scout, so there's this big ecosystem of all kinds of things that can sort of plug in and utilize all this data. That's your data sitting in the cloud for your back and night Scout site.

Scott Benner 15:33
So you just did a thing where you just mentioned a bunch of other like, I'm assuming, like third party apps or that kind of stuff. They come and they go. I don't mean the ones you just said, or anything like that. I mean, over the years, I've seen people say, I've have, oh, my God, such a good idea, right? I'm gonna do this. And some stuff takes off, and some stuff doesn't. The apps, especially, they come, they go, they come, they go. It's constant. You came and you stuck. So that's my next thing. Is, like, we say sugar pixel, sugar people, again, they're like, a sugar pixel. I know you explained what it does, but like, visually, it's this little, let me see, is it about six inches long?

Jon Fawcett 16:11
It's, yeah, it's six inches long, two inches tall and two inches deep. It's about the size of an alarm clock.

Scott Benner 16:18
Okay, yeah. And it's time. It's smaller than that, I think, but, but, and then there's a screen on the front, and it just tell me everything that that screen shows me.

Jon Fawcett 16:28
So we have 25 or so different screen display options to choose from. So I won't get into all of them, but

Scott Benner 16:38
you can choose how and

Jon Fawcett 16:42
what you want to display on that the default things are going to be your blood glucose reading, the trend arrow, and then your delta, which is how much your blood sugar change between the last two readings. So did it drop by five? It would list the negative five, or did it raise by 10, it would list plus 10. But we have all kinds of options for you. Just don't want your blood sugar shown to the world sitting on your kitchen or in your dorm room. You can just display it as a clock, so it'll show the current time. And the clock is color coded, so green means you're in range, you know, red means you're urgent, low, things like that. So the time, the color of the clock just changes all the way through to we have full emoji and icon sets. So you can we have a lot of parents that that's the one they use. It shows a picture on the left, and then your blood glucose and the trend arrow, so if they have toddlers that might not even going to read, they can start associating a picture with how they feel, and the parent can still look and see the exact BG value. And we actually just had a parent email us a few weeks ago with a story where she said the pictures are absolutely fabulous because her three year old, I think, came up and said, Mommy, it shows a thunderstorm. That means I need to wait an extra 20 minutes before I eat. So the kids started associating the thunderstorm with lightning. Is one of the icons that we show for a high blood glucose value. Now

Scott Benner 18:21
here's the downside, John, that kid can't eat it's raining. Did you know that? They haven't figured it out yet, but whenever it's cloudy, she's not hungry. That's amazing how old I think the kid

Jon Fawcett 18:36
was three, and it was just a really interesting story. And we had thought of that, but that was sort of the first parent that reached out and said, you know, my kid learned to do this on his own just by, you know, the parent child communication of, no, you should wait to eat. And then the child associated that with the pictures that they were seeing on their sugarpixel,

Scott Benner 18:58
yeah. Terrible. Postscript, they eventually moved to Seattle, and he starves to death. So when you hear that story, can you tell me on a personal level, like, forget the business for a second. What's your reaction to that when you hear that? Because I have experiences like that, and I'm wondering how they strike you,

Unknown Speaker 19:16
well, and how it strikes

Jon Fawcett 19:18
me is, that's why I'm still here doing this. And he sort of back to your point about the app, you know, come and go and things like that. So I came out of consumer technology as the company that I was running, and that is, I got to see the worst parts of everything from corporate greed with competitors down to just absolute fuming customer support requests to us. So you flip the script here to making a product that's helping people, and that's quite frankly, the reason I'm still doing it is because. Is of how many times people just send us a note and say, oh my gosh, this, you know, my kid is now learning how to understand his blood sugars. Or last night, this saved my life, because my phone alert didn't go off, but this alert did go off, so all of those, that's the reason I do this, and that's the reason, you know, every morning, I get up and I basically

Scott Benner 20:23
search the 200

Jon Fawcett 20:27
Facebook type one groups that I'm part of to see if there's anybody that's having a problem or needs help with setup, or, you know, has a question

Scott Benner 20:35
about it, because

Jon Fawcett 20:38
it's, it's so gratifying just to be able to know you're doing something that's truly making a difference in 1000s of people's lives. John,

Scott Benner 20:47
that's customer service. You don't wait for them to come to you. You go find them. I mean, I do

Unknown Speaker 20:52
it, sort of a weird thing. No, I

Scott Benner 20:53
do it. I know what you're talking about. Yeah,

Jon Fawcett 20:56
I know you do it. If you look at people having Dexcom problems and you know, or pump questions. None of the major companies seem to do that, but you're a great example too. Is you hopped up on there all the time when there's stuff that needs addressed from your end,

Scott Benner 21:15
I answered a woman's question last night at 2:48am I was I was asleep, and I got a text from Arden that said, I need help. I'm working on a finals project, and I don't understand something. I said, Oh, I'll get out of bed. So I got out of bed, I came into my office, and I FaceTimed her, and I helped her work through it, which reminds me, by the way, in two minutes, I have to wake her up, but that'll be the end of the story. And when I got back in bed, I just, I was awake, and I opened my phone up, and I went to my mentions, and I just went through and answered people's questions about diabetes stuff for a couple minutes. And, you know, I take your point about the companies not doing it. They can't, like, they're they're restricted by the FDA, they can't give medical advice. And so no matter, like, you know, when it's you or it's me, I'm just a guy, I get to go on and say, hey, look, you know, here's what I would do. But you know, I'm not a doctor, like I'm nobody's, nobody's counting on me to be right. As soon as you put a company in that position, they, they have, they'd have to be correct, and everything would have to go through legal. And it just they, it's not a it's such a it would be such a valuable thing. They'd have the most popular Facebook group in the world. But there's not a thing they can do. So yeah, you know well,

Jon Fawcett 22:30
and there would be ways I think they could do because there's even times where, no matter how much we ask people to contact us directly for customer support. We can't stop people from posting to the Facebook groups, so that's the reason I do it, is I don't want someone who maybe they forgot to click the help button and contact us through there to the post to Facebook. I don't want them getting upset and not having a sugar pixel work because of a setting that needed changed or something. So that's why we do it. But there are times where I even have to say, Please, email supported custom type one.com because I'm not about to ask them to post their you know, Wi Fi information on juicebox podcast, Facebook group, you know, things like that, where we have to even

Scott Benner 23:22
take caution with

Jon Fawcett 23:24
confidential information that might be on the sugar pixel that we need to see in order to assist them so we we still direct them over

Scott Benner 23:33
you have this little ritual where you go around on on Facebook. Let me ask you a sincere question that you please feel free to answer me honestly about, Do I have the best diabetes Facebook group? Yes. Is it the most active? Yes, yeah. Okay, so I don't look at the other ones,

Jon Fawcett 23:53
so you definitely from what, from what I see, because I I am probably on at least three or four dozen,

Scott Benner 24:03
oh, my god, horrible. Globally

Jon Fawcett 24:05
there, there's, we're in ones that are, you know, in a Facebook group for Norway where I can't even read any posts on it. I have to click through to translate. Okay, try and catch, you know, they'll still write sugarpixel in in English. So I'm talking worldwide. We're on these groups, but by and large, we see the absolute most posts from juicebox group. And I think a big reason for that just sort of as not the guy who runs it like you are, that I don't know if you get the same feeling as the guy who's overseeing it is your users seem to be very, very passionate, compared to some of the other groups like they're not only passionate about sharing what they learn, but about helping people and knowing. That this is a safe space to come to, where I know I'm going to get the help I need. These questions, where there's some groups, where it's just it gets out of hand pretty quickly with, you know, very unhelpful comments. I smacked

Scott Benner 25:14
somebody on the hand the other day digitally.

Jon Fawcett 25:18
Yeah, I saw that.

Scott Benner 25:21
Oh, I did it again since then. Actually, here, I'll tell you this, because it'll delight her when she hears it. Isabelle helps me run the Facebook group. And Isabelle is a lovely woman who lives in Canada, who has type one diabetes. She is maybe the kindest, like so good at, you know, seeing the things to point out to me. You know what I mean, like, check at this. Look at that. You're going to, you're going to want to see this. And she's so kind to everybody, but there's like, three people in the group, if I'm being honest, she really doesn't like and sometimes she'll be like, this one's at it again. And I'm like, okay, and I'll look and I'll be like, you just don't like them. And she's like, that's not why. And I read, and she's right, they're doing something they shouldn't be doing. But yesterday, one of those people kind of like, went off half cocked, and I stepped in, and then I sent a note, and I said, Hey, I got you a present. What's the present? I said, I told this person to, you know, you know, be a little kinder, or something like that. And she's like, Oh, I feel so good about that. And I was like, I know, but generally speaking, the group is fantastic, like, and I even think, like some of the agitatoring people, I think it's just what it is. But I do take your point about the veracity that people are helpful with and how knowledgeable they are too. And, I mean, I think they're knowledgeable from listening to the podcast, and then they come back in to help other people, which is beautiful. And then what you don't see is all the lurking, like they're, yeah, oh my god, 90. It might be 95% of people don't say a word, but they're there, and I can see the data that supports that. They're there and they're looking it's really interesting how it all works. You have a couple, like, a little list of things we could talk about here. This one seems like it'll be fun to dive into CGM outages. I'm assuming, when your sugar pixel works with Dexcom, does it also work with libre? Yes. So you

Jon Fawcett 27:20
can directly connect to your g6 or g7 account, and to be clear right here, because we get this question a lot, is sugar pixel downloads from the cloud servers in the same way that the follow up, like the Dexcom follow app or the libre linkup app work, so it doesn't directly connect by Bluetooth to the CGM or even to the phone running the CGM app. I can be in Ohio, and my daughter could be in New Jersey, and I would still have readings on the sugar pixel sitting here, as long as her phone has readings with the main CGM app. So with that said, Dexcom, G 67 libre three and the updated version of libre two. And this is just one of the things that drives me crazy. Is libre has released multiple versions of the libre two, and now they even have the two plus, which causes a little more confusion. So the original libre two, you had to manually scan the sensor with your phone to see the value on in the app on your phone, they updated that in numerous countries around the world. So like UK, now it's still called libre two, but it essentially runs like the libre three, where that connections in real, real time, without you having to manually scan the sensor. So right now, we work with both of those. I like to sort of tell people, if you don't have to manually scan the sensor to see the value in the libre app, sugar pixel works, okay, but some exciting news were in beta testing for sugar pixel functionality for the original libre version, version two that requires manual scans, so it'll run a little different, but I'm hoping within the next two months, we'll have that available where it will actually trigger alerts off of the libre to where those alerts send out to the libre app and the link up app, even if there's no BG value, it's like the sensor says, Hey, I know I'm low, send that Bluetooth ping to the phone to trigger an alert. So we're about to release that for beta testing right now, and then also in sync with night scout and glue Global Connect, which is sort of like glueru runs their own night Scout backend system that can run through their own app, and we can sync with that too. It's

Scott Benner 29:50
ponderous to me that the companies don't just do this themselves, by the way, like, I mean, I'm glad everybody else does, but you're like glueru, night scout. So this one that, like, just do it yourself. My God. Like, look how valuable it is. People would like talk about adding functionality that people would be thrilled about. I haven't talked a lot about this in the podcast yet, and I will at some point, but I'm involved with a company called Vision AI, and so I'm using the product right now, going to be talking more about it moving forward, but I'm hooked to Arden's account, right? So I just went into a prompt and said, Show me my last five boluses. And it said, bolus dose one may 13, gives the time and the date point six, units two time and date point one, units three time and date point two, units, like, just like that. I said, What's my current BG? Your current BG is 98 the trend is stable, like, stuff like that. I asked the question. It can answer like, what do you think my blood sugar's gonna be in 30 minutes? And it doesn't know. But it said, predicting future glucose levels accurately requires consideration various factors. Like, it gives you, like, you know, a great like, synopsis of your question, since your glucose trend is stable at 98 without additional influence factors like recent meals or exercise, it is likely that your glucose levels will remain relatively stable in the short term, and assuming no new variable, that's hook the Arden's night Scout, yeah, it's insane. If you ask it another medical question, it takes into account that you have diabetes. It's just like, where are we going, you know what I mean, like, because wherever we're going, John, I like it. I'm a fan of all this. I

Jon Fawcett 31:26
would like I see this long term picture off of AI stuff that I would like to see into the actual algorithms, yeah, because I think it can get there. I think we've got a long way to get there, because AI still not perfect, it's sure, based on data in but ultimately, if, if we could have a system, let's just, for example, use OmniPod five. Since my daughter's on that, I was thinking about this the other day so she had, she had a cold last week, and her insulin needs just work through the roof. Well, the one concern with OmniPod five is, do you change to the next pod and then she's having a lot of lows after she's passed her cold, because TDI was like, double AI could easily solve that. Literally, all you have to do is tell it you had a cold, and it can even look through and try to determine an appropriate adjustment of TDI. One of the things I did manually years ago with loop is I pulled in, like, a month's worth of data and made a calculation that would average out, not really average, but more the median of what her blood glucose was throughout the day and after meals and stuff like that, and then determine, based on her total daily insulin, How much to adjust carb ratios and basal spy. It's really not that difficult as a human to process just massive amounts of data like that, but for a machine, I don't think we're there yet with naturally think through all of these variables of sickness or stress or extra activity or anything like that.

Scott Benner 33:20
Arden's using Iaps, and we have the functionality on where it's, I don't know what they call it in the app, but it's like a dynamic insulin on board dynamic basal like, it makes adjustments to those like, and it's still, I hear what you're saying, because I still see the same thing, like coming out of her period, for example, or, you know, a time when she needs more insulin, like, you're almost like assured she's going to get a little too low once those that insulin need changes. But, man, it adapts very quickly. I

Jon Fawcett 33:50
actually just had a discussion with someone this morning about dynamic ISF. I'm torn on it. It's a

Scott Benner 33:58
it's, it's solving a

Jon Fawcett 34:01
different problem, in my opinion. So it's it while it works, and you can solve things with that. It can also introduce, introduce more risk, if you're not for someone that may not know exactly you know what the settings are doing. And it's it sort of comes back to, like our last episode, we, I think we talked a lot about fat and protein, and I know you have other episodes about that. Is so it's dynamic. ISF to me,

Scott Benner 34:31
there's not a lot of science

Jon Fawcett 34:35
that I've seen, and if you have some, I'd love to read it, or if you have had other people on talk about it, but there hasn't. I haven't seen a lot of science to me that has sort of shown that when blood glucose is high, there's more resistance, just period in and of itself, where everything I've seen sort of falls back on the the other things, the. The hormonal changes for monthly cycles, fat, protein, taking four to eight hours, those types of things, and it's always a tricky situation on you can solve that with a TEP basal. You can solve that with dynamic ISF. You solve that with dosing for whatever underlying causes. So I think there has to be something new out there on a way to solve that. I just don't I don't think we're there yet. I don't think dynamic ISF, is it? I don't think temp basals are it. I don't think having to manually go in and dose, because even then, it's just they're all guesses in many ways. Well, what

Scott Benner 35:46
do you see as the answer? AI to put something else in charge. Be like, Look, you figure it out. Because you know, even like, considering fat as an example is not something people do, you know, and even if you were to do it now, you're asking them to know the fat content of a cheeseburger and french fries and like, you know, I'm wondering if these other fixes are while maybe not at the root of the problem. Does it not maybe? Does it just not matter, because it's doing what it needs to do, well and

Jon Fawcett 36:24
to some degree. But I mentioned there's more risks, and ultimately it comes down to the greatest low blood sugar risk is from a bolus, no matter what. So if you're so dynamic, ISF is essentially just adding automated bolusing when you're high dosing, trying to dose and time fatter protein doses. That's adding a bolus. And there's just so many variables that the risk to me, that I see with all of those is that

Scott Benner 37:01
you misjudged the

Jon Fawcett 37:03
reason for the high. So if it, if it is fat and protein, you're going to work out dynamic ISF is going to work out, an extra dose is going to work out, if it's a timing issue, and I know that, you know, a lot of people post that chart, but I don't know if you made it or someone else, but I see it all the time on juicebox of sort of, how do you determine, is it timing or ratio, or what of the dose based on what the graph does after you eat? So if it was a timing issue, you could already have way too much on board, but you hit 250, or 300 because the bolus timing was off from the carb time, and

Scott Benner 37:48
it goes again, yeah, that dynamic

Jon Fawcett 37:50
ISF could cause a major low, or doing an extra fat protein dose too soon could cause an extra low. So that's sort of my concern from both of those so

Scott Benner 38:02
far, what I'm seeing with Arden while she's at college, because her her pre bolusing isn't great. At college, she'll spike to like 202 20 if she doesn't pre bolus, but it hits her pretty hard. It brings her back. It does not normally make her low. That's good. So yeah, the last few months, she's been completely all of her settings in Iaps have been the dynamic version of those settings, and I have not touched it at all. She's doing well, that's great. Yeah. Now I don't know that the stability, like the the rises, are the same. It's, they'll be once she's, you know, not up, you know, overnight, three days a week, trying to get work done. Yeah, right now. It's making her life manageable, and it's allowing her not to think about diabetes while she's so busy. And I'm taking that as a win in the moment, and I'm also counting on the people who are working on this to continue to work on it. You know, that kind of thing, actually, can we, John, can we just take a second here? Arden was up all night working on a project, and I'm in charge of waking her up so she can keep working. So hold on. One second for me, you're gonna hear, hey, it's 1145 you want to get up now, or you want me to call you back in a little bit. 10 minutes. Okay, bye, by the way. Could you hear? Yeah, the Hello was this and 10 minutes, by the way, I already called her 15 minutes later than she wanted me to. So she was up all she did an all nighter, Friday night. So on Friday she went to the lab at one a 1pm they worked there all day. Came home at 8pm ate something, went back at 930 and then left at 11:30am the next day. Then she slept, then she slept through the day, then she got up in the evening, worked all night, again, I think, went to bed at like three or four o'clock and. Got up at 11 or 12, worked all day yesterday, all night, last night, and went to sleep this morning. At time did she go to sleep 10:15am and asked me to wake her up at 1130 so she's been asleep now for an hour and a half after doing well, she's got one more thing that has to be in by five o'clock tonight, and then she's got to go to class all week. So is this the last week? No, this is the last two weeks. Somehow, John, I don't understand this, and maybe it answers a lot of my questions in my cold wind episodes, have you heard those? Don't remember? Oh, there are healthcare workers. Come on and tell you how shitty their jobs are and how bad everybody is at what they're doing. If you haven't heard it, it's really eye opening, and it'll scare the living out of you, while Arden's friends who are becoming teachers and nurses and all these, you know, other things are already home and like, you know, out at parties on Friday night and everything, my daughter, who's learning how to make clothing, is being treated like she actually works in a sweatshop at college. Basically, she went somewhere where the instructors are like, ex, you know, industry people, and they're basically like, tell them, like, look, this is this is it? If you can't do it here, you can't do it there, and I'm going to give you something to do, and I'm not really going to tell you how to do it and get it done and be right. And so that's the situation she's in. So she had to make a pattern from nothing. They gave her a piece of clothing that is already made and told her, deconstruct this, make a pattern for it, and then remake the thing she calls us. She goes, what the AM? I supposed I'm like, I don't know you wanted to do this. Not me. I was like, it was like, go figure it out. Right now, she finally met a really good friend that's in the same track as her, and ironically, that person is a type one from New Jersey. Oh, wow, yeah. So they were there. That's great, and then insane. So they become very fast friends, and they're helping each other and doing great and everything. Yeah, no kidding. Like I'm not lying to you. I very close with all these other girls who are in these other, you know, like tracks in different colleges all over the country. And we talk all the time, and they they say over and over again, it's insane, but Arden's college is way harder than ours is. So yeah, anyway, this is gonna kill her, for sure. She's

Jon Fawcett 42:36
like you said something really interesting that triggered something in my head that it's sort of all the dynamic studies that made it manageable so she doesn't have to think as much about diabetes, especially with how but you know how hard this program is for her right now, and I more and more see Facebook posts or questions where somebody is worried about, you know, hey, I had the same meal this morning that I had yesterday. And here's the two graphs, and they look different. What study should I change? And more and more, I think that the technology is getting there with, at least with loop, IPS, Android, APS, OmniPod, five and tandem. The technology is getting there to where you don't really need to worry about, well, why did it, why did it react different, unless you start seeing it, you know, for a week straight, obviously, because we're at the point with Lily where we almost never talk to her. Think about what she's dosing, how much she's dosing, what her blood glucose is, because the systems are so good at handling it with the algorithms. And even when you have a mistake, it's sort of just, you know, mistakes happen, either go small if you're high, or have some carbs if you're low, and then move on. And it's probably not going to be the same thing that happens tomorrow or the next. I

Scott Benner 44:14
think quality of life is becoming a focus, and as the as the technology expands and grows, and the companies have more time with it, and even the well as DIY people have more time with it, the focus is more and more on quality of life, like not just, can I keep my a 1c at 5.2 I mean, I'll go backwards, right? Arden's diagnosed. She's two years old. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm thrown into the same cement mixture that all of you are thrown into. I feel like I'm killing her. I might very well maybe her a 1c and the eights. I can't seem to affect it. I don't know what's going on. What happens next? Dexcom makes a CGM. All of a sudden, they have more context for what's happening. I'm like, Okay, I'm getting this. I bring her a 1c down a little bit. She gets a pump. I. Know, I'm using the pump just as an injection replacement. So it's not, I'm not getting any of the functionality out of it. Yet, all of a sudden I start learning about extending boluses. And, you know, temp basal increases and decreases. And you know, I'm bumping and nudging blood sugars. And all of a sudden I can bring a 1c down and down, down. It comes out of the eighths and the sevens, the sixes, the fives. And it takes a lot of effort in the beginning, especially a lot of effort now, as time moved on, I got better at it. It took less of my effort, but didn't let you sleep still all the time. You know, there was a lot of downside to it. OmniPod five comes along. And while they're even talking about it in the in the planning stages, the way they're talking about it is like, look, you know, it's not going to be loop, but people aren't going to need to understand all this to still live a nice life and have a good a 1c and some stability and all that stuff. And as they were saying that to me and to whoever they were saying it to, out loud, I was thinking, oh yeah, but my kids got like, a five, three, A, 1c A, five, five, a, 1c, A, five, seven, A, 1c, like, that's what I want, right until you sleep through the night the first time, yeah, and then you're like, hey, you know what? Maybe a six, one's okay. I was gonna die, and I didn't realize it, like, I was worried about her dying. I was the one that was dying. Like, you know? And now you're an adult, and you have type one, and your mom and your dad aren't helping you. You're burning your candle from six different ends. And, you know, and then you get into a situation like I said to Arden the other day. I'm like, Are you taking your vitamin D? And she goes, dude, after finals, talk to me about that. Like, I'm like, they're right next to your bedside. I put them in this little, like pill container, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, just to open one and take it out, put it out, put it in your mouth and swallow it. You're sitting next to it right now. Can you see it? Put it I can't like, she's got no bandwidth. If she was taking care of her diabetes, like MDI, on top of all this, I don't know if she'd be, like, hanging the way she is and doing as well. And so I say, let OmniPod work on that OmniPod five algorithm, like, you know, sure, though I'm assuming they're gonna keep working on it. I like that. The thing what I find in diabetes, John, is that the thing that first scares people is the thing they end up loving at some point. My example is Dexcom came out and all the old head moms were like, you're gonna make these kids crazy. My kid's 35 and she's fine. We didn't have a CGM, like, these. Oh, I can, by the way, I got one in my mind right now. Old Cal just going on and on about, I don't mean that in a gender way, by the way, just, she's just doing anyway. I'm gonna go back to old Cal. Old Cal just mooing and mooing about CGM, and it's gonna ruin these kids and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, OmniPod, you have never seen one. Your kid doesn't wear it. You've never had any experience with it. You sound like a lady going, get off my grass. You goddamn kids. Like, like, and I'm like, I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. But then that becomes pervasive throughout the space. Oh, I don't know. People are too focused on their data. It's gonna give people anxiety. You know, who gives people anxiety? People have anxiety. People who don't have anxiety are very calmed by the whole thing. So it's not for everybody, but that initial panic, it's change. People hate change. Like, do you remember when Facebook was massaging its way to what it is now. There was a revolution online. Every time Facebook changed their their the way Facebook looked right, because people don't want to change. I get that. I understand the whole human thing about that. But anyway, a couple of years later, that cow stopped mooing. You know what she said this CGM is fantastic. My daughter's never had better blood sugars. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Oh, good. I'm glad you figured it out two years later. For the last 24 months, you've been setting brush fires in people's minds on the internet, and all those people now believe that CGM data is a bad thing to have. And then OmniPod five comes out, and they say, Hey, look, we're not going to show you all the settings. We don't want you to think about this. We want you to just live your life. People like, I gotta see my settings. A year and a half later, I hear you go, I love OmniPod five. So I'm like, I think just wait. You know what I mean, like, and I can't wait to go. It's

Jon Fawcett 49:15
all of them, yeah. So it's, it's,

Scott Benner 49:19
we saw this

Jon Fawcett 49:21
when Lily started looping. So she started looping the week that loop added OmniPod arrows functionality, more than just their private just the private test group, and she actually that was her first bump. So she she got the OmniPod. One week later, I switched her to loop with OmniPod. I never even had time to learn extended bolus. Literally, I've never used it a single time, right? So you kind of look at that, though. And one of the things I hear from OmniPod five people, is, oh my gosh. How do you do extended bolus? How do you do extended bolus like we've never done that ever with her OmniPods now, in what, seven years, or whatever, six years, because she went right to loop. But with every system, see, then you had, you know, always saw the loop. People who were coming in from MDI, and, you know not, not necessarily understanding how loop handles things differently. It could be looped by APS, Android, APS, whatever is just, I tell a lot of people, there's no such thing in my mind as an empirical setting, basal, card ratio ISF, etc, nothing that's empirical, that works on every single system out there, because every single system out there handles those things in such a different way.

Speaker 1 50:48
But once you sort of, from

Jon Fawcett 50:52
our viewpoint of how it's happened in our family, is once you embrace how whatever system you switch to is different than what you used to be on, and start adjusting your management style to how to the strengths of that system. Yes, the quality, the quality of life, goes way up. And your point about the first time you sleep through the night. So we have, we have our alerts. I still have a sugar pixel in my room, even though Lily has one in her room. Mine is set at, I think, 50 and 300 like, I don't want woken up unless she hasn't handled it, and it's truly approaching an emergency level. But I've had people ask me like, you know, hey, I want my low alert on sugarpixel set to 120 but then I want to easily change it. If it goes off, I want to change it down to 100 and then change it down to 90. Like, if BG,

Scott Benner 51:51
like, that's just counterintuitive.

Jon Fawcett 51:55
It's counterintuitive. It's it's really degrading the quality of life. And so for us, we've started focusing more on quality of life. And I think her a 1c might have gone up a point one or point two, and that's fabulous, because everything else, the burden of management, has dropped, yeah, by 90%

Scott Benner 52:18
Yeah. I mean, I think Arden would have been sad if she had a five, three, a one scene, her father was dead. You know what I mean? So, because there were nights I laid in bed and I was like, oh my god, I'm going crazy. My head is shaking. I'm vibrating, you know, I need to sleep. The

Jon Fawcett 52:33
other thing that concerns me, and this was sort of back to me creating sugarpixel, I was concerned that, you know, Lily has to go to wake up to her alerts well. And then I started also thinking, okay, in two years now, she's also going to be managing this way more on her own, with way less involvement from her parents. And the one thing that started concerning me was, can an 18 year old shift from their parents handling everything and getting down to this 5.5 a 1c to then becoming an adult who's having to do that same stuff on their own, my fear was a swing of like 5.5 up to nine, a 1c just because a kid's going to get burned out. You and I, we sort of push through it over the years, and most parents do, but the fear is an 18 year old just going to get burned out in the first month of that, and then they're not going to those they're not going to bolus at all. They're just going to let the pump do whatever it does. And that's so I kind of felt that, you know, going from a 5.5 to a six or 6.5 that's way safer and healthier in the long term and not that much different in the short term than a swing up to sort of not managing your diabetes as a young adult and jumping up into the eights, nines, 10s, A, one CS, and

Scott Benner 54:01
you give her the opportunity to come to it on her own without it going wildly the other way. And so it's a thing she'll come to like, you know, I could probably put my a 1c back down under six if I tried it on her time, which will be important, you know? I mean, you can't force people to do things. Yeah, exactly. Those are the big picture ideas you have to keep in mind, when you're talking about stuff like this, like you're not going to be able to force people to just to do a good job. You can't. I mean, I don't know how many times I have to, like, have somebody on to make the point to people, mostly humans, just do stuff for other people, never for themselves. So like, you're doing that thing for your daughter. I'm doing that thing for my daughter. She's not going to do it for herself. She doesn't see the situation like that. She didn't watch her come out of my wife. She doesn't see herself the way I see her, like she's my most important like focus, her most important focus is learning how to put sleeves on a thing before the lady yells at her on Friday. Like, you know what I mean? Like she's not she's not prioritizing life the way I do. She doesn't have the same ability. To do that. She's not as far along in her career, in her life and her understanding, and she hasn't had enough experiences like if a six five, My God, what a great a 1c to have. You know, if a six five, a 1c is the price to pay, and I'm making quotes around that to get you through that part of your life. You know when, God bless that's fantastic. We never did go to CGM outage is when I brought it up, John, I'm going to run out of time for you, but it might seem like a left turn. I do just enjoy, maybe more talking to you about algorithms, stuff like that. I assume you see what happens? The Dexcom lost their but I don't know the technical term, but like, overnight, like people didn't have access to their stuff, unlike other people's phones, right? The share stuff.

Jon Fawcett 55:41
This one this time it was even on the main Dexcom app was getting logged out.

Scott Benner 55:47
That didn't happen to us, but, but okay, yeah, I did see it happen to some people, like people are getting kicked out of their app or something. Yeah.

Jon Fawcett 55:54
So, so they were getting kicked out of their app, having to being forced to re log in, being told they have to re log in, and then sometimes they weren't able to log in again. Lily was able to log in immediately, and everything was back up and running. But I know other people who, gosh, even this week, are still having issues with it with CGM outages. So the first thing is that we always tell people, because I have a lot of we've got 1000s and 1000s of sugarpixel users all over the world. So I hear, anytime there's any outage anywhere, basically, and

Scott Benner 56:32
they treat you like it's your problem. I bet,

Jon Fawcett 56:35
yeah, yeah, quite frequently that's okay, because I have enough experience to you know, even help them with it. Is the first thing everybody should do if they don't have readings in their follow up, or if they're Libra the libre link up app is check the main app. So check the Dexcom G 67 app, check the libre View app, because if you don't have readings there, you're not going to have readings on not only the follow app, but also every other app service device, whether it be sugarpixel or night scout or everything. So the first thing you always want to do is go see if the main app is running correctly, has readings, doesn't have any error messages, like the Dexcom will report a big red X on the server air error for the sharing page when they're having a lot of these outages. So that's the first step to always look at the main app. So as the main app is logged in and has readings, then you start looking at the follow up. And companies have status pages, so status.dexcom.com is you can easily check if they're having an outage. Now it does seem like they might update that page manually, so it's not like automated flip over when they detect outages. So it might not necessarily always be accurate, but it is a good place to check from a sugar pixel standpoint, is, obviously, we rely on those services.

Scott Benner 58:09
The one thing that we do that is different than like

Jon Fawcett 58:14
the Dexcom follow up, for instance, is sugar pixel handles, no data alerts locally on the device. So it doesn't matter why it has no data. It could be from a sensor warm up or sensor error, or a major Dexcom outage like they had last week, where the follow up is completely down, or even your home Wi Fi goes out, or your home internet is out, as long as sugar pixels has power. If it has no readings for any reason, it can trigger the no data alert. So one thing for our users specifically is you might not get readings, but you can still go to sleep knowing that if follow goes out in the middle of the night, you're still going to get an alert for no data if you have that set up

Scott Benner 59:07
nice and get your meter out like, like people used to do for years, check your check your blood sugar. Yeah, it's interesting. The girl that Arden met at school, she doesn't use any technology and yeah and, and Arden's like, you know, we, we were working, and she stopped and checked her blood sugar. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting.

Jon Fawcett 59:28
Well, and you know what's, what's really going to be fascinating in the next few years is so the rumors of Apple and Samsung both working on glucose monitoring, non invasive, just through the watch. If that gets to the point where it's actually reliable and accurate, rather than just a sort of a you're in range, you're high, you're low, not an actual Well, am I 70 versus 150 if those get to the level where. You can rely on them. What starts looking way and way more appealing is potentially some sort of hybrid combination system, where you might be doing a freza just for super simple meal times, or the weekly basal that's coming out, where it could potentially be like one injection a week of a weekly basal, and then that's it, that could potentially actually be a drastic quality of life improvement, because technology

Unknown Speaker 1:00:34
fails, sincerely,

Jon Fawcett 1:00:37
pods fail, pumps fail,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:38
your phones

Jon Fawcett 1:00:40
break and die. And so there could be the opposite swing from sort of add more AI and more technology to if we can get there with the insulins and the non evasive CGMS, where that could potentially be a much improved quality life all

Scott Benner 1:00:57
different pathways. How about there's I did an interview recently with the mother of a 15 year old girl who's had type one for three years. Was using 70 units of insulin a day, combined basal bolus. Mom has PCOS. Daughter started showing signs of PCOS. Mom got relief from PCOS, from wegovy. They put the daughter on the wegovy. And now that that I just talked to the mom again recently, when she was on the podcast, her kid was down to seven units of injected basal a day, no other insulin from 70, wow.

Jon Fawcett 1:01:30
And that's not, that's not the first story like that that I've heard, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:01:35
And now, by the way, they're thinking of moving it down to five units of basil a day, wow. So she's not bolusing for meals at the moment. Now, people hear that, they go, she doesn't have type one diabetes. She does. She does have type one diabetes, and, you know, and I'm, I'm sure, as time goes on, her insulin needs will increase. But that, it sounds to me like that kid was in the middle of Lada that looked worse for insulin needs because of PCOS, and now the GLP is helping with the PCOS symptoms and maybe bringing down her inflammation. I have a doctor coming on next week to really explain to me everything glps are doing for people. I have a family member. I won't say who they are. Again, PCOS Not, not somebody in my immediate family. She started wegovy On Saturday, and it was point two, five, not even what they would consider to be a therapeutic dose. Here is the text from her this morning, I lost five pounds in the first 36 hours. This is a miracle. I said, How did you do you know? Did change your appetite? Do you feel full? Etc. She said, I'd had a headache for the first bit, but I chugged a bunch of water and that went away. I've not thought about food once, and I had to consciously think about taking smaller portion sizes. So she so she, as she was getting herself for food, she she said, Oh, I here's how much I would normally take, but I'm not hungry like that. So she took less. So there's one way it helped her. I've eaten significantly less. I didn't think about breakfast until I got to work. I'm going to eat something now because you told me to, but I really I'm not hungry. I feel full faster, so that now you can say, well, she hasn't eaten as much. You don't lose five pounds in 36 hours by stopping eating.

Jon Fawcett 1:03:22
Yeah, so one pound is 3500 calories. Yeah, that, you know, there's no way to just, and

Scott Benner 1:03:30
I'm sure some of it's water weight. Like, don't get me wrong, I don't think she's like, reshaping herself, but look, look at how excited she is before that. She's a kid who works out all the time. She's an adult, works out all the time is eating it clean and just gaining weight. It has seemed frustrating to me. I think we're still, seems

Jon Fawcett 1:03:55
like we're at the early side of kind of what this whole classification of drugs can actually do for benefits for people, and

Scott Benner 1:04:03
it almost seems like back to your story about the other one who drastically

Jon Fawcett 1:04:09
reduced the insulin usage it. It almost seems like the press has caused some problems at a drastic disservice for the this class of drugs by basically just saying it's, you know, the from a public perspective in just a weight loss drug, but when you look at it from like, insulin resistance and things like that that may or may not be weight related, it seems like there's going To be a lot of benefits that I think people are going to start to see from it that aren't necessarily publicized very much today because of how the press has handled it, that you know just just because you have type one doesn't mean you can't have the same insulin resistance the type two. Have, yeah, and just because you have type two doesn't mean you can't have the same insulin dependency as type one can have. Now, I think from a truly clinical perspective, they've said you can't, you can't, essentially have type one and type two, but from an actual, real life perspective, just Google, they call it double diabetes, or things like that, where you have you have symptoms and signs of both. And I think a lot of those types of people, this class of drugs is going to really help, talking about insulin resistance, weight loss and even other things that, who knows what this drug's gonna be found to? Yeah, you know, other benefits right

Scott Benner 1:05:47
now we're having mostly an insurance designation problem because people talk about it the way it's covered by insurance. Yeah, you know, and that's one side of the issue, the other side of the issue. And I shared this with you before we started recording, I don't have any trouble saying it here. If you look hard at the people who are telling you, oh, my God, it's a crutch. You can do it on your own. Blah, blah, if you look real hard, there are people who are making a living selling that side of weight loss. Okay, so you can tell me that like, you know, I mean, I see people, I don't want to use people's names, but I see people online or on television shows and they're like, We don't know. There's a lot of side effects. It's killing people. Blah, blah. You know what kills people? Tylenol, way more than a GLP does. Okay? Now, I don't see that person on television going, you have a headache, don't take Tylenol. You're gonna die. It's a killer. That's true, by the way, Tylenol has killed more people this year than a GLP medication. Has people die taking medications all the time. It's not going to be right for everybody. If you're scared, don't do it like that's that okay. But I've lost 50 goddamn pounds this year, and I was not running around eating with both hands, with donuts around my fingers. Okay? My body doesn't, doesn't work right, and now it does. That's all I can tell you. I plateaued for a while. My doctor's like, here we'll just up your dose, up the dose. Two days later, I lost two pounds. I could literally feel it like somebody flipped the switch of me. I went to the higher dose. I got a little like, I've been on it for a long time now, like a year. So I went up to a higher dose, I got that weird nausea feeling. I was like, Oh, I can feel it like, I feel it in there. I don't know what it's doing, but it's doing something, and then bang right back. Like I was starting to have sugar cravings again. The sugar cravings went away. You want to argue about what's right way to do something? I'm 52 man. I was gonna die, like I was gonna have a heart attack, like, now I'm not going to I went to the doctor. My doctor says, My God, your your vitals are like your child. They're amazing. You look fantastic. You look 10 years younger. Your vitals are amazing. Good for you. If it's not working, I'll give you a little more. She said, I heard the real weight loss, like, heard she's seeing with her patients. I'm using zepbound now. The real weight loss doesn't even happen until the 10 to 12 milligram injections I was back on 7.5 so here's my point. If you're listening and you're like mad about it, you don't know what you're talking about. This whole like, I'm always scared of what's coming, and you don't know what this stuff's gonna do to you. They've been working on a GLP since in the 80s, I think by Eto was 2005 that's 20 years of data, but, but people are running around like it just came out five days ago, yelling, You don't know what this stuff's gonna do to you. They've been using it since 2005 they just they're turning the screws. They're making it work better. Now, you know, like, I don't know, like, in the end, you got to make a decision who you are in this life. Like, are you scared? Are you going to go for it?

Jon Fawcett 1:08:48
It's really no different than talking about omnipodify or bloom Joe or placebo versus basr. It's not everything is for everybody. We say that a lot. Of course, some people like my our OmniPod five and loom Jeff experience, which is what Lily's using. She's been using loom Gen for probably six months to a year now, absolutely fabulous. And I tell everybody that. But is it for everybody? No, might not work as well for other people, but burns

Scott Benner 1:09:24
Arden like a mother. She can't she can't get anywhere near it. Whatever the additive is it? It hurts her like literal pain.

Jon Fawcett 1:09:32
So, exactly, yeah, so, but there's no difference between talking about those versus how lugovi has helped you and 1000s and 1000s of other people, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:45
John, the difference is, I'm not a nudnick. I don't run around telling everybody loom Jeff hurts. It didn't work for Arden. Like you know, you have to ask yourself, I'm gonna have to let you go in a second. But you have to ask yourself, when someone comes online and says, I took. A look. I took a GLP, and now I have, like, you know, I have real problems, like digestive issues. It's I'm not even on it anymore, and I'm having problems. I'm having a real problem from it. That's horrible. Okay, I feel a ton of empathy for that person. You do not know where their body was when they started, and maybe a doctor should have said to them, hey, you've had a one season the nines your whole life. You might actually have gastroparesis. Maybe this isn't something we should try with you. Or let's wait till there's more data on this. But instead, you don't hear their whole story. You just hear, I took this and my foot fell off. Oh, my God, did you hear that? It makes your foot fall off? Like I'm hearing people's feet are falling off. That's literally how the Internet goes after that. I had to tell a woman online the other day. She goes, we're seeing catastrophic problems from this GLP medication, life threatening. And I was like, who's We? Are you a doctor? No, are you a research scientist? No, when you say we, who are you talking about? Well, I heard it on a project. Yeah, you heard it somewhere. Are you kidding me? That's who we. Is we? Is you heard it somewhere from WHO? What are their credentials? That's how the world works.

Jon Fawcett 1:11:16
But it's a reminds me of the all I probably see posts once a day about two things, actually, probably more like five times a day about two things recently. One is,

Scott Benner 1:11:29
Hey, first time flying. What do you guys do for

Jon Fawcett 1:11:34
for TSA, or whatever security in the country you're in, there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people walk through whatever scanner they're required to put all supplies through the X rays, and have never had a single issue. I'm

Unknown Speaker 1:11:50
one of them. And so are we.

Jon Fawcett 1:11:53
Yeah, you get one person had a pump failure after going through security, I don't have to, you know, hear stories like this

Scott Benner 1:12:03
noise or beams aren't good for it, yeah?

Jon Fawcett 1:12:08
But, I mean, there's nothing saying that actually caused the pump failure. There's, you know, correlation is a causation, yeah? But then that, meanwhile, there's probably hundreds or millions, hundreds of 1000s or millions of individuals who have gone through that never had a single one, so one in a million. And then the other one I hear is, and this is my new favorite, is the insulin temperatures. So all the recent studies that are out there, there's, if you Google Cochrane, insulin, temperature, you'll find it on Google. But there been like a dozen different studies, one of them, one of them, put it in, I think, like a clay pot at 100 almost 100 Fahrenheit, for two months, and it had zero loss of efficacy in the in the study, yet, you know one person you know had insulin fail, right? You know, because it was in the car for an hour. That may or may not have been the case, but all the clinical stuff shows there's no issues at all. There's a risk with everything in life, though, and right? You know, you're going to have the outlier, people who this just didn't work for you, or, yeah, I'm starting to get a pat down at security, whatever. John,

Scott Benner 1:13:30
isn't it fascinating. People generally are distrustful of each other until they say something bombastic, and then they believe them completely. That's the thing. That's the thing that's fantastic. Like, Listen, if you and I got together quietly, I'd say, give me a list of people you don't trust in your life. You would be writing for a half an hour. Oh my god, this guy don't know what he's talking about. I've seen this guy and this guy lost three jobs. A guy don't know how to like, Oh my God. This guy refinanced this house six times. Like, you know, you'd be like, I wouldn't listen to him about this, but you could do that all day long. But someone gets online and says, Hey, I went through an x ray machine, and my T slim exploded like I knew it laser beams like and then, and then the next thing you know, you had 20 people going I went through it one time, and my blood sugar went up. Yeah, that might be adrenaline, because you were really worried about it. No, no, no, no. It's the pump. The pump stopped working after the X ray like no one knows what they're talking about. John, go listen to the cold wind series. Go listen to doctors and nurses tell you things like, my favorite one is an ER nurse who told me I'd be safer having a seizure in your living room, Scott, than in the ER I work in. Okay, one of those people who can't save her life, and that er is online telling you about something else, and you're going see I knew it. No one knows what they're talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm having conversations. I'm explaining to you my experiences. You don't hear me say, do a thing. I know for sure. I don't know anything. I barely got out of high school. You shouldn't be listening to me. You don't know who John is. Is he's just an even tempered guy with a good speaking voice who understands things. He could be at home kicking a dog right now. He might have a dog under his desk right now, and he says, kicking it, kicking it. Hates dogs. You don't know who John is like, right? So you listen and you make good you make good decisions. But you can't just blindly, just take what everyone says you want to watch a conversation get out of hand online. Go ahead and say, Hey, I got type one diabetes after covid.

Jon Fawcett 1:15:29
I knew you were going to say that, Oh,

Speaker 2 1:15:31
my God in heaven, it won't stop. And like, right? And so, like, by the way, covid is a virus. Type one diabetes is frequently diagnosed after a virus.

Jon Fawcett 1:15:43
The funny ones with those that get me are the ones that are like, I was diagnosed with type one a week after getting covid or a week after a vaccine or whatever, when, yeah, they don't really know, but it can be months or years. Even there could have been, there could have been a trigger five years prior that. Yeah, was it? None of us know.

Scott Benner 1:16:12
Of course, it. You don't know how it happens and then, but they do. Oh, you don't know. Oh, I know exactly what happened. Sure you do. You know exactly what happened? Everything else in your life is a freaking disaster. You don't know which way is up this You're right about like, Finally, seriously, I love people. People are terrific. Don't get me wrong. I sound like I don't, but I really do. I love humanity. I think people are amazing. We are not nearly any of us as smart as we think we are, and we see a lot of shadows and ghosts and believe that they're the cause. And if it checks out in our brain, we move on. And that's fine, because for most of your things, day to day, you really don't need to know why things are happening. You know, like, it's not important. But this drill down stuff, by the way, I could jump into any one of those covid conversations and argue both sides of it. Absolutely I could, I could argue both sides of it and but that's all people are doing. Is they're arguing from their perspective, in their or the way they're colored, you know, whatever bro podcast they heard. They're like, Oh, yeah, that's it. It's giving everybody diabetes. Like, look at the numbers diabetes. You're going, Well, yeah, the whole population of the planet got a virus. Viruses can cause your type one diabetes, not cause it like it flipped a diabetes switch, but you have an autoimmune issue. Your body attacked the virus. It got a little funky, confused, got into those beta cells. Now you have type one diabetes, same way my daughter got Hand, Foot Mouth, which is Coxsackie virus, which is a large that there's data that shows that a large amount of people with type one diabetes had Coxsackie before, like so, yes, the whole planet got a virus, and now more people have type one diabetes. This is not surprising, unless you don't understand that that. And then if you do, if you don't understand that, then, Oh, my God, I knew it. And then, and then, it takes four seconds for somebody to go. It was probably the vaccine that got them. Like, here we go. Like, I don't know. I don't have a thought about the vaccine one way or the other. I took two, two. No, I got the I got the J and j1 the one that everybody's like, you got that trashy vaccine? Yeah, I got the vaccine that was built on data from the last 50 years, I got a vaccine that was built from like, the basis of what they vaccinate the whole world with. To me, that seemed like a better move. Also, my wife could see the safety data of it, and I wanted to go with that one. But the point is, is that, you know, if my foot falls off three years from now, someone's gonna be like that J and J vaccine got his foot. We don't know what's going on. Like, just shut up and live. I don't know, John, you've made me very upset. Of

Jon Fawcett 1:18:48
people, I have a feeling we're gonna get some angry people yelling at us when you post this.

Scott Benner 1:18:54
Oh, maybe you don't, maybe you care. We won't mention sugarpixel again. But

Jon Fawcett 1:19:01
you know how often I type something in Facebook just to get it out of my off my chest, and then I delete it without posting? Is 99% of my Facebook posts never make it public. I

Scott Benner 1:19:15
want to be clear. If my foot does fall off five years from now, and it is because of a vaccine, I also won't go, No, it isn't like I'm not defending anything one way or the other. I don't know. That's what I'm trying to say. I don't know. You don't know. I don't know. No one knows. Everyone's just trying to get by the same nudnik that you stand behind in the grocery store who can't figure out how to key in their code for something in the little thing, and start going, I'm so bad at this. That person works at a pharma company. Sometimes, like, right? Yeah, that person's a congressman. Sometimes it happened, and people were like, What should we do? And then our dumb asses came up with the best thing we could think of, and then it got bastardized all over the place through media and people making money. And then. Thing, you know, they're like, you know, you just need 17 boosters. I'm like, I feel like you're trying to make money. And you know what I said? I said, No, thank you. That's all. I don't need a conspiracy theory. Hey, hey, you want to hear conspiracy theory? John companies try to make money selling the stuff they have. Oh, no, do they?

Jon Fawcett 1:20:20
Where's the worst? Ones are the the worst, to me, are the conspiracies over the insulin companies preventing a cure from getting released. Yeah, because of that, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:20:33
I have to tell you something. I know people, most of them, can't do anything. They're not they're not out there making like, great plans to, like, Stop, like, trust me, if there's money to be made, someone's going to make it. There's and right away, people go, there's no money in a cure. Yes, there is,

Jon Fawcett 1:20:50
yeah, there is. And it's potentially, not really any difference than what they're making today, because I have to imagine it. Well, maybe the pump companies, but the the CGMS, you're probably gonna still need CGMS, at least for a long time, to make sure that you know everything's working, and stuff like, let me be

Scott Benner 1:21:10
clear what I mean, John is a company making insulin, trying to find a cure for diabetes. Maybe not, but somebody else is. There's not one magic company, like there's people all over the place. There's people getting out of college every day going, you know what? I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try to do this like they don't work for the company that makes the insulin. I like to when there's a shortage, one person calls their pharmacy and they say, hey, no vlogs back ordered. They're online, dear internet. There's no insulin in New Jersey. We're all gonna die. Oh, my God. I'm like, Listen, your pharmacy goes to a distributor who, at the moment, doesn't have Nova log. 17 other people in New Jersey. I'm like, I live in Westfield. There's plenty of it. I'm here in orange New Jersey, plenty of insulin, but insulin here, blah, blah, blah, blah, oh my. My guy says there's the shortage. Your guy, you mean the 22 year old that works at the counter at CVS. That's who you're listening to. It's fascinating. I love you all. You're fascinating people. I enjoy every one of you. And you know why it's okay to talk like this. John, I'm gonna give the secret. Nobody listening thinks that I'm talking about them, but I am talking about something. You're

Jon Fawcett 1:22:28
sitting here talking about me. I know that talking

Scott Benner 1:22:33
about everybody like, like, there's, there's, listen, let me be clear, if there's an insulin shortage, and it really is, you're all gonna die. Just let it go. Like, my daughter's going, we're all going. Anybody who needs insulin is going. So what are you worried about that for? Like, that's literally not a thing. You can't stockpile enough insulin to live forever. Like, this is the world that we live in. This is how things work. Could everything fall apart and there not be any more insulin? Sure, there could also be no more fresh water. There could also be no more food. I mean, I think we saw how quickly during covid, people were willing to listen to anything. They were told, like it would only take one charismatic guy to make you all kill each other in like seven days, if they wanted to. It's not the point. The point is that there are companies who sell insulin. They're going to keep selling insulin. If they tried to stop the government would step in and force them to make it. There are plenty of drugs that the government makes. Pharma companies make. The pharma company says, Look, we don't make enough money on this anymore. We literally can't afford to do it. And the government steps up and goes, here, here's some money. Keep making it, shut up. That's how that works. Okay? I know you don't know that, but that's how that works. And so there's never, not going to be companies making insulin. That's just true. If that happens, you can come find me and tell me I'm wrong and slap me once across the face with your non dominant hand. Okay? And so, but I could not, by the way, even hit you in the face with my left hand. I don't think I'd be able to do it. I'm so uncoordinated with it. But there it goes, and I get where it comes from. By the way, like you're newly diagnosed, you're looking at your little kid. You can't get insulin. The place I get insulin from says it's discon, you know, it's back ordered, you know, we can't, we can't get it. Those are the words they use. You get very upset. I don't know you're going to Facebook, call your doctor. Like, call your doctor up and go, Hey, I can't get insulin, by the way. If you're really out of it, go to the emergency room. Walk in and say, Hi, I'm out of insulin. I need help. Like, right? Like,

Jon Fawcett 1:24:34
most of the doctors should have samples that they could give you immediately,

Scott Benner 1:24:38
samples of everything. Those doctors are flush with samples, flush with samples, everything gonna be all right. What did that go? Who is that? Bob Marley, every little thing's gonna be all right. It'll be fine. You got sugar pixel. You're fine. John, tell me something did I turn you down when you tried to give me a sugar pixel, like offer code or something like. That. Yeah,

Jon Fawcett 1:25:00
you said, you said your accountant wouldn't let you do one more affiliate.

Scott Benner 1:25:06
I'm gonna do it for people. You send me a link, I'm gonna put it in this episode. I love your device. I and I know we got pretty far away from it. Yeah, it's really fantastic. It's got a great feel. It feels like it sits in this space between like professionally made and DIY, which has this just great feeling. It's not junky. It's not working by the seat of its pants. It's a perfected device that works really well. Looks handsome, but the DIY part of it is kind of like the community part of it, where you're like, Hey, I'm gonna put emoticons in here. That'll be fun. Like, you know what? I mean? Like, that's the thing a company wouldn't do.

Jon Fawcett 1:25:41
One of the display choices is the emojis with slang. So Lily actually came up with all the slang. So one, just one example, is urgent high one of them is a dumpster fire icon, and it just says,

Scott Benner 1:25:58
perfect. It's absolutely perfect. Sugarpixel.com

Unknown Speaker 1:26:02
custom, type one.com. Custom

Scott Benner 1:26:04
type one.com. Wait, wait. Custom type one.com/juice.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:08
Box. It'll be,

Jon Fawcett 1:26:11
I could, I could make that happen, all right.

Scott Benner 1:26:12
Well, then let's just say it like that. How much money am I going to make every time somebody buys one, John, I'm gonna start planning. I might buy a rocket ship. How about we go, yeah, we'll chat off air. Now. I'm gonna make at least $1 everybody, all right? And then, and then you can get online and go, Scott just got that John guy on because he's getting rich off his sugar pixel. And at the end of the year, I'll make 200 bucks, okay? And then I'll go to my account to do my taxes, and they'll be like, What are you doing? Stop it. These are more lines I write. When I write more lines, I charge you more, you idiot. Oh, my God. I just want people to know about it. It really is fantastic. Thank you. No, no, it's quite a thing and and you're doing it over time, and I brought that up earlier. There's a lot of stuff comes and goes. People have good ideas. Sometimes they have big ideas. They get into it, they realize what it really is, and it goes away. And I hate that, because then some people in the community come along and they love the app, or they love the thing, or whatever, and then it's gone again, and you don't know where to jump in, because, you know, Jesus, how many of these things have come and gone. But you're a steady guy, John, I like you a lot. And to be perfectly honest, I like you a lot because you're smart and thoughtful and steady. I like that about you.

Jon Fawcett 1:27:29
Thank you, and we're not planning on going anywhere. This is my full time job, just like juicebox is yours, and

Scott Benner 1:27:35
we already have three release

Jon Fawcett 1:27:41
feature sets for the next three releases already planned out that we're going to be working on. Wow. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:27:48
that's cool. Listen, I noticed when I said something nice about you, you didn't reciprocate. But that's okay. I'm not gonna that's fine. I have no problem with that at all. I I love No Stop. Don't do that. Don't do that. Buy sugar, even though John doesn't like me, go ahead and buy sugar. Pixel. It's fine, because our our recordings feel like just BS, ing with

Jon Fawcett 1:28:14
a friend hanging out at your house, you know, which I think is the the way more personal. Is what cuts through everything. Yeah?

Scott Benner 1:28:24
Well, can we be friends? John, do you want to be friends? What does that mean? I'm not coming to your house to play Atari or anything. Not

Jon Fawcett 1:28:29
on. Don't send me a Facebook friend request, but anything else, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:28:35
all right, man, I appreciate you doing this. Thank you. Hold on one

Unknown Speaker 1:28:42
second. This

Scott Benner 1:28:44
the conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, Boxer, call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon, find out more about gvoke hypopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com, the diabetes variable series from the juicebox podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables.


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