#1484 Small Sips: Wake Up Hopeful
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, welcome to the sips series.
These foundational strategies were nominated by listeners. They told me, these are the ideas in the podcast that truly made a difference for them. So I distilled them down into short, actionable insights. There's not going to be any fluff or complex jargon, just practical, real world diabetes management that you can start applying today. And I know your time is valuable, so we're keeping these short. Another small sip will come out once a week for the foreseeable future. If you like what you hear, check out the Pro Tip series or the bold beginning series for more. Those series are available in the menu at Juicebox podcast.com and you can find complete lists of all of the series in the featured tab on the private Facebook group. Please remember 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. The questions you have, I guarantee you there's answers to them in the Juicebox Podcast, and it's all free. You
Jenny, I'm like a fruit fly. I have a very small memory, a very short
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:35
Oh, I was gonna say, well, at least you went to memory. Because I was like, Fruit flies are really annoying. You are not annoying. Okay,
Scott Benner 1:41
hold on a second. Then what has a really low by the way, now I can hear everyone who thinks I'm annoying. Oh no, no, he's annoying. He was right, safe. But I have a short memory. I find it to be the way to get through life, like it's a purposefully short memory on some things. And the way I would tell you is that I wake up every morning hopeful. It doesn't matter what's happening in my life. It doesn't matter how bad things were the day before, how bad things have been for the last month, how sick people might be, you know, how long we've been fighting at something. I swear to you, I don't know why I'm grateful for it. I wake up every morning and I'm like, let's get this. This. Today's the day we get this. You know, I am
Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:19
100% the same way, yeah, whether it's sunny outside or not, I wake up with a hope for what's coming in the day, and that it's, it is it's all gonna turn around like,
Scott Benner 2:30
today is gonna be the day you have no idea, like my wife is. She'd be thrilled to for me to share this, but she's going through menopause right now. And on top of that, yeah, perimenopause. She has perimenopause. Yeah, those are the words I keep hearing. And she also has significantly low iron at the moment, ferritin, iron saturation, iron binding, everything is very low, right? And so she needs an iron infusion. I believe she called out of work yesterday and slept till 430 in the afternoon. Oh, no, yeah. She's really stuck. And on top of that, she's having these perimenopause little problems too. So she's having all the problems of two different issues. And yesterday afternoon, I couldn't get her an appointment with a hematologist to get the iron infusion. And they told me, like, don't worry. Like, we're gonna, like, we'll call you. But I'm like, No, you won't, like, it's Thursday. You're not going to call me on Friday. You're going to call me on Monday, and then on Monday, and then on Monday, you're going to give her an appointment on Thursday, and then you're going to get her there on Thursday, and then you're going to say, Oh, now the insurance, it's going to be three weeks from now when this happens, right? And I'm like, I'm going to make this happen today. And so I got up this morning, and now my wife has an appointment at three o'clock at a different place. Yay. Because I just don't quit, like, I don't have that in me. I don't even know what it is. I don't take credit for it. It was not given to me by a parent, as far as I can tell. Like it's just lucky wiring, right? But when it comes to diabetes, I think you have to get up in the morning and not give up. And I start every day with diabetes thinking I have a mantra around type one, and it's, it's very quiet. I've said it on the podcast, but I don't say it out loud during the day. I'd rather stop a lower falling blood sugar than fight with a high blood sugar. That's how I managed diabetes, like at at its core, that's what I do. It starts with getting up in the morning and not being, I don't know, like not carrying the last day over, but I want to give a lot of like attention to the idea that if you have feet on the floor, or your basal is weak overnight, you wake up in the morning and you've been 300 overnight, or 60 overnight, or you open your eyes and your blood sugar goes from 85 to 185 like, it's gotta be a lot harder to be like, hey, everything's gonna be all right. It is. I want you guys to be able to find that hope and that joy in the morning. But I think it comes from the same thing we talk about over and over again. It comes from tools, and it comes from understanding how insulin works and timing and amount and mitigating as much as possible, being in that situation in the morning like that's what I think is important. Because I think that most people wake up and. It must be like opening your I don't have diabetes, right? But it must be like opening your eyes in a box hole. Somehow you fell asleep. It's Normandy, and you fell asleep somehow. And when you open your eyes for a half a second, you don't remember that Jerry's shooting a mortar at you. And then all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Here it comes. Here it comes. Your adrenaline pops up and your day is ruined before you dries all the way open. That's got to be what it's like, right? I don't know. I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:25
think in the realm of sleep, I can't say that I remember ever having a dream in which I know that I have diabetes. That's interesting, right? So, and it's kind of the same concept of what you're talking about, that wake up in the morning like my alarm goes off. I don't think to just look at my CGM first thing in the morning. I know that that sounds very bizarre, like coming for me, but it is. I kind of wake up in that same realm of the alarm goes off. My brain kind of cycles through, what do I have coming for the day? Is it a weekend day? Is a day that, you know, get the boys up for school and kind of get rolling for the day, but unless I have alarms alerts or some craziness going off, that reminds me that diabetes is in the picture, and it kind of goes along with what you said. You know, if you've been 300 overnight, you're probably going to feel like trash in the morning. So that's going to remind you almost right away about diabetes versus stability, good quality sleep, and kind of get rolling from the start of the day in a place that allows you to move into your day with that hopeful kind of perspective. I
Scott Benner 6:35
don't want to ignore the fact that if you were low overnight or high overnight, that you're gonna feel horrible. Like, I'm not saying just like, Get up and push through it. That's I'm saying, let's figure out how that happens, so that you have stability overnight, so that you can wake up with the best possible, you know, start to the day, and
Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:52
that you're not rolling over, like you said from yesterday's
Scott Benner 6:55
Oh, like, yeah, it's not even over yet, right? Like, yeah, over yet. Yeah.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:59
I mean, in that it happens a lot with evening meals, whether they're really heavy, heavy meals, and your body is still processing them, or it's a really late, heavy meal, or any of that, absolutely that's a first thing on your brain. Then, is this done? Yeah, no, did I finally nail it? You're getting
Scott Benner 7:18
your ass kicked in an alley, and you pass out for a second when you open your eyes like, Oh, good. They're still hitting me. Still hitting me, right? Awesome. This isn't over. I genuinely think that these are all little things. They're sayings like, right? They're t shirt slogans that are meant to like, from my perspective, I try to sprinkle in things that I think will help you in moments when you need help, but you don't have the bandwidth to remember an entire episode of a podcast, or everything you Jenny said, or something like that. Like, you know, trust that what you know is going to happen is going to happen. Like, people say that that saves them sometimes. Yeah, I'll just Bolus for a juice box. I don't know what they even call them. I'm sure there's a word for like, that kind of stuff, but I'm just the cliche machine over here about diabetes, like I'm just churning and it ends up helping people. So I'm not saying ignore things aren't going well and just buck up like that is certainly not what I'm saying. But what I'm telling you is, if you can put yourself in that position to wake up in the morning and just be hopeful, it really is going to help a lot. I mean, it genuinely is going to bring a lot to your life. So go listen to the Pro Tip series and figure out how to make it so that you can sleep and wake up like a like a regular person who doesn't have diabetes a lot of the time.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:31
Agreed. I think a big piece that goes into that, too is, thankfully, again, our new technology. And I don't know if you've read them, maybe not, but the 2025, Ada, sort of standards of care this year, they have some very specific things that they've they've really addressed things like type twos should have access to a CGM, awesome. They should have right in terms of like type one screening should be there for type one, and from the technology standpoint, they absolutely have statements now within these guidelines of health care providers should learn how to use these systems accurately and assist their kind of patients in in using them, should be recommending them, whether they're FDA approved or the do it yourself, systems which are part of the recommendation, which is fantastic. What
Scott Benner 9:27
happened over at the ADA, somebody fall in their head and decide to do a good job? I don't, I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:31
don't know, but I mean, they're, they're really fantastic adjustments to the standards they're I think they're coming to realize, as you're saying, this hopeful nature, it goes along with tools that are working well, right? And we have to put the tools in the hands of the people that need them sooner than later.
Scott Benner 9:51
Yeah, I'm a proponent of that idea. Like, I've been through all the conversations and the ideas around, you know, like, oh well, sometimes you know that i. Of like, oh, you should get a, get a needle in a meter and figure it out that way first. Like, I don't know. Like, I think you need to have as much information as possible. Some people are going to be overwhelmed by it. That's fine, but we'll help them get through that. Everyone's progress shouldn't be, you know, held back because some people will be overwhelmed by it. Because a lot of people won't be, won't be, yeah, and so it has to stop being like a zero sum, you know? And
Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:25
I would say it's amazing, from what you just said about some people will be overwhelmed, and some people won't. It will surprise you, the people who you would expect it to overwhelm, and then it doesn't, and it doesn't, it absolutely is the best thing you could have done for them, and you didn't think again. This is a judgment piece. Unfortunately, judgment is there. And do you think that they're quote, unquote smart enough to think that they can do it? I mean, all the things that you have no right to really pass over in telling somebody that this is an available piece, let's see if it can work for you. You can't
Scott Benner 10:59
prepare for failure. No, it's the wrong way to come at this. You have to, you have to prep people for success, and for those people who don't have that success, then you pull them out and help them. But you don't just set everybody up to fail and then hope some of them figure it out on their own, which has basically been how this has been going since, you know, for 30 years before my daughter had diabetes, you're all gonna die. Oh, look, some of them didn't. What a plan. Jesus, like, you know, like, what a plan. Great job. Well, listen, whoever at the ADA, whoever found their balls and decided to do this, I think it's awesome. So good for you. Thank you. Yeah, that's enough, Jenny, we're done.
You Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I Bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less, a little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025
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. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast, private Facebook group. Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook if you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. You.
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