#1253 Can GLP Meds Impact Mental Health?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 6:13
get you know,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 1 28:11
lead to. Okay,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 36:03
Nope. Husband.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 49:00
I understand. Oh,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 54:59
I tried Well,

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:20
Yes.

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

Unknown Speaker 55:23
Yes.

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:26
No. We,

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

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

Scott Benner 55:43
She on the 2.4 1.7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 58:46
look at what it did

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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