Scott Benner 7/16/24 Scott Benner 7/16/24

#1254 What Kind of Influence

A mother shares managing her 8-year-old son's recent type 1 diabetes diagnosis, discussing the challenges of maintaining tight blood sugar control while balancing her husband's more lenient approach and the impact on their family.

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

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

Today I'll be speaking with the mother of a type one who is also the wife of a type one and her husband's not great about taking care of himself, and she's worried it's going to rub off onto her child. 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. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juicebox Would you like to help people who have type one diabetes maybe even yourself? Will if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, filling out and completing the survey AT T one D exchange.org/juice. Box will in fact support type one diabetes research. T one D exchange.org/juice box complete that survey you'll be helping after you fill out that survey save 30% off your entire order at cozy earth.com with the offer code juicebox get yourself the same joggers I'm wearing right now. The sweatshirts the shorts the shorts are saving my summer can be serious for a second cozy Earth shorts are saving my summer get 30% off with the offer code juicebox at checkout. Did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you're up to 15 times more likely to get it to screen it like you mean it. One blood test can spot type one diabetes early tap now talk to a doctor or visit screened for type one.com For more info. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod and the Omni pod five. Learn more and get started today at Omni pod.com/juice box.

Emily 2:05
Well I'm Emily I am a 43 year old mom to a type one and new type one diabetic and wife to a type one diabetic as well. I'm also a full time nurse practitioner specializing in nephrology.

Scott Benner 2:22
Okay, so let's get my notes here. She said you're 43

Unknown Speaker 2:26
I am.

Scott Benner 2:28
I've turned 50 yesterday. She doesn't look Thoreau says you say you're 43 your husband has type one. He

Emily 2:35
knows how long have you guys been together? Say we met as ER nurses and 2006 and we got married in 2009. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:47
20 years, about 18 years.

Emily 2:51
I'm on my lunch break. I'm not doing that.

Scott Benner 2:56
See? 1820 years you guys been together? Has he had type on the entire time?

Emily 3:00
He has not. Ah, would you actually you want to start with that story? Yeah, please. Okay. So like I said, we were both ER nurses. When we met actually, I believe he was a nursing student. He's a little younger than me. Oh, and he is 40 now, but he we were planning on getting ready for our wedding. And we were both Night Shift Nurses and he was starting to lose weight. He was working out. He was drinking lots of water. And I noticed he was urinating a lot. And I'm like, you know, you're dropping away pretty fast. Like I've dropped one pound you dropped in what's going on? And he's like, oh, you know, it's purposeful. I'm drinking lots of water. One of the bathroom a lot. Well, the night of our wedding shower, which my bridesmaids had made cookie thing. I noticed he was just urinating like crazy. It was like two or three in the morning. Like cleaning up the kitchen making room for all the new kitchen things and I'm like, You have got to check your blood sugar. And he was like, No, I've just had a lot of water and I was like this is more than a lot of water. So his mother at the time had it was a pharmacy tech and whenever things get expired in the pharmacies, they tend to throw them away which is probably a whole other podcasts we could talk about. So we had accrued multiple glucometers that were just like expired and opened that she had brought to us so I come up in the cabinet get one out check his sugar in it read high and he's like no it's expired. It's not any good. So I checked mine and it read like 80 and he so he's 26 years old at the time I don't think I mentioned that check his with a different one. Like I said we had a crude multiple ones. And again at red hot and I was like alright, let's you know put clothes on we're gonna we're gonna go figure this out. So he was not in DKA he had a blood sugar somewhere and the for hundreds, I don't remember exactly how hot so they basically made sure he wasn't in DKA checked his labs. It was we we went to the ER we worked at, and they gave him some IV fluids, and we called endocrinology the next day and started insulin.

Scott Benner 5:14
Before we keep going, is your microphone on a wire? It is not, is that you're using the one on the laptop?

Emily 5:23
No, I'm using headphones

Scott Benner 5:25
using headphones. But there's a microphone on it. Can you put it closer to your mouth for me?

Emily 5:28
Yeah. I can also find me to just

Scott Benner 5:32
feels like you're turning, it almost feels like you're turning your head away from the mic at times. And it's you're kind of going

Emily 5:38
I am fidgeting a lot. So that's okay.

Scott Benner 5:41
Just fidget towards the microphone. Did you at any point during this process? Think I'm gonna take my brand new Cuisinart and get the hell out of here? Or did you love them by that?

Emily 5:49
You know, I don't it never crossed my mind. Really thought like, alright, you know, it's one more thing. We're medical professionals, we can handle this. It's not a big deal.

Scott Benner 5:58
Okay, so did it end up being a big deal? And could you handle it?

Emily 6:03
I could handle it. So it's really funny. He had a horrible, horrible diet, he would say he was raised on cocoa and Little Debbie. So I'm very much a type A person. So I kind of kicked in that type A personality started controlling all his meals. Because a Wednesday went from I want to say it was summer 1214. down to six, something about the next check. But shortly after that I released control because I had a your I like to tell him this on a regular basis. You're a grown ass man and a medical professional, you can handle this. So that was the last time we saw a six something a one see, he

Scott Benner 6:42
can handle it. So I'm still I took a note here from your husband was like, if I just drink a lot of water, I'll lose 10 pounds. That's what I learned. Yeah,

Emily 6:51
no, that's not how that works. No, unfortunately.

Scott Benner 6:56
So he goes, so you put it, you know, I mean, listen, I'm not saying put it on him like you put it on it. But you know, he gave his control back to him. Yeah, he didn't do well with it. From the very beginning, your kids mean everything to you. That means you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes, screen it like you mean it now up to 90% of type one diagnosis have no family history. But if you have a family history, you are up to 15 times more likely to develop type one, screen it like you mean it because type one diabetes can develop at any age. And once you get results, you can get prepared for your child's future. So screen it like you mean it type one starts long before there are symptoms. But one blood test could help you spot it early, before they need insulin, and could lower the risk of serious complications like diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. Talk to your doctor about how to screen for type one diabetes, because the more you know, the more you can do. So don't wait, tap now or visit screened for type one.com to learn more. Again, that's screened for type one.com. And screen it like you mean it

Emily 8:17
has moderate control. And I think a lot of it, he doesn't listen to your podcast, I feel okay saying this was it was such a lifestyle change, which I know everyone who experiences diabetes at any time. Once you accept it, you realize that but he truly had a the best way I can say it isn't like mortality kind of kicked in. And he had a lot of you know if something goes wrong in the world or whatever, like, that's it like if I don't have this insulin. That's it for me. And it has been I would say that still in the back of his mind, you know, almost 20 years later that this is still making life a little less easy.

Scott Benner 8:58
You're saying that he's fearful of a flood coming? Power outage? Zombie, something like that. Yeah.

Emily 9:05
It's hilarious that you pick zombie because he had a zombie fear when we first met.

Scott Benner 9:12
You just data them anyway.

Emily 9:14
Yeah, why not? Yeah.

Scott Benner 9:16
I don't know. Emily, we're gonna start wondering about you in a couple of minutes if this story keeps going this way. No, I that's interesting. Like that feeling because I see people talking about it online all the time, like that fear of like, what if something happens? And I just recently said somewhere that my daughter and I had this conversation because she asked me at one point, you know, what if something happens, like what if the world gets upside down? I was like, Oh, you'll be dead pretty quick. And she, you know, did she's like, what I was like, come on, you know, right. And you know, she was older when we were having the conversation, but I think it was valuable for her to hear. And I actually told her I said if this really happened, we you know, manage with your insulin as long as we could. We'd stretch it out. Start aiming for higher blood sugars like you know, start thinking about like light including a life, that kind of thing. you'd stop eating carbs. And I was like, but eventually one day if we ran out of it, yeah, I mean, that'd be it, you know? Yeah. And so, but I don't see her hanging on to it and worrying about it. But you think it's something that's with him?

Emily 10:12
Yeah. And it may be maybe the age thing, I don't know. Or it may have been his personality to start with the kind of doom and gloom. But I definitely hoard things like not insulin as much as I can, but also like, beef jerky, and things that if we did have an emergency that he could eat, and now our son,

Scott Benner 10:34
yeah, so so it's been a while now he's had type one for a while. I mean, the are you comfortable sharing what his a onesies are generally? Or do you not even check in with him?

Emily 10:42
So yeah, I actually know his most recent one from last week, it was eight. Okay,

Scott Benner 10:46
and now for you. If we put you back in charge of him, you okay with an eight? No, I'm not okay with that. And then your son's diagnosed when

Emily 10:56
he was diagnosed this past August, recently. Okay,

Scott Benner 10:59
so that's not long ago, six months ago, maybe? Okay, how old is your son?

Emily 11:06
He's eight. Now he was seven when he was diagnosed.

Scott Benner 11:09
Do you have any concern that your husband is going to impact him to an aid agency? A lot of people in my private Facebook group talk about their love for Omni pod five. Have you seen those posts and thought, Well, I wish I could have that experience with an insulin pump too. If you answered yes to that you might be experiencing FOMO FOMO FOMO. Yeah, you guys got me all twisted up on this one? I think it's FOMO fear of missing out on Omni party. It's FOMO. All right. I'll keep going. Symptoms of FOMO may include but are not limited to wishing you could wear outfits without pockets or dreaming about walking past doorknobs without getting your tubing caught. Maybe you fantasized about jumping into a swimming pool without disconnecting from your insulin pump first. Good news. You don't have to suffer from FOMO. any longer. You can see what you're missing by trying Omni pod five for yourself with my link Omni pod.com/juicebox. No longer should you have fear of missing out on Omni pod?

Emily 12:12
Um, yes, it's a complaint argument that we've actually brought up to his pediatric endocrinologist in the past, because we do argue about tight control versus the fear of low blood sugars. And apparently, it's very common for type ones who have experienced the roller coaster and the frequent lows to fear the low and wear me specializing in ethology and knowing what it will do long term to the kidneys. I want tight control, good steady control. And he is more willing to let the blood sugars to get much higher for much longer than I am. And it I wouldn't say it's a battle, but it definitely can, can bring up. You know, we're still new to it with our son. So it can bring a lot of what do we do we treat this do we watch this? What do we do for this? There's a lot there's a lot more discussion than probably most parents actually have.

Scott Benner 13:08
Yeah, well, that's really interesting. So the diagnosis of your son did not take your husband's perspective and change it. He just shifted it onto your son. So while you're out there going, I think we should maybe do better. He's saying no, this is okay. Correct. How long do you think it'll take? Because this is your husband is is embroiled in a psychological turmoil right now? Yeah, you will eventually get out of but I will say that the most common thing that I hear from people is that I finally did better for myself for someone else. Like right for like, I love my wife. So I did better. I didn't want my kids to see this. So I did better. Like that's what really commonly hear from people. So you're just very new at the moment. Why did you find this podcast?

Emily 13:56
Again, that type A personality the minute he was diagnosed, I went online, I started Googling from tic TOCs Instagrams app, just sort of following people left and right type one moms, type one kids, like how can I make this better for him? And went on podcasts because the pediatric hospital that we took them to was about an hour away. So immediately, I started looking for podcasts just for the drop, and found it.

Scott Benner 14:22
I mean, what's your son's a one, so you can I ask?

Emily 14:25
So he was 7.9. And there's a little story behind that. But he had the flu last month, so we had a lot of a lot of trouble keeping him down. In December

Scott Benner 14:35
while he had the flu, that was he managed with MDI or a pumper, and that's for both of them. He's

Emily 14:41
NDI right now. My husband has Omnipod but he has been MDR My husband has was in the eye for a long time he was on the original Omni pod. And believe it or not, even as medical professionals, our insurance is pretty crappy and the cost of Omni pod was I think we still owe the money to be perfectly honest, it was outrageous.

Scott Benner 15:02
Like we still have the money. But does he ever CGM?

Emily 15:06
He does right now for a long time he was on labor, right? We were paying like $75 a month for the labor. Right? And then now they're both on Dexcom sixes.

Scott Benner 15:16
Do you guys work for the same hospital? Still? We

Emily 15:19
do not. My nephrology practice is actually privately owned. And we are consultants at hospitals. And he currently is at a different hospitals system for an urgent care in the same town. Well,

Scott Benner 15:30
so you, you both are medical professionals, but your insurance doesn't cover, like, give you good coverage for devices.

Correct? Oh,

that's nice. You know, that's a decision that your employer makes.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever tried talking to them about it? So

Emily 15:50
once I finally got my son, so my husband carries his own insurance, the rest is on mine. We've recently crossed covered him on both of ours, but my son's CGM got covered completely. Once I've thought the insurance company because they originally had denied it. But my husband was actually working for an emergency department and the coverage was horrible. That being said, I don't know how much work he I don't think he put any work into calling the company and getting the prior authorizations and things that probably should have been done that I did the minute I got the denial. So a lot of that I put on him. I don't know how much is what the insurance problem is versus what just the lack of

Scott Benner 16:33
work. You said, Do as I say, not as I do example.

Emily 16:38
I was gonna say he's a do as I say,

Scott Benner 16:42
Well, if you would tell him he would do it, by the way, but you stopped telling him? Yeah,

Emily 16:46
I think I've told him more than once. And you know, back to the euro grown ass man. situation. So I'm

Scott Benner 16:51
letting it go that You've robbed the cradle here. Emily, I'm seeing what's happening here. You guys have just the one kid? Are there others? No,

Emily 16:58
we have an 11 year old daughter. Oh, okay. So

Scott Benner 17:02
is that autoimmune running your husband's side of the family? He

Emily 17:05
has a cousin who was type one, I do not know of any other family members with autoimmune problems whatsoever. Now I have celiac, okay. And multiple family members who also are celiac. And actually, when we were pregnant with our oldest, he had asked the OBGYN You know, what are the risks of our child having type one? And she said that since I was not a tough one, it was a low risk.

Scott Benner 17:34
About that. Yeah, maybe what she meant was, Oh, you already had sex made a baby. Why are we talking about that? too? I know. It's too late now. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Interesting. So my first thought here is if your husband and your son's a onesies are matching. So specifically, my expectation is it's just the rhythm of your household that leads to that eight,

Emily 17:56
they have completely different diets really? Well, my son started at an agency five months ago say once he was 12.9 I believe. Now it's still coming down. It's still coming down. And his his endocrinologist doesn't want us tightly controlled yet, much to my dismay.

Scott Benner 18:14
Does he think he's honeymooning? Yes, he is honey money. Okay, fair enough. But, but listen between you and me a seven, nine and just turn up the basil a little bit? You know, maybe it'll be a seven.

Emily 18:27
He does have a very weird insulin. I don't know, I just thought a reaction, but I'll go into it in a minute. But um, it's weird. So I play with insulin a lot. And there was no chronologist as far as like her again. But I adjust it based on what he's doing on a regular

Scott Benner 18:43
basis. Good for sure. The algorithms are adjusting constantly. Yeah. I mean, from a basis of a good of a, you know, a starting point of a good setting, of course, but they're still adjusting up and down all the time. It's it's almost never ending. So you know, to say, Me my experience, raising Arden on MDI and then just the pomp and then eventually a CGM became a thing. Like, it's not like I got it. Finally, it's like it came into existence. And then, you know, we started doing that. Then it took me a while after I had a CGM to like, look at what was happening and make sense of what was going on. But, you know, even once that was all together, you're still you know, I mean, there's a pretty big aspect of the Pro Tip series where I talk about Temp Basal going up and down and, you know, bumping and nudging because all I was really doing back then was I was being my own algorithm. You know, I was taking it away to all those. Yeah, right. That's all you're doing. So like, now I watched the algorithm do it on my Ha, sucker. Let him do that. Not me. Yeah, that now that him has a little app on her phone, you know, right. It sounds like you'll get there. But my question is, how long are you going to not say anything? Once hubby starts saying stuff that goes against what you want to do for your kid. That's gonna be a bad day.

Emily 20:06
So the I won't let me think of an example

Scott Benner 20:11
I'm gonna hold it in and go Axe Throwing, what is it you're gonna do, I'm like, because it's gonna happen, like, you're going to titrate his agency down, right? And it's gonna get into the sixes. And then you're going to you're going to know though, the work that goes into that. And then one day, there's going to be a rise in a blood sugar. And you're gonna say, How come you didn't Bolus and he's gonna say he's fine. And then you're gonna go, Whoa, and that's gonna be the end of it, then fists are not fists, you probably won't hit anybody. He seemed like a nice, but like words, at least, or upsetness. Like, it's like, I want to get ahead of this for you is what I'm saying? Well, okay,

Emily 20:41
so it's already happened. So sorry. I don't even know how long ago this was. It was maybe October, November. So he was diagnosed in August. So I had actually slipped away my husband, I believe was at work. And I had gone off to do something and my daughter comes up to me, and she says, Ben's alarm is going off. And he keeps ignoring it and saying it's fine. And so we've taught her kind of everything that she needs to know to help out. She's very bright and very helpful. Firstborn. So she knows she knows what to do in an emergency. She knows you know, what an alarm is, like, what? She just knows everything that needs that she needs to know, at 11 years old. So I came out of out of my room, and I was like, you know what's going on, but and he was like, it's hot. No big deal. It'll come back down. And I was like, huh, ha ha, like, What do you mean, it's hot. And I snatched my phone up, and it was high 210 to 300 arrow up, and I was like, okay, so what did you eat? Why did you eat without insulin? And what do you mean, it's fine? And he said, well, that says it's fine. He does. This is not a big deal. And I was like, Well, absolutely not. So I made it like, that night. I was like, Look, Bill, Ben's already assessed my son, this name has been on the bins already picking up on your behaviors. So you're gonna have to change him. For this. It's going to be a much bigger battle.

Scott Benner 22:06
Yeah, I don't think he's going to enjoy living in the garage at all. But if I was him, I'd shift now. Yeah, he's just all I could think of when you were talking about like, this is where this is gonna go. And someone's gonna win and My money is on you. So

Emily 22:22
yeah. So my husband's a Wednesday, you know, I don't, he doesn't need for all the diabetics listening, do not take this as advice whatsoever. He works 12 hour shifts and frequently drinks coffee and does not eat at all and a 12 hour shift. He says his blood sugars are better when he fast and but then he binges once he gets off work late in the evening. And that is why his control was poor, in my opinion, if he would schedule regular meals and have a routine, because he doesn't work every day. So that's not a routine, I think that control is much easier.

Scott Benner 22:57
See Pre-Bolus thing is meals.

Emily 23:00
Not in the way that you think of it. I don't think he Pre-Bolus Is anything because he doesn't plan. Because usually by the time he gets home, you know, we're all asleep, even though it's 839 o'clock at night, but you know, he may go back Chipotle and get a burrito bowl or something. And then he'll sit down and he might give himself a few units and kind of see what happens. But then he'll get up and get chips and salsa or something like that. And then he'll give himself a few more units while he's eating that. And then I'll get up at four o'clock in the morning and I will hear his Dexcom going off on his phone almost every morning alarming. And I'll be like, Is it is it higher or is it low? And it's 95% of the time it's high. So

Scott Benner 23:43
taking us take out for a minute that you're I'm assuming you love him and you know that you care for him and all that stuff and you don't want there to be a bad influence for your kid. Go into your training, though, isn't nephrology? You know, in nephrology, like, are you not worried every time it happens? This is like not eating you up inside.

Emily 24:01
So actually brought home a urine just in the fall. Or maybe it was late summer and I was like there's I don't know if you know this. You probably do but protein in the urine shows up a lot of times as bubbles. I had noticed bubbles in the toilet. And actually I think it was coming from our son, not him because it was pre diagnosis. But I said there's bubbles in the urine and I want you to do a 24 hour urine before you're one of my patients. He ended up not doing a 24 hour urine, completely ignoring me and I got mad and threw it in the trash. Yes, I watch his lab. They'll watch his kidney labs very closely. And I tried to explain to him as I do all my patients that that sugar is damaging even at good control. You know you're gonna have some damage from the ups and downs and it's delayed. That lab result that we're looking for is behind the ball. By the time it's telling us something's wrong but He pretty much it's like, my labs are fine. It's not a big deal. My labs are fun. And I'm like, today they are.

Scott Benner 25:04
I heard a person recently say they wanted to get in on top of their health, this person does not have diabetes, but they are significantly overweight, like, twice probably what their bodies should be carrying. They were like, I'm gonna get on top of this. And they went to the doctor and came back and said, my labs are great. I don't know that that matters. Like your weight, your weight, your weight over 400 pounds. Like, I don't care if your laps are okay, but and they took my labs, okay, I don't need to do anything. And that was the end of it. You'd

Emily 25:35
be surprised the amount of people who you could look at and go, there's no way you're not a type one diabetic type two diabetic, just from the morbid obesity alone, and then they're a onesies normal, and all I can think is your liver. It's something holy.

Scott Benner 25:47
I'm not I'm not even equating it to diabetes. I'm just saying that when something is so like, obviously not. Okay. That people will write it off. If they get a test back. Test payment. Fine. It's okay. Don't worry about like, you know, like, you know, have you tried, Emily, listen between you and me. I've been married a long time. Have you tried just putting a pillow in the middle of the bed and saying we can move this when you're a one sees under seven? Because I'm a boy, that will probably work pretty quickly on me. You know what I mean? So honestly, I think you're overthinking the whole thing.

Emily 26:17
That's hilarious. It's hilarious. I didn't want to tell the story of how my son's diagnosis came to be if you have time for that, too. Please, please, I'd love to. So my son was a little overweight. At seven years old. He loves Legos and hates to sweat. We, we always say he has a whole lot of lazy in him. And so actually last April, and I will say we are very pro vaccine in our family. So my kids are always vaccinated. But last April, he had gotten the flu, and he got flu B. And he was sick for about two weeks and dropped about 15 pounds at that time. But he wasn't eating and he was really overweight. And so we didn't think a whole lot about it. He looked healthy, with losing 15 pounds. And over the summer, I said this is enough. And so every morning before I left for workout would make them come outside and go for a half mile walk to start their day at 730 in the morning. And so he dropped about 10 more pounds during the summer. A lot of people commented, you know, he looks like a new kid. He's lost so much weight. And we're like, Yeah, I mean, he was sick. He lost weight, the weight loss stop. Walk down summer. Yeah. You know, yeah, I mean, he's lost weight. He's normal now. And he got to where he was eating nonstop. I mean, like more than my husband. And I was like, son, you're I mean, you're eating more than a girl man. Like, I think you've had enough. And this is right about the time school started back in August. And he's like, but I'm just so hungry. And he was starting to sneak food. And he was drinking, I would say he was drinking a lot. But he and I both typically drink a lot of water. So I didn't really think much about it. Because it wasn't, didn't seem excessive, necessarily. And so my husband and I had actually met, I had a little break in my schedule similar to today. And we met for a walk. And it was on a Thursday. And I had said, you know, Ben's circles under his eyes, which he's always kind of had a seem a little darker. And he said, Yeah, what are you concerned about? And to say I have anxiety is to minimize the problem. But I said, you know, what, if it's leukemia, and he was like, Why do you always go straight to me? And I said, I don't know, you know, he's just gotten so thin. And he's got these circles. While we're to we'll give it a few more days and see, kind of see how the week plays out. So, Friday morning, he got up and he had wet the bed, which was unusual. And he kind of just said, my, my husband said in passing been, you know, wet the bed last night. And I was like, Oh, that's weird. So Saturday morning, then gets up early as it is to about 6am. He said, You want to get up with me? And I said, Yes, we got up. And he said, Can you get me a glass of water and a bowl of cereal and a glass of water with cereal? That's weird. So I said sure. And he Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which is you know, lovely. And then he said, By the way, I wet the bed again last night. Dad put a blanket over it. Can you wash my blanket? And immediately, I went and woke my husband up and I said we have to check his sugar. And he was like, What are you talking about? And I was like he's wet the bed twice. That's not normal. And he just asked me for water. So we checked it. It was about 450. I immediately started solving. Yeah. Because I said he's not my blood type. He can't have my kidneys if you need

Scott Benner 29:45
them. That's where you went to right away. Immediately immediately.

Emily 29:48
I said Norris my blood type is our daughter. He's not he's your blood type and y'all can't share kidneys. You know, what are we going to do? And so we just got him dressed. And my husband I took him to the Children's Hospital an hour away in Atlanta, and I took my daughter to volleyball practice and then came home packed bags. And by then he took them to the hospital. He was in a mild DKA. He ended up on an insulin drip for about four hours. That was a Saturday afternoon, we were able to get all of our diabetes education convinced them we knew what we were doing and lead by Sunday afternoon. We assume it was triggered by the flute. My husband, we don't know exactly what his trigger was, unless it was just the stress of getting married. But it was very, it was very overwhelming.

Scott Benner 30:33
For everybody, for you specifically, probably

Emily 30:37
from a specific oil, you handled it differently. I'm mainly went to Oh God, how can I keep him off dialysis. And my husband went to a different place have this as my fault. So we actually did the trial net testing my daughter and I at one of the juvenile diabetes walks. And because like I said, I jumped all in. So I got a team going, we went and did all that. And she and I are both negative for antibodies. So even my son recently got mad at my husband and said, This is your fault. You gave me this diabetes. That

Scott Benner 31:10
sucks. I feel I feel bad for your husband. That's terrible. Yeah. It's horrible. Do you guys have any thyroid in the family? Multiple

Emily 31:17
women in my family? I do not know if I don't know of anyone on his side of the family. And I do know that there's another trial that for antibody type thing that will test for the celiac. My son is negative for celiac currently. Yeah,

Scott Benner 31:33
but you and your husband are like a, you're like a perfect storm. Really? Yeah,

Emily 31:37
we really are. Yes, my mother had Graves disease. My grandmother has Hashimotos. So it's something that I'm keeping an eye on. I'm not convinced my daughter's not celiac now, but she does not feel the need to be tested and does not feel like it's important enough to her right now. So I'm letting her enjoy easy. Carbs.

Scott Benner 31:58
I can hear all the celiac people yelling silent celiac at their, at their iPhones, right? Yeah. Or Spotify.

Emily 32:04
I mean, it took me it took me many years to convince a doctor what was wrong with me with celiac. So I'm prepared to battle for her when the time comes. But

Scott Benner 32:13
well, so I don't know where to go from here. Wait, I do know where to go from here. I'm sorry, I apologize. You are having a really interesting, but not uncommon experience. And I know this because I've spoken to a lot of nurses who have children have been diagnosed or have been diagnosed themselves or had a spouse done, what have you. And they start from this very basic understanding of diabetes, because if you're if you're inpatient or your emergency, like your understanding of type one's pretty basic, and you don't really the way they manage it, I mean, to call it management really is. I mean, that's a loose interpretation of what's actually happening. So if

Emily 32:53
you could only if you could only say the way this my hospital managers talk, or diabetes in general, as an inpatient, I'm doing

Scott Benner 32:59
a series called cold wind, I'm getting a good feeling for it from anonymous healthcare workers. So don't worry, I horrible Yeah, I know what's up. But that's, that's your level of understanding. And then now you it's in your own life. You know, originally with your husband, you were like, if we do this, we'll be okay. His agency was very good under your tutelage. And then not so much when he's out on his own. He's impacting your son in a similar way, you are coming from a different perspective. And, and, like, how do you see this shaking out? Because in my heart from a third party, I think what are finds the easiest path? So your son's going to follow your husband because it's easier.

Emily 33:44
And we already have times where even the doctor was like, what happened on this day, thanks to Dexcom clarity, you know, they can pull up all these charts. And I said, Oh, that day, he snuck I think, apparently because I had the same exact question about that. She goes, okay, okay. Maybe

Scott Benner 34:00
that's my point is that if if you're preaching, health and wellness and you know, Pre-Bolus thing and that stuff, and your husband saying it went up, it'll come back down. It's okay. Like, I don't see how a an ammeter a young child's going to go for harder. You know what I mean, when they're making a decision, and then that's going to leave you in a bad spot?

Emily 34:23
Yep. Yeah, I'm okay with being the bad guy, though. So

Scott Benner 34:26
you're the bad guy. Well, I don't think you're the bad I don't that doesn't make you the bad guy. But I but I understand what you're saying it. It seems really unnecessarily upsetting to me, you know, because, because at some point, I mean, we are ignoring what an eight a one C means. Right? And he's got it now. Right? Your husband has to know, he understands. And so now we understand it's happening to him. He's understands it's gonna happen to your son. And I don't really know what my next question is, other than to say it's a really bad situation. Hello, I'm wondering how you're going to handle it. So

Emily 35:02
my first step is to convince my son which has been very difficult to try the Omni pod. He hates adhesive. And we finally, this last Dexcom change, got a routine that was not painful and I was able to get that bad boy just slide right off. So I'm hoping by the time we do our pod prep class in February that we will have him convinced to give it a try. Because I mean, he's used to snacking and eating what he wants. And while I still wish I could get him to rein in that sweet tooth. I know from treating diabetics day in and day out that they can't help but crave sweets at times more. Not necessarily more, but I want him to understand the balance of he can have really whatever he wants in moderation with insulin, and he still has honeymooning so it makes it a little more difficult because there's so much he can have without insulin. He goes all day he eats an omelet in the morning school. He eats a freeze dried strawberries, Atkins chips, ham and cheese, no sandwich just ham and cheese every single day he eats this, and he doesn't need insulin. So then he comes home. And I give him insulin for dinner. But he's still very much. I don't know, accepting understanding, fearful. I mean, there's so much emotion for a child who remembers life before and is still trying to adjust to life now. It's difficult. But like when he had the flu, this past December, he started, his blood sugar started going up. So I took as long acting he's on 10 of ones. So I took them to 11. And the next night, he was still high. I mean, like I'm insulin, dosing him every two hours was short acting to keep him at 200. He's thought take him to 12. And he's still hot, though, I take him to 13. Because I was like, we gotta get this down. Luckily, he didn't have ketones. And His correction factor was 90. So I took it to 80. And he was supposed to round supposed to round down on his insulin, which I disagree with around that bad boy up. And then I just got to where I just added half a unit every time if he needed to. I gave him two and a half y just to try to keep him at 200 for a minute. And I mean, it worked, obviously, but an eight year old can't do that for themselves. And unfortunately, I do work full time and can't be there all the time. So

Scott Benner 37:27
you're thinking about an algorithm? Yeah. Okay. I mean, let's you can sell it. It's no more shots. Yeah, no, we've tried that. He's like, I don't care. It'll be easier to eat what you want. If you go on that route?

Yep. Yeah.

Have you tried therapy? Actually,

Emily 37:47
yes. His provider has integrand ologists. We've established with a psychologist, they have two in their practice that are diabetic, trained, or one of them, I believe, is a diabetic themselves. So yes, we're in that route, as well to kind of break through some of these. And what's really funny is, my daughter is tight control my son, when he had the tiniest, tiniest injury in the whole neighborhood knew. And, but when it came down to this, he's been a real champ about it. So I try to give him as sure as much credit as I possibly can.

Scott Benner 38:25
So it's all very new. I'm not I'm not saying it's gonna be perfect right now. I just think you have specific challenges. I mean, his age, you know, his general demeanor on this, you know, the influence from another parent. Those things are on pill. I'm sorry, I'm sure he's a great guy. I'm not like I'm not on them or anything. But like, you know, it's just like it is what it is. There's plenty of people with type one walking around with a one season, they can do whatever they want. I'm not telling them to do differently. But you have a perspective. And you're saying I don't want that. And these forces are going back and forth. The kids obviously seems like personality wise might be more like your husband. Sounds like your daughter might be more like you. That seemed fair. Yes. Yeah. So you're he has a lot of uphill battles there. And then you're going to be the the only way Listen, I don't want to be the Ghost of Christmas Future. But the only way this is going to work is if your husband spearheads it. Yeah, and not just listen to your mom. Yeah, like because that's not going to work either. Like he's going to have to like get himself a CGM manage himself. See, see what's really possible and then pass it on to your son.

Emily 39:31
Yeah, that's all and I mean, he. He's tried like, he's got the Omni pod. And so he'll say like, you want to pull this off my son, you want to help me? You're gonna press the button to start it and Benjamin's like, Absolutely not. I have no interest in that whatsoever. So

Scott Benner 39:45
I see what you're doing. You're trying to soften me up.

Emily 39:47
Yeah. I'm not doing that.

Scott Benner 39:50
I mean, listen, I know there are people who slather oil on them, they get into they slide off like all kinds of stuff. I always just hold on I'm like just grabbing yank it off and it'll hurt For a second Yeah, be done with it. That's

Emily 40:01
my husband's philosophy. Yeah, grab and yank baby oil and a bathtub slid right off. So I

Scott Benner 40:08
have such an inappropriate joke. I was gonna say that's gonna be his philosophy about a lot of stuff if he doesn't get this together

sorry. Yeah, I don't know. Like you're in a really weird position. And I don't know that it won't come together. Actually, may I be honest? It probably will. Yeah, what I think will happen is that some times gonna pass and your husband is going to have his come to Jesus moment. And then he's going to write himself and he's going to do it for your son, and then he's going to drag everybody along with him. And that's what's gonna happen. I think you're in the middle of two different adjustment periods right now. I think you're in the middle of your son's diagnosis, from his perspective, and he's not looking to be, you know, wearing a bunch of stuff right now. Right? And you're looking at your husband gonna have to get past the guilt, and then get on to the being a parent part. Yeah. And he's gonna end up saving himself by mistake while he's saving your son. Yeah,

Emily 41:04
that would be wonderful. What?

Scott Benner 41:05
What I see happen all the time. And people. It's very common. It's something human that, you know, it just happens over and over again, people just don't do things for themselves. I don't understand it actually, like, look at you, you're running around for your kids. You know, you you know, your husband, your husband's like, I know what to do. I

Emily 41:24
wouldn't say we had an unhealthy lifestyle. But we didn't have the most healthy lifestyle until COVID hit. He was actually working in the emergency department at that time. I was in nephrology, and I was like, Well, I'm not going out with that. So I immediately quit drinking wine as a coping mechanism and started exercising. And I was like, I've got to be a good example for the kids. I've got to be healthy. You know, we're not dying, working in a pandemic, this is ridiculous. And so they, they see that, and they can appreciate that. But it's really weird. They don't do it for themselves. So it's a battle, would

Scott Benner 41:58
you catch a glimpse of yourself in the in the cabinet door with a glass of wine at three o'clock in the afternoon during COVID? And you're like, Oh,

Emily 42:05
I was like, Well, what I what I tell everyone was I drank the first month away, and when that didn't solve any problems that decided to try something else.

Scott Benner 42:14
I don't remember. I don't remember March of 20. Oh, that's something I listen. It's life. You know, it's a process you're, you're going to come up against things and find ways over under and around and some things you're going to meet head on. This is going to be one of those things, it's going to come to a head in less he finds a way around first, because you're going to get pissed at some point.

Emily 42:38
Like, a lot.

Scott Benner 42:39
I'm just telling you like the I've lived through the I've lived through the feeling of giving every minute and second of your life to making sure that a blood sugar is where it's supposed to be and then seeing somebody else come in and get up. And you're like, Whoa, what are you doing? It's like someone walking on your freshly mopped floor times a million. You know, you're like I just got done fixing this blood sugar. What are you doing? Oh, yeah,

Emily 43:04
I mean, even his school nurse will use two of them. They have two of them in their school that alternate. And one is just like, like, I'll call her up. I'll be like, Hey, did he have something because he went from 120 to 200. Like what's going on? And she'll be like, Oh, he wanted a dumbed down soccer and I just couldn't say no. And I'm like, cool, but no, your sugar. And like,

Scott Benner 43:27
who couldn't say no, I'm sorry. The school nurse school nurse, what do you mean?

Emily 43:34
And or they'll call me and go hey, he's 200 But he's about to get on the bus. So do you just want to fix this when you get home? And I'll be like, I mean, is he 200 own up? Is he to me? How

Scott Benner 43:44
long is the bus ride? Yeah, yeah, I

Emily 43:47
mean, like, where are we at here? And so they worry about and honestly and his elementary school which is quite a small elementary school there are four or five top one kids right now so and he's the most recent one so it's not new for them this in the nursery is very lenient is actually a very well established he was an emergency department nurse she was a flight nurse like she's got a lot of experience. I don't know what why she doesn't want to treat his blood sugars or

Scott Benner 44:18
why she's unable to say no to a lollipop

Emily 44:22
I find them and it's brought back a lot he brings them home a lot I'll say that

Scott Benner 44:25
from the sugar from the sugar pusher this

Emily 44:29
from and I hate it I mean you know he's in second grade so they they reward the kids with candy so often and it seems you don't think about until it becomes a problem. So you know once a week coming home with a sucker not a big deal earning a Skittle every so often for getting a correct answer, not a big deal. When they're diabetic and they're in five Skittles, you know, it can be a big deal. So,

Scott Benner 44:53
Emily, I'm gonna say that I could probably find a couple of psychologists and line them up and tell you that rewarding children with candy is probably not a good idea. That's Oh,

Emily 45:02
yeah, they do it though. It's it's an N I've always said like you don't you don't need a starburst. Like I don't understand get a sticker.

Scott Benner 45:09
It can't they have a sticker where I don't know how good grade. Yeah. How about an A, let's just go with that. They used to give us pluses and minuses and then we could trade them for, you know, you made a little currency. Okay, you build up 100 pluses. You could buy, like a half a letter grade on a thing or something like that. You know, they mean, like, yeah, yeah. I'm just picturing your children's educators lobbing Skittles at them when they're getting math problems, right. One plus one is what two Oh, right. Here you go. Let's see if we get in your mouth. Yeah,

Emily 45:38
it's pretty close. Oh, Jesus.

Scott Benner 45:39
You know what? I can't I can't tell you that this conversation has left me very upset. And I feel very hopeless. I feel very hopeless. I keep searching for like the bright light here. But you're not up to it yet. So it's not completely up to you. So Oh, wow. Well, here, tell your husband this. When my daughter was diagnosed, her endocrinologist pulled us aside after like the second, it'd be like our second visit. And she shooed our kids out of the room and told us that she goes, Hey, you too. The instance of divorce is one and two. But when you have a chronically ill child, it goes to two and three. And I was like, right on. Thanks. Right. Yeah. And she said, You guys should probably go to therapy. And then like, she kicked us out of the room. It's going to be one of those things like your mama bear things not going to like it's not going to go away. Yeah, yeah. I had it. It's hard to get rid of. I've said some terrible things to my wife when she's gotten in the way of me managing Arden's blood sugar in the past. So especially after you've, you've been at it for a full day, with a to my daughter was two when she was diagnosed. You know, I can imagine, yeah, you got everything rolling along. And then somebody comes in the door with like, a sack full of crappy food. And you're like, what enough? Are you doing? Like, I just got this together? You know, I spent my whole day getting this blood sugar stable. I didn't know what I was doing back then. You know, so there's a whole day's worth of effort. And then somebody just walks in. They're like, Hey, it's me. I'm the seafood fairy. And you're like, No, I can't, I don't. And then they feel bad. Like they're not doing it on purpose. You know what I mean? Like, so? This doesn't happen anymore around here. But like I'm saying in the past long time ago, I know how much anxiety and turmoil it brings up. So I wish you luck. It sucks. And you're are you doing this on your lunch break? For me?

Emily 47:30
I am. Thank you. Actually, I usually have a pretty, pretty long lunch break, because I do dialysis rounds on my lunch break.

Scott Benner 47:37
Oh, geez. How did you get into this line of work? By the way,

Emily 47:41
I was an ER nurse for 12 years. And then I was a hospitalist for a couple of years as a nurse practitioner, and I got recruited by the nephrology group from the hospitalist work, you're likely to find it rewarding. I do I always swore as an ER nurse that I would never work with dialysis patients. But you know, never say never. So I actually enjoy it a lot. But the

Scott Benner 48:06
I guess you get to know people too, right? Because they do. Yeah, they repeat people home dialysis is that if I can ask couple questions about it. Yeah. Is it the same? Are you getting the same bang for your buck as you are if you go into a dialysis center,

Emily 48:20
and it's actually better, you can do it more often for less time. We can control not control things a little bit better, but you have less of the roller coaster building up of toxins pulling along while building up on the mountain. So home dialysis is actually the best option. And is that there's actually a huge push for it right now. But you know, just like with any other chronic medical condition, patients are scared to do things by themselves. So getting over that hump is

Scott Benner 48:52
difficult. Once you're on dialysis, is it? Is there a average amount of time you can make it without a new kidney? Or it could go on forever? Or does it vary?

Emily 49:03
I have some patients who have been on dialysis for more than 20 years, who will not get a kidney they don't qualify for a transplant or who you know, had a kidney. It lasted 10 years, and they've been on dialysis for 20 years. But then we've had some transplants who've lasted. I had an older lady, she was in her 90s. And I want to say her transplant had lasted over 30 years. Wow. Yeah, so admit, but it just takes diligent just like anything else, taking those meds, getting those follow ups, doing what you're told to do. And that's hard for so many people. It's

Scott Benner 49:38
not just diabetes or in other states. It's just getting people to do things. repetitiously is tough. Yeah. And isn't it true that once they start feeling better, they forget about the thing that made them feel better? Yeah.

Emily 49:48
Yeah, even notice that Yeah. And so many of them will say like, well, I didn't feel good today. So I didn't come to dialysis. And I'm like, But why do you think that would make you feel better?

Scott Benner 49:59
You didn't feel good today because you need to come to dialysis. Yeah,

Emily 50:03
like if you were, if you were sick gi related things, for instance, I can provide IV fluids and Zofran and things like that with dialysis, like I can help you out. I mean, if you can't get off the toilet, then I can't help you there. But there are a lot of things I can help with. Or I can always come look at you and say, All right, yes, we, you know, here's what we can fix about this sitting at home, I can't do any of that. So, but convincing people of that is so very difficult. It usually takes me I tell everybody, I need you to give me six months, because you're gonna feel worse before you feel better. Your body has to adjust to this. Usually, and it's always a battle, I always tell people, I'm not going to push you on it or encourage you to do it. Unless I have to.

Scott Benner 50:44
Everybody who gets dialysis, they end up with a fistula, right? Like a port somewhere.

Emily 50:50
A fistula or graft, I mean, some have a tunneled catheter, because they refuse or they, they've been doing it so long that they just don't have vascular access to do anything else. But of course, you can start with PD and peritoneal dialysis in the belly. But that does eventually burn out.

Scott Benner 51:06
What are the real life impacts of people who are on dialysis? Like, what are they going through day to day? You

Emily 51:12
know, depends on the type of dialysis and kind of what how rigid they are with what we tell them to do. I have one gentleman, he's been on it 20 Something years, he says, I feel great. I do everything you told me to do. Come to my dialysis, I never miss I feel great. I have no complaints whatsoever, comes to dialysis for hours, three times a week. And I have other ones who should be there three and a half hours three times a week. And they may show up once and they're in and out of the hospital nonstop. And it can be very frustrating. And I have some who gain two kilos between treatments, which is average and okay. And I have some who gained 10. And I'm like, do you understand how many pounds 10 kilos in three days? Like, what are you doing? You don't know what you're doing to your body? And it's, I call it 51st dates? Because I just say the same things over and over and over again.

Scott Benner 52:02
But what are they experiencing? Like privately like, what are they nauseous? Are they like, what do they go through when they're not?

Emily 52:11
Feeling? Well? You mean like before starting tile? So

Scott Benner 52:13
once you're on once you're on it? And if it's not, if it's if you're not doing the things you're supposed to be doing, you're not having an optimal experience, I guess? What are some of the things that are happening. So,

Emily 52:23
for instance, if you gain too much fluid, if we pull off a lot of fluid during the treatment, or more than what your body really can adjust to frequently you're going to be weak, you're going to be nauseous, you're going to be sleepy. So they're just like, Oh, I just sleep all the time. I don't have any energy. And I'm like, and some of that's usually when they start their Mnemic we have to get that kind of turned around. And the blood pressure tends to if they're sky high, and they have on five kilos or something ridiculous. We pull off five kilos, their blood pressure drops significantly. So they're hyper hypotensive all day and their diet can be limited. You know, they're on something called phosphor responders. And sometimes those calls gi upsets some constipation, some diarrhea and vomiting. So they have to take that with every meal. There's a hard existence. It can be Yeah, they can be it's just a lot that you have to consider. I mean, it's similar to type one diabetes is a lot that you have to consider in everything you do all day, they have their own food restrictions. They're not allowed to drink, really more than 32 ounces a day, which to me is a nightmare. I drink that in the first hour, I'm awake, I can't imagine and I try to give them empathy for that. Because I know I could not imagine being limited like that. It's hard for some people, for sure. It is yeah. And but at the same time, I'm like, All right. I mean, I can understand, you know, you had a thirsty day you were active. You know, you wanted you wanted to go that Super Bowl party, but at the same time. You've been doing this for five years, it's

Scott Benner 53:54
you knew what was gonna happen next. Yeah. You

Emily 53:57
knew you knew I'm gonna find out your Monday morning. So do

Scott Benner 54:01
most of them come from one disease state like, or is it a very, it's that I'm sure a lot of things, you know, can end with kidney failure. But do most of your patients come from like type two or? Most

Emily 54:12
of them are type two. Yeah. So type two, Hypertension is very common. A few in our area is different. For instance, there's a disease, polycystic kidney disease, and sometimes you see pockets of that, because it's very, it's genetic. And we have a pretty large population of that in our area. So we have a good many with that. And then lupus nephritis can be common for those who do not take care of their lupus early. The same with diabetes. Those are probably the most common. Do you

Scott Benner 54:44
think that people with type two as an example, know that they're there because of their type two? If I'm their provider, they do they understand? Do they understand that? There are there's more damage coming the kidneys there's just what they've seen so far, or is that a or Do people have that feeling of like, Oh, something finally broke? Now it's broke, nothing else is gonna go wrong? Do you know what I mean by that?

Emily 55:06
Yes. So I think it just depends on, you know how much education there have been provided with by the providers. Because for us, I was always taught that if, if the eyes are involved, the kidneys are involved. So even if they don't know they have eye damage, if they've got kidney damage, especially if we biopsy them and know it's coming from diabetes, we immediately are like, you're like your vision, you got to stay on top of this, because it's been affected. So sometimes they know, but I don't think they always grasp the reality of the full picture. And then kind of by the time, especially once they get to dialysis, you do kind of get out well, you know, here we are. Just like the last question. Yeah. And luckily, once you end up on dialysis, because your medications aren't rapidly filtered, or normally filtered, the problem is, a lot of times their blood sugar starts to get really controlled, as that kidney function starts to decline. And so then they get like, but my blood sugars are better. And I'm like, but you're at once he was 14 for three years, like they're better now, because the medicine is lasting longer.

Scott Benner 56:18
And what is better mean? 10?

Emily 56:21
Sometimes it'll even a once he's come to five, they'll go off their diabetes medicines. Really?

Scott Benner 56:25
That sounds Yeah, yeah. Wow. Any heart issues pop up afterwards? Usually? Oh,

Emily 56:31
yeah. Yeah. The correlation between heart disease and chronic kidney disease is it's close, right? Enormous. It's yeah. And then you'd get microvascular disease, especially because you have issues with calcium and microvascular disease from calcium buildup, and it's horrific, really, I mean, just dialysis itself. I mean, you know, you're pulling fluid from the body, and then it builds back up. You can just imagine kind of how it does that to the vessels, they all end up with heart failure, not all of them. But frequently, and that were heart failure. And,

Scott Benner 57:04
well, Emily, like I said, You're a party. This has been nothing but bad news. But I appreciate you doing this very much. Thank you. I hope people don't think it's a bummer. But it's good information. You you have it. So yeah, I appreciate you telling us the personal story. And then finishing off here with explaining some things from your professional perspective, too. Thank you. Yeah. And

Emily 57:22
I wanted to make other parents like, I want them to know that you know, even as to health care professionals, we probably missed the signs for a minute, you know, when it came to our son, and it's, it's very easy to beat yourself up about it, but you just do the best you can every day. Yeah.

Scott Benner 57:36
Now listen, I knew something was wrong with my daughter for a month and she still almost was in a coma by the time I got out of the hospital. So it's hard to see me it's happening in front of us so slowly, you just never put the pieces together, like fast enough. Yeah. And

Emily 57:50
I look at the picture. And I'm like, Ah, like the week before school picture his yearbook picture from this year. I'm just like, oh,

Unknown Speaker 57:58
I might not see this. Yeah, he doesn't matter.

Emily 58:00
Yeah,

Scott Benner 58:02
no, no, my I have a photo of Arden. I mean, she was too. So she's in a diaper running around like a hotel room. And I mean, she looks like Keith Richards in the middle of the 60s. And I don't know how, like, none of us noticed that. You could see her ribs and she look like she was on a heroin bender. Like No kidding. Yeah. You know. So anyway, don't don't beat yourselves up. It's, you know, you're past that now. So let it go. Yeah. All right. Well, Mike, thank you so much for doing this. Would you be able to hold on one second for me?

Unknown Speaker 58:30
Sure. No

Unknown Speaker 58:31
problem Thanks.

Scott Benner 58:39
Your kids mean everything to you, and you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes, screen it like you mean it because if even just one person in your family has type one, your child is up to 15 times more likely to get it. But just one blood test can help you spot it early. So don't wait. Talk to your doctor about screening. Tap now or visit screened for type one.com To get more info and screen it like you mean it. If you'd like to wear the same insulin pump that Arden does, all you have to do is go to Omni pod.com/juicebox That's it. Head over now and get started today and you'll be wearing the same tubeless insulin pump that Arden has been wearing since she was four years old. If you were a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bowl beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 In your podcast player or you can go to juicebox podcast.com. on and click on bold beginnings in the menu. 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. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com

#1253 Can GLP Meds Impact Mental Health?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown Speaker 6:13
get you know,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 1 28:11
lead to. Okay,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 36:03
Nope. Husband.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Benner 49:00
I understand. Oh,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 54:59
I tried Well,

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:20
Yes.

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

Unknown Speaker 55:23
Yes.

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 55:26
No. We,

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

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

Scott Benner 55:43
She on the 2.4 1.7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anonymous Female Speaker 58:46
look at what it did

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1252 Weekly News 7/8/24

Weekly News 7/8/24

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1252 of the Juicebox Podcast

Welcome back this is some diabetes news for you from the week of July 8 2024. 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. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year's supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box. If you'd like to save 30% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout I dried myself just recently with some beautiful waffle towels from cozy Earth and my baits and my bagels were all very happy about it. Yours could be to pat yourself dry and comfort and quality cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box. I don't they don't tell me what to say by the way I just I say whatever comes to my head. And listen if you have type one diabetes or you're the caregiver of someone with type one and you're a US resident, You'd be doing me you and pretty much the whole world a favor if you went to T one D exchange.org/juicebox joined the registry and completed the survey take you about 10 minutes T one D exchange.org/juicebox podcast this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by me because I'm here to tell you about the juice cruise 2025 That's right. I have introduced a vacation for all of us with diabetes. Families I say all of us because I'm the father of someone with type one. So we're looking for families or adults. People with type two diabetes gestational if you have a connection to diabetes, and you want to go on a vacation was with a bunch of cool people who are going to really understand your life. Get a tan see Mexico hang out talk diabetes, go to Q and A's all this cool stuff. juicebox podcast.com Scroll down just a little bit to the juice crews banner, click on it there you'll find out all about registration. I think there's an early bird, bird, right? Why can I say early bird early bird special if you sign up? I think you gotta put your deposit down before August 1 To save something. You'll see it when you get there. juicebox podcast.com Just scroll down a little bit click on the banner. What's up kids? We're gonna do a news thing for you. Today is July 12. It's got his birthday, and I'm gonna read you the news. Let's start with this article. Distinct T cell signatures identified in children with type one diabetes. This is from News Medical Life Sciences. I don't know news dash medical.net. So here's the here's the skinny right. A recent study published in news dash medical has identified distinct T cell signatures in children with type one diabetes. T cells are a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial ro ro role in the immune response. I'm not getting that out. This study discovered unique patterns of T cell activity in children with type one diabetes, as compared to healthy children or kids who don't have type one. Research conducted detailed analysis of blood samples from children with type one and those without they used advanced techniques to identify and compare T cell populations and their activity levels. And the study found that specific T cell subsets were more prevalent and active in children with type one diabetes. Now, the implications of that are this. The findings suggest that certain T cells may contribute to the development and progression of type one. And they think that understanding T cell signatures could lead to new diagnostic tools, and maybe even allow for earlier detection of diabetes. This of course, might pave the way for targeted therapies aimed at modulating the immune response to prevent or slow down the destruction of beta cells. Pretty cool. Now, you're saying but Scott, what is a T cell? Okay, so a T cell or a T lymphocyte lymph cell lymphoma cell? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I'm just interpreting the news. These T cells are essential for the adaptive immune response, which is the body's targeted defense against specific pathogens they help recognize and eliminate infected or cancerous cells. There are hyper T cells. The cells assist other white blood cells in immunological immunologic processes, including the activation of B cells to secrete antibodies and macrophages. Okay, to destroy ingested microbes. ingest the microbe, they go get it. What's a microbe we can deep dive if you want to, but cytotoxic T cells are another one these cells directly attack and destroy infected or cancerous cells and regulatory T cells help regulate or suppress other cells. To the immune system preventing autoimmune diseases. Okay, so that's what a T cell is. Now go back up to the study. The lead researcher emphasizes the importance of the findings in understanding the immune landscape for type one. And they noted that this research could help identify at risk individuals before clinical symptoms appear. I'd be very cool for early intervention. The study is a significant step forward in the quest to unravel the complexities of type one diabetes, continued research in this area holds promise for developing better diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. And of course, maybe more will come one day. Pretty cool, right? That's not bad. So that's that article. Now let me get rid of that one and get to the next one that I thought we'd talk about. Okay. There's a trial that you can get involved in the V x two, six. Why are people texting me while I'm trying to talk to you about the news? It's just a reminder to pick up a prescription, which is what I'm going to do when I'm done here. Now I'm going to be later because of the text. Ironic, no. Okay, the VX 264 trial. Let's find out more about it. This trial is researching Iceland cell transplants. Hmm, okay. Let me get you that info Meishan and where to go check it out vert. This is vertex by the way. And let's see where can you find out of this find out more about the trial? Yes, I will. Okay. So it is 264 dot t one study.com. By the way, I have no affiliation with this study. investigational therapies for type one so this is a study you might be able to get involved in. I thought this might be interesting to you. 264 dot t one study.com. The upward study is looking for individuals living with type one diabetes to participate in a study of an investigational cell based therapy. This is right from the website. The investigational therapy consists of cells designed to produce insulin contained within devices designed to protect the cells from the immune system sounds like a pouch kind of thing. investigational devices are implanted in the space behind the muscle of the abdomen wall. researchers are studying the safety tolerability and effectiveness of international health. Well, if you're interested in this, go check it out. It's the upward study type one diabetes clinical trial. And I've read you the the link a couple of times. I'm not gonna lie to you. I won't be putting the link in the show notes. But you can go back and listen and type it in for yourself if you'd like to learn more. When let me see if I can learn a little bit more about the upward study. All right. The upward study is investigating and investigational cell based therapy for type one diabetes, the eligibility is 18 to 65 years old diagnosed with type one diabetes, requiring insulin injections or pumps. Well, okay, well, I can probably most of you. Go check it out and see what you think. You know, if you get involved in the study, let me know he just looks like he just has like a three step process to find out if you're eligible. Go check it out. I've had people on who have done implantable studies before and had really great success. I'd be happy to tell you what episode that is, but I really don't remember. I know you're like well, if he told me it's got to go listen to it, but I don't have that kind of time today. All right, what else did we see in the news today around the type one diabetes? Oh. How about this one? This little ditty. GLP drugs like ozempic may reduce the risk of these 10 cancers. 10 Let's find out more. Oh, there's so much reading here. Watch how I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna paste it and say, give me bullet points. Let Chad GPT read that link. It's read. And now. Bada bing. Here comes the bullet points. It's that fast live. Let's see what we have here. Okay, a study overview. Here's the study over you researchers analyzed over a decade of medical records from nearly 1.7 million people with type two diabetes to investigate the effects of GLP one drugs on cancer risk.

significant risk reduction. Check this out, kiddies. Gallbladder cancer reduced by 65% minute Jimmy OMYA by 63%. I probably didn't pronounce that right. Pancreatic cancer reduced by 59%. Well, that's lovely. Liver cancer reduced by 53 Ovarian by 48 colorectal. I only know how to say that because of commercials where they say colorectal cancer reduced by 46% because it looks like color Actel you know what I mean? Multiple Myeloma bone marrow cancer reduced by 41%. esophageal cancer 40 percents just hear me just roll out esophageal like it was nothing. endometrial cancer of the uterine lining reduced by 26%. Oh gosh, kidney cancer reduced by 24. Wow, it did not seem to significantly reduce the risk for postmenopausal breast cancer, stomach cancer or thyroid cancer. It says here the reduction cancer risk is thought to be linked to the GLP ones drugs effects on insulin production, chronic inflammation and hormone levels, which are factors involved in cancer development. God damn right. How about that? Should we be clapping? Now the study did face limitations due to its retrospective nature and reliance on electronic health records, which can include diagnostic inaccuracies and uncontrolled variables. Further research is needed. Boy, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what I got up this morning weighed myself. This is the lowest I've weighed since I started a GLP. Med a year and a half ago. On my birthday, it was a nice little nice little birthday surprise. Before I get to the last story, I just want to jump in to tell you this. I'm hosting a cruise in June of 2025. It's called just cruise 2025. Go to juicebox podcast.com. Scroll down a little bit, click on the banner, it will take you right to the website where you can find out the itinerary, all the cruise information and put a deposit down in your cabin if you like. It's selling very well. And there are limited spaces. So if you're actually interested, you putting your deposit down now of course would be the way to go. We were only able to secure a certain number of cabins and a certain number of spaces. There's going to be me Eric is coming working on getting you one other person for talks. So there'll be conversations around type one diabetes, we'll be giving talks like straight from the podcast, and of course answering questions, tons of q&a, working on having some people there from different companies to answer questions for you about devices. And other than that sun and fun around Mexico. Getting a tan with a bunch of cool people have diabetes. So check it out. Go to juicebox podcast.com. Just scroll down a little and click on the banner for the Juicebox Podcast cruise. Doesn't matter if you're a family with type one or an adult everyone's welcome. You have type two, come on. Let's go you got diabetes. We want to meet you. There is a $25 on Boyd on Boyd onboard credit per state room if you register by August 1. I thought this NPR article was interesting. I'm going to share it with you it's from June 2024. It's called your gut microbes may influence how you handle stress. Here's some key points from it. A study published in natural Mental Health found distinct biological signatures in the microbiomes of individuals who are highly resilient to stress. You may recognize the word resilient here, I just put up a four part series with Erica Forsythe about resilience. And that's why this caught my eye. Hi resilio resilience was linked to anti inflammatory microbes and improved gut barrier integrity. The gut microbiome communicates with the brain via the immune system, vagus nerve neurotransmitters and short chain fatty acids. And that's really cool, isn't it? Like there's not much more to it than that. But that's I thought that was kind of awesome. It says future research aims to develop microbiome based therapies to mitigate stress and mental health disorders. Oh, I thought that was awesome. It's called your gut microbes may be influencing how you handle stress. If you want to Google it. It's bile. Let's see. I'm wonder if I could. Yeah, I think this is pretty cool. I don't know I'm interested in stuff like this. I thought you would be too. Alright, that made me go find this article. This is Medical News. Today. It's a year or so old, but it's called the role of the gut microbiome. Actually, what's the article called? Type Two diabetes researchers identify gut bacteria linked to insulin sensitivity. Among other things, it says cedar cyanide researchers found that people with higher levels of gut bacteria from a group called copra caucus tend to have higher insulin sensitivity. Additionally, they discovered the gut microbiomes with higher levels of flavor. Oh, I Fraktur tended to have lower insulin tended to have lower insulin sensitivity in that in that interesting, like, how could you get more? Alright, let me ask the chat. GPT. Overlord, how can I get more copper caucus in my gut? To increase copper caucus in your gut, you can try the following methods diet consumer diet rich and fiber including fruits. Okay, probiotics, prebiotics, limited processed foods, regular exercise, avoid antibiotics, okay, I feel like that stuff we already know. But can I just like, is there a way to give myself a let's call On a turbo boost of copper caucus. There isn't a specific guaranteed method for rapidly increasing the levels. He sends me right back to this. Where is copper caucus found? I'm mispronouncing it. By the way, type of bacteria commonly found in the human gut plays a role in producing short chain fatty acids, important for gut health. This bacterium thrives in environments such as dietary fiber, so consuming High fiber foods can support its growth. And doesn't say it's not like eat this thing and you'll get it. Is it found in any supplements? It's thinking it's not commonly found in commercial probiotics. I'll be damned. Well, let's get on that. Should we? Anyway, interesting article. Like I said, Medical News Today type two diabetes researchers identified gut bacteria LinkedIn insensitivity. All right, everybody. That was fun. I'll be back next week with another one of these I got a lot of emails from people who said they were enjoying these. I appreciate you guys listening. I'll find you some more stuff to talk about next week.

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If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are gonna 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. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. 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