http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/22/iphone-reads-blood-glucose-level-with-nanosensor-tattoo/

http://voiceofdiabetes.org/are-you-kidding-a-diabetes-tattoo/

What would be nice would be if test strips were standard – or if you could develop a monitor that could use any kind of test strip. Or a reusable test strip. Or something to take your strip that could be plugged into a computer. Or if a nonprofit company could start manufacturing low-cost – but reliable – monitors and strips together. A family member has type 1 diabetes – it started as type 2, but it began as an autoimmune thing that attacked the pancreas until it stopped working completely. The family member tests at least twice a day (often more – it’s important to do periodic random tests at different times to see how things are) and it’s astonishing to see how expensive the strips are. Even up here in Canada-land.

We all benefit when diabetics are able to monitor their blood sugar regularly, and if it costs a dollar a pop, there are going to be people who decide to hold off and stretch those strips as far as they can. Good, tight control is really critical…and it’s hard to maintain that control without knowing what your numbers are.

I don’t care to get into the blame game of who gets diabetes and why. It sucks for everybody who gets it. Every single one of them.

What my company doing is a great example of this.  They took some academic R&D to do with sensor technology, said “cool stuff”, and then started to put their nose to the grind stone to figure out a way to build a few million units as cheap as humanly possible.  It is hard ass work.    I am not saying that corporations are a magical fairy-tale land of awesome, but the alternative is far far worse.  To have drug production in the hands of non-profits and government agencies from conception to production is the kind of hilariousness that wouldn’t be tried in even the most ardently socialistic nations.  That idea died the death it deserved when the Soviet Union crumbled due to their utterly worthless and incompetent industrial practices.  Governments and non-profits suck at production.  They have a place for R&D, and the US (like most nations) makes liberal use of them for that purpose.  However, when it comes to faster, better, and cheaper, corporations beat the living piss out of government owned industries and non-profits.  Even in the most socialistic single payer systems, drug and medical tech is built and sold through private corporations for profit.

If you take profit out of medicine, people simply won’t do medicine.

And I feel your pain, man. I was a thin kid who was fed a health-conscious diet, but with no family history of the disease. Came out of nowhere when I was 15. But going on the Omnipod (disposable, tubeless insulin pump) was the best thing I’ve ever done for controlling it. Between that, jogging a few times a week, and leaning *heavily* toward a low saturated fat paleo diet, management is a breeze now. I stay far away from breads and pastas. Never touch them if I can help it.

It is significant, because it’s the only insulin you can buy without a prescription, which means people buying it are probably without insurance. 

Here’s one of the most famous doctors of all time yet his knowledge was severely limited to that of a typical mechanic who saw things in a purely mechanical fashion.  Obviously, this happened a long time ago but even back then I knew enough to want to reach through the TV and strangle the guy.

Sadly, even today there are doctors who seem to have the same attitudes about obesity and, by extension, diabetes.

We live in a capricious universe, not an ordered one that somehow unfairly dealt you diabetes (or me insanity, for that matter). There are just as many type 2′s that never ‘deserved’ it as there are type 1′s that are eating, drinking and smoking up a storm as we speak. Your condition entitles you to judge no-one.

The last time I saw a diagram of glucose metabolism it showed a couple hundred different actors and pathways.  And those were only ones inside the body.  Not simple.

Your sound bite sounds cute, but it is incredibly foolish and naive.  The alternative to people chasing after profits in the health industry isn’t all of that money being dumped into some magical non-profit drug manufacture.  It is that money going to crap like your cell phone and nothing getting spent on improving health.

That info I mentioned? I was diagnosed because despite eating ravenously (even by my standards), I had lost a bunch of weight. Everyone was complimenting me and I felt great but I knew something wasn’t right. The initial blood glucose reading at the doctors office was 399. I asked if I got a prize if I could break 400; they weren’t amused.

I attacked the problem with information gathering. I documented every bite, every calorie, and tested 8 times a day – morning, before and after meals, and at bedtime. I took the pills prescribed. I exercised like crazy, far more than I had done in decades.

In 90 days my A1c went from 12.9 to 6.1. I had achieved control. I had also cut my daily caloric intake by more than half and done extensive exercise. I had it all on spreadsheets and bar charts in a nice folder to show the doc at the 90 day followup.

Oh, and one more thing. I had put on 60 pounds.

I did some more reading and found that weight gain was a side effect of the drugs I was prescribed. Less calories went in. I did more physical work. And I gained massive amounts of weight.

The doc was happy with the A1c number because it showed that the medications had brought my disease under control. If they made me fatter, he flat out told me that was my problem. He had helped me get the disease under control and it was up to me to lose the weight, something he stressed was absolutely necessary if I was going to ever get off the meds.

“How can I lose weight if the drugs you prescribe cause me to gain weight, no matter how hard I work?”

“That’s something you’ll have to work out for yourself.”

That was years ago and while I was able to maintain control for a while, I eventually gave up. I went out of control for years before a personal crisis forced me to rearrange my life. Many things have changed for the better in the last little while and I’m rapidly getting better.

Still, the problems with treatment remain for most patients and I despair of ever seeing this change. There’s too much business potential in keeping you just sick enough to need profitable management supplies.

One addendum – Thank you, Lizmari, for pointing out that obesity is often and apparently a side effect of diabetes, not THE cause. When I first started reading about that, it cleared up a lot of mysteries about my own body.

It took ACT UP to do the heavy lifting in terms of getting a meaningful research response, but public sentiment didn’t galvanize until “innocent” sufferers were promoted as the face of the disease — and, of course, they suffered due to the ‘evil’ deviants who exposed them, directly or indirectly, to HIV.

Can’t we avoid this phase of fighting, and unite against the real problems out there?

It’s just as insulting to be marketed as the innocent lil’ puppies of a disease (they called DM1 “Juvenile Diabetes” up until this century) as it is to be condemned as gluttonous sinners. Brad’s response proves that the marketing worked.

Well that might be a little true, but considering the average person really only needs 2000 or less calories a day it isn’t that difficult to obtain them form reasonably healthy minimally processed sources for probably the same thing they are spending their money on now.

Bulk oats are certainly cheaper than Quaker instant.  And as an overweight person I feel pretty confident in saying that if someone isn’t really watching what they eat, consuming a “portion” of something is unlikely.  That bag of chips I just opened, yeah I’m not eating 1oz…it’ll be closer to 1/4 or 1/3 of the bag.  Those cookies that are two to a serving, I’m probably having 4 or 6.  Eight ounces of soda, but I just opened a 20oz bottle…

It’s not just about access to reasonably priced food, it’s about the willpower and desire couple with the understand and knowledge of what you are eating to get a person to make better choices.