+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox Podcast.

Today we'll be speaking with Pete Thompson. He's a PhD at the University of Manitoba. He's an assistant professor at their max ready College of Medicine, and we're talking today about type one diabetes research. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year. One CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Peter Thompson, PhD 1:51
My name is Peter Thompson. I'm an assistant professor in physiology at the University of

Scott Benner 1:56
Manitoba. Peter, welcome. I appreciate you doing this for me.

Speaker 1 1:59
Fantastic to be here. Thanks a lot, Scott for the invitation. Oh, it's

Scott Benner 2:03
a pleasure. You know how you ended up here, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1 2:06
I have a little bit of an idea. I think it's really fantastic that you've got a lot of Canadian subscribers, and they think that the work you're doing on the podcast is really amazing. It's been game changing for them. And so, you know, they put the bug in my ear about this, and I think that's how I got here, right? Am I can correct me if I'm wrong on that? No,

Scott Benner 2:24
that's definitely right. I got the messages. I got the emails. Should I call you? How do you like to be referred to? Dr Thompson, Peter, what do you expect?

Speaker 1 2:32
You can call me Pete. Peter, I go with either of those. Don't call me Dr Eddie.

Scott Benner 2:38
I'll stick with Pete, because that's the first thing you said, Good. Tell me a little bit about your background. All

Speaker 1 2:43
right. So basically, for me, I been a researcher for now about five years. I got started doing my research training in Alberta. So if you're familiar with things like the Edmonton protocol on islet transplantation, I did a lot of my training in Edmonton at the University of Alberta, and then I moved to Vancouver, and I did a doctorate there. It was actually not until later on in my training that I did a research fellowship. So, you know, this long, convoluted route that we take in order to become academics involves, you know, doing all these degrees, but then you have to do sort of an independent, mentored research training stint called a postdoc. So I did a postdoc in the University of California, San Francisco, and that's really when I got into the field of doing diabetes research. So So yeah, it's been a long journey.

Scott Benner 3:34
Yeah, no kidding. Time wise, how long is that journey? I hate to say

Speaker 1 3:38
this because it's I don't want to dissuade young people from picking up a career in science their research in this way, but bachelor's is four years. Masters was another two and a half, and then PhD was five. So we're looking at about that's, I guess, 12 years, and then my postdoc. So about 16 years of total time from bachelor's and undergrad, even in college, to being a researcher, research professor,

Scott Benner 4:01
yeah, well, that's a lot of dedication to get to something. So what drew you to put that much effort into something? Why this?

Speaker 1 4:07
Yeah, you know, I've always been a really curious person. I love understanding how things work. I've always been curious about nature and understanding the world around us. I've been involved in science for pretty much as long as I can remember, from, you know, having my first sort of science kits at home as a kid, to doing science research as a as an undergrad student, and then continuing in it. You know, I think I always felt like I could do something in science, but it's really something that you have to do in community. It's something that you get mentorship for. It's something that you need people to believe in you in order to do well and to move ahead and to keep going. And so, you know, I think everyone has those times in your life where you just feel like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Am I gonna continue being able to do this? Or am I just gonna throw in the towel? And you know, I had a number of those times during my training, but I always had people to kind of bring me back. Fan. Family Members, good friends, mentors who were further along than me in the road and could say, hey, no, you're gonna you're gonna make it. Keep at it. And they saw the potential in me when maybe sometimes I didn't see that in myself. So you know, I owe a lot to you, the people who've shaped me in that way. And I think everybody, in some ways, kind of a product of of the the people that are around them. So really grateful for that. That's

Scott Benner 5:21
wonderful. So as you're going through the process, how do you hone in on diabetes? Like, because I imagine in the beginning, you didn't start off thinking, I'm going to be a researcher for diabetes, right?

Speaker 1 5:31
That's right. Yeah, I, you know what, I didn't really know much about diabetes again, like I said, until much later in my training. I think it was during my my PhD, and as I was studying, we were working on sort of fundamental questions about how cells make decisions. And some of these questions are things that have been studied for many years, but some of some aspects of them are things that we really just only recently had the technology in order to develop and think about more critically. And so it was at that time I was thinking like, you know, okay, do I want to be kind of studying these things, you know, in a very abstract way, where I really don't know if this is going to really move forward. And, you know, you talk about, when people talk about stem cells, there's a lot of excitement around, you know, being able to develop new therapies for all sorts of diseases. But the work I was doing at the time was very, very fundamental. It's very, very like, hey, how does a cell turn on this gene? How does it turn off this gene? Things like that. And so it wasn't something that I could see being directly relevant to, you know, how people live their lives. And, you know, treatment for disease. And people would often ask me, oh, what do you do? And I kind of have to try to make up some sort of explanation that made sense. Because, you know, to me, I was like, Well, this is interesting from a scientific perspective, but maybe no one else in the world really care about

Scott Benner 6:47
that. I'm trying to pay for this degree, is what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1 6:52
It was, it was a process. And then, you know, during my research fellowship training, that's kind of when I made that decision. I thought, you know, okay, what are, what are some, some ways, or some questions that are out there that, you know, if we had a bit of a sense of what the answer could be, you know, maybe that could really unlock some doors, and it could, it could actually help somebody. And I really, I started, I guess I don't know, maybe existential crisis sort of thing, where you just think, what am I doing? What's my life about? But I had that point at that time in my training, and I felt like I really needed to do something with a medical focus. And so I, I was thinking about going into either cancer or diabetes, and I have people in my family who have been affected by both of those diseases. And so really, you know, personally, I saw that the person side of both of those, you know, in terms of making a decision, I was really drawn to diabetes because of some of the things I started to learn, especially about type one and, you know, to me, I think, I still think that, when I was learning about this, it's just shocking to realize that, you know, in the history of what has been done for type one diabetes, you know, you go back over 100 years now, And we're still using what was at the time expected to be a stop gap measure. It was expected to be something that could help manage the disease, not something, of course, that was ever envisioned to be something that was like the end game of this is all we're going to be able to do. And, you know, 100 years later, of course, we've made a lot of advancements in a lot of different ways. I don't want to undercut that, but our mainstay therapy for feeding diabetes. Type one diabetes is still insulin. And I just found that staggering. I don't know of any other branch of medicine or disease based investigation where, you know, we're still using something that we used 100 years ago. You just think about that, right, like so that to me. I think that really stuck out to me. And as I started to dig deeper, I realized that, you know, there's a lot of there was a lot of puzzles, there's a lot of things, mysteries that we don't quite fully grasp yet around type one, when I started getting to the field, there was a bit of a renaissance happening. So there were a lot of focus, moving away from just thinking about type one as an auto immune disease and just saying, well, we need it. We need to fix the immune system, starting to think about the pancreas and what's happening to those cells that get targeted in the pancreas, the insulin producing beta cells. So there was a lot of things going on at the time, but I guess that kind of maybe summarizes some of those things for me that were really impactful.

Scott Benner 9:12
I have to be honest with you, I've asked that question of a number of people. This is the most complete and thoughtful answer I've gotten so far. And I've been doing this a very long time, you'd be surprised. Some people are just, I think the wind blew one way, and they ended up as an endocrinologist. It is interesting. Some people it's, you know, family background, or, you know, like I was trying to help myself. I do find that there are people who have diabetes who end up in health care. It's almost like they're maybe subconsciously trying to help themselves. You know what I mean. Like, there's Yeah, but that's a real Thank you, Pete. I really appreciate that. Like, as you were talking, I was like, I finally got, like, a clear answer on that one awesome when you finally find a place to work, do you come in and do you decide I'd like to try to work here because I like what they're doing, or is it more about finding, like, pay. Lab space where you can try a thing you want to try, like, how do you go on day one? How do you get started? This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be true, but I'm not even done telling you about it yet. The Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste the sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch. You can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM, yeah,

Speaker 1 11:13
great question. I think there's a lot of different ways to get started. Most of the time, though, you have to really reach out to established researchers that have a program in the area of research that you want to study, and see whether they're willing to sort of mentor you and take you on and help you to get to where you want to go. So you know, I guess the main thing is that this time in your training is really supposed to be a springboard. It's supposed to help you get to that next step. A lot of people will do their research fellowship, and then they'll, they'll want to get an academic job. Other people will want to do, you know, an industry job, go into, into pharma, what have you. There's lots of different directions you can go, and you really want to try to target or find the right sort of environment and the right sort of research that's going to help you to get to where you want to go. And you know, to be honest with you, I mean, I didn't necessarily know that I wanted to focus on this really sort of niche area in type one. I just was really excited and really intrigued by some of the things I didn't understand. And I was kind of coming in as a newcomer and an outsider to the field a little bit, you know. And I would sit in these seminars as I started, getting started, I chose a lab, and the lab was, at the time, mainly focused on type two diabetes, but they had a lot of projects were kind of overlapping. And I remember the, you know, the first day, I sat down with my mentor, and he was saying to me, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get started. And I had been in conversation with him over a long period of time, and then he says to me, you know, you wanted to start. You, I initially thought, okay, diabetes. I really didn't know a lot about type one versus type two, so I just thought, Okay, we're going to work on something related diabetes. And he's like, Well, you know, you came in here wanting to work on type two diabetes or something along those lines. We're not going to do any of that. I just feel like, like, my gut just dropped. I'm like, oh my goodness, I've invested so much time and effort in this process of finding a lab and getting this position, and I moved my family from Vancouver all the way to San Francisco, you know, we had two little kids, my wife and I, I'm like, Oh, my goodness. Like, so you're telling me now that we're not going to do what I I signed up to do, you know? And it was really a jaw dropping moment. And then he says to me, Well, you know, what do you think about type one diabetes? You know, anything about type one I said, Well, goodness, no, I don't know. I don't know, really, anything about anything. So anything is

Scott Benner 13:23
new to me. Yeah, I was here to find out about type two diabetes. But okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 13:28
so it was a, I really look back on that moment and I see how what could have been, like, okay, oh, my goodness, I'm done. I should just, you know, get out while I can, like, just try to find another position here. Because, you know, now I'm not gonna be able to do it. Yeah, that. Or I could say, hey, well, maybe, maybe there's something here. Maybe I should, I should pursue it further and just look into it at least. And, and so I'm, you know, I really thankful that I did, because I would not be where I am today if I hadn't stayed in this lab. And, and it was, again, like I said, it was a confluence of all these different factors, where the field was going in general, and then we're glad that I chose to do my fellowship training in where they had decided to go, and my mentor was saying, you know, yeah, we want to start moving into tech one. And we think there's some really cool concepts that haven't been explored and all this stuff. So it was, yeah, there's definitely some serendipity there. I'll say that. Is

Scott Benner 14:20
there any, in hindsight, understanding of why the mentor made the shift?

Speaker 1 14:24
I've looked back on this a lot, and I've thought, I've tried to think of, you know, was there anything that he kind of had a sense for? You know, he's a type of guy that I think reads very deeply. He reads a lot of things, he attends a lot of seminars, and he picks up information. I think other people might not see any value. And so I think he probably had been, sort of had some ideas brewing and cooking for a while. But, you know, then when I came to the lab, is like, Okay, I've got, you know, someone new to train. And who can I get to work on something that pretty high risk. But you know, if it pays off, it could, it could go, it could go pretty far. And so I was willing to take a risk. I took a bit of a gamble. And. Pete off there. I think he's

Scott Benner 15:01
thinking, Liz Peter guy is he's screwed. Basically, I just drug him across the country, and he's got his he can't even say no. He's gonna have to say yes. I think

Unknown Speaker 15:10
some of that entered into the equation for sure. Yeah.

Scott Benner 15:12
He's like, Finally, I got a sucker here to work on this new thing for me. Totally. It's awesome though. Like, look where, like, you know, so let's walk through where that moment led to you. Tell me that day is how long ago? Five years that day

Speaker 1 15:28
now is, it would have been january 2016 so it's going on nine years. Nine

Scott Benner 15:34
years, okay, so nine years ago, by the way, I'd like to do another podcast on the conversation you had with your wife when you got home that night.

Speaker 1 15:43
Oh yes, I think she would love to wait on that. There was, there were some tight moments. There so dense moments, for sure,

Scott Benner 15:49
in our home. Yeah, you know what? You make a better point. I'll get her, because she'll start out so dummy took us from Vancouver over here.

Unknown Speaker 15:57
Yeah, totally Yeah. What did

Scott Benner 15:59
these last nine I know this is a big question, but, but what have these last nine years been, and where did where they led you? Like, where are you right now? Yeah, so

Speaker 1 16:08
we started out with just a really simple idea, or a really simple question, which is, you know, if you look in how type one diabetes develops, can we look a little earlier than when diagnosis happens, and if so, what is going on in the pancreas? What's going on at the level of beta cells? Are they really just kind of sitting there, sitting ducks to be picked off by this really, you know, sort of poorly understood auto immunity that we really don't understand yet. Or is there something going on? Is it a sort of a two way street and and maybe some things that they're doing could be part of this really complex equation that leads to type one, right? And so we started thinking about these earlier sort of stress responses. We like to, we like to think about beta cells as cells that are very prone to being stressed. And simply what we mean, what I think I, you know, mean by that would be just that, you know, there's a lot of ways that they can stop doing what they're supposed to do, and not just in the sense that they they get killed by the immune system or they die, but that they can sort of say, well, I'm not going to make insulin for a little while. I'm too tired. I'm too exhausted. I got to these other things to deal with. So they have these complex behaviors that we're kind of still trying to work out, I would say, in the field. But we started to really pioneer this idea that early responses in beta cells and how they interact with the immune system could shape the progression of the disease, and really could lead to whether the disease happens really quickly or whether it takes a long time. So we started out with fairly simple experiments in animal models where we were just looking at some of the things that could happen to these cells. And we were really surprised when we started to get data that suggested that beta cells are undergoing a process that is actually causing them to be like accomplices to the auto immunity. You know, here, we here, here, all along. The dogma is really that type one diabetes is really just driven by auto immunity. It's really the immune system to blame. The beta cells have nothing to do with the matter. So we really just need to focus our efforts on the immune system. And I think if I could summarize a lot of common knowledge and medical textbooks on type one diabetes and how it works. That's kind of really where we've gone as a field, and it's only it was only in the last, I would say, 10 years or so, that our work and that of a number of other labs in the field, has started to really think about these early stress responses in the beta cell and how these might be sort of galvanizing or accelerating the process. And you know, this cross talk between pancreas and the beta cells themselves and the T cells, these, these immune cells that actually target the beta cells in type one

Scott Benner 18:48
So are you saying that what you're looking at is that the T cells we thought attacked the beta cells, the beta cells gave up, and you have type one diabetes, but you're saying they're in the symbiotic relationship that's holding them this way.

Speaker 1 19:00
Yeah, yeah, that's the really exciting thing. And so we, we did some work in in some animal models to show this, that when you basically block or help the beta cells to overcome those stress pathways, you can actually slow down the process of the autoimmune destruction. So the autoimmunity is not some sort of foot on the accelerator that that cannot be shaped or slowed down. It's actually in this very complex dialog, as it were, between what the T cells are seeing and what the beta cells are doing. So we can, we can look at both sides of that equation now. And I think there's some really exciting clinical work, clinical research studies that have come out to really substantiate this further. So we've we've we focused our efforts on that, and from that discovery, we've been able to move forward with some new things that we're doing in the lab around looking at whether we can detect these markers of beta cell stress and. Earlier in the progress of type one Okay, and this is really exciting because, you know, now there's this idea around type one diabetes stages. I don't know if you're familiar with this idea, but it's, it's a fairly recent concept, but the idea that there's sort of pre clinical or stages that happen before someone gets diagnosed that we can actually measure to detect whether they're likely to progress to actually diagnosis. So you have the auto antibodies. So these are antibodies that the immune system produces against beta cells. And if someone has two or more of these auto antibodies, that's considered stage one of type one diabetes, right? And then if they have two or more auto antibodies, and then there's, you know, changes in their glucose tolerance, we would say that's stage two, and then stage three is when they get diagnosed. So if you think about it, there's now these two pre clinical stages that we can measure with a blood test that will look at auto antibodies, and we can do things like glucose tolerance testing in order to know where someone would be along that continuum before they get diagnosed, being able to look at stress in the beta cells and in the pancreas specifically, and then being able to link it back with some of these earlier stages of type one, I think, is going to be really transformative. And that's I think we're the work we're doing is headed and, yeah, it's a really exciting time to be in the field. Are you? I mean,

Scott Benner 21:18
obviously you're still in the process of figuring out what that communication between the cells is, but have you begun to wonder how to interrupt it?

Speaker 1 21:26
Yeah, yeah. So we have, we definitely have some clues from our animal studies where we've identified specific components in the cell that we think are good drug targets. Unfortunately, you know, obviously it would be wonderful if what we did in an animal model immediate. Model immediately was translatable to people. But as we know, I think the history of medicine will tell us that a lot of things that are studied in animal models just really can't tell us what we need to know about what happens in humans. So

Scott Benner 21:53
Pete, I've long been a proponent of instead of trying to figure out how to stop type one diabetes in humans, you should figure out how to take humans with type one diabetes and turn them into lab mice, because they think if you could do that, you could just cure them all very quickly.

Unknown Speaker 22:10
That would be wonderful, any number

Scott Benner 22:12
of 1000 different ways that we figured out how to do that. I understand your point. I want to let you finish your point, but then I have a follow up question. I'm sorry I cut you off with stupidity, but finish your point there, and then I'm going to follow something else. So

Speaker 1 22:23
we do have some ideas. I guess I was just, I was just going to follow up by saying that we have some we have some inclination, but we need to do use some of the tools that we have where we can study human cells in a sort of lab based setting. So we we have really great collaborators. We have an amazing team here in Manitoba that studies pediatric diabetes. Maybe I'll get into that a little bit later, but I also have lots of colleagues that work on type one diabetes from the human perspective, and so we do get deceased organ donor tissues and things like that that can help us to really make connections between what we're seeing in the animal model and what could be happening at the cellular level in the human pancreas. So those are really amazing tools, and I'm very indebted to, you know, the expertise of of my colleagues in that way, those who are doing the immunology side of it. Because I'm not an immunologist myself, but you know, we do want to understand the immunology. We know that there's a cross talk there. And I hope nothing that I've said would let anyone or lead anyone to believe that I'm not, you know that I'm saying that type one is not a non immune disorder. You know, of course it is. But I think we just need to broaden our understanding what that actually means. You know, we don't want to just think that it's only the immune system and that there's nothing that is going on with the beta cells

Scott Benner 23:35
themselves. Oh, no. I think it's important to I mean, as you were talking, what I was like, focused on, in my own mind, was that idea that somebody has an idea like, you know, like, oh, you know what it might be this, and then they spend a lifetime chasing that pathway. Well, maybe that will be it. Maybe they'll get to the end and be like, Oh, I fixed it. But we need other people going down other paths, yeah, and chasing other ideas. Like, a decade ago, there was somebody saying, like, I think it's possible. You know, we used to think of the beta cells as being dead, but I forget the name of the research. They're like, I don't think they're dead. She's like, I think they're frozen. That's how she described them as they were, like, swollen and couldn't move and do their job and or something like that. And I was like, when she said that, I thought, cool. Go figure out if that's what's happening. Absolutely. You go look at that right now. I have a new second question. I'll ask my first. I'll ask this one. First, how much do you count on other labs do you have? I've spoken with other researchers. Some of them share their like you guys had kind of a network of computers, I guess, and like in back room stuff, where you can see what other people are doing, but is AI going to help you move these things along more quickly? You're in Manitoba, and you're thinking about what you're thinking about, and somebody somewhere else thinking about something else. How do we push it all together and then ask a bigger mind? Do you see any through ways here, between all these different ideas?

Speaker 1 24:58
I think there's a lot of potential for. AI, and I know it's already being used in in some settings to try to bring things together. Like you said, we need to have more contact. I think. What has you know, in my limited time in the field, I've seen this. I know a number of other colleagues I've spoken with have seen this and have served this over the years, just that, you know, it's so easy to be very siloed in science, academic researchers are notorious for having pet ideas or concept. They don't want anyone to steal it. They don't want anyone to know about it, and they want to kind of work on it in their own isolated little bubble. You know, well, that's just not the way that sciences can be done and be effective in the 21st century. We really need to come out of our silos and share data, share information. And AI is definitely one of those ways that we can do that. I think a lot of effort is being placed on this from major consortia, and we see some of that happening, a lot of that happening in the US with what's called the human pancreas Analysis Program, or H path, as we like to call it. This is a huge data gathering consortium where they're basically saying, Well, hey, if we can study, you know, this aspect and this aspect and this and put it all together from, you know, hundreds of deceased organ donor pancreas and, and people who had type one and, and, you know, get blood samples and, and do all of this stuff and bring it together, we would have this amazing resource for the community. And then you, you do have, you know, a bit of a way of of collective, collectivizing people's thoughts, and so that you, you do get people being able to crowdsour things in the way, I guess you could say it's and then making that freely and publicly available, and an interface that that anybody can use, you know, they, they've done an amazing job with this, and not just them, there's, there's others who are doing this. So I think things like that are really changing the game. And they're they're bringing academics out of their silos, which I think we need to do more

Scott Benner 26:48
of. It just makes sense to me that if you started this nine years ago, just using you as an example, and this thing I heard, I heard 12 years ago, you haven't heard that now, maybe it's useless, right? But maybe it's not, and I don't know that the human mind can hold all these ideas at the same time and try to see the connections. I think you need a bigger thing to say, like, here's all the research we've done on type one diabetes and all the theories that people have had. You know, can you AI, hold them all at once and try to see if there's something from Chicago that, when I link it up with the thing from San Francisco and, you know, and Manitoba, to come up with some something that none of us have thought to think about yet. Like, it wouldn't surprise me if the researcher that figures something big out comes at it from that angle, instead of just picking their pet project and running after it. That's my thought, absolutely.

Speaker 1 27:42
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's where the fields headed. And, you know, I think we need to see, we need to have more investment put into that. And, you know, AI is a bit of a sensitive subject. I think maybe there's a lot of concern around, is it going to take away some of the things that, you know, we as humans can bring to the equation. But I don't think it has to be that way. I think there's responsible and effective ways to use it, and at the end of the day, it's a technology that, you know, technology can go either way, right? So

Scott Benner 28:08
listen, if AI puts you out of business, come to my house. I'll make you dinner for a week. Okay, sounds great. Scott, I love that. I love that. We'll get you going again. Don't worry, I find just something else to do. So my other thought was, gosh, that was not my first thing that oh, don't worry, Peter, I found my idea if I said to you that I received a text this morning from a person who's been on the podcast previously, the mother of a child with type one comes on the show last year. In this year, we've done a lot of GLP conversations this year, Dr Blevins out of Austin, talking about glps, lot of different things. Some people coming on. So this woman comes on. She's the mother of a child with type one at the time. I think the child's 15. She's got diabetes for, I think about four years at this point. Definitely has type one, you know, auto antibodies, markers, etc, using about 70 units of insulin a day at that time, Omnipod, CGM, both being used. The mom had PCOS symptoms earlier in life. Ended up on some we go, V, helped the mom with the PCOS, a little bit of weight loss, that kind of thing. The daughter starts to develop the PCOS pretty badly. Weight starts to come. So they follow suit, put the kid on. We go, V, and today, this morning, I got a text from her to tell me that her child is now down to just one unit of basal a day. It's injected. She took her pump off six months ago, stopped bolusing for meals, started just injecting basal insulin. Think it was five units at one point, then four, then three, two. Now today, just one. So now a kid, probably 16 at this point, had type one diabetes for four years, gets put on a GLP for something else, you know, they say for weight loss. But obviously her doctor was trying to help her with the PCOS, but it's not on the label. So, you know, you do it the way you do it. She goes on that and now today, she's down from 70 units of insulin a day to one unit of. Basal lens on a day not covering meals. Is that an example of the conversation between the T cells and the B cell and the beta cells being interrupted? Is that even a thing you've ever heard about before?

Speaker 1 30:12
I'll say, I've never, I've actually never heard about that before. I think that that's, I mean, that's phenomenal. That's nothing short of of, you know, wonderful. I mean, I have no clear explanation for that. I mean, I'll say I'm not an expert in the GLP one receptor agonist space, but I know there has been a lot of excitement about, you know, anecdotal evidence. Mainly, I've heard of people using people with type one using these agents to help control their sugars, and seeing really good results. And so, you know, in this case, you have, you know, there's, there's PCOS going on, and other things that that might have been computing, you know, but disrupting that communication between the T cells and the beta cells can take a lot of different forms. And I don't think this is maybe a really clear example of in the future what we might be able to think about that. We, we have all of these sort of tools in our tool belt. And in some cases, it's going to be something like a GLP one receptor agonist that's going to be really powerful and really effective for somebody. And in another case, it's going to be something else, you know. And so I don't think, I think this is an example of, you know, we, we often think about type one diabetes, oh, we got to find the cure. And I really, really rail against that language, and I think we all should, because I don't think there is going to be one cure. I think there are multiple ways. And, you know, it's about finding the way that is going to work for for that individual person, and really moving towards what we could think about is maybe, I don't know this, this term is thrown around a lot, and maybe it's lost its value. But personalized medicine, you know, just the idea that we can tailor things better and not just do a one size fits all sort

Scott Benner 31:48
of approach. It's awesome that you said that, because I didn't think you were going to be like, Yes, Scott, that makes perfect sense, and we've been looking into it. I brought it up so that I would put it on your radar. Because that's not the only conversation I've had like this. I've also had a man on. I'll send you these later. I had a man on in his 50s, diagnosed type one, and he's, you know, managing it with insulin for years. You know, he's having a rather slower onset, but he's, you know, more and more insulin. And one day, his doctor just says to him, Hey, how about we try to use this GLP to get some weight off of you. And so they go for it, you know. And the guy loses weight, and he's not using insulin right now, like now, he still has type one and, and I, my expectation is, is that he is probably in the bros of a very long, slow onset, maybe, like, a lot of situation, or something like that, but hell, if it keeps them from using insulin for a couple more years, then great. Like, I want people to understand, like, I'm not saying glps, like, cure type one diabetes, or that if you have type one, you take a GLP, you suddenly won't need insulin anymore, because there are plenty of people who are on a GLP and have type one, and their insulin needs don't change that much. But that's why I loved what you said about thinking individually, because for the people it works for awesome. You know what? I mean? Like, it's not going to work for everybody, but if this little girl is 16 years old, I mean, she's injecting a unit of basal a day, that's it. And who knows how long that'll last for. But you know what, if it lasts for five years? Like, how great is that? And what could doctors learn from that in the meantime? Like, if we look up, like, I'll tell you right now that my daughter uses a GLP with her type one, and it does pretty significantly bring down her insulin needs, maybe by 20% right now, yeah, she lost 15 pounds. Like, is it because she lost some weight? Is it because she changed how her her eating worked, like, you know what? Maybe, maybe she's just taking in fewer carbs, and her body mass is lower, and so she's using less insulin. That's fine, but here are the things it's also doing. My daughter also has PCOS symptoms. Her stomach pain significantly decreased on a GLP My daughter has had since her period started, and she's 20 now, she's had trouble with acne. Her acne almost completely gone on a GLP medication. Is acne? Is that inflammation? Right? Is, is the GLP lowering her inflammation like I think we need people to pay attention, is what I'm saying. That's all

Speaker 1 34:18
absolutely, I 100% agree, and I think it, it just points to that, yeah, that idea that we need to take note of these cases and these situations where we're seeing benefits. And also, I would add that, yeah, we don't always necessarily need to know every single detail of exactly how these things are doing, what they're doing. As long as we understand that they're safe, we understand what they should be used for and what they shouldn't be used for. I think there's a lot of space in that gray zone that, if you will, of you know, we Hey, you talk to someone who's an expert in this field, they'll say, Yeah, we understand X, Y and Z about what GLP, one receptor magnets are doing. But then there's this whole other alphabet of things that they could say that we really don't understand why it improves this and. And the next thing it just does, and maybe that's enough, right? Yeah, right. Oh,

Scott Benner 35:04
so Peter, this is off the topic, and then we'll get back to your thing. But the reason we knew to try the GLP for my daughter is because I tried it for weight. So I'm probably 57 or 58 pounds lighter today than I was almost two years ago. Wow, which is awesome, and it changed my life in a million different ways. But moreover, throughout my life, I was a person who, no matter how well I ate, I gained weight. I always used to, I would joke with people that, like, if I if I decided that today I was going to have a sandwich with bread, then tomorrow, I would retain water like a pregnant lady, like I'd wake up, like, I'd wake up like three pounds heavier, like you and I could eat the same thing, and I'd gain three pounds, and you'd be like, I don't understand what happened to you. I also, through my adult life, was having to get iron infusions because my body would not absorb iron like through my through my diet, and even if I took supplements, it just didn't work. But you know, I haven't had an iron infusion since I started using a GLP medication. And to that, I would say exactly what you just said. I don't know why, and I don't care why. Yeah, yeah, right. It just it helped me. So if someone can figure it out to explain it to somebody one day, that'd be awesome. But for me, personally, I don't care. I'm doing better now today. So anyway, I'm sorry, so tell me a little more about what your the research you're doing. So

Speaker 1 36:20
in our research, we are really trying to develop ways to better understand and then better target the stress responses that beta cells experience for type one diabetes develops. So we, you know, we use animal models, as I mentioned. We use deceased organ donor tissues as well, because some of these responses, you know, we don't, they're quite volatile, if you will. So, you know, we kind of, kind of study them in a dish. You know, the cells won't behave the same way that we think they're behaving when they're in the pancreas. So we can sort of trigger them or manipulate these pathways to sort of mimic those responses in a in a dish or in a test tube. And then we can, you know, kind of gain insights into, okay, if this is what it looks like in a dish or in a test tube, well, how does that correspond to what we see in the pancreas, and what could be happening at this particular stage of, you know, the development of diabetes and and so we're doing a lot of work in that sort of early stage space. Because I think kudos to the my colleagues who are working on stem cells and islet replacement therapies, I think there's amazing, groundbreaking work that's being done in that area, but I think they would be the first to also recognize that, you know, there's a lot of hurdles, there's a lot of challenges, and these types of therapies are not going to work for everybody. And more to the point, we need to move beyond just, you know, dealing with a disease once it happens, to understanding why it happened, and then hopefully eventually one day, being able to completely head it off at the past so that nobody ever develops it again. And I think that's where our research is really looking to the future, and saying, you know, we have these tools and approaches and medications, and maybe it's transplantation as well that can be done when people develop type one, that maybe even one day it could be safe for kids who developed type one. What could we do that? Would, you know, head things off at the pass and prevent the development of type one for, you know, people who will go on to develop it, and if we understand more about what's happening in those early stages, then there's things that we can do. So where I'm really excited about that part, I think that there's a lot of questions we don't have the answers to yet, but I think this is where as a what I would like to call a fundamental or basic research scientist. So, you know, there's this kind of divide between people who study things in a cell model or in a in a dish, versus people who are studying things in, you know, clinical setting with patients and things like that. Clinical basic science divide. Basic researchers need to do better at engaging with people who have diabetes and with clinicians. And I think for too long, I've seen in my own experience, there has been a big divide, if you're, you know, doing fundamental research, sometimes it's very difficult to build connections with clinicians. For a lot of clinicians, they don't have the time to spend to think about research. They're dealing with a patient case load. They have to get through that right. They don't have time to go beyond that. And then, on the other side, you have a lot of basic researchers who are just so focused on their cells in a dish that they don't want to look beyond that, to sit, to ask the question, you know, to even to have it as part of them. What is what I'm doing? Even important for people who have diabetes, do they even care? You know, that I'm doing this, is it going to make any difference to them? You know? And so I think that's where I've started to really take cues and learn from a lot of my, my the partners that I've been able to develop, partnerships we've developed here in Manitoba, you know, we've got a family advisory group that's really helped to shape some of the research direction and giving us feedback and ideas. And we, you know, we go to them a lot, and we exchange knowledge, you know, the idea that somehow, as a basic researcher, because I have a degree and I've done this research that I know more than. Someone who doesn't about diabetes is, I don't think is accurate, and I think we need to get away from, you know, recognizing that one person's knowledge or thinking that one person's knowledge is better than another. It's not. It's just different knowledge. I had a really dear friend, and she's a patient partner on one of the team grants that I work on, who had to really drill this into us. And, you know, everybody's at a different stage with this. There's some basic researchers that have been in the field for so long, and this is so new to them, but she had to really drill it into us and say that, you know, like, I and she's lived with type one diabetes for over 50 years. She has a daughter with type one, and she's like, Look, I am an expert in what it means to have type one and then manage it and and manage it for my daughter, like I've gone through this, I have this experience that's so valuable. We need to be recognized as experts in our own right in this area. And I was just like, that's exactly what we need to recognize and hear. I've been really learning from that and trying to change my perspective and recognize that, you know, different types of knowledge can be brought together. And when we do that, we are we're all better off for it. Yeah, that's kind of where I think we've been going as well, is that we don't want to just to be developing these questions in an isolated bubble, this idea that we don't want to be just thinking about things without any sort of communication or interaction and being able to share that knowledge. So seeing it as a two way street, what do you

Scott Benner 41:20
think the best way is to because you're it's interesting, because we don't know each other. But I'm on this idea as well. So I started off by saying that I've had, you know, 1000s, you know, by the time this podcast is over, to have 1000s of episodes of people coming on here and saying, you know, telling their stories, or, you know, anecdotally, explaining how they handled something. And I one day said to myself, I used to tell people, Peter, just go listen to the podcast. You'll know how to take care of your diabetes, right? Like, that's when I started, like, I was two, 300 episodes into it, and I was like, I don't know how to explain it to you, but if you start at the beginning and listen your A, 1c, will just come down to the sixes, which, by the way, worked for people, which made me think that therein lies the answer. I don't have a wide enough lens to tell you exactly where the answers are. I just know they're in there. So eventually I figured out that I had a plan for diabetes. I just I never had called it anything. So I put together this Pro Tip series. Right now, I think it's maybe 25 episodes, I'll tell you now, if you don't want to listen to the whole podcast, listen to the Pro Tip series. Pro Tip series, I think you're able to come down into the sixes. Then I started expanding and thinking like, I bet you the answers to most people's diabetes questions lie in these episodes, but how do you say to them, Go listen to 1300 hours of this, and I guarantee you know you'll be okay. So I started as AI got better and better. I started thinking, like, can I just feed the podcast into AI and let it pull out the nuggets? Yeah, I think in that same vein, which, by the way, is the thing I'm working on behind the scenes, and because it's my goal that when I'm done making this podcast, that I leave it behind as a searchable repository. Like, that's my goal, right? So, fantastic, yeah, but as I'm listening to you and thinking big picture about the world, it occurs to me, like, I don't want to say something like, you know, crazy, like, the answer is already out there. We just don't know what it is. But isn't it like, isn't it possible that all the research being done everywhere, if you could smoosh it all together and find, again, something smart enough to go through it and say, here are the connections that you're missing because you're busy, you're tired, or also someone's father, or, you know, mother, or, you know, like just a human being, you're never going to see this or never hear that story like that. Just to me, makes sense that if you want to get to it more quickly, there has to be a repository somewhere and a brain that's in charge of going through that repository and looking for connections that we're missing.

Speaker 1 43:44
Yeah, I love that idea really. I think that that's going to be really impactful. And I would love to see something like that put together for, you know, your with your with your podcasts, you're doing that, but also, you know, in the in the research space, something that really would bring everything together. I think there's just so much out there. And I mean, I'm always, I'm always baffled when I I try to keep up with reading the current literature in the in even just in my sort of sub, little, tiny sub field of of type one research, and I, and I still can't keep on top of it, because there's just so much of cool stuff coming out all the time. And how would so, yeah, the idea of being able to bring it all

Scott Benner 44:22
together is really remarkable. Pete, if I asked you about a movie that was coming out, you might say I didn't hear about that one. There's no way for you to know about everything that's happening. And if you're doing the important work of drilling down on something focused and small, you can't see big picture little picture. At the same time, we don't have the capacity for that. It makes me wonder how many things in the world have gone right, and if you could go back and watch them happen, that you wouldn't learn that it was just by dumb luck or happenstance that it actually worked out.

Speaker 1 44:52
You know what I mean? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I think it's a lot like stuff like that.

Scott Benner 44:56
Well, probably everything like that's probably what life is. So I don't want to wait. For happenstance to happen. It probably will, like, probably some guy's gonna wake I mean, you know, somebody's gonna wake up 50 years from now and go, Oh, huh, no kidding, I got it. This is how you cure type one diabetes. It just so happened that all these things happen. Like, can't we force that to happen more quickly? Is my point, and I think it's here now. I think we can actually so, yeah, I need one of you to start thinking about that. That's all. I don't know which one. I don't care which one of you. Your mentor, he seemed willing to pivot on a dime. Yeah,

Speaker 1 45:33
no, exactly, and ironically, I'll maybe I'll add that he actually pivoted pretty much out of the field himself. He's working on something completely different. He's just, you know, he's one of those people. I think he just saw something, he went with it, and it created something new. And then he was content to kind of say, okay, you can, I mentored you. I figured you're gonna go and take this into the next thing. And so then he's moved on to something else now. So I think that there's something, there's something really wonderful about that. And the way that science can advance is and train the next generation of researchers. You know, I train graduate students and a postdoc in my lab as well. And that's the idea, right? Is that there's no way that I can follow up on every single thing that we do. So I'm hoping that of the people that I train, there's gonna be someone who's like, hey, yeah, this is gonna be cool. I'm gonna take it in this direction and think of things that I never thought of, and that's what I've been able to do in my lab from the training that I

Scott Benner 46:26
received. So when you work with clinicians like when you do have connections with them, what are your takeaways from them that have helped you with your with your work? I think

Speaker 1 46:35
one of the biggest takeaways is, you know, it's trying, it's, I guess it's getting more specific with the questions that we asked. Instead of saying, Well, does, you know, X happen in type one diabetes, we can say, Well, does x happen in children with type one diabetes at this stage, you know, and really drilling down on some of the things that we don't think about, because we don't, we don't really, we don't work with people in our in our research, we're working with cells in a dish, or we're working with, you know, sections from a pancreas, or we're working with animals, you know. So it just, it opens your eyes to things that you just so quickly overlook, and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to make generalizations about the work that you do that that turn out to be inaccurate. You know, I think that part of our human brain wiring is really just to try to find shortcuts, right? We're always trying to simplify the complex information that's being inundated to us every day, and that, you know, you do that by making assumptions. Well, this is this was this way today, and it's been that way yesterday, so it's probably going to be that way tomorrow. And we do that in so many different areas of life, and so it does come over into the side of research, where we we just made generalizations about what we're doing, and we're not careful to sort of nuance those. And you'd be you'd be surprised at how many research papers you read that you when you read some of the things that are done and the conclusions that are made, you have to be very careful that we're not over generalizing or making the conclusion so sweepingly broad that we're missing the ways that it actually might be relevant very specifically, but not relevant in other ways. And so I always try to tell my students, you know, it's not just important that you show that you know whatever the process happens in this particular context. It's also important to show when it doesn't and when you know if you have a negative result that is very important and very valuable too. There's a

Scott Benner 48:23
parable about a pot roast, and you'll maybe stop me, but little girl and her mom are making a pot roast. Mom takes out the pan. She takes out the pot roast, she cuts both the ends off the roast, puts it in the pan, puts in the oven. It strikes the little girl as odd. She says, Mom, why did you cut the ends off the pot roast? The mother says, That's how my mom made it. So the little girl queries the grandmother, and you know, she says, Grandma, you know, my mom did this with the pot roast. Why? And the the grandmother says, well, that's how my mom made it. So they go to the old folks home, and they find the great grandmother, and they tell her this story. And, you know, take grandma, you know, Why'd you cut the ends off the pot roast? And she thinks and thinks and thinks, and she says I had a really short pan. I just think that's we end up doing a lot of things and we don't know why we're doing them.

Speaker 1 49:08
Absolutely. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Yeah.

Scott Benner 49:11
So if that's the case, then you're making big decisions about things you're putting your life's work into. It made me think of what you said, like, you generalize and to like fill in the gap. You know you're like, Well, this must mean that, because that makes sense to me, but that doesn't exactly right. Doesn't mean it's true. Yeah, how many generations of people will do research the way you're doing it now? Do you think it'll shift at some point? You

Speaker 1 49:38
mean shift towards more, towards the team science, or is it

Scott Benner 49:42
going to be Star Trek when you're going to start telling the computer I'm trying to figure this out today. Help me figure this out. You understand the world's information. I

Speaker 1 49:51
think it could probably be, you know, if I'm, if I'm, you know, fortunate or lucky enough to have a long standing career, maybe, you know, 30 or whatever. Your career, I would say, you know, at some point along this road, that that's things are going to start to shift in that direction, yeah, the students that I'm training today, when, you know, some of them do choose to, you know, do a career in diabetes research, I think that they're going to be the ones that maybe those types of tools are just commonplace. And it's like, yeah, this is just what you do. And then we save our very precious human brain power for the things that that we can do best, rather than trying to assimilate all this information that we can never do, right? But, yeah, it's a good it's a relevant question, because I think it also has to do with, you know, how are we training the next generation? Are we are we training them how to think in a certain way? Or are we also complimenting that with you know, here are the Here are the tools that are going to be essential for us to do our job better, right? And some of these things are things that we're just learning how to use. We don't really know the best way to implement them. We're starting to see how they could be beneficial. But in the future, you're going to probably be relying on these things, because there's just going to be so there is already, and there will be, continue to be so much information that you can have a process,

Scott Benner 51:03
right? I think that the day to day life of people, in short order, 100 years is going to look so different than it is right now. Person from today won't, wouldn't recognize what a what a day in the life looks like. Anymore. It's possible we get back to everybody, you know, growing tomatoes and hanging out and chatting and, you know, like, because, like, maybe the, maybe the Terminator doesn't kill us all, Peter, maybe it, maybe it actually helps us. Like, right? So, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 51:30
wouldn't that be wonderful?

Scott Benner 51:35
Seriously, like, you're not going to stop this process now. Like, it's, it's in motion, and this is the way it's gonna go. I'm hopeful that with the limited, you know, I don't, I don't reach that many people, but with the people I reach, I would like it if you guys would all think about, like, how can I use these tools to make the thing I'm doing better, more accurate, more valuable? You know, not so much about like, limiting your own effort. I've said to people before, like, one of my favorite pastimes is to think to the end of my knowledge and wonder what's on the opposite side of that. Like, because I when I get to what I don't understand, I know there's more I just don't understand it. I hope people can use technology to wonder beyond that, because I think you're all asking yourselves a lot of important questions that you just don't know the answers to. But what if we can come up with bridges to those answers, and what will that do for people? Because, like you said, it very well may turn out that if I hold 10 people in front of me with type one diabetes, that they all aren't going to get to a world where they don't need man made insulin the same way. You know, there might be different, different pathways for those people. It's awesome. You're thinking about it that way. Yeah, that's definitely,

Speaker 1 52:47
I think, a key takeaway for me from our conversation today. I'm going to really look into that more and think a lot about that more, because whenever I can have conversations like this and then come away with it, with something that I didn't think about, or something a way that I could apply knowledge in different way. I'm really grateful for that. So, yeah, yeah, thanks

Scott Benner 53:04
for that. No, please i Listen, but hopefully it helps you. But I sit here, I think about your job, and I think, what if someone trained a large language model with just the research papers from the last, I don't know, 15 years about type one diabetes and people who were trying to cure it. What if there was an AI system that could only think about what was in that information, and that you could sit down at a terminal and ask it questions? That'd be awesome, trust me. All right, we just need somebody to get on that. I just need a few, maybe a million dollars and a lab and a couple of couple of guys who understand Python or something, I don't know. I don't know a lot about, I don't know a lot about the computer side of it, but it just makes sense to me, like that, if there's a pathway that this is it, because to go back to how you started this, we've been on this for 100 years, and all we got is it's synthetic now, not from beef and pork, and it works a little faster. That's how far we've gotten in 100 years. Now, that's awesome. Don't take me wrong. I think it's awesome. But if that's the pace we're on, then are we another 100 years to it? What? Like? What you know, what I mean? Like,

Unknown Speaker 54:15
yeah,

Scott Benner 54:18
you need to connect the through lines like and Pete could work his whole life, and five years later, someone could start over, and no one would know a damn thing about what you spent your life on. And that's not how we're going to build on ourselves. I think, yeah, geez, this is a turn into a bummer at the end. Pete, I didn't mean for

Unknown Speaker 54:37
Well, we had fun along the way, I think, didn't we? Is

Scott Benner 54:39
there anything that I didn't ask you about that you about that you wanted to talk about?

Speaker 1 54:43
No, I think that that kind of covers it, I mean, but yeah, I'm always excited to share about what we're doing, and hopefully this is you know, for your listeners, they're interested, or they want, they have further questions, they have. Any of them can feel free to contact me, my contact information. I can. I can give that, or they can just google me. PM, we have a lab website. You know, one other little point there is just like, how important it is now, in again, the 21st century, you'd be surprised how many researchers don't have any sort of online presence, and it's very difficult to actually figure out what they do. So when I started my research lab, I was like, That is like, so fundamental. I need to make sure I have that in place so that everyone can kind of see what we do, what our research is about, and if they have any questions, we can get in contact and we can have a conversation. Because to me, that's that's really where the rubber meets the road. That's why this work is going to be meaningful and important and impactful. Happy to feel any questions or have any further discussion with anyone who might be interested in

Scott Benner 55:38
listening today. It's awesome. Well, I'll tell you, you can easily if you Google Peter Thompson, P, H O M, P, S O n and diabetes, it will take you to a University of Manitoba link that you'll be able to find them very easily that way. But also, Pete, if you send me a link, I can put it in the show notes to the podcast so that people can click on it. Sounds great. Scott, that's perfect. I want to finish by saying this like I understand why people, so many people suggested you for the podcast because you have a really good energy. Can I ask how old you are?

Speaker 1 56:07
Yeah, I'm 40 years old. As of August 18, I turned 40. I did the big got the big four. Oh, so I made Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 56:12
congratulations, but I only asked because I assumed you were about that age and you feel like you're 23 Wow. Seriously, oh my gosh. I mean, no, seriously, like, oh, 1,000,000% like, you have the energy of somebody who just got out of school and was like, I'm gonna do this. And I guess that's my last question. Is, like, where does that come from? Do you know, or do you think it's just natural?

Speaker 1 56:31
I don't know. I think it's, it's part of just how I approach life. I guess I really, I really try to bring a positive attitude to everything I do. I mean, it's very easy to get discouraged and but, you know, I think there's all these little silver linings all along the way, and I didn't get to, get to say anything about it, but, you know, I did start my lab during the COVID pandemic, and that maybe that's a whole topic for another, another episode of, how do you, how do you do research in a pandemic situation? And many people could weigh in on that, but you know, I've had these things that I've had to deal with, and, you know, some of that is just my own personality. I'm a person of faith, so my faith factors into that too. And I think you just have to find things that keep you going. And some people, it's friends and family. Some people it's, you know, their belief system, whatever it is, you have to find something that's worth fighting for and why you you're, you know, find your why. And so for me, that's, those are some of the things that help me. And the research I do is so exciting. I just, I'm still I still pinch myself every day. I love the job I have. I love the work I get to do. I love the people I get to interact with, and really feel like we can make a difference. So for me, that's, that's all I need.

Scott Benner 57:37
Well, that it genuinely comes across when when I'm speaking with you. So I appreciate you taking the hour and doing this with me. Thank you very much. Fantastic.

Speaker 1 57:45
Thanks so much for the invitation. Scott and really was happy to be on the the episode today.

Scott Benner 57:55
I'd like to thank the ever since 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juice, box, one year, one CGM, earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, The free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So, if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri, it's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode, you're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me or Instagram. Tik, Tok. Oh gosh. Here. One. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say hi if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginnings 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, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.