#546 Type 1 Firefighter

September 21, 2021Scott Benner

Kyle is an adult firefighter living with type 1 diabetes.

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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
Friends, this is Episode 546 of the Juicebox Podcast.

On today's show, I'm joined by Kyle. He's an adult who's had Type One Diabetes for a handful of years. He's also a firefighter. And he is an interesting one. There are a few other things that are interesting about Kyle, but I don't want to give it all away right here. I'd like you to listen to the

Unknown Speaker 0:29
episode.

Scott Benner 0:31
Of course, I'd also like it if you remembered while you were listening, that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan for becoming bold with insulin, have you ever heard that episode bold with insulin? It's the 11th episode in the podcast number 11. Check it out. I've got a little space here. So I'm going to use it up. If you're a US resident who has type one or a US resident who is the caregiver of someone with type one, and you'd like to help people living with Type One Diabetes, but you don't want to get off your sofa. I've got the link for you. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox takes you less than 10 minutes to fill out the survey. And when you do you help people living with type one diabetes, and you support the podcast. It's a win win win.

This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. g vo hypo Penn. Find out more at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. Since you have to have a meter you might as well get a good one. Try the Contour Next One blood glucose meter find out more about it at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox.

Kyle Kondoff 1:57
Just looking to my ptmc my phone my PDM and then I got my my glucose on my watch. So make sure Where's your blood sugar at? I can see it Oh, oh 117 A Here we go. My name is Kyle Kondoff. And I'm a type one diabetic. There's no pressure now, firefighter for going on 10 years now. And just over five years diagnosed as type one.

Scott Benner 2:22
Wow, how old are you? I'm 3232. So you became a firefighter 22 diagnosed around 27. Yes, I got that pretty well, we get that if everybody would just come on with like increments of five for all their answers. I think I would look like a genius. What made you want to be a firefighter.

Kyle Kondoff 2:43
So I was actually a pedestrian versus vehicle. I was the pedestrian whenever I was 19 years old. And the firefighters basically brought me back from the dead, kind of they did CPR and had the defibrillator on me and everything, according to my friends. And so whenever they got me back, they got me in the ambulance and flew me to the hospital and I came back after basically having to learn to walk again. And it was probably about four months later that I decided that you know, they saved my life. So I wanted to save other people's lives. I started off as a lifeguard here in San Antonio at Six Flags, Fiesta, Texas got up the supervisor and talked to the EMTs and medics that were at the waterpark and the park itself. And they talked to me about you know, being an EMT and, and firefighter and everything. So I started on that journey at that point.

Scott Benner 3:45
Wow. How old were you when you were in the accident? That was 1919. What were you doing? How'd you did? Let's just be for a second. Was it you? Or was it the car? What happened?

Kyle Kondoff 3:56
It was the cars fault. They well unfortunately, Texas is a crosswalk state. So he got to be in a crosswalk and everything. So the guy wasn't really at fault. There's problems with the police report, and he said he wasn't intoxicated. The cop said he didn't appear to be intoxicated. But the cop also said that I was wearing the wrong colored clothes from what I was at night. I don't have the clothes anymore because they cut them off at the hospital. Or they're on the scene. But at the same time. I know what I was wearing, because I pictured from that night so it kind of it screwed me in a way that you know, we couldn't sue the guy or anything like that. But turns out that my friends believed us intoxicated. So anyway, it was not a drunk driver but a drunk driver that hit me. And he he actually drove about 200 feet farther down and I guess kinda looked in his rearview mirror and saw all my friends kind of standing around me. And the first thing he did was he ran up on top of wherever we were. I was laying in the ground and everything my friends were dealing with me And the first thing he said was I swear I haven't been drinking so

Scott Benner 5:06
it's always the way to go. I just want to start by saying I don't know how that woman got my bed now honey you ever heard ever heard Dennis Rodman? Explain getting caught cheating. We Carmen electric. Yeah. Have you heard him say that? He said the the woman fell out of the ceiling. He did not know how she got into the hotel room. Yeah. I think you're out of excuses when you go to that. Pretty much. Anyway, um, what kind of injuries Did you sustain?

Kyle Kondoff 5:36
So I actually had a compound fracture my femur, my left femur, and that's where the bone breaks through the skin by it broke right in the middle of my leg. And I had two fractures in my left hip, where the the the bones were cracked and everything, and I had a surgery to put two pins in my hip. And then I have a rod going through my femur. Luckily, I was 19 at the time, and so they didn't have to pull it out. And you know, worry about me growing or anything like that I was done at that point. But I still, you know, still have pain and stuff to this day from that. But then outside an NCL and an ACL tear on my right knee. So basically, I was standing a certain way and the car clip me. And then I had various injuries to my face. And hey, and I had road rash on my hand. And then from where I hit the windshield, you can see scars and stuff, holding cracks and everything.

Scott Benner 6:33
That's terrible. And you are your professional firefighter.

Kyle Kondoff 6:38
Yes, yeah, I've been doing this for over two and a half years now career, I was volunteered before that. But I worked on an oil rig as a confined space and rescue team member and then I was an oilfield, firefighter as well. So now I work for the county area. Two jobs right now,

Scott Benner 6:57
a lot of intense jobs that you have. They're all like very physical, are you incredibly physically fit, or?

Kyle Kondoff 7:04
I'm not gonna say incredibly physically fit. But yes, it's very important to stay fit for our job. I mean, as you know, you know, firefighting is an intense job anyway. So no matter what we have to work out, we have to keep ourselves up to a certain standard.

Scott Benner 7:19
Yeah, so I have the tiniest overlap, trust me, but it's a very tiny overlap with you. But my entire life growing up, my father was a volunteer fireman. And I look back on that time and genuinely believe that 65% of it was a way for him to get out of our house. And, but the other bit was, he really was, you know, like a community oriented person, he really did want to be helping people. And there were times it's funny how it goes, right? There are stretches. When I was younger, where there were a lot of fires, and I don't just mean like, you know, somebody bush in their backyard, but buildings that were involved in, you know, required, you know, multiple counties and things like that. And now there just don't seem to be as many of those types of fires, is that building code stuff? Like why or am I making that up? Or are there?

Kyle Kondoff 8:13
No, you're not? You're not actually making that up. So what I would assume, and this is me not knowing exactly, you know, when your father was a firefighter, but you're talking up in New Jersey, New York area, correct?

Scott Benner 8:25
Yeah. And they can the 70s 80s

Kyle Kondoff 8:28
Yeah, in there. So those were called the warriors. That's actually whenever they had the most fires. That was, unfortunately, we lost a lot of guys on 911. And a lot of those guys were from that era that passed, but they took a whole lot of knowledge with them. And they had a lot of fires. I've been reading books lately about a lot of guys that were in in the 70s and 80s started taking their tests and stuff. But were with the captains and chiefs and whatnot, that that fought during those years. And that I mean that sometimes, you know, five, six fires a day, in the bad parts of you know, the cities and areas where it was rundown, and they had vagrants and stuff like that. And it had a lot to do with with New York and the New Jersey area. So it's a whole lot different fighting fire up in the northeast than what it is down here in Texas.

Scott Benner 9:19
not crazy. I just have to say that I you know, I realize you're a professional at this point, but it's amazing to watch a siren go off, and a salesman and a trash truck driver. My dad was a you know, a man who took care of machinery and a rubber molding factory and, and you know, these people would all just sort of come together and they jumped on a truck and rode to a fire and took care of it like like professionals it was and they did a lot of training. I tried when I was 16. And I did it for three years. And I had to do hundreds of hours of training. Just to you know, just to take the thing off my helmet that made everybody think I didn't know what I was doing just so they maybe give me a chance to try something, and it was an incredible thing to help other people, and it's time consuming. And I don't, I don't imagine that people who, who live around paid fire departments realize that, that a lot of the country is covered by volunteers.

Kyle Kondoff 10:15
So it's actually 70%, around about 70%. volunteer in the entire country, there's very few major metropolises that have, you know, the the professional career firefighters, we're all professionals, you know, the careers and the volunteers, guys, we all terrain, you know, exactly how we can, to the best of our ability all the time, and you might see some putting in a little more effort than others. But at the same time, you know, we all have to realize that we've got a job to do. And so it's really important. But as you were talking about the training, we have continuing education, where we're constantly training on shift, trying to do some sort of training all the time. So

Scott Benner 10:59
I just, I will never forget, I've tried to pass this ideal on to my kids, and I don't know that I've ever done it well, but the first time I was at, at a training academy, and we were going to go into a building, so this building is just this concrete shell so they can burn it over and over again, right. And, you know, we entered the building, the fire was on the second floor, we send it the stairs, we get to the top of the stairs, and I've never, and I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again, it was like being inside of a giant pizza oven. Every wall and the ceiling was covered in fire. It was just everywhere. And and, you know, and everyone's training except for and so there's there's nervousness. And so, the person lugging the hose just drops it and you hear it go down the stairs, down each step, just all the way down, you're like, Okay, you can just hear the nozzle just tumbling down the stairs. And so in that moment, the four of us that didn't know what the hell we were doing, you know, we're like, what do we do? And I think one of them said, I'll get it the rest of you stay. And so somebody hustled to it brought it back. And for you know what, I'm gonna be honest, how was probably 25 seconds. The without the water on the fire the room just it was it was just done. Just it's indescribable. What that much fire look like. And I just thought I'll never forget how, how awesome the power of it is. It just was, it was insane. Then the water headed, it just started to quell and you were like, Oh, my God. And I got out of there. And I thought, why am I doing this. But I think there's a large part. And we're gonna move on in a second. But I think there's a large part of the fact that I don't panic around diabetes, that comes out of those three or four years that I spent doing stuff like that, because I was around things that were dangerous and dead bodies and being awoken at three o'clock in the morning, and then suddenly having to do something that's sometimes physical or thought, you know, thoughtful or, you know, you're, you know, you're sound asleep, and five seconds later, you're racing down the street in this giant truck. And so I've seen some panicky things. And I know the difference between something to panic about and something not to panic about. I was wondering if you see any correlation between that and how you handle your type one?

Kyle Kondoff 13:23
Absolutely. So I think that that is something that I didn't address. For the longest time, I didn't realize exactly, you know, growing up, we're all raised differently, we're brought up in a certain way. And even I mean, I have a sister, you know, she's a little bit different than I am and the way that we were brought up, but from family to family, everything differs. And I think that's how we have to think about it with our diabetes, because for so long, I've tried to show people exactly what I do for my diabetes and how I take care of it and how I've achieved my success. And there's still there's good days and bad days everybody has. And I think there's the panicking part, though, exactly what you're talking about, you know, I can, because of the way I take care of myself, and because I'm not panicking, I can be sitting on the scene and I'm 65 and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna get a glucose tablet. And I'll address this a little bit later, you know, but right now I have to worry about this fire, I have to worry about this medical patient, whatever the case may be. And kind of the same thing with highs. If you know we're eating and I've given insulin, most of the time, I don't give insulin before I'm eating on the job. But if I've given insulin, then I'm not going to freak out. I'll pop a couple of glucose tablets and go on the call and you know, I'll deal with the low or the high later on, I'll figure it out. But no matter what, it's always an adjustment game. And I think just not freaking out is the the hard part to convey, especially to newly diagnosed I mean, it's very difficult to, you know, be in that hospital room and be at the doctor's office, whatever the case may be and just be explained all this information. You're sitting For four or five hours, and then they give you an insulin and a meter and say, okay, you do it now. And it's hard not to freak out after that. So you know, that's why we say that people are in their honeymoon phase. And, and they're, you know, as firefighters were probationary firefighters, I called the newbies that are coming in probies, because it takes some time to learn, they've got to learn from everybody else, they've got to figure it out for themselves, figure out what the carbs are going to do figure out what the protein is going to do figure out everything, and, and make adjustments, and it's going to take some time, it's not going to happen overnight.

Scott Benner 15:34
I can't, I can't agree with that any more Actually, I just think that there's, there's such a, there's such a line to be drawn between, you know, a lot of people don't have this experience. But you know, I was only ever a volunteer, and, but I lived just across the street from the firehouse that I that I worked at. And so we used this a long time ago. I'm pretty old. Now, Kyle. But we used to have these, um, these little like squawk boxes in our houses. And I don't know how they worked. But when the county you know, set off the tones that that triggered, you know, the siren back at the Firehouse that got people to come to the files, they would also set off these little boxes in our in our houses. And they would just give off this a really loud pitch squeal that was just, it was frightening if you were asleep. I mean, it would scare the hell out of you every awake, right? And so you're dead asleep, suddenly, on your feet, you don't know how you're in close, I just run across the street, I'd be in my gear and waiting as people came up. And Moments later, it's four o'clock in the morning, and you are literally driving down the street there, you know, lights going, you don't need sirens, hopefully that time of the morning. And there's this and you're listening to the radio and someone's explaining to you what's what's about to come when you get there. And you're like, Wow, I've only been awake for 10 minutes, and I'm pulling hose off a truck and that buildings on fire and all the neighbors are standing out here. And there's no time to react to how horrible all that is. It's just like something bad happened. And now I'm going to do the thing I'm supposed to do. And and you don't get to live in the part that the neighbors are living in. You know, you don't I mean, I just think that with diabetes that obviously in the beginning, right? You don't have all the tools and all the training and it's all just panicky. But once you've got it, then that's where I think you see people who have any kind of autoimmune issue actually stuff that they live with all their lives. They just the here's the bad thing. Here's what I do next. And then it ends. And that's it. And you don't have you don't have to get involved in the in the drama that that exists in there for the people who are uninitiated or, or, or don't know what to do next when they see something like that happen?

Kyle Kondoff 17:47
I don't know. Yes, for sure. For sure. No, I hear exactly what you're saying. because like you said, you know, the training and figuring it all out whether it be firefighting, whether it be dying, be diabetes, then you're training yourself, whenever you're a rookie, whenever you're going your first fire or something like that, you know, the guys turning around, and that's why it's a big deal for you. And you know, we have a special dinner, you know, he buy dinner, whatever it is, because it's a big deal for you, because it's your first fire. Well, whenever you get off that truck, or you come around the corner, and you see those flames, your eyes are open wide, and everybody's gonna be watching your back the best that they can, because they know that you don't know at all, you don't know exactly what you're doing, you have to be monitored by somebody else. And I think that's important with diabetes is right away. I mean, we have the diabetic online community, but we've also got our CDs, we've got our endos. And we've got people that we can talk to and figure it out. Whenever we're first diagnosed, I think a huge, huge thing is the diabetic online community. Because sometimes it's difficult to reach a CV, sometimes it's difficult to reach the endos. And not everybody's gonna have the answer that you want on the DLC. But at the same time, there's somebody out there, and we're all going through somewhat of the same thing. So we understand it. And that's the hard part is sometimes it's hard to realize whenever you've been in this for 50 years, five years, 10 years, whatever it is, there's somebody that just got the news yesterday, and you're trying to give them all that information, and you're getting frustrated with them. But at the same time, they're frustrated because they're going through this. So we all just need to sit back and look at it and I think empathy is huge.

Scott Benner 19:24
You have to be able to cherry pick knowledge from people to like you can't just look at somebody and idolize them and say this is the person who knows everything because this person might have very like you know, I'm I keep like flipping back and forth between this and firefighting. But I remember this one guy who just could run the scene, like he was very good at keeping everything together, putting people in places, keeping people working and getting the fire out. And I'd listened to him about that stuff. But there was also another guy that one time got caught in a room and just went through the wall into another room and you're like that no one teaches that. Like that guy's like, you don't even Like he's a different guy. And so you wouldn't ask that second guy how to run the scene, you wouldn't ask the first guy, you know, hey, if you really got stuck in a room, what would you do? Because this guy, Greg just took a pry bar and just went through a wall into a room that wasn't on fire. And I was like, that kind of stuff is, you know, everybody has a thing they're good at. And when you reach out online, there's a little more kind of like mental surgery you have to do because you have to first assess who's who, like, who knows what, and also who's been here longer. Because you can sometimes bump into people who are in the same boat you are, but for some reason to you, they seem like they're knowledgeable. You ever, ever, you know what I mean? Like, you'll bump into a, you go into a group chat, or you'll go into a Facebook page, or you see somebody talking on Instagram, and somebody comes off as having gravitas. And you kind of start listening to them. And then the longer you realize, okay, they haven't had diabetes any longer than my kid has, or that I have or whatever. And it's just very interesting. But you have to cherry pick, some people say amazing things. I watched the thread this morning, that I didn't agree with some of the things that were being said in it. And I thought, there's enough smart people in here like this is going to come to a resolution like this thread will eventually end up being its own little thought bubble that's valuable on this topic. But if you don't let the people have the conversation, then it's just one person swooping in and going, No, no, this is right, I'd rather see the conversation happened. But it can be difficult coming in from the outside to pick through all that information and come out with a good stuff. But that really is the key. Because once you can cherry pick from people, then you've got a real full understanding of what diabetes is about.

Kyle Kondoff 21:46
So I hear exactly what you're saying, I think the important thing is definitely do your research. Because it took me about a year after diagnosis to figure out exactly where I am. Now. I'm gonna say a cuss word in the diabetic community. And that's Dr. Bernstein and low carb. And that's what I follow. But you know what Dave, people that aspect of that's a customer that's that's a bad thing we don't want to listen to that is the attitude of other people. That is to to his followers attitude of very few people that just ruined it for everybody else. I'm talking about people that I've heard that whenever I started mentioning it in a Facebook group, somebody said, Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. or we don't want to hear that that's not part of this group, or, you know, I've been kicked out on Facebook groups because of stuff like that. And that's because other people have taken whenever somebody posted that it's their birthday, and here's a birthday cake, or, you know, whatever it is, they put up a picture of an amputated toe. And they just call people names, and they say you're killing your kids, and you're doing all this kinds of stuff. It's, I mean, I'm not gonna get into politics, I'm not gonna get into religion. But this is exactly what the problem is with social media is the fact that we're just criticizing something that somebody is doing. And we're not providing a solution. You just keep on name calling and everything, we learned this, this kid sticks and stones may break my bones. But words can never hurt me, well, then everybody gets hurt on social media because of the things that they say, and we get kicked out of Facebook groups. But then you give people like me, other people that are doing this a bad name. And the message doesn't get out. I mean, I don't have all the followers that some of the other people have on Instagram, and I'm fine with that. I'm not trying to be super high up there in the diabetic community. But at the same time, I want some of the information that I'm putting out there that some of the other people are putting out there that's working for us to get out. Like you said, I don't want somebody to copy me for everything. And when I first started, people were asking me, you know, what is your correction factor? What's this, I'm not going to give you my numbers, because I may have somebody that goes on there and thinks, Oh, well, that needs to be my correction factor. And that's an issue, because we're not all the same. So our bodies react differently to foods, our bodies react differently to insulin, we react differently, to all kinds of things, I mean, 42 factors that affect blood sugar, I'd argue there's a couple more, let me tell you what, whenever I drink coffee, my blood sugar spikes, I cover it with insulin, whenever I go on a fire, then my blood sugar spikes because of adrenaline, so I gotta not necessarily cover it with insulin, because after the fire, I'll start to come down a little bit. But no matter what we have to figure out what works for us. And it's going to take time overall, like I said, coming in there as a probie. You know, just on day one, you're not going to expect Now, don't get me wrong, as a firefighter, if you come in at 6am for your shift, and we have a call at 605 everybody's gonna be watching your back, and you still have to go on the fire. But that's not quite the way it isn't diabetes, we're not going to just throw you to the wolves and then say, you handle it. We're not even going to give you any advice. You know, there's people out there that you can cherry pick what that information is, but also there's people out there that are just doing bad for the diabetes. community and it's unfortunate it really is because some of the good information doesn't get out there. And some of the bad information gets spread a little bit more to people. And people realize that this is a disease, and I'm just gonna have to live with the highs and the lows and just be miserable all my life. I mean, we don't have to be miserable all the time, we can make adjustments over time. And I know you've proven that you don't have to live a low carb life, you don't have to do whatever you let art and eat whatever she wants to eat. And I know people like Matt Silvio who eats 300 to 600 grams of carbs a day, compared to my 30 grams of carbs a day. And he has an agency and daily graphs that look pretty equal to mine. So there's more than one way to skin a cat, right. And I think that we all have to realize that you have to find what's best for us.

Scott Benner 25:44
So how, I mean, I've been at this quite a while. And it's given me some context for life in general, not just around diabetes. But in social media, in general, is a very small percentage of people. Most people walking the planet are not on Facebook, at all the time like it, listen, they might have a Facebook account, but they're not living on Facebook, I could post something on Facebook right now. And I could with some reasonable assure surety write down the name of the first 10 people I think will like the post. So they're just always there. Or they have it set up so that every time somebody says something, they see it, you know, and when you get caught in a conversation about Ybarra coffee, it gets a great example, right? You drink coffee, your blood sugar goes up, someone else says I drink coffee, it doesn't touch my blood sugar. There's more people that are still don't see the causation between coffee and blood sugar at all, because it doesn't have carbs in it. Nobody ever brought it up to them. So they never pay attention to it, they might live their whole life. Just thinking, you know, my blood sugar gets high every morning around 1030 craziest thing, and never see the connection to, you know, a drink or anything like that. And so when you bring all these people together, the one thing that they lack is the knowledge about how to talk to a crowd, a crowd of people who all have varying realities. And so that's, to me, what ends up lacking in social media, because everyone gets a voice is that there's not one learned person who's kind of leading the way. And I could probably make an argument the other way that you need all these extra voices. And that's how you drag things forward. And it's true. But in the moment, like we're not trying to, I'm not trying to build a bridge 10 years from now, I'm hoping that the people who are listening can just be healthier today. And I'll come out and say I have no trouble saying, if you eat less carbs, you'll use less insulin, and you'll have less variability in your blood sugar. That's almost a short. You know, like, there's I don't know, anybody who can argue with the idea that fewer carbs in a person using insulin makes managing diabetes easier. That just is obvious. But then as soon as you say that out loud, someone hears you're telling me I can't have cake or whatever it ends up being right. And and right. And, and you are reasonable person, you're like, No, I'm not telling you I'm not having cake. I'm just telling you, Hey, this is how we this is how it works out for me. But then, like you said, some lunatic runs in and yells, you're going to lose a limb. And then there we go. And it turns out that in every faction, there's some lunatics and then they all start throwing, throwing Barb's at each other. And before you know it, the story is people online are crazy. When for a year and a half now, I've seen in the private Facebook group for this podcast, that that doesn't need to be true. I see people in there who are have all varying kinds of ideas about management, and I watch them all get along. And I don't know what that is. But I'm pleased about it. And, and that's it and there's no policing, like I don't like there's no What do I even call it monitor people who monitor the face? I don't have that. admin.

Yeah, I don't have that. When anybody, you know, sometimes people will report a post or like this person, and I'll look at an hour ago, I don't know why you lie. Is this a problem? And I just I'm like, No, like I've maybe once or twice people are trying to, you know, pimp their business or something like that. And you're you stop them. But I don't get why adults can't have adult conversations coming from varying perspectives. But it's harder than it than it should be. But I don't think it's impossible. And I like to let the fights play out. I also think that's where Facebook groups go wrong in the defense of protecting one position. They'll like, no, we're not talking about this anymore. I'm like, Yes, and you're a bunch of adults, talk about it, fight with each other. You know, it's gonna stop and normally they don't fight and if they do like I Don't get it like I don't I had a person write me recently and said, I love your podcast. I love your Facebook group, I'm going to keep listening to the podcast, but I can't be in that Facebook group anymore. And I'm like, What happened? So there was one post. That was something political. And it was right around something that was going on in the country that was just a hotbed of thought. And people like they went back and forth about a little bit and I came in, I was like, Look, guys, keep it a diabetes, or like, we're gonna have to, I'm gonna close the the post op, and I let them go for a lot longer. And finally, I just was like, Alright, that's enough. And you close it, and it just kind of drifts away on the Facebook page. But I thought to myself, like, wow, this page has been very valuable for this person for their health. And in one year, there's one conversation that gets political. And that's it for you, you're done. Like, just don't look at that. You know, like, I don't even get that and I'm not I don't understand how somebody can't just not look at something that makes them upset. I don't look at things that make me upset. Seems reasonable for me to avoid stuff like that. But anyway, I, you know, I'm with you. Like I really am I however people want to eat is how they want to eat. I've always come from the perspective of you should know how to use insulin so that however you choose to eat, you can manage your diabetes, because no one deserves to have crazy like, high or low or crashing blood sugar's just because they don't want to eat low carb or they were they do want to eat low carb, but you could eat low carb and not know how to use your insulin and still be in trouble. So you know, it's to me it's about using insulin. What but So, let's go backwards for a second. Tell me a little bit about when you were diagnosed. How old were you? 2227 27 excuse me and how did it come on? Gee vo hypo pan has no visible needle, and it's the first premixed auto injector of glucagon for very low blood sugar in adults and kids with diabetes ages two and above. Not only is chivo hypo pen simple to administer, but it's simple to learn more about. All you have to do is go to G Volk glucagon.com Ford slash juicebox. Je Vogue shouldn't be used in patients with insulinoma or pheochromocytoma. Visit je Vogue glucagon.com slash risk.

When your doctor handed you a blood glucose meter, did you say to them, is this a good one? Or did you just think I don't know anything about this, I just got diabetes and doctor has given me a blood glucose meter, then all of a sudden, this is your meter. Before you know it, you're buying replacement test strips. You're not even wondering if the meter is any good. You just think well, this is my meter. But they make meters. A lot of different ones. Some of them are better than others. This one a Contour. Next One blood glucose meter is really really good, Tandy. As a matter of fact, it's handy. As a matter of fact, it's easy to hold and easy to use, it has Second Chance test strips so you don't ruin a test strip if you hit some blood, but don't get enough. And it doesn't really need that much blood. Plus, it's super duper accurate. That's not a technical term, but it is super duper accurate. Once you check it out, it's possible you'll be eligible for a free meter. They have a test CHIP program. There's a lot of things to learn at Contour Next One comm forward slash juice box. But the one thing I'm here to tell you is that the Contour Next One is an accurate, easy to use easy to see at night. meter that you can use either by itself or with a connected app on your phone to keep track of your doings your goings on your tests and stuff, your data you understand. Contour Next One, forward slash juicebox. Don't just use the meter. Somebody handed you do some research. Get yourself a good one.

Kyle Kondoff 34:09
I was on the oil rig working in the confined space rescue team back in 2014. That's whenever I started the job. And during that time, unfortunately, we were also goes to Louisiana. And I mean, especially knowing what I know now, it was fried food, burgers, pizza, fried food, everything that was easy to make on an oil rig. And we had sodas and we had chips and we had candy bars and we had everything available. The one thing that I wasn't doing a lot of was drinking water, but I was drinking a lot of other stuff. So we would go down and we would work in well the construction guys would work in the hole we would be on the floating rigs with the columns and we would go down into those columns. 250 feet. Well, long story short, there wasn't a bathroom down there. We figured out alternative. And I was going to the bathroom a whole lot more than everybody else. Everybody was taking their snack bags or taking their drink bags. And it was kind of a community drink bag. And at some point, I started taking my own drink bag down. And I had a lot of drinks. And I had a lot of Gatorade, and I had a lot of soda, and I had very few waters. And I would start to run out of things to fill up whenever I'd have to go to the bathroom, because we'd be down in that hole for either four to eight hours, depending on the work day. And I didn't realize it at the time. But I was also having blurry vision that was associated with diabetes. We attributed it because everybody was kind of having headaches and stuff like that, to the welding machines to the carbon monoxide to everything else, you know, that was going on on the rig. And I was taking Nexium for

acid reflux. And the side effect of that is dry mouth. So I'm drinking a lot. So whenever you drink a lot, you have to go to the bathroom a lot. So everything was attributed to something else that was happening. Fast forward to 2016. And I had to have 36 hours of blurry vision. I was working in a hospital at the time. And I mentioned it to one of the nurses I had had blurry vision off and on. And she said you might be diabetic. I said, there's no way. So the next day I went out and my fiance at the time. Now my wife, we were planning our wedding and going to some flea markets and picking stuff up. And I said, Man, that microphone is really blurry. And my wife wears glasses. And she said, What microphone? Now? I was like, Okay, I guess my visions are right. And so later on in the day, we had Sonic and I started feeling not so good. And my vision stayed blurry. And I said, You know what, maybe we should go to the store and buy a meter. So we went to the first store and unfortunately, that's hv here locally, it was the pharmacy was already closed. They require a booth to buy from the pharmacy, not over the counter. And so I had to go to CVS, Walgreens and buy a meter there. And the first check I did in the car said 394. So I texted one of my nurse friends from work and she said, What did you eat? 30 minutes to an hour ago, we had Sonic I had this whatever. And it's funny because the lack of education for diabetes, I don't blame it on her. I blame it on the system in general. She kind of said, Well, you know, wait, another 30 minutes to an hour and check again. Because at that time at 394, obviously on diabetic or pre diabetics, something's going on, because it's not going to be over 200 realistically. And so I checked again, 30 minutes, and it was 402. So I looked at my wife and said, We got to go to the hospital. So we went to the hospital. And they looked at me and said, Oh yeah, you're type two diabetic, we'll give you know two things are fluid to iv boluses. And follow up in your PCP. Oh, here's a prescription for Metformin. 160 pounds soaking wet at 27 years old. And now I'm diagnosed with Type two diabetic. I go to my doctor, unfortunately, my doctor was on vacation. So I saw his colleague, and he said, Oh, ya know, anybody can be diagnosed type two, any age, any size, whatever, it doesn't matter. And, of course at that doctor, it wasn't an endo It was a PCP so they're looking at not Lada they're looking at type two, they're not looking at anything else. Modi, any other kind of diabetes, just diagnosing type two. So they said check your blood sugar once a day, keep on taking Metformin, I'm checking in the morning, for about three weeks, I was having high, two hundreds, low three hundreds every single time I checked, there was a couple times where I checked here and there throughout the day, but it still wasn't even improving. And I said I've got to go back to the doctor, something's wrong. And I've been looking it up and you know, maybe I'm a type one diabetic. So what does the doctor my doctor was back he took one look at me and he said cow, there's no way you type two. We'll do some tests and check and make sure that you know you're type one. And obviously, ever since then I've been on the magical. I used to say magical drug but now it's a hormone. I know it's not even a drug because everybody else's body makes it but magical hormone called insulin and diagnosed type one at that time. So it was a little bit of a rough road for those three weeks. But it was even rougher. Obviously after that trying to figure out insulin and carbs and everything else. I went to some diabetic education classes and everything was thrown at me. And like I said it was about a year later it was right at the end of 2016 whenever I started lowering my carbs automatically because I had kind of already figured out the carbs were affecting my blood sugar, so many little bit less carbs and see what's happening. So So that was off of some diabetes group, stuff like that. And I started going under 100 grams of carbs. Then I saw somebody mentioned Dr. Bernstein. And it was spring break. That year whenever I had finished up his book, and we were going on a trip to Port Aransas, my family and a couple other families, and I was eating completely different from everybody else. And I took my food and I looked at my blood sugar, we went fishing that day. And I noticed that everything was kind of staying pretty steady. And I was actually pretty happy with the progress. And at that time, I was also getting on to the 670. So the big thing about the 670 was the auto mode. And I realized that auto mode wasn't for me after four days, because it just fluctuated my blood sugar like crazy. Now looking back, if I would have done it again, I would have stayed on at least a week, maybe you know, close to a month. Obviously, my blood sugar still would have fluctuated, but it took a little bit of time for the pump to adjust. And I stayed in manual mode, but it had suspend before low. And that rarely needed to turn on for me, because I set my low alarm to 75. So I kind of adjusted here and there. But ever since I switched over to low carb from that first a one C for almost four years now I've maintained the sub five a one C, and a lot of people want to know my grass, I kind of post a lot of that on social media. And they want to know you know how many lows I have and stuff like that. And the doctor assumed right away, that it was going to be that case that I was going to have a lot of lows and everything was going to be problem. But the thing is having a normal a Wednesday in the normal range of a non diabetic is possible. As a diabetic, we just have to take care of ourselves and we have to monitor with CGM. And by checking ourselves if we don't have those CGM multiple times a day and making sure we're not going low, and we can kind of stay within the normal range. It really is possible. I mean, it doesn't, again, doesn't have to be low carb as the answer just bowled with insulin, like you said. And I mean, honestly, I've listened to your podcast now for the last six months. And I started getting more bold with insulin in my head once these get a little bit better to there. So

Scott Benner 42:12
Kyle, my work. Kyle, am I gonna send you a one c into the mid fours? Is that what's the lowest I've ever had? Scott was a 4.2. Wow, that's amazing. Well, so I'm going to ask a question, but I'm not asking him for the reasons everybody else has said have you? Do you get low? Like with what frequency Do you have like an emergency low where you have to address it?

Kyle Kondoff 42:35
Emergency low, I would consider really below 55. And I hit that up about two to three times per month. But it is not dropping dramatically. Sometimes it's even. And I mean, I'll say it extend the heck out of my sensor. But last Dexcom sensor I got 23 days on so I extended it twice. And it was because my sensor was off. So it's not always because of an actual low. Sometimes it's the censors fault. But I've got my captain following me. I've got my wife following me. I've got some friends following me from around the country. And I also have my nightscout app and anybody can follow me and I show them you know, if you're interested, you can follow me you can see it but I explained the lows and say you can see that I'm not really going low that much throughout the day. So again, it is possible.

Scott Benner 43:24
No, no I can I believe it. I'm also going to tell you I don't think as few as you have, I don't think Arden has that many. And and my point is just that is that you are balancing your insulin against your needs. Bait and your needs are what they are because of how you eat and how you live your life. And that's no different than what Arden's doing. It's exactly the same thing that her body has needs based on her intake and her you know her activity and hormones and all the other things we meet that need with insulin you meet your need with insulin you create less need by putting in fewer carbs. And there's no doubt that that can definitely make more stability. Because then you're probably I'm guessing lower basil rate has more of a chance away from food and Bolus to keep you really low and stable. I How much do you weigh now? About 175? Can you tell me what your basil is? per hour?

Kyle Kondoff 44:24
Yeah, so it's point seven, five. And then in the early morning, I do have a dog phenomenon. So I have point eight five for that.

Scott Benner 44:32
I wish I would have guessed out loud because I was right around point eight in my mind based on your weight and your diet. But if you told me that same weight, and you just a just a standard, you know, practice of you know, I don't mix of things. I would have guessed more like 1.4 1.5 maybe ish, but because you're active, maybe you would end up at 1.3 or something like that, but but it's just it's faster. You're just making The need, there's a need, you're meeting it. And you're doing a great job, obviously. What kinds of things do you eat in the course of the day? I guess there's no more potato chip bags, the Pinto no more potato chip, but it was waterbottle. So I'm sorry, sir. Okay. I was trying to think like, you can't pay it back. I mean, you could but what do you do with it? I also I have about 1000 questions about what it's like to work down in the hole all day. But, but, but But first, just what's your what's your, like your meal planning like Now, how do you eat.

Kyle Kondoff 45:29
So most of the times, I actually skipped breakfast. But I've been getting more into the gym and stuff lately. So I've been trying to add more calories, trying to put on a little bit more muscle, so I'm trying to add more protein. So I've been doing some egg cups, because I was doing omelets before and I had like an omelet mix and stuff. I'm meal prep before where it gets really hard to cook at work sometimes, because the calls and stuff, microwaves my friend. And so I just chopped up some onions, tomatoes, peppers, stuff like that, and throw in some sausage, and kind of mix it mix up some eggs, use muffin tins and make some egg cups, about six of those for breakfast, sometimes a yogurt with it. And then for lunch, I use solo bread, or different kinds of low carb bread and make some sandwiches. I mean, I can do lettuce wraps. I can do things like that. But there's capabilities. And that's the other thing too is like low carb, and keto. There's plenty. I mean, this is like unfortunate to say it was the perfect time for me to become diabetic. And start into this lifestyle. Because there's so many things that have happened in the last five to 10 years for the low carb and diabetic community. I mean, Atkins was the thing years ago, a lot of people were doing it, but you still had to figure things out. And it wasn't so many products. And then of course, sugar alcohols weren't always good for you and stuff, or they just made you go to the bathroom all the time. But then you had all these keto products come out. And some of them are good, some are bad, don't get me wrong, a lot of things, say keto. And they still spike my blood sugar. And I'm like, Hey, guys, just so you know, this is not something you should use, because this is what we're trying to avoid. But do whatever you want. And then other times, it's like, I'm just a meat and veggies kind of guy. So I'll have a steak I'll have, you know, some salad, I'll have some chicken wings. I mean, it's just finding variety in there. Most of the time, we eat about 20 to 30 same meals in our lifetime, in a period of time as humans as a low carb keto guy, I've counted and it's about 15 to 20. So I really haven't missed that much stuff in there just eliminated a lot of the carbs. And a lot of the bad cards, I haven't eliminated the good cards. I mean, I've got plenty of veggies, I do have green leafy veggies all the time. So

Scott Benner 47:49
no, I listen, I got I'm trying to think if I was in the mind, maybe like early 20s and wanted to lose weight. And we I did Atkins to lose weight. And it worked terrific. You know, I mean, like I buy limited carbs from my diet, which ends up it's funny when you think about it, like they all have names. Now, I was saying this to I recorded with Susan about how she eats, it'll come out probably in a month or so from now, which will now confuse everybody because yours will come out after that. But and Susan's, she's, you know, very low carb person. And she, she meal preps really well. Like she just does a really good job of making these these new, like interesting meals, and that are low carb and everything. And, and, and I and I said to her, I was like, you know, we, we call everybody wants to call how they eat something like they wanted to have a title or belong to a group or a club or something like that. But in the meantime, if you eat if you if you eliminate carbs from your diet in America, you're basically eliminating, like rice and pasta and potatoes and you know, and things that come in a bag or a box, which then basically eliminates fructose and sugar and stuff like that just by proxy because you're not eating those things anymore. And what you're really saying is I'm eating more natural things that aren't wheat, and potatoes and rice. And I mean, obviously there's well, way more to it than that. But I mean eating keto, but does that really mean you don't mean? Like, like, I'm low carb, but does that really just it's just you're just eating certain things. And a lot of the things you're eliminating, honestly are, I think are things nobody should be eating to begin with. I yeah, you know, so I have a basic idea about food that it should be able to, within a couple of ingredients break down into things that are obvious and identifiable. That's just sort of how I think about food. You know, I don't eat low carb, but if I make a pizza for myself, I can see that I have flour, salt water, there's a little bit of cheese, there's some tomatoes, there's some garlic, and you know, I don't know, maybe I'll put a sausage on top of it. At least those are the things like the only mean like you start looking at bags, the things that have 50 things inside of them. I think that's when Really get in trouble, not about blood sugars, but more around health in general. It's just that that just seems to make sense to me. You know, and people have said a different ways throughout time like you should be able to pronounce things your eating is one way they used to talk about it. I think it's amazing. How long have you been eating like this? This has been coming up on for years and years, is never once called, Please be honest with me never wants it, you think to yourself, I really wish I could eat. Like there's not something you miss.

Kyle Kondoff 50:31
You know, honestly, whenever I think about something that I miss, I kind of find alternative ways to make it. And that's what I was getting. Whenever I talk about products and stuff. There's low carb donuts, there's plenty of low carb cakes out there, we can make them fresh. There's box ingredients now with swerve and different types of stuff like that. They just had dunkin donuts. And Shipley the last two days at the Firehouse. And I didn't crave them at all, there's a certain amount of time to that our bodies adjust whenever we go low carb and keto that it takes time for you to get rid of the sugar craving. And most of the time, it's close to two months. But after that, you just you kind of lose the cravings. And sometimes whenever you look at certain things, almost makes you want to get sick, because you're like, oh, that doesn't even sound like it tastes good anymore. It's just it's too sweet. I'll tell

Scott Benner 51:20
you as I approach 50, I can I can say for certain that stuff like that, like cookies and cakes and things like that, I don't really I would not, I'm not interested in them with a frequency that I would have been at a younger person. And I don't even know if I was interested back then. Or if I was just kind of broke. And so I grew up in that like, eating at convenience stores on my way to work kind of vibe, you know, like that kind of thing. Nobody was really cooking or prepping meals or anything like that. And I wonder too, if people realize that as you get older, you sort of don't you're not as hungry to begin with. I don't know if that, you know, they just are like, yeah, I think I just like I really do wish I used to say this all the time. But I really do wish eating was like at the beginning of the Jetsons where they all sit down and eat that that little pill, they cut it in half and eat it, you know what I mean? And then they're okay. But there's part of me that just wishes food was like, but, you know, I just don't, I don't know that you realize that. You're not gonna, if you're eating a doughnut right now, and you're 35 like, you're not going to be eating a doughnut, when you're 55 for one reason, or the other, your liver is going to start getting fat and your doctors gonna tell you to stop or you're gonna, you know, start gaining weight, you're gonna wish i got i gotta stop. Like, it's not, it's not a sustainable way to eat forever, for certain, but at the same time, I have had some really good times eating that food in the middle here. So I don't know, like I think of it as a personal choice. I think of all this as personal choices. I just wish people had all the knowledge they needed to make the choice, because in general, we just grow up eating whatever somebody puts in front of us. And then that becomes a thing. I mean, you listen to you, you're down in the hole working, it sounds like you were eating like out of a garbage can almost right, like, and how old were you at that point? That was 2025 26 you don't get diabetes, you think you ever changed the way you eat?

Kyle Kondoff 53:15
You know, that's a hard question. Because I've actually thought about it plenty of times you're mentioning, you know, whenever we were eating that stuff, there's actually a picture whenever I was volunteering, of the guys taking a picture of me whenever we came back from Sam's Club, I was staying at the Firehouse of time, I had lost my grandpa a couple months before. And so I was kind of living at the Firehouse and I picked up one of the Sam's Club thing of donuts, I picked up two loaves of bread. I picked up a cheese ball and a cake and a couple other things. I think only one thing in there was not major carbs, I might have had lunch meat in there, you know for the sandwiches. But no matter what it was just like, this is what I used to eat. And I'd share that video, that photo on social media and stuff during National Diabetes Awareness Month talk about you know, so my whole lifestyle, but it honestly diabetes made me healthier. And it's weird to say that but in a way I think even eating higher carb or anything like that. It makes us more conscious of our life, love our choices and everything. Because before that I was just going through life. And whenever I was in college, I was kind of doing the same thing you were doing. I mean, I'd pick up subway and hey, they had the, the three for five or three for $15 whatever was on Sundays and now like every Sunday I'd be going to subway pick those up. And I'd be eating ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese and you know, we'd have all kinds of things that was the poor foods, I guess, you know, people kind of call them but it was more convenient as we were in college and doing things and even now, my sister in law lives with us and she's 19 my wife talked about it the other day, but she's kind of just eating out convenience eating potato chips, not so much eating meals. It's kind of the way that we did things. I mean something People focus a little more on some of the other extracurricular activities during college and are drinking a little bit more than what they're eating. But still, it wasn't a priority. And we kind of figured that out later in life. And so diabetes just made me healthier in a different way. But you know, it's interesting, something I'm starting to add people don't look at sorry. It's something that people don't look at is some of the positives of diabetes.

Scott Benner 55:24
Right? Well, I'm certainly making no judgments, because I'm not the pillar of health. But I think it's pretty obvious that your body is a machine, and you're feeding it right. And if you don't have anything like type one, then basically you're putting stuff into your machine, some of it's great for your body processes it fine and some of it, it can't, and it does its best to not let you kill it, you know what I mean? Like, that's all your body's doing is it's trying to stay alive as long as it can. And you some decisions you make as the person who put stuff inside of that body, those decisions are great, and some of them aren't. And some of them you don't even realize aren't like little things like different, like processed oils that you really shouldn't be taking in that you're that you take in in food and don't realize how much you're doing. It's you put that in there, it bogs your body down, your body's trying its hardest not to shut off. So it's it's dealing with dealing with it dealing with it, it's the theory eating your body more quickly than it then your body should be deteriorating. And when you get type one diabetes, now all of a sudden, it just becomes more obvious, because there's this one process that your body used to do to try to stop you from dying, that it can't do anymore. And now you're doing it. So you become very hyper aware of it the impact that food has on on your blood sugar. It's just it's the amount of people who end up saying that they think they're healthier because they have type one than they were before. Never, never fails to not shock me but but it never fails to happen is people are like, Oh, you know, now that I'm aware of what's happening, you know, and what I take that as is now that my body's not covering for my, my decisions. And I and I know what they are more frequently. That's it like and don't get me wrong, like I you know, I don't particularly love cereal as a good example. Things that you hear people say a lot like, Oh, I want to learn how to Bolus for cereal. I know how to Bolus Arden for cereal. I've worn a CGM and eaten cereal. And to be honest, my blood sugar didn't go up that far. But that's not the measure of health that my blood sugar didn't go up. That's just the measure of how well my pancreas works. So I hadn't had cereal in a very long time. And I was wearing a CGM around Christmas and I ate it for people. I was like, Alright, here, I'll eat a bunch of cereal. And when I got done, there was a little left in the box. And then the broke part of me like the kid that grew up broke was like, You can't throw that away. Because you paid for it. Which is ridiculous. Because the best thing I could have done for myself was throw it you know, but I was like, oh, it didn't make my blood sugar drop that much. I'll eat it. And I started clearing the things out of the house that I bought to show people while I was eating on a CGM. And I gained like four pounds getting rid of all that stuff like so that people could see my CGM for 10 days in December, I gained like eight pounds. And that's that's no joke. So and don't get me wrong. Like every day, I was like, here, I'm gonna eat a bowl of cereal, which was something that I don't do. And then I was like, Alright, let me get a bag of candy and potato chips and show you what a bag of candy and potato chips do at the same time. The part you didn't hear is that at the end of it, I was like, Oh, I feel terrible. Like I yeah, I felt hard. You know,

Kyle Kondoff 58:31
I actually saw you doing that. It seemed like some people were trying to live vicariously

Scott Benner 58:36
through you like, Hey, you did? There were a number of type ones that were like, can you please eat this for me? Right? Like I ordered a pizza because somebody online asked me to so and, and no lie, the first two slices of pizza my body dealt with. And I was okay. But when I gave it the third slice that my blood sugar got pushed up. And it stayed there for hours after that now, you know, pushed up it was I think in the 160s if I'm remembering correctly, but still higher than my body wanted it to be. Because I could feel it like I got a little tired. I didn't feel so great. You know, like my, you know, my visit to the bathroom. The next day was not as exciting as it could have been. You know, like my body was just not, like ready for all that cheese and the flour and I got a little heartburn from the sauce because I'm old, you know. So there was a lot of interesting things that happen. And don't you think though, that, that that's part of it is when you're being diagnosed, and someone says, here are the things you can't eat anymore. It feels like somebody's stealing something from you, like forget all the actual health benefits for a second, I feel like somebody is taking something from you. So when you're like I think I could figure this out with insulin. I always sort of hope that the people transition this way that they feel like something's being taken from them. They figure out how they can stop that from happening. And to me I think of that as using insulin well but then I Least hope that there's a third act where they go. Alright, well, now that I know how to Bolus for cereal, I'm still not going to eat it as much because I do see the impact it has, and it can't be good for me. I mean, there are just some foods that I mean, it's clear from me watching Arden's blood sugar that your body does not want inside of it. You know, like, that just seems obvious to me. But I don't know. Anyway.

Kyle Kondoff 1:00:22
Yeah, you're exactly what you're saying. Because I think that's all a mindset to is having the knowledge, whether it be a CGM, whether it be poking your finger and everything. But obviously, CGM is much more beneficial because you see it every five minutes, some people don't have that luxury. And that's what's frustrating is the fact that, you know, the, the technology is out there, it's not accessible for everybody. But the knowledge for all that technology is, is not completely out there for the rest of the world for the insurance companies for people like that, because it would be beneficial for like you did for non diabetics to wear this. And I see spouses and other kids and stuff like that on social media, whenever the diabetics or their loved ones, put them on the non diabetics, and they see what it does. Your trial is not the first one. But it's just it's kind of interesting to see the correlation between that. And at the same time, we're thinking about, well, yes, it's genetics. Yes, it's some other stuff. But type two diabetes is further down the road. And we don't want to keep on killing our insulin, making ourselves more insulin resistant over time, and get that type two. So like you said, there's things that our body doesn't want us to eat, that stuff could possibly lead to that in the future. And that's where it comes into play that, you know, whenever non diabetics say, Well, I can't eat that. I mean, yes, you can. Is it going to hurt you in the long run? Nobody knows. We can't tell you. It's kind of unfortunately, it's like what's going on in the country right now? We don't know long term effects of Corona with people. And so it's a wait and see kind of game for these people. And I mean, I don't know, you don't

Scott Benner 1:02:02
want to wake up 15 years from now be growing a horn out of the middle of your forehead is pretty much the point do you don't want something that's not supposed to happen to you to happen to you? Look, I'll be completely honest with you. I haven't been to a fast food restaurant. Since whenever the first time it was that I heard that one of them used some form of silicone in their french fries to keep them something. And I was like, wait, what's that now? And you don't like and I don't remember. I think the company then came out and said, Oh, it's not silicone. It's this. And then when you hear them equivocating about it, you're like, well, I don't think I care if it's actually silicone or derivative of something. How about I don't want to eat that. Like, I won't use nonstick spray on a pan. Like, I just I look at it. I'm like, What is in there? Like, why would I like you know what I mean? Like, it's weird, you'd spray it on a pan would just spray it right in your mouth. No interesting. It's like when you deep fry something, and you start with and don't get me wrong, I just made potato chips recently. They were amazing. But um, you start with five cups of peanut oil. And when you're done, there's three cups of peanut oil in the pan. That means that two cups of the peanut oil is now in the potato chips. So I mean, some of that burned off, but you eat a handful potato chips, you're also eating the oil that it was cooked in. Or you know, and I don't know, there's just something about that. I didn't grow up that way. And it's been a learning process for me. And I don't always win the fight. But I try very hard not to eat something it comes out of a package that's not bagged or boxed or frozen. I just if I'm going to eat something that's not good for me, I'd rather just be ice cream. When I can look at the label and go that's milk and sugar and chocolate. At least it's bad for me and I know what I'm eating it because you don't know what's going to happen later. And I would especially think this sticks in the back of my head sometimes too is you know, there's autoimmune in my family. My daughter has type one. She has hypothyroidism. My wife has hypothyroidism. By the time this comes out, I think I'll be comfortable saying my son was just diagnosed with hashimotos. He's 21 years old and the picture of health. I mean, he is he's a college athlete. And suddenly, recently, he just broke out in hives out of nowhere. And it took a little bit of investigation to find out that he has hashimotos so now he's been on medication for that for I just think that when your body's already, like looking at you going, I wonder what I could get next. Probably don't eat silicone, I guess is my point. I don't know I just try to put yourself on the right side of the fight at the very least give yourself a shot. You know, having said that, I really believe that if you have type one diabetes, any way you want to eat is up to you. I just hope you really understand how to use your insulin because I don't want to see you have that struggle on top of everything else. How do we do today? What do you think?

Kyle Kondoff 1:04:57
I think we did get I think we get by Other good topics.

Scott Benner 1:05:01
I thought we had a nice conversation I really did. I appreciate you doing this, I appreciate you being interested in, in coming on. And if there's anything I missed, now's the time.

Kyle Kondoff 1:05:14
You know, the one thing that I put on social media and it's funny is I tried to be positive about stuff. And lately, it's been a struggle for people to be positive and a lot of things going on. But I kind of mentioned that earlier, look at the positives of diabetes, look at the positive of life. But I always end with this. There's no such thing as a perfect diabetic, I always put up graphs I put on my a onesies, there's good days and bad days. I mean, I'm up there in the two hundreds, maybe three times during that three months, but I'm still down there, low. And there's difficult days, there's good days and bad days for all of us. But there's no such thing as a perfect diabetic. So just don't let anybody judge you on anything that you're doing. And don't focus so much on what everybody else is doing. The only thing we can do is try to beat the person that we were the day before. Well, I agree. And

Scott Benner 1:06:05
I try to remember as well to do the same thing like look, here's the rise Arden had are actually at some point, we've been transitioning Arden onto a birth control pill to try to manage her her periods were coming like really crazy, like she would bleed for like 11 days and then get a five day break and then it would start again. Like it was just insane and it would just keep going on and on it was kid was killing her it was like she was it was like she was just like she was a vampires like buffet line or something like that. It just she couldn't rebound, there was no time to rebound inside. So we tried birth control, the first two months weren't enough of a strength, it was harder for her blood sugar. This is we're in the middle of a third month now with a stronger pill, it's starting to regulate itself. But her blood sugars over the last three months have been incredibly difficult to manage. And so in my world, that means she's going to be more like a six than a five and a half. And that we that she spent more time over 140 than normal, and that there was a lot more insulin used. But it was a fight. And I just always when I'm in the middle of that fight. And I'm trying to imagine how one day I'll talk about on the podcast. I just want people to remember that that stuff like that happens to everyone. But when you come at it with the regular amount of insulin that you always use in every other situation, whether that's because you're leaving a honeymoon or you're having a hormone thing or a growth spurt or whatever, you're gonna lose. If I didn't aggressively go after these last three months. Arden's a once he easily would have been eight and a half. If I would have tried to use the amount of insulin I was using prior to these three months for her. There's no way or a once he wouldn't be a half, but I'll keep it under six. But it's it's with a lot of being flexible and adjusting and things like that. So I hope people remember that.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, g Vogue glucagon, find out more about chivo hypo Penn at GE Vogue glucagon.com Ford slash juice box, you spell that GVOKEGL Uc ag o n.com. forward slash juicebox. I'd also like to thank Kyle for coming on the show and doing such an amazing job. And while we're at it, and we're thanking folks, thanks to the Contour Next One blood glucose meter for being super duper accurate, supporting the show and making just good stuff. Check it out at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox.

I do not know how the 1980s radio guys like modulated their voice all the time and talk like this, it seems really difficult. Anyway, thanks so much for listening. And I really appreciate that you appreciate the show that you're listening to it, that you're downloading it that you're subscribing or following in your podcast app that you're telling friends, generally speaking, I really appreciate you. I'll be back soon with another episode of the Juicebox Podcast.