#1285 False Start

August 21, 2024Scott Benner

Laura was misdiagnosed as T2 at age 59.

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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 again, friends and welcome back to the juicebox podcast.

Laura was misdiagnosed with type two diabetes. She, of course, has type one. You'll hear about that story, and she was eventually diagnosed with Hashimotos. We're going to talk about type one, misdiagnosis, GLP, medications, weight loss and so much more. Actually, at the end, what do we find out she was in an ever since trial? Oh yeah, we talk about that at the end. 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 or becoming bold with insulin. When you use my link, hungryroot.com/juicebox you will save 40% off of your first order@hungryroot.com go check them out if you're tired of making meals but want something healthy. 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. 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. Dexcom sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link, dexcom.com/juice box. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the insulin pump that my daughter wears. OmniPod. Learn more and get started today with the OmniPod dash, or the OmniPod five at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by cozy Earth. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of the clothing, towels, sheets, off of everything they have at cozy earth.com

Laura 2:14
Hi. My name is Laura. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I have had type one diabetes for three and a half years. How old are you? Laura, I am 59 and a half. Oh, by the time this airs, I'll be, I'll be the big six zero.

Scott Benner 2:32
Is that a dig at me? For how long it takes me to put out the episodes? Or Absolutely not. Is it just close to your birthday? Wow. So you were diagnosed when you were what, 55 656. Yeah. Hey, did you live your life with auto immune issues?

Laura 2:46
Nope, nothing. Not a Zippo in the family, anything. My older sister has quite a few. She has Hashimotos, and she has vitiligo, and she has something called Burning tongue syndrome.

Scott Benner 3:04
I just had somebody on the other day who told me they have geographic tongue. And I was like, what is that burning tongue? I thought that was a music festival, but

Laura 3:19
it that would be fun. She said her tongue feels like she burned it on pizza

Scott Benner 3:24
all the time, ongoing or recurrent burning in the mouth with no obvious cause. Yeah. Does she have it constantly, or is it off and on? I'm not sure. Well, lucky her. It's very rare. Fewer than 20,000 cases per year. Wow,

that's got to be a bummer, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, 20 like one in 20,000 and it's not a lottery ticket, it's this, you know what I mean, right? Great. Thanks a lot. Any other siblings for you?

Laura 3:51
I have other siblings. I have a brother and another younger sister, and they are all fine. Parents are fine. My dad's everybody's fine. No celiac, nope.

Scott Benner 4:03
You got a bipolar brother in law, anything like that? Brother? No, some people say not diagnosed, which I always find amusing. Okay, wow. Okay, well, then what the hell? Tell me about how you figured it out.

Laura 4:19
Well, I was fine. Everything was fine, and then covid happened, and I own a small business, and that was very stressful, like I had to lay everybody off and close the place and figure out what we were going to do. And that happened when end of February, beginning of March, 2020, right? And in May, I was thirsty all the time. And, you know, I mean, there was a lot going on, and you couldn't really get to the doctor, and so I didn't really think about it. I was like, Huh? It's weird. I'm thirsty all the time. And then you. You know the classic symptoms, I started losing weight, and I had leg cramps and heartburn, and my hair was falling out and my skin was dry, and just all these things, but they didn't seem related. Yeah, looking back, clearly they're related. But at the time, I was like, well, that's weird. Well, now I need more potassium, whatever, I'll eat a banana, right, right? I'll just eat a banana. It's fine on an empty stomach. That's great all by itself. But your

Scott Benner 5:30
sister has Hashimoto. So did any of those symptoms like make you think that? No,

Laura 5:34
no, okay. No, I did. I did look it up and it kept saying diabetes. And I'm like, I there's no way. There's no text to in my family at all. My a 1c has always been fine. There's no way that can't be it. Well, it was so well, you know,

Scott Benner 5:52
what? Can I ask a question before we move forward with that? Can you maybe put a little more context to the pressure you felt having that small business and having to do all those things.

Laura 6:02
Well, I employ 13 people, so we had to lay everybody off and figure out how to keep the business alive. So, you know, in the first two or three weeks, I spun up a website to sell like a web store, which we did not have before. I did all the legwork for making sure that they could get their unemployment and get the benefits for that. We did all the things for a PPP loan. We I did a like a fundraiser hoodie that I turned that out in like two weeks. My partner was working from home. So while we were home, he was working, so I, like, couldn't really do it wasn't, like, happy, fun time. Woo hoo, we're on vacation, right? Yeah. It was just really, really a lot of stress, yeah, pretty much vibrated for three months.

Scott Benner 6:57
No, I hear you so you weren't ill during that time, just the stress Gotcha. Well, it could do it. So, yeah, you're living proof. All right. So okay, I'm so sorry. So you've having all these symptoms and but what pushes you to say I need to seek medical attention? Well, it was

Laura 7:15
the weight loss, which I have always been overweight my whole entire life. So I was like, Woohoo. I'm doing great. Because I was trying. I had lost like 20 pounds before this happened, before the pandemic happened. Okay,

Scott Benner 7:29
so you were on that process already. The podcast is sponsored today by the place where I kept my oh gosh, my sheets, my towels, some of my clothing, a lot of the things that I stay warm or comfortable with. Cozy earth.com I'm wearing a pair of cozy Earth joggers right now. I've recently gotten another pair in a different color. I sleep on cozy Earth sheets. They are so comfortable and soft and temperate, temperate, meaning I'm never hot or cold, which is really saying something, because my wife loves to turn that giant fan on, but they keep me nice and warm without making me like, sweaty or moist. You know what I mean? You don't want to be moist while you're sleeping. And then, of course, the waffle towels I use every day to dry off my bits and parts after I've showered. Cozy earth.com. Use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. I'm not saying 40% off of one item. I'm saying 40% off of everything you put in the cart. Cozy earth.com, use the offer code. Juice box at checkout.

Laura 8:35
Yeah. I mean, I kind of fell off the wagon when the pandemic happened, but I hadn't gained any, you know, I was, I was like, okay, I'm good, I'm good. And then it was like, falling off. And I was like, wow, this is fantastic. But then I think it was probably in mid to late June when I was just like, getting winded, walking across the parking lot. And I was like, there is definitely something going on. So I made an appointment with my PCP, but she was on vacation. It was like, The appointment was, like, a month out, like, all right, well, okay, end of July, going to see the doctor. And then when she got back from vacation and saw my list of symptoms, she sent me for lab work, and I went and did that on a Friday afternoon, and on Saturday morning she called me and said, Get thee to the ER right now. I was like, why I'm fine. She was like, You're not fine. Like, I'm fine. She said, you're dehydrated. And I pulled up the skin on my hand and went, No, I'm fine. I

Scott Benner 9:41
see plenty of plumpness right here. It's really okay, but dehydrated. What she sent you to the hospital for? Well,

Laura 9:46
she knew.

Scott Benner 9:48
Oh okay.

Laura 9:49
My a 1c was 13 and a half. Oh

Scott Benner 9:52
yeah, okay. My

Laura 9:53
blood sugar was 400 and something.

Scott Benner 9:55
Did she indicate type one or type two to you, or did she let the hospital tell

Laura 9:59
you she. She all she said was, you need to go right now. You're dehydrated, you're very sick. Go like, Okay, we were packing to go camping, Scott packing to go camping. Like, the next day we were going camping. That day, it was Saturday. We were leaving that afternoon I would be dead. Now, yeah, out in the woods, yeah, yeah. So I get to the, er, of course, I'm in DKA, so couple of days in the ICU and a day in the regular and then I'm home.

Scott Benner 10:38
They give you, obviously, insulin. They brought your blood sugar down slowly, all that stuff. And then what's the management like leaving the hospital? Is it pens

Laura 10:47
or, of course, diagnosed with type two, and I left with Lantus and Humalog and syringes and lip aside, they put me on glipizide. Oh, and my, my TSH was like 1800 everyone just likes this disgustingly high amount. So also Hashimotos, same time, yeah, I

Scott Benner 11:12
was gonna say we said about the hair loss. That made me think about that. Yeah. Okay, so you started with Synthroid, yep. And they thought you had type two, yep. How long does it take you to realize you don't have type two?

Laura 11:26
Not very long. I'm very, very lucky, because I'm in the hospital. I have the hospitalist is my, you know, guy comes to see me, and I'm like, I do not understand how this happened. I There's no type two in my family. I've always been heavy my whole entire life. I'm very conscious of what I eat. I exercise all the time. I do not eat I don't drink soda, I don't eat poorly. I don't have a lot of carbohydrates. They're telling me to eat 45 to 65 grams of carbs per meal, and I'm like, that's more than I eat now. Yeah, I can't do that. I don't understand. And so he ran the test, he did the GAD test, and told me it would take some weeks for the results to come back. Okay, so

Scott Benner 12:17
let me say so basically, you think your body structure pointed to type two. Oh,

Laura 12:24
yeah, my age and my overweightness. Okay, yeah, Laura, you

Scott Benner 12:28
don't have to. But can you give me context how tall and how much I

Laura 12:32
am, five, four and I was I rolled in at like, 210,

Scott Benner 12:38
Laura, did you say rolled in on purpose? You're trying to be funny?

Laura 12:42
I did not, but we'll say I did okay. I'm hilarious. I

Scott Benner 12:45
was like, is she just be like, going for it here and and your whole life, that's your issue. But, yeah, but you do exercise and you don't eat egregiously correct,

Laura 12:56
interesting. And that actually runs in my family.

Scott Benner 13:02
See, now we're getting to something here. Have they talked about putting you on a GLP medication?

Laura 13:06
I am currently, well, let me go you. Oh

Scott Benner 13:10
yeah, you don't want me to jump ahead. I like it. Tease it out. Laura, keep everybody listening. Let's get them to the ads. All right. No, okay, okay, so they give you the get antibody test, but it takes a while to get the results back.

Laura 13:24
That's right. So I leave on a sliding scale with a poker, you know, and a blood sugar meter the hospital, because I went in on a Saturday, they were going to send me home on like Sunday afternoon, when I when they let me out of the ICU, they were going to discharge me from the ICU, and the nurses were like, What? No, you cannot just send her home like this. She needs to talk to a nutritionist. She needs to talk to somebody you know, you can't just send her home. And the doctor was like, she's out. But then there was an issue with the pharmacy and what they were gonna my insurance was gonna cover, so the nurses advocated for me to get a room a regular on the telemetry floor, or whatever nice another night, so that I could be there on Monday to see people

Scott Benner 14:17
that's excellent. Good, good for them, for sticking up for you. Did you have anything to do with it, or were you really at their mercy?

Laura 14:23
I was a little I mean, I didn't get to talk to the doctor about that they were. They just told me that they were trying to get it so that I didn't have to go home straight out of the ICU. And I was like, that's good, because I don't know what's happening. This is

Scott Benner 14:37
going to seem morbid for a second, but I was with my mom in the days approaching her passing, and I was fascinated about how little contact you had with a doctor. Even in that dire situation, they roll in, they say a couple things and they leave again. You're like you have questions, and sometimes you can't even think of all your questions, right? Away. You know what I mean? You're right. You're writing them down, and you're like, trying to get people's attention, and then they say, Oh, don't worry, we'll send a hospitalist to you, because that that person will be your, you know, you know who you'll speak through to all the doctors. But then you don't see those people like, hey, when's the hospital is coming back tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning, it's 10 o'clock in the morning now, you know, like, it's really fascinating how it all works. And, yeah, yeah, the situation you get put in, but the nurse saves you, right? They get you to a bed. What happens next?

Laura 15:27
You know, I talked to the nutritionist, who, you know, was basically useless. She told me the same thing, 45 to 65 grams of carbs per meal. And I was like, I'm not going to eat that much. She said, Well, that's what you need to do. And then she was like, Well, what's your favorite thing to eat? Your all time you would, you know, knock over a bank to have this thing. I was like, Well, you know, I never eat this thing, but my all time favorite thing is a load of baked potato with barbecue. And she was like, well, you can have that. And I was like, No, I can't.

Scott Benner 16:00
I'm pretty sure that's not right, yeah, oh my god. Okay, so you get shaky advice in the hospital. How do you figure out what to do for yourself? Actually, how much weight did you lose in the run up to the diagnosis? I meant to ask

Laura 16:19
like, 2025 pounds. Just 2025, pounds

Scott Benner 16:23
off the off the 210 No, no, I

Laura 16:26
was at the hospital at 210 Oh,

Scott Benner 16:29
okay, and that 25 took you to 210 Yeah, I got you. So we started at around 235 we got to the hospital at 210 Yeah, yeah. You know the phrase tickled her ass with the feather. What do you weigh now? My daughter is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an OmniPod, and it's been an OmniPod every day since then. That's 16 straight years of wearing OmniPod. It's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you. Omnipod.com/juicebox, whether you get the OmniPod dash or the automation that's available with the OmniPod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bathtub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an OmniPod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an OmniPod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once omnipod.com/juicebox, get a pump that you'll be happy with forever for a person using insulin. The benefits of a Dexcom CGM cannot be overstated. The Dexcom allows you to see the speed, direction and number of your blood sugar. For example, My daughter, who is 700 miles away in college, her blood sugar is currently 163 after a meal and steady. I'm going to tell you all about that in a second, but please remember that you can get a Dexcom right now@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. I have that information because I am one of the people who follows her Dexcom CGM. The Dexcom CGM allows for up to 10 followers of your choosing. That means that I can see everything that Arden's blood sugar is doing, no matter where she is. You might be thinking, Oh, you have to look at your phone constantly, but you don't, because you can set up alarms to let you know when thresholds are met. I on my phone have Arden's low alarm set at 70, and her high alarm set at 120 on Arden's phone, her low alarm is 80 and her high alarm is 130 so we get alarms that make us go, Hmm. I wonder what this is about. Do we always do something about it? We don't. Right now, for instance, I can see what Arden has been doing. I spoke to her recently. I know what she had for lunch. She made a great bolus. This is going to come back down, but if it doesn't, we'll see that on the CGM. If it starts to head back up, we'll see that on the Dexcom. And then she can make adjustments to her insulin using this great information. Find out more right now and get started today@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. That special link is for you the juicebox podcast listeners. And guess what? You may be eligible for a free 10 day trial of the Dexcom g6 you'll find out at my link head over there. Now maybe there are some questions you have about Dexcom that I didn't answer in this ad, but all the information you need is right at the link see customizable alerts and alarms zero finger sticks and glucose readings right on your smart device. Nice. Dexcom.com. Forward slash juicebox links in your show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. 162 Wow. Very nice. Good for you. Okay, we'll figure out how you got to it as we talk. Okay,

you're married, is that right? Yes,

Laura 20:18
I'm not married, but I'm in a long term thing,

Scott Benner 20:22
somebody may as well be somebody stuck helping you. I got you, that's all. I meant, yeah, by married. I meant, is there someone with you? Going, Uh, okay,

Laura 20:29
yes, yes, there is. And that was pretty much his reaction, of

Scott Benner 20:35
course. Like, what are we doing? I thought we were gonna retire soon.

Laura 20:39
What the hell? Right. So

Scott Benner 20:40
you guys make sense of all this. You don't like you're getting the advice about eating, but this isn't obviously what you ended up doing. So how do you figure it all out? I'm

Laura 20:50
the kind of person who needs to know all the things. I always know all the things. So of course, you know, what do I do? I'm instantly trying to figure out what to do and what's going on, and how to advocate for myself, and how to make sure that I use my insulin properly and do all the things I had a follow up. Well, my original appointment with my doctor was, like the next week, so I kept that appointment, and, you know, they kind of gave me some advice about what to do, but it was pretty much stay the course. I was lucky enough to get in with an endo, probably within a month, I think, okay, yeah, it was in August when I saw the Endo. I'm so lucky. She's so great. I've heard so many horror stories, yeah, mostly on your show. Thank you. And she's really fantastic. And by that time, I had the results of the GAD test, and it was astronomically high. Type one for sure, be off the flip aside. And, you know, switch me to pens, and got you going with, yeah, with all that, got me a Dexcom. But by that time, I already knew what I wanted I had. You know? She was like, Well, if you heard there's this thing called that, and I'm like, Yeah, I want the Dexcom. Oh, okay, yeah. Where

Scott Benner 22:17
did you hear about all that? Like, going through the internet and looking around, that's how you found out about like, CGM things,

Laura 22:22
yep, yep. Facebook Facebook groups, they were far more health helpful than anything else. I don't think I had found your podcast before I went to the end of for the first time, but it was shortly after that, and I have to say, Scott, I would not be where I am today if it were not for the podcast and the Facebook group and the other groups, because, you know, we all know they don't tell you anything. Yeah, they don't tell you. They're trying to keep you alive, and that's about it

Scott Benner 22:53
here. This is a quote from an NIH article. Social media has become a primary source of health information for Americans. A large number of users, 76% reported that they do not merely encounter such content on the internet, but also rely on platforms such as Facebook for health information. That's like from an NIH study, yeah, wow. It doesn't stop any doctor and make them go, huh? You know what I mean, from like, a self preservation standpoint, Laura, like you're a small business owner, yeah, if you heard that 76% of the people who came to you figured out what they needed somewhere besides you, you'd think, Oh, we're going to be out of business soon. Yes,

Laura 23:34
right? Yeah, I would, and I would do everything in my power to make myself relevant, yeah,

Scott Benner 23:40
right, become the person who who delivers that good information, right? Fascinating to me. I seriously, I'd be in a panic if I was a doctor. I read something like that and think, how close are we to? You know, no lie, an AI bot diagnosing you, and you coming in and saying, Here's what I think is wrong, and the bot agrees with you or not agreeing with you, and you ended up with a, you know, a prescription, or, you know, a direction or something like that. Like, I don't know, I think I'd want to be protecting my job if I was a doctor, but Right, no kidding. Now, I mean, some of them are terrific, and I don't even mean that pejoratively, like a lot of doctors are fantastic, but I speak to enough people to know that it's not a big enough percentage of patients having good experiences for me to say, you know, wow. Mostly people are doing great. I think mostly the information shaky. Somebody's reading from you from a book, like, I mean, how fascinating is it when like, three people bump into you and they go, just eat up to 45 carbs a day, and you're at a meal, and you're like, wait, the last person said that. You know, I told the last person, I don't eat that much already. What am I supposed to do? You want me to eat more? And that was the nutritionist right in the hospital, in a hospital, standing in front of you, weighing 210, pounds, at five, four. He's like, you know, you should, you should eat more food than you're eating now. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating. Sorry. All right, so now you got pens, you know, you're a type one. You're picking around online, figuring things out. How long does it take you to get comfortable that you're making reasonable decisions?

Laura 25:11
You know? I It's, it's a continuum, I don't know. Once I had the CGM, it was, of course, much more clear what was happening. And you know, my insulin needs drastically went down once I got my blood sugar under control. And again, I have a great doctor, because right off the bat, she was like, you adjust the Lantis as you see fit. Oh, good. And she wrote in my chart that I had agency to make changes up to 30% like, on day one, yeah, giving

Scott Benner 25:47
you freedom to, like, see what's happening and and react to it, right?

Laura 25:51
Yeah, that's excellent, which is great, because it never occurred to me to not do that. And before I had the CGM, I didn't know I was having lows at night.

Scott Benner 26:02
Yeah, no,

Laura 26:02
I never woke up in a cold sweat. And she she did say, like, if you wake up in the middle of the night, go and test your blood sugar just to see. She didn't say you should get up every night and test your blood sugar to see if it's low if you wake up, take a look. Yeah, yeah, which I never did. I mean, I would wake up, but I just roll over and not do it. You

Scott Benner 26:21
should have seen me begging Arden last night to test before she left her class because her CGM was like, dead. And I was like, please don't drive without testing. She's like, don't you worry. And I was like, that sounds like she's gonna do it. She made it home. Fine. Yeah. I mean, like this just happened to you. Now someone's saying to you, hey, you know how poking your finger sucks. You should do it if you wake up in the middle. The middle of the night, yeah, but not if you But isn't it interesting? Like, not if you don't wake up in the middle of the night, right? Then why is it important, right? Like, if it doesn't have to be every night, then why is it important, right? I had a very similar experience with Arden when she was little, about that overnight stuff, where they were like, hey, you know, you can leave the blood sugar much higher overnight for safety. And I said, Well, why does it have to be lower during the day? Then, well, because high blood sugars are bad for health. I said, Well, why are they not bad for health at night? She's like, well, you need to sleep. I was like, that doesn't answer the question. Like that just pushes it down the road. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's kicked the can at that point. Yeah, you know, answers the questions that don't really answer the question and don't make sense or upsetting, and then you don't know what to do, so you did nothing. Correct.

Laura 27:30
Yeah, correct. But then once I had the CGM, I was like, Oh, that's too much. So dialed it way back, and then back up and then back down. I mess with my carb ratios a lot, figuring out things like, I'm more insulin resistant in the morning, and that my breakfast ratio was much higher, lower, higher. Needed to be stronger. Yeah, yeah, in the morning, things like that. I've figured all that stuff out. What about is it something

Scott Benner 27:59
about your personality that lets you just be like, I'm going to like, I'm gonna do you think it's your age? Like,

Laura 28:04
you know what I mean? No, it's who I am. I before I owned my game store, I was a software test engineer. When I left to do my business, I was a director of test engineering for a Fortune 100 company. It's kind of in my DNA to know all the things, okay,

Scott Benner 28:23
yeah, so you're not so it's your personality. Then I wasn't sure if maybe your age just leaves you to be more, you know, less afraid. I guess I think that's

Laura 28:34
probably some of it. You know us, us elders are wise

Scott Benner 28:39
elders. Gotta try to claim that. At your age,

Laura 28:44
I'm taking it, man. Well,

Scott Benner 28:45
if you can claim it, then I'm gonna start claiming it. I'm getting close enough, you know, when you speak to so many people who will tell you that they were frozen because no one told them to make an adjustment. And if they do make an adjustment, somebody gave them, you know, crap about it, then that stops them, not just for a day or a week or a month, but sometimes for years and decades of making like, reasonable adjustments to help things.

Laura 29:07
And that's why, again, I keep saying how lucky I am that I have the doctors that I have, because I think she she knew right away that I would be able to do that, and she never said, No, don't do that, or don't make those changes. Or she never told me how to manage my self. She let me take the lead on how I'm going to do that.

Scott Benner 29:31
Has she been helpful making adjustments to Settings going forward since then?

Laura 29:35
No. I mean, I make all she has never adjusted anything.

Scott Benner 29:40
Well, now I'm worried, Laura, that she just gave you autonomy because she didn't know what to do.

Laura 29:45
Oh, she did. I mean, you know, she set me up with an insulin to carb ratio and a correction factor and no good you know, those initial settings, how much Lantus to take and that kind of thing.

Scott Benner 29:57
How much have they changed as you've lost weight? Uh, quite, quite a bit, quite a bit, yeah, I would imagine that 4050, pounds, 50 pounds is, I mean, a reduction in your basal, a reduction in your insulin sensitivity and your carb ratio. No,

Laura 30:17
yeah, yeah, yeah, I use way less insulin than I did. And there are a lot of factors that go into that. I think one is the weight loss. I'm down from where I started, like 94 pounds or something like that. You're

Scott Benner 30:35
down 94 total pounds

Laura 30:39
since before the pandemic.

Scott Benner 30:42
Oh, okay, so you were 235 and then went to 210 but you had been up to 256

Laura 30:50
Yeah, prior to that, I

Scott Benner 30:51
say, Wow, good for you. That's such a, such a change. Well, are you doing anything differently now that you're continuing on your weight loss? I mean, now obviously that you're out of decay and you know for years,

Laura 31:02
well, one of the things that I figured out was eating is a problem. It was an aha moment for me. Tell me more. I just don't eat.

Scott Benner 31:15
Laura, you've decided that your body just revolts against food one way or the other, so you don't eat very much anymore, correct?

Laura 31:23
What do you eat? Meat and veggies and the occasional starches? What'd you cut out? You know, I just changed the amount. So I figured out that I really only need, like, 12 to 1300 calories a day at all. I mean, just to maintain

Scott Benner 31:46
so even though you were eating things that you thought of as healthy, meats, vegetables, etc, you were eating in mass, so much of it that you

Laura 31:55
were holding weight. I was eating probably less than the RDA for somebody of my age and still struggling.

Scott Benner 32:05
So do you think your body doesn't work well, like it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing? Okay? Because this is what I think about me, by the way, growing

Laura 32:13
up, and because I've had this issue my whole life, you know, one of those you hear somebody say, Well, I have a slow metabolism. Well, that's just an excuse, right? Well, it's not, not for you, not for me. It's actually true, and now that I know that, and I've internalized it, I just eat half of what I used to eat, not half, but markedly less.

Scott Benner 32:38
Was it difficult to eat less? Oh, I

Laura 32:41
made myself crazy. I was on the verge of an eating disorder. What were you doing? I was just really strict about what I ate and how many carbs I had, and I wasn't like keto, low carb, but I was trying to stay around 70 per day and keep my calories between 1012 100. Yeah. Do

Scott Benner 33:05
you think you're at your ideal weight now, or is there more to lose?

Laura 33:08
I would like to weigh less, but my PCP sent me to a weight loss doctor because I got stuck. I've been the same for like, a year and a half or two years now, the same weight I can't lose anymore. And she basically told me that, um, my body is not going to let me lose anymore, and I should be happy where I am. I

Scott Benner 33:33
have questions, how is your digestion and your elimination? Fine, good. The poopy comes out like the way you want, good, good form, not squishy or anything like that. No, you don't run to the bathroom after you eat. Your digestion works pretty

Laura 33:49
well. My digestion works, well, great. I don't have any gluten issues or lactose issues. Nothing to that I've done. I did an elimination thing, uh, 10 years ago and had zero change in anything.

Scott Benner 34:04
What's your hourly basal?

Laura 34:06
It varies. My total basal for 24 hours is probably around eight units

Scott Benner 34:13
really well. That's because you're not really eating much right either. And

Laura 34:17
my basal is actually like 65% of my insulin. Hold

Scott Benner 34:23
on, hold on, stop. You're not making sense. Let me your total daily basal is eight units. Yeah, wow. Point three, five an hour.

Laura 34:34
So at sometimes it's point two and sometimes it's point six. It varies. I have 12345, segments, which is probably too much, but that's what it is. What's your A, 1c, the last one was 4.8 which I don't think is right, because my CGM says 5.7 which it always says 5.7 it's never I mean 5.6 sometimes five. Point eight. But it's always been 5.1 5.2 when I get it tested. And so the CGM still says 5.7 and my average is 103, or something for 90 days, but it came back at 4.8 which is weird. Take me through today. What

Scott Benner 35:16
you eat for breakfast? I have not eaten today. Oh, a little intermittent fasting. When will you eat first?

Laura 35:23
I usually eat before I go to the shop, because we open at noon, so between 11 and 1130 okay,

Scott Benner 35:32
you're on the West Coast, so it's 10am there. Yeah, okay, okay, so you haven't eaten yet at 10am because I'm looking at my clock, and it's one o'clock, and I was like, You haven't eaten yet. Doing the intermittent fasting,

Laura 35:42
I could easily not eat. Easily not eat. No GLP medications at all. Well, I am taking Victoza here we which was a daily injection. I did not start that until it's been about a year. And the reason is and my endo prescribed it to preserve the beta cells that I still have Okay.

Scott Benner 36:07
And how will it do that? How does she explain that

Laura 36:11
it would do that? She said, Yeah, I have many questions. She said, there have been studies that show that people who retain beta cell function that a GLP one helps, helps that because I'd just been waiting for the other shoe to drop right. When is it going to get bad? When am I? When am I going to be in the full blown horror stories that I see from everyone and my C peptide was like point five, I think after two years. So if

Scott Benner 36:46
your total daily basal is just under eight, what's your total daily insulin? It

Laura 36:50
varies between, where can I see it? It's probably like 11

Scott Benner 36:55
to 15, between 1214,

Laura 36:57
something like that. Okay, wow. Okay, it depends on how many carbs I eat, Yeah, but

Scott Benner 37:04
you're having up to 75 carbs a day. Sometimes I

Laura 37:07
have more interest. But since starting the vitoza, my insulin to carb ratios are much less aggressive, less strong. Yes, have

Scott Benner 37:17
you considered asking her for something like manjarno to see if you could, because I'm looking at the chart here. Five four female. At 160 you're at the high end of of overweight, and 174 would put you at obese. 140 is the high end of a healthy weight for your height, as far as this chart goes down to 110 so I think you you would qualify for a Z bound for example, which is just the weight loss version of of manjarno with what you've been saying previously, it matches up so much to my life. I wonder if you wouldn't lose another 20 pounds on this because I have always thought that my body doesn't work well, either, like I've never eaten a ton of food. It doesn't matter if I do or if I don't. I'm always gaining weight. You know, if I went and had a regular meal, like most people would like, nothing crazy, if I just if we all went out to dinner together, I didn't need anything differently than the skinny person sitting next to me, I'd wake up like, two pounds heavier the next day. Yeah, yeah. And so I would restrict my food all the time because it was the only way I could keep myself from ballooning up to 300 pounds probably, you know. So I ate very little most of the time to accomplish that. And then every once in a while, I would do stuff like, fast to drop 20 pounds, if that my number was getting too far, and I was starting to count, like, 230 pounds. It's like the top of my, of my, you know, my goal weight even, because I just couldn't really control it. Exercise wouldn't help. You know, drink a bunch of water didn't help. Like, all the things you think of, nothing helped. I started taking, we go V in March last year, and then basically lost like, 40 pounds, and then I plateaued. I went from 233, to 196, I think, and then I plateaued. I couldn't I started gaining and losing the same two and a half pounds every week. It was like, I'd shoot the week over, I'd lose a couple pounds, four or five days later, I'd start to put them back on again. By the time it was time it was time to shoot the week over again, I was back to where I started. I talked to my doctor. She said, Let's try zepbound, which is manjarno. Boom, I'm on that. I've lost like 188 now. I've lost eight pounds on manjarno in like three, like three and a half weeks. Wow, that's fantastic, yeah, but my eating hasn't changed. See, that's the thing

Laura 39:41
that concerns me, because I do not need to eat less. I need I often have to. I mean, I'm looking at the I use my fitness pal, yeah, to keep track of my carbs and also my calories, because I can't eat too much, and I'm at the end of the day and I'm like, Oh, I'm only at like, eight. 900 I need to eat something,

Scott Benner 40:02
not only that, but when I eat more, I lose more weight. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. As crazy as that might sound today, I got up this morning and I had two eggs, scrambled, honestly, not scrambled more like, what do you call it when you lay flat and you fold them? There's a real simple word for that. There you go. Two eggs with two pieces of shrimp, like previously cooked shrimp warmed up in it. That's what I ate for breakfast. This afternoon, I'm thinking about a cold sandwich, roast beef, turkey, provolone on a roll with some yellow mustard. Don't make fun of me. That's what I'm gonna have for lunch, and tonight, I'm thinking about having some leftover pasta that has shrimp and sausage in it. I will eat all of that today. I'll wake up tomorrow, I'll be a pound lighter. Wow. It's insane. And the emergency feeling I used to get after I ate is completely gone. Like, I used to be one of those people, like, if you went out to lunch, like, I'd be like, All right, we got to go home now. We can't walk around the mall. I got to get out of here because, you know, I'm going to need a bathroom that is completely gone out of my life that's great, completely gone. All my acid reflux gone. So my not educated perspective, and I want to say by not educated. I barely got out of high school, I didn't go to college. I'm not a doctor. I've never read a study about a GLP or a GIP or anything like that. The closest thing I can come up with is that whatever is in that juice that they're that I'm injecting once a week, is something my body either did not have enough of or didn't have any of. I

Laura 41:39
think that is 100% true. Yeah, it's the GLP one Gi, P, yeah, yeah, that, that hormone enzyme, whatever the hell it is, I think it's the thing that I did not have enough of, right? And now you're getting taken one of those drugs. It would have helped me immensely. Oh, my God, because I white knuckled it to where I am. Oh,

Scott Benner 42:00
see you. And I did the same exact thing, which is, we just restricted our food so much. Like, I mean, that's what I've done my whole adult life, yeah, like, I'm like, I just can't, like, ever since I've been out of my I mean, Jesus I was when I was a kid. Like, if my family went out for a slice of pizza, I was, I knew I was dead. Like, I knew I was going to be just like, like, everyone would be home, like, living life, and I'd be in the bathroom afterwards. You know, all that's gone now, and this is the only thing that's changed. And I just interviewed a woman the other day about her daughter, her like, teen, young, teen daughter hasn't come out yet, but type one for like, three years using a fairly significant amount of insulin, and now she's on we go V for weight loss, because she was gaining weight that she couldn't stop gaining. And the weight come off of her and her insulin needs. She's off her pump. She's down to injecting basal. Wow. She sends me her graph. Sometimes you should see how insane they are. She's not even injecting for meals, but she's definitely got type one. So I don't know if that GLP is like, like your doctor said, like retaining some beta cell function, if it's what it's doing, but I'll tell you what. Scotty ran, he did not walk, and got his daughter on ozempic, because Arden's only shooting the introductory amount, the point two, five a month, which is by all measurements, not even a therapeutic dose she's going to use. I forget what the number is, 11,016 like over 10,000 fewer units of insulin next year because of the reduction it made, point two, five a month, and any excess weight on her body is gone. She looks so healthy, and anywhere she was carrying excess weight in eight weeks is gone.

Laura 43:53
I I'll, I'll check into that because, because I have been reluctant. I mean, I'm not taking the vitosa for weight loss, it doesn't really do that. I mean, for some people, it does, but not for me, but it has reduced my insulin usage, and like I have fewer spikes. So Laura, if I had $100,000

Scott Benner 44:15
to put on a bet in Vegas, I'd bet it on 10 years from now, type one diabetics are going to get GLP medications with their insulin when they're diagnosed. Wouldn't that be great? It's going to be my bet. I don't know if I'm right again, like I said, barely got out of high school, you probably shouldn't listen to me. There's the disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast, on purpose. It says you shouldn't listen to me, so but these are my experiences and what I'm hearing from other people, and I think they're worth sharing, because this person I spoke to is not nearly the only one. My schedule is littered with people to record with this year who are using wegov bound, manjarno, those things, and they're seeing insane reductions in their insulin needs. So. Now, maybe not for everybody, but for people like you and me, who, like, you know, I gain weight thinking about eating like, maybe my body just didn't work right. Because at the moment, sometimes I look in the mirror I can't believe it's me. My ophthalmologist. I walked in to get a new pair of reading glasses the other day, and I've known him my whole adult life, and he almost cursed in his business in front of other people. He went, Scott, what the You look like a different person? And he was not being, you know, polite or, you know, but he was like, my god, you don't even look like the same person. And I don't. I've seen photos of myself a year ago, and now I can't believe I wasn't in the hospital a year ago the way I looked, and I didn't know. I thought that was who I was. You know, I've yo

Laura 45:44
yo dieted my whole entire life and so but it's ingrained in who I am is, you know, this pudgy to fat to obese person, and the personal failing that was my inability to control my weight is part of who I am, and I still struggle with that, actually, which my eating just because of all that. And then I got type one right, and I had lost that weight the little bit at the beginning, when I first went to the Endo, the only thing. I did not cry at all about any of it until she told me that my body was going to want to gain that weight back. Yeah, and I burst into tears, and she was like, It's okay, it's okay. And I'm like, It's not okay.

Scott Benner 46:37
I can't tell you how much happier I am now than a year ago for so many reasons that, I mean, I could sit here and list them all day but, but they just they weren't things that any of my efforts were were impacting. And I listen, I don't think there aren't people who are eating their way to their weight. I'm sure there are. I'm saying that. I think that some people's bodies just are mis tuned, like, no differently than you need that Synthroid now because your thyroid is not picking up the the TSH correctly, right? Like, so, yeah, you know? So you, you take that t4 not because your body's not making it, but because your body's not using it correctly, so you kind of flood your body with extra T for so that you get enough of it, almost like, you know, you really only need, like that little squirt bottle in a football game that they squirt in the players faces, but for some reason, it doesn't make it into your mouth, so they have to shoot a fire hose at you, and then you get as much as you want. And that's what's happening with that. I don't think that's not what's happening to me, because I'm going to tell you right now, arms, butt, legs, hips, my back, my chest. There's no extra weight on me anymore, and it's coming out of my stomach. It's been the entire time. I've never I could lose weight like crazy. It would never come out of my stomach, like, if I could lose 15 or 20 pounds, like, I could starve myself and lose weight 10 years ago, it wouldn't come out of my stomach. My stomach's almost gone. I'm down to measuring my stomach by handfuls of fat. That's how I do it. Like, I'm down to four of handfuls, and I can feel when they're like, I didn't measure myself first. Sometimes I'm like, disappointed that I didn't but I didn't measure my body, but I'm telling you right now, my arms, my hands, my face, my legs, there's not an ounce of fat on me anywhere, like I and I'm not too thin, like I'm not like skin stretched over muscle over bone, I look healthy, and the extra fats coming out of my midsection, it came out of my I'm so embarrassed to say I probably had side boobs at one point. They're gone. You know what I mean? And that's not attractive for a guy.

Laura 48:43
That's not attractive for anyone, really. No,

Scott Benner 48:45
listen, Laura, that depends on what you like. But I'm saying that for me, it didn't look good on me, my back, which I never would, lose weight off my back, my face looks so different. It's insane.

Laura 48:56
Do you have loose skin? No, I do. I probably have 10 to 15 pounds of loose skin. I

Scott Benner 49:02
am vitamining and supplementing, and, AG, wanting and like, trying to give my body everything possible that I can so that hopefully it can bounce back from that. I have a little bit under my arms, but it's getting better. I had it on the inside of my thighs, but that actually tightened up, and my stomach is like astonishingly tightening as it's shrinking. It's great. I'm gonna have some around my belly button when it's over. I know for sure, but not nearly the way I expected to.

Laura 49:30
I don't have as much as I thought I was gonna have, either considering how much weight I've lost, I

Scott Benner 49:36
swear to you. And and by the way, I used to think, Oh, what are that? What's that person gonna do without loose skin? And now that I'm a person who is in that situation, I'm going to tell you, it's so much better than being bloated. I don't even care. Oh,

Laura 49:48
God, right, yeah,

Scott Benner 49:50
don't even care. Wow,

Laura 49:52
I have a an appointment with my What do you call it the weight loss doctor, which I don't really need because I'm not losing. Wait, but I like the accountability that year, because I'm seeing her yearly. Now, I

Scott Benner 50:06
would lead with, what if I have a GLP deficiency? Can we try one of these other medications for a little while? Now, look, I I'm gonna say too, there are some people who have, like, terrible side effects from it. I'm not one of them, right? And I don't think it's a lot of people, but it's enough that it's a known side effect. I've seen, you know, a handful of stories of people having, like, bowel obstructions even, but I don't know those people's details. Like, you know what I mean? Like, if they were, as an example, if you have had type two diabetes your whole life, and you have some gastroparesis, and then we put in a drug that slows down your digestion, maybe you get a bowel destruction from that, right? You know what I mean, like, but I'm gonna tell you that like I'm on it. I let my daughter take it. My what? My wife's lost 65 pounds on it, my wife, who had her thyroid explode after she had my daughter and gained a ton of weight that was inexplicable. Nothing about her life had changed, and she fought with it for a decade, and, you know, got on top of it as much as she could, but was not winning that fight. She looks like a different person now, and by the way, too, my knees don't hurt anymore. My back's not sore. My joints feel better, like I can run up and down the stairs. The other night we threw away, you know, when you like, go down in the basement, you're like, Oh, how did all this stuff get down here? We should be throwing out. Yeah, and, and, right. So that happened the other weekend. We were like, Let's get rid of this stuff. I ran up and down my stairs 100 times with a jacket on, up out of my house, down to the driveway, put it down, came back in over and over again. I did it for two hours. I didn't break a sweat, I didn't run out of breath. Like it was amazing. Like, if you would have found me a year ago, I would have told you I don't think I'm gonna live into my mid 60s, and now I'm like, I think I could live forever like this. I'm not kidding, you know. So I

Laura 51:55
feel so much better, I bet from even before. I mean, I was getting, like, you had stand up from sitting and be stiff. I don't have that anymore. Yeah, and this was before the diabetes, you know, I was like, Oh, I'm getting old, and that sucks. Getting up and down off the floor was hard. But now I'm like, spring chicken baby.

Scott Benner 52:17
I found myself a year and a half ago, I got up off the sofa, and I was, like, bent over. I couldn't even stand up straight, like, I was like, what is happening? And to your point, you think, like, Oh, I'm getting old. I guess this is what they mean, bullshit. I was fat, that was the problem, and I didn't have whatever. This is, like, whatever GLP brings to you. And I have to admit, I know I sound ridiculous, saying that something is helping me, and I don't even know exactly how, but I don't really care. Yeah, so you know, it just is working for me. That's what I know right now. I somebody said, do you have to take it the rest of your life? I said, I don't care if I have to. I have to. I don't know what that means. Like, I mean, I'm sure we'll dial it back at some point, because there's going to be a point when I don't want to lose weight, and we're gonna probably have to find a balance to stop that from happening. But my doctors already said we could, you know, we'll try lower doses. We'll try longer intervals in between the injections. She's like, who know? She's like, we'll figure it out. Just very cool, having a good doctor like that, you know, yeah. Anyway, why did you come on the podcast? I'm sorry. It's only been, well, I

Laura 53:21
wanted to talk about the late onset a little bit, and the whole weight thing, you know, I the, I did really screw myself up with the eating, and I saw myself going down a bad path of, you know, really, I mean, I'm still overweight, so I clearly don't have the eating disorder that would make me excruciatingly thin. But I I was screwed up, and so I found somebody on my own who was a t1 who did counseling, and she helped me a lot, making me like, I mean, was it CRT? Is that what they call it? Wait,

Scott Benner 54:06
the rapid eye movement thing? Oh, no, no,

Laura 54:09
no. But where they you have to do things. So she was like, go out to eat and eat something that scares you.

Scott Benner 54:20
Nice. I don't know that one, but okay,

Laura 54:23
it's behavioral therapy. Okay, I don't remember the name anyway. It doesn't matter. But she helped me a lot. Helped me get out of my head about it. One of the things that Victoza, which is also a GLP one, it's just lower. It's liraglutide instead of semiglutide Anyway, that has stopped a lot of the food noise, which is great. Oh, you had that. My

Scott Benner 54:45
wife talks about that. Oh,

Laura 54:47
my God. I mean, because it's my whole entire life. Well, what am I going to eat? What am I going to eat? It. Can I have that? How much is in that? Should I eat this first? Should I not have that? We're going out to eat. What am I going to get? I'm going to be with those people. Know, just this constant, never shut up, yeah. And now I don't, I don't think about it hardly at all. My

Scott Benner 55:07
I've said it before. My wife said that she'd open her eyes in the morning and think about what she was gonna eat for breakfast immediately. And then she said while she was making breakfast, she'd find herself thinking about what she was gonna eat for lunch. Yep, that's, yeah. She's like, it's, it's insane, like, and now she said it's completely gone.

Laura 55:24
So now I did get, I got a referral to the psychologist who's on the on the diabetes in the clinic that I go to, and she's been very helpful as well. I feel now like I'm no longer screwed up with my food. Yeah, and I'm in a zone that I can maintain without having to think about it all the time, and that has been very helpful. That's excellent. Good for you. So I want people to seek the help that they need and to recognize when you think you're going down a path because it's very hard. The whole thing is hard, man, it sucks every time I go to the end though, she was like, so how are you like? I'm all right, diabetes still sucks. And she puts that in my chart, diabetes still sucks, like, it's always gonna suck. Yes, never gonna not suck. Thanks

Scott Benner 56:16
a lot. To learn that in medical school. Fantastic, right? Yeah. You

Laura 56:21
don't really need to write that down. It's always going to be that way, and it's just the late onset is hard because, you know, I lived my entire life a different way, yeah, but in a way, in a weird kind of way, it was a blessing. I'm not going to say that, but I've heard people say that. Tell me why? Me to figure it out. And I am way healthier than I was before. Yeah, and I wasn't unhealthy. All my labs were good. My a 1c, was like five and a half. My cholesterol was good. Everything was good. I was fine. I was just fat.

Scott Benner 57:00
You really think you had an eating disorder.

Laura 57:03
I think I was very close, okay. I mean, I still can just not eat anything, yeah,

Scott Benner 57:09
just not, just not. So you're talking about an eating disorder, not in the way of, like, Oh, I'm uncontrollably eating, or I'm eating and purging, or something like that. You're, you're saying, like, I was just not eating.

Laura 57:18
I was not eating, yeah, and nutritional,

Scott Benner 57:21
like, downgrade. That's why I think I look so bad last year, because of nutrition. Like, I was trying to get all my nutrition through, like, a green drink, you know what I mean? Because, yeah, I wasn't really eating very much. And still, I'm taking those, like, I still drink ag one, and I take my like, you know, I take my vitamins and everything really religiously. By the way, I take vitamins, like, very, very religiously every day, vitamin D, magnesium, a probiotic, zinc. I take a multivitamin. That's really good. And and I take iron, like, three times a week with some vitamin C. And so I'm very, like, very careful to do all that, because I really think my body is going through a metamorphosis, and I want to give it as many building blocks as I possibly can. Yeah,

Laura 58:09
yeah. My little my pill case has two actual pills, and all the rest of it is supplements. Yeah, do you take all that stuff? And I'm like, Well, yeah, there's the calcium and the magnesium and the this one and that one, and the Omega three and the I got it all in there.

Scott Benner 58:27
I like, when somebody said to me, I'm like, Well, I, you know, you shouldn't have to take all those supplements. And I was like, Well, I do. Because if I don't, like, look at this photo of me when it looked like my eyes were falling back in my head, and, you know, I look terrible all the time. If I was going to go to a speaking engagement, I'd have to start six weeks before the engagement and go completely like low carb, just to get enough of the bloat out of my body that I felt comfortable getting on stage. Wow, yeah. And so that's not a thing you tell people about, but I absolutely that's not my situation right now. Like, if you came to me right now and said, Hey, stand up in front of 500 people and talk, I wouldn't even think twice about it. Like, okay, great. What are we going to talk about? And I jump right up, but be back. Then I would set my I would set up my things, and then I would do these, like, very restrictive, like, very high protein, almost no carb diets to kind of, like, diaphragm myself a little bit, like, try to get like, as much liquid out of my body as I could. But I wasn't really, like, losing much weight. I was just getting, like, the blow down, yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's hard, like, it's hard to stand up in front of people thinking, I know what I look like. You know what I mean?

Laura 59:41
So, yeah, yes, I totally understand that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 59:45
that's I feel so much better now it's Synchron I actually thought today my clothing sizes are dropping so much that I've been trying very hard not to replace clothes. Because I'm like, if I just buy another shirt, this shirt is not going to fit me in six weeks. So I've been very careful about it, because I don't want to spend extra money where I don't have to. I just had that thought today, like, I have to go buy different pants. Like, I'm gonna go to a I think I'm gonna go to a 34 waist, which, trust me, as a person who at one point had a 40 waist, like, it's insane. It's such a significant difference. I wear a large T shirt. Now. I used to wear a two XL, and there were days where I was like, oh, things grabbing me. And then one day, I was like, I can't wear this two XL anymore. I look homeless in it. So I threw it away, and I got, like, some xls. And then before I knew it, I was said to my wife, I'm like, I think I have to get large T shirts. I don't think I'm ever going to be a medium. But I don't think my that's just my size of my body. I said to somebody the other day, I'm sitting here at a 90 degree angle recording the podcast, and I can see the hinge in my hip like I can see where my leg touches my torso. And I was like, that's such a crazy thing to me. I was recording one time on camera with somebody, and I could see myself like I could see the image of myself that they were seeing. And I started touching my forearm, and someone said, What are you doing? And I said, Oh, I thought there was something on my arm. And then I looked closer, and it was the line between the two muscles in your arm. And I thought, Oh, I've never seen that before. Like, seriously, you know. So I don't know if the if these things can help people to not have all the problems that you've described and all the problems I've described, and to generally be healthier, to live more comfortably. I'm not even talking about esthetically, you know, that's a bonus. Honestly. Yeah, I think run, don't walk. You know what? I

Laura 1:01:34
mean? Yeah, I've had to replace my wardrobe twice. The first time it was like Target clothes, because I knew it was transitional, but now I am in a single digit size. Yeah, I have not been in since, like, junior high. I wear a medium shirt. It's just amazing.

Scott Benner 1:01:57
I learned that skinny Scott likes fashion. I didn't know that. I upgraded just slightly, like, not, not this great expense. I spend a little more money just on the T shirts I buy now so that they they're just out of a slightly better material, and I look better because I didn't know that. And I never would have done that before, because that material is a little, um, stretchy, and so I would have been super afraid of how it would have clung to me. So I would never have bought it before. I would always stick with, nobody wants anything clingy, right? I would stick with more cotton because it would billow. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, such a good deal. But also, my brother did it. He's type two, lost like 35 pounds, a 1c went way down. There's just a lot about this that's valuable. So anyway, good luck to everybody. Whatever. What else? Anything else, Laura, we done? You did a great job. I was terrific.

Laura 1:02:53
I do. I did have a couple more things. Number one is I use an OmniPod dash and my endo has been pushing me to switch to the five and use the algorithm, okay, but I'm not going to do that because, because the target is too high.

Scott Benner 1:03:12
Oh yeah, you are. What is your target on your you're probably targeting eight. I'm

Laura 1:03:16
at it'll correct at 110, I have all my settings in my pump, so I use those. I let it do the math for me, you know. So it won't add a correction unless I'm over 110 I understand, yeah, and I like it at 100 okay, I've got it down now. Like, I know what's going to happen in the afternoon. After lunch, I don't need anything again, like I eat at 11, and I won't eat again until dinner, which is usually at like seven, and by that time I'm riding around 85 and then I'll eat dinner. That's fantastic. Look at you. Well, you know, I credit a lot of that to you, Scott. I learned so much. I understand how insulin works, and I now i i do it without thinking about it's like, oh, I'm 85 and this is what I'm going to have for dinner. So I'm not going to pre bolus, right? Or I'm going to pre bolus 10 minutes, or I'm 120 I'm going to pre bolus for 20 minutes. You know, it just depends on what I'm going to eat and where I am and how what I'm going to do after you have to think about all those things. I made a list once for my my people around me about all the things you have to do to eat, like, I

Scott Benner 1:04:33
want this goddamn response, yeah.

Laura 1:04:38
And that doesn't include, like, preparing the food. It's just the 25 steps to eating,

Scott Benner 1:04:44
yeah, and, and, what a big difference they make for you. Yeah,

Laura 1:04:48
oh, it's, it's huge. I feel a little bit like I know that because my pancreas still works a little bit that it's not as volatile as it could be. Hmm. But I really think that the management wise, I've figured it out enough that when and if that ever happens, that it'll it'll be pretty much the same.

Scott Benner 1:05:12
Yeah. I wonder how much that the victims is helping you too.

Laura 1:05:15
It has helped it reduce my insulin needs, and it because it makes your pancreas produce more insulin, which I was like, isn't that going to burn it out faster? Because this is why I take insulin, right? So that my pancreas doesn't have to work so hard and burn itself out. And she was like, you would think, but no, so I don't know. It does help a little bit. You inject that daily. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, interesting, yeah, the daily injection is not the greatest, but, you know, it's just part of my routine. I get up, I poke my finger, I calibrate my Dexcom, I take my shot. I go, Oh, I take my Synthroid. I go on with my day. Yeah, yeah. Just get it out of the way. So that's another thing I so I like the g6 because I don't use the code when I started up. If you don't use the code, then you have to calibrate it every day. And I do that, and it is always right, good. It's always right. Go ahead, always. You're doing

Scott Benner 1:06:20
terrific. Larry, you really are. I'm proud of my disciple and what has happened to so I'm actually just, it's hard. It doesn't get any less awkward sometimes to know that the podcast is so helpful to people. Like, when somebody says it to my face, I'm always like, Oh, thank you. You know, I don't really know what to say so much, but hearing you mimic back the things that I know you got from this, it makes me feel terrific. I know you're a healthier person because of it, and that's really exciting for me. I

Laura 1:06:52
am, I am. I feel really lucky. And, you know, just again, I'm that kind of I've read all the things. I've read, all the books, all of them and

Scott Benner 1:07:01
are for free too. By the way, I give it away.

Laura 1:07:05
That's right, throw it out in the air, take it

Scott Benner 1:07:08
Yeah. Also, I saw ads. I just want to be clear, it's not. It is altruistic. OmniPod, yeah, yeah. Hey, omnipot.com/juice, box. Thank you. Dexcom.com/juice,

Laura 1:07:20
box. Oh, I also use the contour next, next, oh, contour next. And I pay, I pay for it myself.

Scott Benner 1:07:26
Thank you. See that, because I hope they're listening, yeah, yeah. Actually, they're a great sponsor. That's a sense of diabetes. They're actually coming on with another product soon. Actually, by the time this comes out, it's very possible the ad could be on this, but we're going to be doing ads for their CGM as well.

Laura 1:07:45
Excellent, the implantable one. Do you know it? Oh, haha. I have done three research studies, and one of them was for the six month ever since, really, how was it? Oh, it was so hard. Oh, my God. Why you didn't like it? Tell me. Oh, well, the device itself was fine. Oh, although it was kind of a it's not as accurate as because I couldn't, I wasn't. I had two of them, one in each arm. One was blind, and the other one was not. And I had to, I mean, I had to poke my finger four times a day. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:08:23
the I see what you're saying that doing the study was hard. Doing the study was hard,

Laura 1:08:27
yeah, it was not as accurate as my Dexcom. But

Scott Benner 1:08:30
this was prior to it being released.

Laura 1:08:33
It was out for three months, and I was in the study to or the trial, I think was a trial, actually, I don't know what it was for for to move it to six. Oh, I see, I see, so all you six month, errs, you're welcome.

Scott Benner 1:08:46
I got you there. Good job. And

Laura 1:08:49
now they're down to the year, and they asked me if I wanted to continue on for the year. And I was like, Absolutely not.

Scott Benner 1:08:56
You were good. Like, I'm all right. With this other one, you

Laura 1:08:59
would have to go in every like three weeks,

Unknown Speaker 1:09:03
oh, oh, I

Laura 1:09:04
see again day, like 12 hours of an IV, and every 15 minute pokes and blood draws. And just for

Scott Benner 1:09:13
the for the study, yeah, for the study participant is difficult in some things, that's for sure. Yes, I appreciate you doing that very much. I've

Laura 1:09:21
done a couple other ones that were far east. Were far easier, yeah, which like what I did one through the dermatology department, and they found me through my Endo. It was about pump sites and you know, how they were scarring and that kind of stuff. So they did these biopsies of different spots on my body where I had had a pump over like, three ago, two ago, the last one, and then they had me do it right then, yeah, so they had big chunks out of me for that. Jeez, how

Scott Benner 1:09:57
much money did you make for that? Was it enough?

Laura 1:09:59
I. That one, not really. It was like $125 gift card. What did you buy with it? Probably test strip. Oh, but the sentionic study is the one they gave me, the contour next meter. And I was like, Oh, this is fantastic. I wish I could get it, but my insurance doesn't cover it, so I just buy it myself. Pay for

Scott Benner 1:10:23
yourself. I do hear that it's possible that you can pay less for the test strips and cash than other people pay through their insurance for other test strips. That's

Laura 1:10:32
exactly right. You can pay less by just buying them yourself. Contour,

Scott Benner 1:10:36
next, com, forward, slash, contour,

Laura 1:10:38
next, that's

Scott Benner 1:10:41
hilarious. Well, I appreciate you being such a good supporter of the podcast as well. I really do appreciate it. Like this information only gets out because people listen, they support the advertisers, and they tell other people about the podcast. That's how it keeps happening. So, yeah, yeah, if that that stops, I'm just going to be a really popular Walmart cashier. I

Laura 1:11:00
recommend it. I'm in a couple of support groups, which I also recommend everybody out there, find people around you. And I mean, we don't really talk about anything, yeah, but it's helpful to have other people around you, because I don't have anybody around me. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:11:17
no, it's more valuable than I ever imagined it would be. Watching the my Facebook group help people is

Laura 1:11:25
extraordinary, actually, yeah, yeah, yes. All

Scott Benner 1:11:29
right. Well, Laura, I appreciate you doing this with me. I am gonna go out and buy a pair of pants. You've motivated me. What do you think about do it? All right, I'm tired of like pulling my belt so tight and I'm gathering up around my waist,

Laura 1:11:42
you'll feel much better when you have pants that fit. I

Scott Benner 1:11:44
think so too. Thank you. I appreciate that. Hold on for me for one second. Okay,

today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 which now integrates with the tandem T slim x2 system. Learn more and get started today at dexcom.com/juice. Box. If you'd like to wear the same insulin pump that Arden does, all you have to do is go to omnipod.com/juice. Box. That's it. Head over now and get started today, and you'll be wearing the same tubeless insulin pump that Arden has been wearing since she was four years old. Huge thanks to cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order if you're newly diagnosed, check out the bold beginnings series. Find it at juicebox podcast.com, up in the menu, in the feature tab of the private Facebook group, or go into the audio app you're listening in right now and search for juicebox podcast, bold beginnings, juicebox is one word. Juicebox podcast, bold beginnings. This series is perfect for newly diagnosed people. I want to thank you so much for listening and remind you please subscribe and follow to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, if it's YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or any other audio app, go hit follow or subscribe, whichever your app allows for and set up those downloads so you never miss an episode, especially an apple podcast. Go into your settings and choose, download all new episodes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. Hey, what's up? Everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way, recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.