Scott Benner 10/15/24 Scott Benner 10/15/24

#1332 Sausage on a Stick

Andy had to figure out diabetes on her own.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends to the juicebox podcast.

Andy is the mom of a child with type one diabetes. Her daughter was diagnosed at two years old. She realized that her daughter's health was not going to be okay if she listened to her doctor, so she went out on her own to figure out what to do. 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 healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com don't forget if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T, 1d exchange.org/juicebox right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help if you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the juicebox podcast. Private, Facebook group juicebox podcast, type one diabetes.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us Med, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low. On body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox? Go find out. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com. Forward, slash juice box.

Andy 2:24
Hey, y'all. My name is Andy. We're from North Texas. My daughter, Lorelai has type one diabetes and celiac

Scott Benner 2:29
disease. Have we rescheduled this a number of times? No, we haven't. Your name reminds me of someone else's name then

Andy 2:38
you called us on Christmas.

Scott Benner 2:41
Oh, that's part of the reason, not the complete reason. Though I feel like it's been on my schedule forever. How long have we had this booked

Andy 2:47
for? I think I booked it in September of last year. Oh, wait,

Scott Benner 2:53
October, November, December, January, February, March, April. That was eight months ago. Jeez, I'm embarrassed for you know what? I'm not it's an embarrassment of riches. Let's call it that, that it takes so long to get on the show. Where do you find out it takes six more months for it to come

Andy 3:08
out? Oh, yeah, I know my husband thought this was live. He was like, Oh, are we gonna get to watch this? When I get home from work tonight, like, No, dude, you're gonna be lucky if it comes out in six months. Yeah.

Scott Benner 3:17
You gotta stay alive and healthy if you want to see this. This is like a Star Wars movie. You gotta willfully be alive for the next one. Okay. Andy, it's funny. So you have, let's see a child with type one diabetes. Yes. Lorelei, yes. And she is how old

Andy 3:35
she is about to be six. She will be six in June.

Scott Benner 3:38
Okay, how old was she when she was diagnosed, it was

Andy 3:41
just she was two. She was like, a week before her second birthday.

Scott Benner 3:45
Okay, the name is from the TV show or no, yes, and tell people

Andy 3:53
about six months after she was born. My husband's best friend sent me a Facebook message with a link to a song called Lorelei from the band clutch with a message attached. I think it's awesome that you named your daughter man eater. There's the PSA to everybody. Make sure you know what you're naming your children before you name them. Because Lorelei sounds like a beautiful name, but if you look up the the meaning behind it and the folklore or the Rhine River in Germany. It's not as, uh, pretty. It's

Scott Benner 4:24
not as much fun. But what TV show Am I thinking of? It's Gilmore Girls. I

Andy 4:28
make Gilmore Girls junkie.

Scott Benner 4:30
That's fine. I know a lot of ladies who are, don't worry, and a few guys, if I'm being honest, hey, that's awesome. Those guys are usually drug into it by a lady. But nevertheless, it's fine. I've avoided it. That's one I've that's one I've dodged. I dodged those and singing competitions.

Andy 4:47
Oh yeah, my mom and my sister into the singing competitions and like, the tattoo competition shows. I don't really watch those.

Scott Benner 4:53
I did love the glass blowing one on Netflix. I watched. Like, a full two, like, I feel like I watched two seasons of it, then it came out again. I turned it back on. I was like, Oh, I'm done with this. And I just completely didn't care after that, I

Andy 5:08
think we watched some of that. My husband does blacksmithing stuff as a hobby. He's a he's been a pharmacy tech for God, 21 years with a big box retail store. He took that up just as just something fun to do, and we watched that. What? It's a show. It's like fire and something that they do a blacksmithing competition.

Scott Benner 5:29
I think I've heard of it. Yeah, forged in fire. Oh, yeah, you're Yeah, you're exactly right. So he is a, what does he do for a living? He's

Andy 5:38
a pharmacy technician. He's a manager of the store that he works at,

Scott Benner 5:42
and it is free time. He makes horseshoes and other things like that. No,

Andy 5:46
he makes knives and swords, and he's an avid hunter. He does draw hunts. Him and his best friend and their family sign up for draw hunts in the state of Texas, and if you get picked, you go on random hunts. And he's been to the Lubbock area to hunt mule deer, and he was just down, I know I'm gonna say it wrong. It's down by the Mexican border to hunt Gator for manage, like wildlife management. And he just brought home an 11 foot, 348 pound alligator. What

Scott Benner 6:19
will you be doing with that eating a day. Imagine, yes, okay, yep, it's,

Andy 6:23
it's all processed in our freezer. And, you know, lorela has celiac, so there's a lot of things that we can't just go eat, because most restaurants don't, don't make that stuff gluten free. So when he gets a hold of an animal like this, like we'll have a big Gator fry, we'll do gator tail, and she'll have her own little gluten free plate.

Scott Benner 6:42
Well, it's lovely. I've had Gator nuggets. Yeah, before. They were not bad. They weren't exactly like people are like, it's like chicken. And then I bit, I was like, have you had chicken? This isn't exactly like chicken, but, but I didn't dislike them. Has he ever done or applied to be in one of those hog hunts? Because there aren't wild hogs like a real problem in Texas. Yeah,

Andy 7:05
pretty much if you have a lease or you have somebody that gives you permission to go on their property, I think hogs are year round because they're so overrun. It's just like coyotes, they're so overrun, and they they mess with livestock too. So interesting. That's those are kind of free game

Scott Benner 7:21
interesting. Okay, well, does he sell his knives?

Andy 7:24
No, it's just kind of hobby. He's made stuff for friends, like we run around with two of our friends that are married, and for their wedding, he made them His and Her knives, and he's made spears and stuff to do do some of his hunts. Let's

Scott Benner 7:40
hope they don't use those, his and her knives on each other when things get tough. I'm gonna make them listen to this now, what a story that would be like. Remember that lovely gift I gave them at their wedding? Well, one night, they got into a fight about 16 years later. Oh, they're not Canadian, though they're not Canadian, they won't stab each other. They'll, uh, Dear God, Canadians love to step Oh, that's just something I've heard. Alright, so I've spoken to you on the phone before. Yeah, briefly.

Andy 8:06
You posted something on Facebook. I think it's Christmas Eve 2023 post, post your information here, and I'll give you a call. I think we talked for like five minutes New Year's Eve. Maybe it's, yeah, New Year's, Oh,

Scott Benner 8:18
yeah. I get very bored on New Year's Eve. I hate it. It's like it feels New Year's Eve feels like a wasted day to me for some reason, because I don't drink and I don't care to sit up and watch Dolly Parton sing with someone else at midnight or whatever ends up happening, and so, but there's nothing to do because the world kind of closes down. Yeah. So I was like, I'm gonna call people from the podcast. Oh, I did that. How was I? Was I Okay, yeah,

Andy 8:47
it was great. Oh, well,

Scott Benner 8:48
you have to say great. But I just mean it wasn't like you didn't hang up the phone and then think, what a waste of time. We should not have done that. No. Oh, very nice. Okay, well, what makes you want to come on the podcast there, Andy, if you take insulin or Sulfonyl ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G Vogue hypopen. My daughter carries G voc hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes, ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypoped and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys or. Called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. Really,

Andy 10:11
I just we're about 40, almost four years in, so June 17 of this year will make four years type one diabetes, and I feel like we've just moved so fast through all the information and all the technology, and just kind of sharing our experience with it, and also just, you know, no matter where you are in this journey, just maybe hearing that you can keep going, and kind of also reiterating the fact that groups like the juicebox podcast, that's where the hope lies. I think, our diagnosis, our story, my daughter's diagnosis story, it wasn't that traumatic. I don't think, I mean, it sucked, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like she was moments from a coma or anything. But the overall, I guess, idea at the hospital is this is, is as good as it gets. Don't ask for more. I don't know if you've seen the movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where Paul Rudd is telling Jason Siegel to pop up on the board, and then he does, and he's like, No, you're doing too much. Get down and he pop up on the board. He does it again, or he just sits there and he's like, No, you're not doing enough. Pop up on the board. That's what our hospital experience felt like. And I just, I've gained so much information and have been able to implement it that if I can, in turn, give back to at least one person with even just my voice, I'd love the opportunity to do it. Well,

Scott Benner 11:36
let's do that then. So you said you moved through technology very quickly. What does that mean?

Andy 11:42
So we did MDI for a year, about 13 months, six months into it is around the time that I found the podcast, and then simultaneously below carb group. And so I was using pre bolusing with lower carb foods, which allowed me it gave us a break. I feel like her sugars stayed notoriously in the four hundreds for the first six months. I mean, there was no there was just no break from it. And then we were just kind of damned if we do, damned if we don't, with long, lasting insulin, and that if I gave it to her at night, she'd tank if I gave it to her, if I didn't give it to her. Her blood sugar was 300 when she woke up. And so implementing a lot of the strategies from the Pro Tip series, bold beginnings and variables, and then the low carb community, it kind of gave me that time to practice with everything without it being intense. And then I was able to find I port because of the podcast Nice. So I jumped on that bandwagon. We actually got a call from Medtronic when Texas was in that apocalyptic freeze in 2021 I remember that. And I had a two year old new a two year old diabetic and a two month old newborn. My son, Eli, and we were at our neighbor's house because we were up without power for seven days. Oh, and Medtronic gave me a call, and they're like, Hey, we're ready to ship out your I port order. And I'm like, yes, yes, we need that. So going through using I port for about six, seven months, I was able to take some more information from the podcast and give the basal insulin in the morning, maybe an hour before we did her breakfast insulin, I was able to correct more and get her down to like an A 1c of 5.6 5.7 look at you. And then we moved to a pump. Had the same problems with the arrows pods that we did with MDI. She'd go to bed, go low. And it was probably two months of doing that that I jumped on the bandwagon with another person in the low carb community who has been a really big cheerleader for us to start DIY looping. And she helped us get started on that. From there, I haven't looked back. We we did the virtual machine, turning the windows computer into a max system. My husband did all of that, bless his heart. Then in 2023 they came out with browser build. And so then I painstakingly taught myself how to do that. It only took me four hours the first time.

Scott Benner 14:13
It's not bad, actually, I can't even take credit for doing it myself. I still lean on other people, I have to be perfectly honest. Yeah, I

Andy 14:21
messed it up so bad, and when we were building the caregiver app, because that was the one thing that I wanted for my daughter to go to kindergarten this year, was I'm not going to deal with the doctor's orders. You know? I know the doctors have to have some kind of system in place, and they can't have diabetics over here doing something and diabetics over here doing something else, and it can create chaos. I understand that, but their orders are conservative on the DMP, they don't want her corrected unless she's over 240 and they only want one correction every four hours. And I'm just like, man, nope. So we got help through the loop community. There's a. Moderator named Dan. I'm gonna give him a shout out, because he put up with me while we were trying to build the caregiver app. He was very gracious and kind. He's from Germany, and made time to to FaceTime me to actually get it all figured out. Well,

Scott Benner 15:13
when you say put up with you. Do you think, like, if he heard this right now, he'd be like, Oh, Andy, she was a pain in the ass, like, that kind of thing. Or no, no. He was

Andy 15:21
really, really nice. He was like, everybody thinks I'm like, a grumpy old man. He's like, he's really young. I think he's in his 20s. But if he doesn't have children, it's probably my fault, because both of my children decided to scream like banshees while I was on FaceTime with him, and it was nuts. Like, you want birth control call my house, because my two kids, as soon as I get on the phone, if they're here, it's like World War Three colors.

Scott Benner 15:45
I have always disliked ordering diabetes supplies. I'm guessing you have as well. It hasn't been a problem for us for the last few years, though, because we began using us Med, you can too us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, to get your free benefits check us med has served over 1 million people living with diabetes since 1996 they carry everything you need, from CGMS to insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies and more. I'm talking about all the good ones, all your favorites, libre three, Dexcom, g7 and pumps like OmniPod five, OmniPod dash tandem, and most recently, the I let pump from beta bionics, the stuff you're looking for, they have it at us. Med, 888-721-1514, or go to us. Med.com/juicebox, to get started now use my link to support the podcast. That's us, med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the only six month wear implantable CGM on the market, and it's very unique. So you go into an office, it's, I've actually seen an insertion done online, like a live one, like, well, they recorded it. The entire video is less than eight minutes long, and they're talking most of the time. The insertion took no time at all, right? So you go into the office, they insert the sensor. Now it's in there and working for six months. You go back six months later, they pop out that one put in another one. So two office visits a year to get really accurate and consistent CGM data. That's neither here nor there for what I'm trying to say. So this thing's under your skin, right? And you then wear a transmitter over top of it. Transmitters got this nice, gentle silicon adhesive that you change daily, so very little chance of having skin irritations. That's a plus. So you put the transmitter on. It talks to your phone app, tells you your blood sugar, your alerts, your alarms, etc. But if you want to be discreet, for some reason, you take the transmitter off, just loop comes right off. No, like, you know, not like peeling at or having to rub off adhesive. It just kind of pops right off the silicon stuff really cool, you'll say it, and now you're ready for your big day. Whatever that day is. It could be a prom or a wedding, or just a moment when you don't want something hanging on your arm. The Eversense CGM allows you to do that without wasting a sensor, because you just take the transmitter off, and then when you're ready to use it again, you pop it back on. Maybe you just want to take a shower without rocking a sensor with a bar of soap. Just remove the transmitter and put it back on when you're ready. Ever sense cgm.com/juicebox, you really should check it out. Well, you know what you said that really just caught my attention. I mean, all of it was very interesting, but what just caught my attention is that you somehow married this podcast with a low carb lifestyle, and you did it really well in the beginning, right? I don't know if you still do it or not, does she? So,

Andy 18:54
yeah, hold on one second. The nurse is texting me almost what? Almost lunchtime. Read

Scott Benner 19:00
the read the text out loud, if you will. Okay,

Andy 19:02
her blood sugar's 83 and the nurse is asking, I'll just give half of the insulin, right?

Scott Benner 19:08
What do you think

Andy 19:10
I'm telling her, Yes, give half. Okay, I have a series of alarms on my phone throughout the day. By the way. I'm not working home with my children, so for anybody that's working and it's like, God, how do you do all of this? Well, I I'm not. I don't have a job. I'm a bum. So her first alarm goes off at 1015 that lets me know lunch is coming up. 1045 that lets me know that, hey, if we've done a split bolus, I need to go back in and give her the rest of the insulin. 1145 that's just hey, check for fat and protein, and recess is coming up. See what her blood sugar is. We may need to turn her pump down. 1250 is, hey, we're going off to PE let's double check make sure pump is turned down, unless she doesn't need that. And then 145 is, Hey, make sure she's getting to the nurse for insulin, for snack. But as far as the low cost. Community, I was full force, low carb when it first, when I first started doing it, and it was just one meal at a time, one meal at a time. Practice it, see how it works. And the biggest difference for me was, if my kid isn't going to eat it, I'm not going to make her eat it. Okay, so we'll, we'll try it. But if it's something that she just won't eat, she's got to eat food I'm not going to, not going to break my neck trying to get her to eat something that she thinks tastes bad. So we started with like breakfast, like birch benders, waffles and sugar free syrup and things like that. And just really getting practicing the meal and getting the insulin dosing down and the timing down, and that works really great for probably six to eight months. And I mean, gosh, her her lowest, a 1c. Been a 5.2 but where it started changing flipping script on us was when she needed coverage for the fat and protein. And I didn't know how to do it. I attempted using the R insulin, the regular insulin that's just over the counter at the pharmacy, but there was really no method. And I say that loosely, because if you follow the low carb communities, you can figure out how to use it if you want to. But we had so many problems with basal insulin that the our insulin was kind of acting like that as well. She was going low, small body weight, right, right? Right. Yeah. She was 19 pounds when she was diagnosed. So by the time I started using insulin, she might have, or the R insulin, she might have been 23 pounds.

Scott Benner 21:27
Was there also a honeymoon in there. There was,

Andy 21:31
but again, it, it was very strange, because I felt like she just like, went full force into diabetes, to the point where a half unit of levemir was enough to put her in the 50s at night, but if you didn't give it, then she was three 400 when she woke up. Yeah, yeah, it's a tough time. We were just stuck between a rock and a hard place on MDI. Young

Scott Benner 21:52
kid still MDI, too much basil, one way, not enough basil the other way. But you're balancing a more lower carb lifestyle with the things you're hearing about on the podcast, and where does that lead to? So

Andy 22:07
that led us to finding out how to actually bolus for fat and protein without using our insulin, just because our insulin was just hard on her, just like the basal was. So we moved over to I just went back to the podcast, and I went to the search, the little search icon typed in fat and protein, and that led me to the episode, waltzing the dragon. And I, I listened to it. I'm like, Yes, this is exactly what I needed. This is what I was looking for. And I found that that protein calculator, and at first I started doing about 50% so like, I would type it all in, get that, what that carb count would be for the fat and protein, and then I would start giving her half, just to see how she would react to it. And then if I felt like she needed more, I would give that. But if I knew she was going to be super active, I'd only do the half, like the 50% once I got comfortable with insulin, just in and of itself, really just starting to say, You know what, hey, why don't we just try pre bolusing for dipping dots? Why don't we try pre bolusing for that little piece of cake or whatever? And it's taken a couple of years to really get me there. But fast forward to now. We went to her kindergarten field trip, and she had a low carb lunch. It was pre bolus for she did a lot of walking. Once we signed the kids out, me and my friend signed our daughters out. We went to the dipping dot stand. She got two units. We stood in line for 10 minutes. She sat down to eat her ice cream. She got three more units, and we walked out of the park and her blood sugar was 83 Yeah, well, you're good at this. Some days still suck, but that's just part of it. Yeah, no, it

Scott Benner 23:49
certainly is. And do you find that when it sucks, it's more of a learning experience than just a bad experience,

Andy 23:54
right? This whole week, she's been sick. She's had croup, so she's been out. I just got her back to school today. So sugar's been all over the place, and she thank god she's not been throwing up. Also, I'll take that. But as far as like, the fever, the cough that she's had, our diabetes week has been pretty hard. I think her average blood sugar's been like between 140 and 160 just trying to to keep everything together. And then she went to school this morning and threw a curve ball at me and didn't want to eat breakfast and ended up in the nurse's office with a blood sugar of 58 so we had to fix it

Scott Benner 24:29
so you bolus. And then she's like, No thank you. Yeah,

Andy 24:34
pretty much. I gave her a few grapes, and then we've kindergarten has turned into a one sees about a 5.9 right now, but she gets a lot of adrenaline the minute we walk out the door. And I know you've talked about this too, with Arden, we do a low carb breakfast, so ratio keto yogurt, but it's 15 grams of fat and 15 grams of protein that that converts into about two units for her. So I'll do the six, six carbs worth in the morning, pre bolus her that by about 15 minutes. Soon as she's done eating, I go ahead and hit her with the fat and protein. Okay, and then it really just depends on where her sugar's hitting. Sometimes, most of the time, she will go up and be 161 80 when we walk out the door, if I don't give her that adrenaline dose. So I kind of have to time that, essentially three units just to get us out the door in the morning, settings on loop or low carb. So we do kind of fight with that as well. I have to know how to dose for those higher carb foods with settings that are lower carb. But when we're at school, or it's a school day, breakfast, lunch, or typically low carb, and then at night, it's not a free for all when we come home. But if we're doing stir fry, she'll have rice. If we're doing pizza, we'll we'll make sure she's got pizza that she can eat that's gluten free. I'm just not going to send her to school with gluten free bread, like a gluten free peanut butter and jelly, because we have to dose two to three times more insulin for something that's gluten free than we do, than we would have if it was wheat.

Scott Benner 26:16
Yeah, the gluten a lot of gluten free foods just they hit harder, right? Their glycemic load is heavier, right? And so what you're saying is that for most of the time when you're doing low carb meals, you have a ratio set up in your system. You have a basal set up in your system. It all works well with low carb but if you start adding carbs, or some of that gluten free food that that is harder to hit you basically do what a conversion in your head. Or do you just, like, do eyeball it. How do you do it? Um,

Andy 26:49
so if she eats an Applegate corn dog, those are 22 carbs. And I've learned this from the podcast just doing a search too, just on the Facebook page about just high glycemic like rice flour. And all the all the celiacs on there going, Oh yeah, you have to double dose. Sometimes triple dose. And some of the celiacs are like, I don't understand. That doesn't hit me that way. And I'm like, oh, what? You're lucky. But so for a corn dog, I will, I will look at her blood sugar. Say her blood sugar is anywhere between 90 and 130 I will throw the corn dog in the air fryer. It's 10 minutes. I'll go ahead and dose her the two units for the corn dog. Then I'll pull it out, let it cool down. She's eating, excuse me, within 15 minutes, and when she sits down to eat, depending upon where her sugar is, I'll go ahead and hit her with 22 carbs, two more units. And then I'll put her pump. I have little settings. One of them is just called rice flour, and it's like 50% more. It just turns bloop up by 50% okay? And I'll hit that for an hour, and then she starts eating. And typically she falls anywhere between 121, 50 by the time she's eating it. Andy,

Scott Benner 27:59
you figured this stuff out with the podcast, the Facebook group and what else. Where did you get all this information from to pull together and to help you make your decisions? So the

Andy 28:09
juicebox podcast, let me be 83 there's one that was recommended to me via the juicebox podcast, and it's parent, I think it's called parents with celiac and type one. Let me look at the Facebook page real

Scott Benner 28:19
quick. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Actually, taking like references from different places and blending them together to do a thing that works for you. It's

Andy 28:28
called empowering parents of children with celiac disease and type one diabetes. What

Scott Benner 28:33
a title. I don't want to be. Jeez. Who named that one?

Andy 28:38
I don't know. I go there. Well, okay, so here's the deal. She was diagnosed with celiac through blood work a year after type one diabetes, so still the middle of covid, and they couldn't get her in to do a scope until, like October. They get her in, they do the scope, they see the damage. They're like, yes, go gluten free. So we go gluten free or so, I thought I see somebody post on that celiac page. What kind of meat sticks should I eat that are gluten free? This is, like, a year after the celiac diagnosis, and I'm going wait, what the the person that helped us with, you know, watch out for toothpaste. Watch out for shampoo. You know, you're going to have to start really reading labels to watch out for Sealy or to watch out for gluten. Gluten. Uh, nobody said anything about processed meats having gluten in them. And so for a year after we got the diagnosis of celiac, I was giving her Slim Jims as a snack. Oh,

Scott Benner 29:37
so you thought you were doing it, but you kind of still weren't, because there were some foods that you didn't realize had gluten in it, right?

Andy 29:44
And somebody posted on that celiac group, and it just popped up in my feed on Facebook, and I was sitting there laughing, and my husband goes, What's wrong? And I'm like, mother, ever God dang it. So it's always some. Thing. But yeah, it's just all the information I found. I just encourage anybody. I'm not going to tell you what to eat. When I first started the low carb journey with my daughter, I was all for it. Gung ho. Oh yes, you should do this. Why don't they teach us this in the hospital? I will say that the low carb community can be a bit like Mean Girls. On Wednesdays, they wear pink, and you definitely need to know how to use the insulin the the hospital's failure is in that they can't be there to babysit you or to teach you all of these little things. And so they just teach everybody the same thing, stay alive. And then I think the low carb community can kind of take it too far, and it gets a little bit where they're like proselytizing, how you say the word, yeah, that's the word. We all have to make our own decisions. There's, there's a ton of crap food out there, obviously. And you just take all the information for what it is, and it's totally okay to take something from one place and use it, and take something from another place and use it. I'm, I toe the line, so I'm not going to tell anybody what to do. Good for you. Just use the influence.

Scott Benner 31:07
I'm very impressed with your ability to not pick a side. Like to look and say, hey, there was good information in a lot of different places. Like, why do I have to put on a jersey for one of these teams and root against the other team,

Andy 31:20
all the, all the literature that's out there too. Dr Bernstein's diabetic solution. I mean, at the time he was diagnosed with type one diabetes, he was like 12 in the 40s. He did what he had to do to live better than what the doctors were telling him he he would be able to Yeah, 1,000,000% Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of you like, like, what you've done here in building the podcast. You walked so that people like me could run for my kid. Oh, that's nice of you to say. I mean, that's the ultimate gift, and that's we just had a fourth grader at my daughter's school diagnosed with type one diabetes, and I wrote the juicebox podcast down on a sticky note, and I slipped it over to the nurse. And I'm like, I know you probably won't, but you should give this to the parents.

Scott Benner 32:04
Oh, that's, that's very it's very nice you to say and, and I'm just again, I want to say I'm very impressed with your ability to blend ideas, especially in a culture now that, I mean, honestly, like, the way we get our I don't want to sound like a broken record here, because people say this all the time, even though I don't think I've ever said this year, but the way people get their news is obviously very algorithm centric, like you get fed things that you are going to agree with, right? And and so that's kind of part of that's a little bit of the problem. The other bit of the problem is, I do think people like to be on teams, right? They like to root for their side, root against another side. That happens as well. I have no problem in the world with people eating low carb. Like I've never once had a thought in my mind, like no one should do that. There are days and that go into more days that art needs low carb for reasons of just, you know, taste and flavor and what she decides she wants to eat one day. I wouldn't think twice about it, but I got, by some people, I think I got labeled as like a carb pusher, because I was saying, and will continue to say, you know, you need to meet the need. There's an amount of insulin that that your body needs. You need to use that amount of it at the right time. And for my money, that was me saying, I would rather people understand how insulin works and be able to apply it to what they're eating, than to spend my time trying to talk people into eating a certain way. Because I just don't think that's a tenable idea. I don't think that I or anyone else could talk everybody into eating us. Like, like, let's, I guess, let's say that there was an actual right way to eat. Like, I don't know, Jesus knows that he shares it all with us, or she, or whatever. I don't care. And like, so like, this, this absolutely, this, absolute right. These are the right things to eat. Eat this on Monday, this on Tuesday, this on Wednesday. You're gonna, you're gonna be as healthy as possible, like that was the right way to eat, even if it was that, I don't know that you could make everyone do it. I actually don't think you could. And so in the interim, let's not see people running around with 350 400 blood sugars because they make less than valuable choices with their food choice choices, right? And I'm not saying that it had to be, it has to be low carb. You can eat a, you know, a diet that has 50, 6070, carbs a day in it, and be eating healthier foods, but you still need to know how to bolus for it. You need to know how to bolus for a Twinkie the same way you need to know how to bolus for a sweet potato, you know what I mean? Or, you know, you have to understand that there's carbs and carrots like stuff like that, or that you might eat meat and having completely low carb lifestyle, but still see some sort of a bump from the protein later, right? All these things are going to happen. You should know how to use the insulin for them. Now after that, if you want to move on to another person or an idea or a book or a podcast and figure out a healthier way for you to eat, then God bless, you'll know how to use the insulin for that too. You know that that's it for me, having said that, I haven't had as much problem with it over the last couple of years as that I've as I've had in the past, it almost seems like people have calmed down a little bit, if that makes sense. So I don't know if maybe, I obviously don't know the other side of it. I'm not in anybody else's Facebook group. I don't pay attention to what they're doing in the world. I don't actually know what they're doing, but just everybody seems a little calmer at the moment. I don't know if that's me being wishful thinking or if that's actually true, but one way or the other, I'm impressed with how you handled it

Andy 35:44
well. Thank you. I just think that the catalyst for all of this was really me, just I was listening to the doctor. I was being dutiful. I was doing everything they were telling me to do, and it was a dumpster fire every day for six months. On top of having a toddler with type one diabetes, I was pregnant with my son, and the the turning point was a sausage on a stick. Gave her the sausage on the stick. I dosed like the doctor told me to within 20 minutes, her blood sugar was 400 and she stayed that way for like eight hours, and it was the most miserable day and experience we've had the sport far with type one diabetes, and she's had stays in the hospital due to stomach viruses since then, but that was the moment I decided I wanted more, and I wanted more for her. We couldn't keep living like this. The doctors were just not giving us the information, other than just teaching us how to survive. And my mother in law was pushing me to find some kind of group, and I was just very I was against the idea of a group where everybody does the same thing and everybody has high blood sugars and there's no real growth. I just assumed that if the doctors didn't know any better, how could anybody else know any better? And she had probably said to me for the millionth time, Andy, find a diabetes support group. And I said, Fine, I'll just look one up on Facebook. And I just typed in diabetes group, and here comes the juicebox podcast. And I'm looking through everything and reading, and I'm like, What can this guy know?

Scott Benner 37:18
Huh? I know, right. Seems like an idiot, but go ahead, yeah. But I started

Andy 37:23
listening. And you know, the dynamic between you and Jenny, you as a caretaker, her as living with it and and taking care and helping people who who live with it, it's just such a great dynamic. And the information is so easy to understand. You just have to take the time to actually, you have to devote some of your time to it. And I've listened to a lot of the podcast, not all of it, by any means what.

Scott Benner 37:49
I'm sorry this interview is over.

Andy 37:51
Okay, you've got a lot of episodes. You push an episode out every day. I'm trying to keep up, buddy. Hey, I'm

Scott Benner 37:58
trying to keep up too. Don't

Andy 37:59
worry. No, you're fine. So one of the first things I heard you say on one of the I cannot remember what the episode is, I'm not Nico. I don't remember everything.

Scott Benner 38:09
Do you think Nico's freaked out? They used her name on the podcast?

Andy 38:12
I don't know.

Scott Benner 38:14
Actually, can I let's hold your thought for one second. Sure. I keep thinking while you're talking, why are you not a group expert in my Facebook group?

Andy 38:25
I have no idea. Think about

Scott Benner 38:27
that. If that's the thing you'd like to do, I'd like you to do it, but go ahead. So go ahead. You're not Nico. You don't know every episode, but I said this thing, what'd I say? You

Andy 38:36
said it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission. And I had forgot that before I had children, that was my motto. I lived by that. It was just I was a manager at Walmart for a few years in the optical department, and I lived by that with dealing with my market directors and trying to appease them all the time. I heard you, we were in the swimming pool, and I was listening to this episode, and I go, Oh, light bulb. I forgot. I can be an asshole. I forgot I can fight bag. I

Scott Benner 39:06
want to be clear. I don't see that as being an asshole, but I take your point that, yeah. I mean, the truth is, you're you get so busy trying to make everybody happy, you can't really accomplish anything. You know, your, your new job is, is the doctor happy? Is the school nurse happy? You know, is my is my spouse happy? Is this person happy? Am I doing everything that everybody expects from me? I How about just do what's right? And then, like, you know, if, if you get called out later, just go up, sorry, you know, like, just, it's just, it's it's obvious to me, you get put in this situation where, if I took you to four different doctors and asked them all the same question, you very likely would get four different answers. So now there, that means that there are four different groups of people out there living their lives the way their doctor spoke to them. And it doesn't say that any of them are completely right or completely wrong, but I think that there's a blend of right and wrong mixed through those four doctors and a Facebook group and ideas about eating low carb and how to use insulin and every you need to take all that stuff together and just turn it into your own, you know, into your own salad, and then use what works for you.

Andy 40:26
You know, a lot of the days just kind of run together as you start going through life. And you know, you have memories that stick out good and bad. And that day it was, it was lay down and just take it as it is, or do something it. It really was a hard day, and I'll never forget that

Scott Benner 40:43
it's so good that you just were like, I'm not doing this anymore. And this isn't good for this isn't good for her. Like, like, that's how I I mean, listen, when my kid was little, that's how it struck me. I was like, I How could I be doing what I'm being told? And my daughter's a 1c is in the eights, but a person who doesn't have diabetes a one season the high fours like, you know? And that doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't. It seemed like such a give up to me, and I just, I just wasn't willing to give up like that. I mean, try to amount like right now, Arden's at school. She's halfway She's almost done her sophomore year of college, and she's literally thriving and doing just everything that she thought she would do. But I mean, what level of illness would she have right now if I left her a 1c in the eights for the last for the last 16 year, 18 years,

Andy 41:38
as I started learning stuff, that was the biggest pushback from the endocrinologist. Mind you, we use Cook Children's out in Fort Worth Texas. The hospital group is amazing. I mean, we I had called the pediatrician the morning I suspected the diabetes. They didn't laugh in my face. They just said, Okay, you're not crazy, till we prove you crazy. Come in, we're going to check your sugar. They threw us straight onto Cook Children's Hospital. So we drove 35 minutes into downtown, but as soon as we got back to triage, the first thing that was ever said to me by a nurse, and I don't think she meant it in the way that it came out, we were all wearing masks, so it's not like we could read facial expressions. She looked at me and said, Don't worry, mom, she's not that sick. And now I understand that. You know, my kid wasn't in DKA, so she really wasn't that sick. But my response to her because I knew enough about diabetes growing up, because I have a cousin with type one diabetes, oh, it was forever. And so my response to her was, yeah, but it's a life sentence. And she just kind of cocked her head at me, and collectively our our experience with our endocrinologist and the physician assistant that works with her, they trust me more now than when we first started. But every every visit, every three months, I would come in with something, pre bolusing, the next step, the next appointment, I would say, How about low carb? And it was, you shouldn't pre bolus because you don't know how much she's going to eat, and what happens if the food at the restaurant comes out too late and she goes low. We would much prefer her blood sugar to be 400 for the sake of experience.

Scott Benner 43:20
I love people that always assume the wrong thing's gonna happen, and it's the only thing they can imagine. I'm gonna, like, listen, you're gonna pre blast and be like, great if they if the food doesn't come out in time, have juice with you. Yeah, all fixed. You know, you know, how is instead of a small fix like that, to an idea, how is the idea next? Just let her blood sugar jump up into the threes, the fours, and stay there for hours instead of just being ready if something should happen. I don't like people who plan for failure, you know? Yeah, that is a lot. What that feels like to me is just planning for failure. You know, I wanted to say because we're gonna get past it. Your idea that, like, look, it's a life sentence. That's a very realistic and honest statement, but again, there's more to say after that. Like, yeah, it's a thing we have for our whole life. But you know what? I think we could mitigate a lot of the problems I'm seeing with this instead of just making the first blanket statement that comes to mind and then just accepting that as reality from here forward. Like, I don't understand why people don't think they can impact something. You know what? I mean, like, like, and I don't begrudge you having an honest emotion and saying, my kid just got this thing, it's never going to go away. Like, that's a real, honest emotion you have to work through. It doesn't mean there's not more you can do, right? And it doesn't mean you've given up because you're being honest about the situation.

Andy 44:51
Am I right about that? No, exactly. We don't get to pick the cards we're dealt in life. I know that sounds maybe gimmicky, but. But it's true. I you can look at a situation and let it kill you, or you can get back up and keep going, but I refuse to take subpar care in it as well.

Scott Benner 45:12
Yeah, listen, Andy, there are people who have actual life sentences, like they get put in prison for the rest of their lives, and you can watch documentaries about some of them, they find a way to live the best life possible, locked in a cage. Yep, diabetes certainly is an incarceration like that. And you know, like everything, God, it does sound like you're like it does sound like you're in San Francisco, and everything smells like patchouli oil when you say something like this, but like your life is really what you make of it. Yeah, yeah. And everyone's not promised a rose garden. So some of us don't get roses, and some of us get roses with weeds in them, and some of us don't even get a garden. Some of us don't have a house. And everyone's gonna have so many different versions of their reality. But within most of those things, you can build a happy life now. Don't give me, you know, and I want to say I'm not, I'm not trying to say that if you're living under a bridge right now and into a paper cup that, like, you know, like some good feelings are going to pull you out of it, I do think, and this is a, you know, a fairly existential conversation at this point, but I do think there's a way to be a happy homeless person if you're absolutely stuck in it, maybe not happy, but happier than someone else who just says, This is my life and lays in a pile like so no matter what version of life you get, I think there's a spectrum of happiness to be had within that version of life. Does that make sense? I think that's as clear as I can say it.

Andy 46:43
You think about the pain scale at like a hospital, or like zero to 10, and I feel like, when you look at somebody's life, like the trauma, or the level of hard, this level of heart might be a six for somebody and a 10 for somebody else. But within those feelings, those that feeling is valid, but it's what you do in spite of that, and how you keep going. Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:05
it's not a loss till you give up, right? That's pretty much it.

Andy 47:10
I'm no I'm no stranger to to life kicking me in the ass. My mom was 19 when she had me, and we grew up in the Bible Belt, so, I mean, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. You know, if you wanted to be right for the hereafter, you better have that kid. But oh my god, you had that kid as a teenager, and you're a piece of trash that kind of trickled down, and she struggled with drug addiction throughout her life. She's full of tenacity and and grit, and that's definitely rubbed off on me. And

Scott Benner 47:44
I thought you were gonna say meth. I thought you're gonna say she's full of tenacity and meth,

Andy 47:50
she's gonna kill me when she hears this. Now, no,

Scott Benner 47:52
you know what? She's not. Because the thing you just said was really thoughtful, like being put into a situation when you're 19 and being told by everybody. Hey, you got yourself pregnant. Now, do the right thing and have the baby, and then the minute the baby comes out, they look at you, go, Oh, look at this hooker having a baby at 19 years old. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly like they

Andy 48:14
are rocking a hard place, rocking a hard place, but I think I've learned a lot from her over the years, and she's definitely done so much to better her life. And even through all the pain she was she was in a really bad accident a year after my stepdad passed, where and my little sister is 10 years younger than me, and she was taking the death of her biological father really hard, and was in in the hospital trying to get help for some mental issues. My mom worked for a meat plant down south in South Texas, and was in a really bad accident, and lost her hand, lost her hand up to her forearm. Holy hell. And then in that time I did, I thought this was the hardest thing that I've ever dealt with. I was at work. Somehow my mom managed to call my husband at work and told him to go get me in the middle of her, you know, trying not to bleed to death. And I was stuck with fight or flight. Tyler called me, and I'm just standing in the middle of the Vision Center like I don't know what to do. I do. I go down to Brian, where my sister's in the hospital, and ask for a bunk bed so we can have more room for activities. Or do I try to make it to the hospital? I hope my mom's not going to die like at 25 years old, like I had no idea what to do. You know my dad, the only dad I knew, had passed away at 42 years old. And here's my mom's my mom's probably not going to make it. My sister's falling apart. What do I do? Yeah,

Scott Benner 49:47
no kidding. Hey, was this a workplace accident she had?

Unknown Speaker 49:51
Yes, so it was.

Scott Benner 49:52
So there's some meat that didn't get used that day. Is that what I'm hearing

Andy 49:57
my uncle got in the hospital. She when she came to you know, they had a nerve blocker, so when she woke up from surgery, you know, she wasn't in pain at that moment because she couldn't feel anything. And my uncle's sitting in the air in the in the room with us, and he goes, Well, you know, that batch just went to the trash can. And she's like, What the heck is that supposed to mean, and he's like, it's too fatty. The con the fat contents way too high.

Scott Benner 50:24
That's terrible. I love people who deal with pain with humor. My, um, my best friend's father passed away when we were younger. He he had cancer and and died pretty quickly the day he passed away. I mean, we knew it was coming, and the day he passed away, I rushed to my friend's side, and he's just as shocked as you could be. And at the same time, his mother was going through menopause, and I said, Is it possible your dad, like, cut himself and rubbed the cigarettes in the cut to get away from your mom?

Andy 50:54
Oh, my god, yeah, they're running. He just broke up

Scott Benner 50:58
laughing. And there was just one little moment of, like, levity in probably one of the worst days of his life. You know, I love your uncle doing that, like, oh, we had to throw away a bunch of hamburger today. Well, that's, did she get pulled into a machine?

Andy 51:14
She did. That's horrible. She got pulled into a machine. So the plate, like on a meat grinder, the plate has three holes, and part of the plate was actually broken. Is So the the worm that, like, rotates the meat through, and I'm sorry to anybody that's doing this that you know, go ahead, you're fine.

Unknown Speaker 51:32
I'm holding on to the chair, but go ahead,

Andy 51:34
trigger a warning, because I have all the pictures like, because we took pictures for legal reasons and things like that. The the machine itself that it's a circle with three holes. So the worm pulled her fingers in, and as it was twisting everything, the bottom part of the plate was open, and it just fed her hand through. Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 51:55
is she wealthy? Now, no, what? What's a what's a hand and an arm worth

Andy 52:03
so small company. She speak legal advice, and it just,

Scott Benner 52:07
oh, my god, don't tell me this. I thought your mom was the queen of Texas at this point. Like, no,

Andy 52:13
no, she's doing all right. She fell, I think it was the beginning in 2023 she fell getting out of the shower and landed on her elbow. And my sister's, my sister's 24 and still lives with her. And she came running because she hears my mom screaming, and my mom's butt naked in the floor, and there's blood everywhere, and my mom's broke her elbow, and the bone is sticking through, and this is on the nub that you know, you know, seven, eight years prior, she fed to a machine. So I am. I love my mom to death. She's a pain in my ass, and she just found out that she's type two diabetic, and I've been telling her this for, like, the last year and a half, and we just finally got her on Metformin. And she's lucky that she lives an hour away, and the doctor's not within my vicinity, because they've just been letting her sit at an A 1c of 6.4 and I feel like I'm having to pull eldest daughter tactics out on her, trying to get her to take care of herself, because I want her to stay here. Yeah.

Scott Benner 53:15
What do they have her doing? Metformin?

Andy 53:18
Uh, she just started Metformin, and I told her, you know, because you have one hand, you need to push for a CGM. I don't care if it's freestyle. I don't care you need something. And my mom has lost some of her attitude, I think, in her old age, She's nicer when it comes to the doctors, and the doctors like, well, your sugar's just kind of bouncing around, and I don't think a CGM would be good for your mental health right now. Or however, she worried,

Scott Benner 53:46
God, every again, the wrong answer to the to a reasonable question, Does your mom have any weight issues? Uh, yes, uh, yeah. Tell her to ask for a GLP that might really help.

Andy 53:57
And that's what I told her, too. I'm like, you know, I hear, I hear good things about metformin and not so good things about metformin and with the glps as well, with stomach issues. And I told her, I was like, you know, start the medicine, try it out. I was like, but for the love, if you start having issues, you call the doctor and tell them you want something else.

Scott Benner 54:18
Yeah. I mean, the GLP could easily lower her a 1c and help her

Andy 54:22
with her weight, right? And we have a history of type two diabetes in the in our family, one of my my step uncle, he's not blood, but my step uncle and my mom's brother, blood uncle, about the age of 3334 they both had massive heart attacks and ended up type two so and it was back to back on both of them. Jeez.

Scott Benner 54:42
I Yeah. I mean, I, first of all, this, the ladies got one hand a CGM is an obvious answer,

Andy 54:49
right? That's what I asked her. I'm like, what do they want you to do? Prick your toes? I'm like, Okay, do you like having your feet? Because maybe they should just give you a CGM.

Scott Benner 54:58
I mean, it would be fine to. Check your blood sugar in her feet. But, like, think about the like, she still has to take her shoes off, and she still has one arm. Like, it just, there's a lot. Why are you adding a level of difficulty to something when she could once every however many days? Gee, she could get the ever since CGM, and it's implantable for six months. I don't know if that's, uh, eligible for type twos or not, probably nothing's eligible for type two. So probably, right? And that's, you know, like, at least you put on a Dexcom for 10 days. One, you can easily put a Dexcom on with one hand, right?

Andy 55:30
Yeah, that doesn't I've been preaching it for a year and a half. I'm gonna get my way. I'm going to get my way with this. So she's going to be wearing a CGM, whether she likes it or

Scott Benner 55:39
not. You know, I hear stories like this and and I sit here, and there's part of me that thinks I can't possibly be that much smarter than everybody else. Like, it. Like, what is how does this happen? Like, how does someone say you don't need the stress of that? Like, you idiot. What a dumb thing. Whoever said that to her, You're a moron. Like, like, my god, you're a moron, and I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just sit here and I think, like, I know I'm not that smart of a person. Like, is like, How is this possible that other people can't keep up with these simple ideas? She

Andy 56:12
has heart issues. I don't remember what it's called, but when I was pregnant with Lorelei, she had to go in and have, like, the the sack of her heart, like the electrical component there was, there was too much misfiring going on, and so they had to burn part of it, an ablation, yeah, like an ablation type thing. And, I mean, it was, I mean, it was a big deal, but not, not a super big deal. They were able to fix it, right? But in her time of going to the cardiologist and seeing the doctor and them doing blood work hurt historically, her a 1c been at like a 6.2

Scott Benner 56:47
for oh, and nobody said anything. The whole time,

Andy 56:49
nobody said anything. And then she goes to this PCP, and they're like, oh, you're a one sees a 6.4 and when she told me her a 1c was a 6.4 I laid into her not about her diet and her eating habits, but about, okay, we need to start medication. We need to get you on a CGM. We need to start monitoring this so it doesn't get worse, because you can live the rest of your life on the medication and understanding maybe some some diet changes, but just knowing the trend of your blood sugar when you eat certain things. This is doable. This is so doable. And she went to the primary care and they're like, well, you're pre diabetic. You're not diabetic. So it took her a 1c getting to a 6.9 before they'd be like, Okay, well, here's some Metformin.

Scott Benner 57:36
Oh, that's a common story for type twos. They sit or I just the number of people I've been talking to who are point one away from getting a GLP, and their doctors are telling them, well, you just first, you got to get type two diabetes, then we'll give it to you. And they're like, you know, I'm this point four, and this point five would have made me a type two. And they go, no, sorry, so that's an insurance thing. Yeah, most definitely. But that's still, like, it's a system. It's set up. It says, Look, we could stop you from getting sick, but we're gonna wait till you're sick, and then we're gonna see if we can't get it backwards for you. Like, it's just fascinating. It really is. Everything is fascinating. Uh, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Andy 58:19
No, you didn't ask me if there was any history in my family. Oh, hold

Scott Benner 58:23
on a second. Is there any history of type one diabetes in your extended family?

Andy 58:28
Yeah, that and other autoimmune diseases.

Scott Benner 58:31
Please do tell me about that. Andy,

Andy 58:34
my cousin, was diagnosed in 99 I was nine. He was like 17, and shortly after, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and then PSA to anybody playing with Ancestry DNA tests, if you don't want to clean skeletons out of your closet, so don't take them, because I found out who my dad was at 29 years old, and he had lupus and sarcoid it alone.

Scott Benner 58:56
Sarcoidosis. Yep, another sarcoidosis. Wait, what were you doing on, like, ancestry.com were you just trying to find out if you were, like, you know, Persian or something, or what were you doing? I

Andy 59:08
was trying to see, like, what kind of European mutt I was. I took it just out of fascination, and then I did. I did both. I did the ancestry and the 23andme and I found first cousins with so there was, I was told growing up, and I grew up with dad a being my biological father, and he was not the best. We'll leave it at that. And then I overheard a conversation at 12 about Dad B. So I always knew that there was a possibility, but nobody would ever give me that validation, and so I took the test. I found some first cousins. I reached out to them. They were able to tell me how we were related. It did lead me to Dad B. I was able to reach out to my brother and sister that I didn't know I had.

Scott Benner 59:56
Jeez, why is everyone's life so confusing? Listen, can I get. Some advice here. Complete a sentence. Don't just say, Oh, well, what if they don't eat? Then you've pre bolus. Like, actually think it through and tell people the truth that really should fix most of everyone's problems. Like, like, I mean, how is it possible that so many people have your story? Because your story is not uncommon. That story is not uncommon at all. I've heard about it, and somebody talked about it, but nobody would really tell me, and I had a feeling, but no one would say and holy hell, everybody's making this all a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Andy 1:00:33
No My mom did jump in and help. We found my grandfather, and I did a lab core grandparent test kit with him, and it came back positive. And then I did Ancestry DNA. It took my sister and my grandmother about a year and a half after we reached out to him to actually reach back out to me. They were grieving the loss of their son and their dad. And, you know, there was a lot of Skeptic like, you know, speculation is Andy telling the truth? Does she just want money? And I'm like, Y'all ain't got no money. I just want to know where I came from.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
I want 23 of those. $45 I know you've got your pocket,

Andy 1:01:14
but I talked to my sister. So side note, I have a sister named Katie, and then my brother's name is Johnny. And then my my mom's other daughter is named Caitlyn, and she goes by Katie, perfect. So I have two sisters named Katie, and they're both blood, you know, they're bullet related. Once my dad's kid wants my mom's kid, every

Scott Benner 1:01:33
one of my wife's side of the family is named Mike. Oh, dear God, my niece just started dating a guy, and it seems like it's probably going okay for the moment. So I bothered to ask what his name was. I said, Hey, what's this guy's name? You're dating? She just started laughing. I was like, Oh my God, is it Mike? You guys got to travel outside of, like, the sphere you live in, and look for other people. I don't want to kid you. My father in law, his name is Mike. His son's name is Mike. They had a baby and named him Mike. He's got a daughter who who married a guy named Mike, and then they had a baby and named it Mike. Oh my god.

Andy 1:02:11
Our neighbor's name is Mike on the right. Our neighbor's name is Mike on the left. And then my best friend, who moved to Minnesota, her husband's name is

Scott Benner 1:02:19
Mike. I don't understand it's not listen, it's not a bad name. But what are we doing? There's others. I

Andy 1:02:25
didn't appreciate it when I was little, because my name is Adrian Estelle, and I was nicknamed Andy. So I didn't even know my name was Adrian until I started school that growing up, I was always called Andy Rooney by my family or who Andy, where's Opie. And then, you know, starting school. And then high school, I started getting the Adrian from Rocky, but I appreciate it now, because at least it's not, you know, Brittany or Ashley or something like that. Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 1:02:58
your life is a CW TV show. That's why you love Gilmore Girls so much.

Andy 1:03:04
Hey, most days are pretty mundane. I mean, just hanging out with a three year old and trying to keep the five year old alive in kindergarten. Well, it sounds

Scott Benner 1:03:11
like you're doing a very good job of that. Seriously, yeah. Well,

Andy 1:03:14
it's, it's not without the group that you've put together and all the people that have come together. It's

Scott Benner 1:03:21
yeah. I mean, I didn't want to say and I did it, but I mean, you're Yeah, no, no,

Andy 1:03:26
there's, there's thanks to be had for you for putting this all together, and then for all the people that have come on the podcast or just interact on the Facebook page. I mean, even if it's just one person that you help it, you don't realize that the catalyst that like, the trickle down effect that happens from one person to the next, if you really, if you really put in the work to get to this point, it's amazing. Well, you

Scott Benner 1:03:50
know what? I do deserve the credit because I, it really is me that started it, but, but, like, I don't, I don't deserve the ongoing credit in the same way as I do for starting it, if that makes sense. Oh,

Andy 1:04:01
yeah, no, that where credits do. It's just like, like I was talking about before all the literature that's out there. You Dr Bernstein, you know, think like a pancreas sugar surfing, all of those ideas, while maybe there's differences in them, it's created a voice for the type one community that without we would just be left with what the doctors have to say. And that's something against a doctor. I've, I've had doctors tell me that they felt like the juice box was Doctor bashing. And I'm like, but you're looking at it from your from your side of the street. Yeah, you need to come over here. You need to come over here, put my shoes on, and then listen to it, and maybe you'll your mind might be changed a little bit. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:42
no, I agree. Listen, I also give a lot of credit to all the doctors who hear it and don't get their panties in a twist and then say, hey, it is possible that I'm doing some of the things that they just said. So you know, how can I make this better for other people? Yeah? I have, I have an episode called listen to the doctor with an endo who had the courage to come on here and say, I heard your podcast. And I thought, This is Doctor bashing. And then I kept listening. And then she said, I thought, I am doing some of this stuff. And now, because of the podcast, I give better care to people. And, you know, I I'd love you to listen to the episode, but one of the things she said into it was, you know, I spread this out through the staff, and a lot of the staff came back and said, I don't want to listen to this. He's saying we're doing the wrong thing. Like it doesn't feel good for me to hear this. But I would say to you, if it doesn't feel good to you to hear it, then maybe you should be examining why it is you feel that way, not what I'm saying. So, you know, all I'm saying is teach people how to take care of themselves, and don't let them sit around, you know, contented with a seven, A, 1c and eight, A, 1c try to actually help them. And if you're not willing to help them, then send them somewhere else and see if they can get the help somewhere else. But don't just capture them in your little in your little bubble and, you know, Doctor them into a into a grave, you know,

Andy 1:06:07
yeah, for sure. No, that's, that's the goal. We're gonna get my mom a CGM, whether she likes or not that doctor, whether that doctor likes it or not. Oh, she'll

Scott Benner 1:06:16
find it illuminating. My brother has type two, and he said, You know what you've heard so many other people say about wearing a CGM, but man, it tell it teaches you what you want to eat and what you don't want to eat, almost like, God, that's not even worth it. Like, if my blood sugar is going to go up like that, I don't want to eat that. He had a lot of moments like that wearing one, and it's been really valuable for him. And a GLP, by the way, his a 1c went down two full points on a GLP. Oh, nice. Yeah. Type Two. He's in the fives now. It's gonna fundamentally change his life. Yeah.

Andy 1:06:48
And then I've been listening to the episode like you had an episode about the teenager that's on the GLP and a chef's kiss. I mean, I if it goes the right way, I can definitely see this being something that a GLP being used in management for teenagers, because that's that's one thing that I heard being in the hospital with like Lorelei would get get sick, and we couldn't control it at home. So she'd go to the ER, get admitted to the endo floor. We had a round of Doctor around with a doctor, and then the nurses coming in, and they're so desensitized to everything, and the one thing that kept coming out of their mouths were, we're just used to bad diabetics. We're used to teenagers that don't take care of themselves. And I'm like, man, let me stop you. There is it that they're not taking care of themselves, or they don't know

Scott Benner 1:07:33
how? Yeah, because they're putting some effort in somewhere, and it's obviously not in the right direction. I fundamentally reject the idea that people don't care about their their health. I think that they that there's levels of effort you'll get out of people, but it also comes with levels of understanding and levels of direction. You can't just wake up every day and run into the same wall and expect that they're going to keep doing that. Eventually they're going to sit down and say, I'm going to stop running into this wall now. And if you don't show them where the door is, then that that's what giving up looks like. It's not because they didn't give up because they wanted to give up. They gave up because the effort they put out every day didn't return anything, right?

Andy 1:08:13
Yeah, and I, I could definitely see the GLP ones being used for teenagers, especially in in that heightened growth period where they're just so resistant to insulin, I'm

Scott Benner 1:08:24
telling you, I can see it being used for a great many people with diabetes. Oh yeah, type one or type two. So I have more people coming on. I actually have a doctor coming on to talk about, like, kind of really lay out what glps are. I have more episodes with people who have been using them and talking about the experiences they're having with them. So you know, I'm gonna keep talking about it awesome. Yeah, all right. Well, Andy, you were terrific. I really appreciate this. Thank you so very much. I don't know what to say. This is a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed it. Awesome. I

Andy 1:09:00
did too. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Hold

Scott Benner 1:09:01
on one second. I want to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, cgm.com/juice box. Get the only implantable sensor for long term wear. Get ever since us med sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast, check them out at usmed.com/juice box, or by calling 888-721-1514, get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvoke hypopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l. U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box, if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl 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. Hey kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know? What else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. Of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in, but make sure you're not a bot or an evildoer. Then you're on your way. You'll be part of the family. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you. Wrongwaverecording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

#1331 Deck My Diabetes

Andrew Hollis from Deck My Diabetes has a daughter with type 1.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome back to the next episode of The juicebox Podcast.

Today, we'll be speaking with Andrew, who is the owner of deck my diabetes, and the father of a daughter who was diagnosed with type one diabetes right when the covid lockdown began, nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. 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. You juicebox.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. This is my favorite diabetes organization, and I'm just asking you to check them out at touched by type one.org on Facebook and Instagram. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juicebox, get started today using this link, and you'll not only be doing something great for yourself, you'll be supporting the juicebox podcast.

Andrew 2:01
My name is Andrew. I'm the father of a daughter with type one, and the owner of deck my diabetes. My wife and I started that company in 2020 and it has sort of become our new identity, if you will.

Scott Benner 2:16
Is it a full time job now or or is it still something you do to supplement your your work. So

Andrew 2:21
I do work a full time job in another career. I won't say it's not a full time job, because it has kind of grown into that. But it is not our main revenue stream, if you will, right? So we do that on the side. So tell me

Scott Benner 2:34
a little bit about your family. There's you, your wife, your daughter. Is there anybody else?

Andrew 2:38
Uh, nope, just the three of us, and we have three dogs as well. So my wife said, after our daughter was diagnosed, she said, I think I'm done. There's just, there's just so much stress involved in raising a child with type one that she want to be able to put all of her focus and effort into making sure my daughter has the best, you know, the best care possible, and she doesn't want to have to split her attention. So I agree with her wholeheartedly. You know, as well as I do that, raising a child with type one, there's a lot of hurdles to encounter, fair amount

Scott Benner 3:12
of work, that's for sure. How old is your daughter?

Andrew 3:15
She is seven. She'll be eight in October. When was she diagnosed? May of 2020, and it was the week that they announced covid lockdown here in Michigan, where we're from, so that that added a whole new level of stress beyond just the diagnosis, but also the limitations put on the hospitals at the time, for one parent in at a time and that kind of thing. So definitely made it complicated for us. Am

Scott Benner 3:40
I losing my mind on years? Was covid? Not 2019?

Andrew 3:44
In 2020? Is when, when our covid lockdowns hit here. I think, you know, depending on what part of country. And I think there were different there were different lockdown restrictions at different times.

Scott Benner 3:53
But oh yeah, you might have got a Midwest lockdown. I got an East Coast lockdown, yeah, yeah. Immediately they were like, what's that get in your house? I'm like, Uh, okay, yeah, no, no, yeah.

Andrew 4:03
For us, it was kind of like, hey, it's spreading. Hey, you know, we're looking at all these, these other states that are having lockdowns. And then finally, there they said, Okay, now there's mass panic. People are mass buying bread and milk, and the stores are empty, so inside for a little bit. Yeah, that's when they started that, and I work in the transportation industry, so we, you know, for for my career job, and we were considered essential personnel. So I, you know, I still had to venture out and about, even amongst all of that mess.

Scott Benner 4:32
So she's diagnosed just as this lockdown is happening, yes,

Andrew 4:36
so the kind of leading up to the diagnosis, my wife had said, hey, you know, I'm seeing these signs. Our daughter is she's drinking a lot, she's going to the bathroom a lot, she's just doesn't look healthy. And I said, Oh, she's probably just growing. I did the dad thing, you know, you brush it off a little bit. Say, yeah, it's, it's, it's normal. She's just growing, and she's hydrating. It's no big deal. And I was. Is at my day job, working overtime on a Saturday, and she sent me a photo of my daughter, and her face is white and her eyes are sunk in. She's got black circles, and she said, Something's not right. I said, Okay, I'm leaving work now call the pediatrician and see if they can get us in on a Saturday. So my wife called. They said, we'll meet you at the office. So I drove home, grab my wife, my daughter, we jump in the car, drive directly to the pediatrics office. The doctor meets us in the room and says, I can smell ketones from the door. He said, I'm pretty sure that we're dealing with diabetes. Let's do a blood test just to check and their test me. Their meter came back and said, Hi. She said, Okay, go get in the car. Don't go home. Go straight to the hospital. Go straight to the ER. And then they'll they'll do a battery test there and confirm, but I'm pretty sure it's diabetes. So we jump in the car. Had to reach the hospital. My daughter didn't even have shoes on because we weren't expecting to have to go anywhere. We were ill prepared. Didn't plan for anything. Show up at the door and they say, Oh, no one adult.

Scott Benner 6:05
It was panic. But could you put issues on one of these people?

Andrew 6:10
Right? Right? So, yeah. So my my wife, of course, she's, you know, at the time, my wife and my daughter really have the special bond. And, you know, as mothers typically do. And so my wife decided to take her into the ER and I waited out in the parking lot for hours, probably eight hours, waiting to, you know, kind of get an idea what's going on. She's keeping me updated via text. Thank goodness for technology. Then I ended up leaving to go get her an overnight bag. As soon as they admitted my daughter. I said, Okay, what do you need? Send me a list. I went and got, you know, got my wife a change of clothes and all snacks and stuff, and went and got some cash so she could use the vending machines if she needed. And picked up dinner on the way back through, they had a nurse come down and meet me at the door, and then they carted it all up to the room for me. So, yeah, it was very complicated. No

Scott Benner 6:59
kidding. Oh, so how quickly do you I mean, that's just a handful of years ago. So what happens that makes you think, like, I'm gonna start a, like, a, I don't know a company that like, make adhesives for you know, that's just an interesting leap. I'm trying to figure out how that, yeah. So,

Andrew 7:18
so the LEAP started something like this. We get back from our diagnosis. We're a month in. We are fortunate enough to be given the Dexcom g6 as the CGM, and my daughter goes to put it on. She puts the first one on. She's three years old at the time, and she looks at it and she says, I can't go anywhere with this on. I said, What are you talking about? She said, people are gonna look at me funny. Look at me funny. I have this thing on my arm. Nobody else my age has this thing on their arm. I try to coach her. And you know what? We try to teach her. Everybody has something they're dealing with, and this just happens to be what your thing is, and it's manageable. And this is a great piece of technology. It's gonna help people try explaining that to a three year old. So I ended up finding a version of a shield online, and I had a three printer. So I printed one. I printed it out of purple material, and as soon as I showed her that, her reaction to putting her Dexcom on completely changed. She went from I don't want to wear that to showing everybody pointing to it. Check this out. I got I got purple. I got a yellow one. My dad's gonna make me more colors. And it just seeing the attitude shift, I knew that there was something to this shield, okay? And so I reached out to the maker of the shield and said, Hey, I really like your product and and your your design is something that that I would like to be able to sell. And he said, Yeah, no, this is kind of my thing. You go make your own. So my wife and I went back to the drawing board. We redesigned from the ground up and and essentially we believe we created the better mousetrap with the g6 design. And shortly after posting, Facebook blew up, hey, can you make my kid one? Can you make my kid one? So it started as a hobby, and we were just, yeah, you could pay pals a few dollars make it one. No big deal. And then we had people asking for one, for the OmniPod and for the Libre system, and it just kind of exploded. From there, we went from one printer to 16, 3d printers currently,

Scott Benner 9:10
jeez. Did they just run constantly, almost,

Andrew 9:13
almost so the the issue with manufacturing, withd printing, is that you have limitations for how much you can fit on a print bed or at a time, and then you have to go down there and manually move, you know, remove those items, and then you can print more. And what we've got now with the 16 of them is we kind of have this flow where we have a set number of stock we have on on the wall so we can fulfill orders. We have enough colors now that as the wall starts to empty out on a particular color I'll go load that on one of the printers. My wife runs them during the day, and then I do all the maintenance and things in the evening after my daughter goes to bed.

Scott Benner 9:49
Today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by Dexcom, and I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom G set. In the Dexcom g7 is small, it is accurate, and it is easy to use and wear. Arden has been wearing a Dexcom g7 since almost day one of when they came out, and she's having a fantastic experience with it. We love the g6 but man, is the g7 small, the profile so much closer to your body, the weight, you can't really feel it. And that's coming from me. And I've worn one, I've worn a g6 I've worn a g7 I found both of the experiences to be lovely, but my gosh, is that g7 tiny? And the accuracy has been fantastic. Arden's a 1c. Are right where we expect them to be. And we actually use the Dexcom clarity app to keep track of those things. That app is built right in to Arden's Dexcom g7 app on her iPhone. Oh, did you not know about that? You can use an iPhone or an Android device to see your Dexcom data. If you have a compatible phone, your Dexcom goes right to the Dexcom app. You don't have to carry the receiver, but if you don't want to use the phone, that's fine. Use the Dexcom receiver. It's up to you. Choice is yours with Dexcom, dexcom.com/juicebox who does the order processing and the shipping and everything

Andrew 11:15
we do, we kind of tag team it. We're finding as we grow and we're getting on more platforms, like we have our product now on Amazon and on Etsy and our website, but with like, Amazon orders, as we as we grow, the orders are coming in so rapidly that we're now we're packing daily. We used to pack, like, twice a week, but if we do that, we'd be loading our mail carrier with, you know, two, 300 items, and that's not fair to them, and it's not fair to our customers either. We find out to have to wait. We really want, yeah, we really want to get these to people as soon as possible. So we're typically, if you order, you know, sometime between 9pm Eastern Time, or, yeah, 9pm Eastern Time and about 10am the next day. We're packing it to be shipped that day, that 10am day, right? So if you order on Friday at 9pm between Saturday, Friday at 9pm and Saturday at 10am it's probably going out Saturday at 11. Oh, wow. Mail Carrier comes. We see the change in what this does for kids and for parents and, you know, making diabetic living a little easier. And we don't want them to have to wait a week for us to process. So we typically don't.

Scott Benner 12:21
So you, you make the grip the grip shields. The first one is that,

Andrew 12:25
right? The g6 grip shield is the very first, yeah, the very first one that we made. And we've, you know, tweaked the design several times, and then, yeah. And then we evolved and got into OmniPod grip shield, the libre two grip shield. And then, as technologies progress with CGMS, we've also moved into, you know, the new CGMS, libre three, the g7 there's some additional new products that are coming to market, especially in the European market right now. We're trying to get our hands on some of those so we can design around them. Yeah, because there's, there's obviously a need like

Scott Benner 12:56
so I've my daughter's worn OmniPod OmniPod arrows, OmniPod dash, OmniPod five, she's worn g6 She's worn g4 She's worn g5 She's worn g7 in my life, I've never thought that any of this was necessary, but I see people wearing it constantly. So what is it doing for people that I guess we don't seem to see the need for? Because it has to be something, yeah, tell me about it, please. Yeah,

Andrew 13:22
yeah. So there's, there's really three things that I make the claim our grip shield does, and then there's a fourth item out there that our customers claim that I have no data to back up, so I won't make the claim, but I'll tell you what it is anyway. So the three things that I make the claim that we claim our product does, and that our customers see benefit from. One, it provides the ability to change an over patch anytime throughout a cycle without accidentally tearing off your device. Because the way the flange on our grip shield sits over the adhesive for a device, your over patch will never touch your device, which means if you're out swimming and the patch starts to peel and looks kind of ratty and not very good looking, then you can just peel it off. Grip shield comes with it. You put the grip shield back on, put a new patch. You're fresh and set to go. Oh, I see. So, so there's a huge benefit for people that work outdoors, for people that are that are, you know, sweating a lot, that swim a lot. Summertime is obviously our busiest season just because of that. Yeah, but there's that's one benefit. Well, that makes

Scott Benner 14:21
complete sense. I don't even know why. I couldn't think of that by looking at it, but sure. But yeah. So, yeah. So it basically goes over top and creates this like exTO skeleton shell around the device. And then you're basically, when you put an over patch on, then you're really holding that down, not touching the device at all. So if you want to rip that off and put a new one on because it got wet or because it started to get dingy or whatever, you're never ripping at the device. Okay. Oh, that makes complete sense. How about that?

Andrew 14:50
Yeah, so that's one, one benefit. So the second claim that we make is that we is it provides bump protection. So we, we can't tell you how many times people say, Hey, I bump. My Dexcom off on the door of my car, or I was putting my shirt on, and I ripped it off on accident, got caught and snagged on my shirt. So the grip shield has this vertical wall that is about the same height as the as the Dexcom or the device, the CGM or the pod, and it disperses that bump, that that accidental bump, so that you don't dislodge the device. So OmniPod, you know, is can be pretty bulky depending on where you put it, and so it would kind of glance that blow and prevent you from tearing it off. So that's the second thing, which is great for young kids who are rambunctious and playing. And that's kind of what we geared that one toward.

Scott Benner 15:38
Okay, did you say there were three things, yeah, yeah. The

Andrew 15:41
third thing is, it adds a nice pop of color. That's really the third one is, we offer, you know, right now, I think we offer 12 colors so you can color coordinate. And then we started last year doing multi color so you can actually customize your grip shield to whatever you want. So we've seen, like, people order colors for Clemson, and we're like, I wonder if this is going to go to somebody that's, that's a Clemson fan, because it's going toward, you know, South Carolina area, and it's their colors. Or, you know, in we see orange and blue coming all the time for, for people that are in Florida. I'm assuming that's the Florida Gators, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 16:14
how about that? Oh, that's super interesting. Then you have a couple of other items too. Like, you're the wall mounted insulin caddy for the for the refrigerator. I feel like I've seen that. I feel like I can't get away from that. Actually, on social media

Andrew 16:26
so that that product there stems specifically from another It was another Facebook post where somebody had showed a picture of their insulin vial on the floor. Their kid had left the butter door compartment door open, and they swung the door open really fast, and the insulin bottle hit the floor and broke, and they were you know, of course, insulin, insulin is not cheap, and there was a kind of a complaint online about that, and and a lot of people chiming in and saying how bad they felt about it. And I looked at my wife, and I said, Why do we store it in the butter door? I don't understand why it goes in that compartment. I mean, I know why I can't go anywhere else, because it gets shuffled around the refrigerator. You don't be able to find it. But how come there's nothing out there? So I started doing some research, and found out there's lots of organization things that people have created. And I don't want to negate any of the any of the makers out there, like there's since three printings become very popular, you could go to any craft site and find, you know, a tray that goes inside the on a shelf or inside the butter compartment, and you can find things that hang on the door shelf of your refrigerator. There's all kinds of options, but there was nothing that was easy and simple to organize to so I created one with a flat back that you can adhere to the wall of the refrigerator and stick your insulin vials in it, and now you'll know exactly how many vials you have, where they're at. For us, we rotate them. So as I pull one out of the front, I push everything forward. So you know, first in, first out. So I'm always using the older vial of insulin first, yeah, and helps me keep organized. We know exactly where they're at. And that's kind of how that came about. It was really about convenience for me. And then again, posted online, and people like, can you make us these? And we saw that there's a need for it, so we started making

Scott Benner 18:09
them. How long does it take to, I don't know, like a grip shield for an example. How long does it take for the printer to make it

Andrew 18:17
so for depending on the on the grip shield, obviously there's different sizes. So something like, something like a g7 is around a 20 minute print per g7 I typically do, like, six on a plate at a time, and so I it's, you know, it's right around an hour 15 to spit that whole plate out. If you get into something like an OmniPod, it goes up because it's a lot more material, it's a lot taller, and there's ways to, like, speed that up. We could make it faster, but then the quality goes down. Okay, so I don't want to sacrifice quality just to push more product out. I'd rather have a higher quality product. The end game is to get out of 3d printing altogether into let a manufacturer injection mold them for us, which will be an even higher quality it'll be faster, less time for me to do that, so I can focus on on growing our business and and working on all of the other background items that come along with owning a business and get Mike, it was

Scott Benner 19:14
absolutely going to be my next question, like, what? Why don't you get these made somewhere? Man,

Andrew 19:20
but yeah, there. But yeah. The issue, the issue that I see right now is that technology has has moved so rapidly, in the CGM, in the in the pods, well, pods have been kind of the same for a while. There's the same shape because OmniPod smart doesn't want to recreate, you know, the wheel from scratch. But as these products are coming out, every single time you want to have a mold made, it's it's 10s of 1000s of dollars to have a mold made. So there's a very high, expensive front, and I'm all I'm trying to figure out how to justify spending that without having to increase pricing, because I don't want to be more expensive. I want it to be affordable, that that's our that was our whole goal. We started this is, you know, I don't want to sell it for $25 that doesn't make sense to me. Logically, the value is probably there. But I don't need to make a million dollars off of one person my you know, I want the Walmart mentality where I make $1 off of everybody, and that's the way I'll make my money and make it affordable. So

Scott Benner 20:22
also they're not, it's not like they're disposable. They must last for a while, right? They

Andrew 20:27
do. They do. So my daughter, when she was on the g6 of course, we have one of every color, because we make them here, but she would know the guy, yeah, yeah. She she would rotate through them. And we had some that were three years old. She was still using the original ones on and so I have customers that that have them. They they had them for a year, year and a half, almost two years. I have one customer say she had hers for two years, and it finally broke on her, or got another customer said she had hers for a year, and the adhesive got so sticky, the buildup was gross, and she wanted to replace it. So they do last quite a while, and they're compatible with a lot of the patches that are already on the market. So like, we team up with the sugar patch out of Texas and given us their secret sauce recipe and how they manufacture the patches. So we can make the white ones and can can include them with our grip shields. But we also know that, like skin grip is another big name out there. They're compatible with our shields. We make our shields to be, I'd say, very narrow walled so that they're they can fit a lot of patches without trimming right out of the box.

Scott Benner 21:35
When I look at them and they have kind of like the fin cutouts around the border. Is that so that the adhesive can go there, or is that for flexibility?

Andrew 21:44
It's for flexibility and it's for breathability. If you had a solid flange there, that plastic, that context, your skin would get really sweaty and gross, and it just wouldn't be comfortable long term wear. So really, the gap there is to let moisture escape and then create that flexibility as well, so that we have freedom of motion. It's

Scott Benner 22:05
going to breathe through the overlay patch. Most of them correct. Some of them are thicker and not as breathable. I've seen a couple that, you know, are thicker.

Andrew 22:14
You know, I am the guy. I'm always in the pursuit of perfection. So we're constantly updating our designs, a little here and a little there. And as we get feedback from customers about, you know, I really wish that this, and so we may, we may go revisit that. If we hear it for two or three customers that are not talking to each other, right, that are totally strangers, and we hear that feedback, we take all of that feedback from a review, from a message to us, you know, from Facebook comments, as we're sorting through our groups that we're a part of, and we see people commenting about our product. We my wife and I will both look in and say, Huh? They said that. I never really thought about that. So, you know, some of them are tighter, like the libre three has smaller gaps in it than than, let's say, the jet Dexcom g7 right? And that's really because I haven't had anybody come back and complain about it, so I haven't made any changes yet.

Scott Benner 23:01
And the overlay patches that you sell on the site, they did, they come just in white, or are there colors there as well? So

Andrew 23:08
because we partner with the sugar patch, we have an agreement that out of our site, we will only sell them in white, and that's because they do a lot of a lot of custom printing like I think, I think Ashley there has, I think she said less, something like three, 4000 designs that she has available on her website you can pick. So I don't want to take their business. I just wanted to be able to supply a quality patch with our product. And that's the that's kind of the agreement we came up with was they would allow us to to include the patches we make, the white ones. And then if people want custom color or whatever, they would go to the sugar patch to get a refill. And you

Scott Benner 23:45
have those manufactured or you get them from sugar patch. Sometimes

Andrew 23:49
we get them from sugar patch, and sometimes we're cutting them here. Yeah, we have, we have a machine here that we can cut patches with. It just depends on, on how many hours are in a day and what I have going on, if I can, if I can manage to sit there and cut patches. In fact, I ended up having to contract my father in law to cut patches for all of our stock because we sell so many I can't keep up on my own. So he has, he comes over and cuts the patches. We include two with every single grip shield, and he'll cut them and pre pack them in our packaging, and then when the grip shields are ready, we'll stuff them into the bag and zip them up, heat seal them, and then ship

Scott Benner 24:27
them out. So this is not like, obviously, hand cut. You're not trimming with scissors, but, but although, boy, that would be you're not charging enough if you're doing that right. But I mean, somebody, is it like a press or how do you like? Is it a stamp? What? How do you cut them?

Andrew 24:45
It's a machine cutter. Think along the lines of a craft cutter, right? But obviously you got to know, there's a there's a lot involved. I don't want to go too far into detail, because it's kind of the like I said, It's the secret sauce for

Scott Benner 24:59
the sugar. No, no, don't. Have anything away. I'm just trying to imagine if your living room is full of machinery or something like that. No, no,

Andrew 25:04
no. So, so I live in Michigan, we have a basement, and I have a we have a pretty large area of our basement that is dedicated to deck my diabetes. So I've got shelves with printers on it. I've got shelves with stock on it. I've got a set, a setup for shipping. I just put up some slat wall, and we keep our our stock on. So, like, I keep an example, I keep like, 24 of our g7 any color g7 grip shield is on the wall at a time. So, you know, obviously there's just, just pegs full of them. Yeah, that room, and that's all it's dedicated for. I think, I think that pretty much explains it like, like we are, we spend a lot of time in that, in that office on a daily basis, if we're printing pretty heavy, you know, a printer is nice, because you can set it and forget it, like you said it, and then an hour you come back. Yeah. So throughout the day, we may, we might spend, you know, two hours total, but then we got to pack orders, and we have to prep the Amazon shipments for Prime and and so, I mean, realistically, in a week, we're between the two of us, we're probably spending 40 hours down there as, like, part time gig. So

Scott Benner 26:08
is this a thing you can continue to do? Like, is this a pace you can keep up? Yes,

Andrew 26:12
well, no, not really. And that's why we need to get into injection mold, because the three printing is the printing itself isn't a lot. It's the maintenance that comes with running a machine. As much as I do. You know, if I looked at some of these machines, I mean, I probably have racked up 1000s of hours of print time on each one about every six months. I basically have to refurb, refurb them, so they're like, on a schedule. So six months out, I'll do printer number one, and then I'll do printer number two the next month, and printer number three the next month, so that I'm kind of spreading it out, but yeah, yeah, we can't maintain our growth cycle if we continue to manufacture ourselves. And that's a to me, that's as a business, that's a good thing, but as a as a father of a diabetic, that makes me a little bit sad, because it tells me that the diagnosis are still ramping up and and, you know, there's a lot of families who are having those scary moments where they get the diagnosis and they weren't, you know, weren't ready for it, or, you know, their lives are being flipped upside down, and they're looking for support. So like I said, as a business is great. I honestly would hope that someday there's a cure for diabetes, and I don't have a business, then you know that that would be my ultimate goal. Of course.

Scott Benner 27:25
How does your daughter feel about like that? You're doing something around diabetes like this depends on

Andrew 27:31
what day you ask her. She loves the fact that we're helping people. In fact, she's very involved in the business. She will help us pack orders. She helps me with the with the doll products that we sell. So we sell like doll look alikes. They call them the warrior buddy line, which is really was designed as a coping mechanism for my daughter because she didn't want to rotate her Dexcom site to different spots. So now she can make her doll look like her and change the site at the same time. Andrew,

Scott Benner 27:56
let me. Let me help you a little bit with your Michigan accent there. Okay, yeah, doll. I'm afraid people are like, What is he talking about? Like, a wooden dowel, yeah?

Andrew 28:08
Sorry, yeah.

Scott Benner 28:10
So you have, oh, my god, so you have little, like devices for dolls, like, but it's everything. It's like a Jesus you have a Medtronic set. You have looks like a Dexcom OmniPod. You have them all. But that's insane. Yes, you know, we

Andrew 28:31
started with the g6 because that's what we were familiar with. That's what my daughter had. And, you know, again, it was one of those things like, Oh, hey, I bet you people would like this. So we put the g6 online, and suddenly we had questions, hey, can you make a libre one? Can you make it this one? Can you make it that one? Can you make a T slim and and we started growing them. And Medtronic is the guardian version is fairly new to us, because we had somebody ask, and I made a design and send it to them. And basically said, hey, I want some feedback. I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping. And I never heard anything back, so I just kind of let it sit. And we didn't think there was a big demand for it, but then we started getting these inquiries and emails from people saying, Hey, I don't see a Medtronic one, and my kids being left out because they're on Medtronic. That's what my insurance pays for. So I think last year we we finally redesigned and made it a little bit larger. Now they work with patches we used to use, like a double stick tape you we would send you, and it just wasn't quality. So now we actually use the same patch material that you would get with the sugar patch, and that sticks much better. Turns out, look at

Scott Benner 29:38
that. Hey, did the companies give you a problem with this, or no,

Andrew 29:43
no, we may need to address, you know, at some point changing the name to say, you know, look alike. I don't I have to look and see what the title says. Now, because, you know, because we were constantly changing things for SEO, but, yeah, I have not had any any issues with it for companies coming out. For us for using, using the name in the in the device name. I really think they should, most of them. Yeah, I think most of them are really looking at it as if we if it's more normal for a child to wear it, then they're more likely to select our product. So it's actually a benefit. It's to their benefit to have other things out there. I

Scott Benner 30:16
can't imagine they haven't tried to buy some of them from you by now. It's possible. Yeah, that's something look at that. It's so like, it's so adorable and tiny. Yeah,

Andrew 30:26
you know, really, what it came down to is trying to normalize wearing the device. If you look at our tagline, every once in a while in our website, you'll find our logo with a tagline on it, and it says, deck out and show off. And the goal here is really so that we can normalize the device wearing and stop hiding those devices, and make it, make it easier for kids to see that, that it's okay, right? But really, because we have a child, our mission is geared more towards children, yeah, and that's what the dial thing is for. And I can't tell you how many people email us and say I got your warrior buddy kit. My daughter is thrilled that her doll looks just like her and has a device like her, and she's doing device changes at the same time we are. We're gonna have to order more refill pack patches, because we keep moving the device around. It's wonderful. That's that's what we want to hear, because that's why we do it. Oh,

Scott Benner 31:19
it's fantastic. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, we've met before, am I right? Yes, yeah. We

Andrew 31:25
met. Well, early on, when, when our company first started, I had heard about the juicebox podcast and gave you a call. Oh,

Scott Benner 31:33
we talked, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that way, way, way

Andrew 31:36
back when we talked about, kind of, what the device, what this, what the space looks like, and diabetes in general, because we were only three months into it, you gave us a lot of really sound advice. We started listening to the podcast and picked up a lot of your catch phrases that we still use around the house, like crush it and catch it. You know, I if you don't have a T shirt line, Scott, you should have one. I

Scott Benner 31:57
don't know if I do or not. I think there's T shirts somewhere, but I don't pay a lot of attention to it. Yeah,

Andrew 32:02
yeah, but yeah. Then Then we met last year at touch by type one.

Scott Benner 32:06
That's, yeah, that's why I remember that for sure. Oh, it's wonderful. So I put this kind of, like, the call out, I think I did it on LinkedIn, and I was just like, if you have a company that helps people with diabetes, you know, you can come on the show and tell people about it. Because I started getting into this, like, headspace where I can't sell you. I sell ads to big companies. Like, if I try to sell you an ad the way they pay, like, you're selling things $12 at a time, you're not gonna, it's not gonna benefit you. You don't even mean, like, it's never gonna work out. And if we do something where it's like, I get a couple of pennies off of I'm like, I don't want to, I'm not involved. I don't care. And so, like, I don't want to do that either, but I would like to shine a light. But I also, like, I couldn't figure out how to do it, because I don't want, and I can't have the podcast turn into a billboard, like, for like, you know, it can't be two weeks of people, like, I make this and I make because it's just a, first of all, there's, it's never ending. Yeah, it'll never stop. Right, right, like, so. But I did just want to pick a couple of people out, and I and I kept looking around, and I thought, You know what? Let them pick themselves like. And so I like, just kind of put it up online honestly, truth be told, that's how beta bionics ended up on the show this week. Okay? Because they reached out, and they were like, we'd love to talk about our pump. And I was like, great, come on, you know? And I almost did that purposely, because I'm sometimes stunned that like companies that aren't advertisers don't want to be on the podcast, like, I wonder. I always wonder, like, did they think because I don't buy an ad, they don't want to like Scott doesn't want to talk about libraries or like something like that, like, because that's not the case. I don't know. It feels like maybe that's the idea in some people's minds. And I thought, oh, I'll just do this so I can say a couple of times, you know, if you want to come on, come on. It's absolutely fine. It gets to the point where people are like, why won't you have someone on to talk about this? And I'm like, What do you think I'm in charge of who asked to come on the podcast? It's like, I just, I can only answer the people who, who, you know, who reach out. And there are plenty of people. I'm like, No, I'm sorry. I'll tell you the one thing I can't do Andrew's books if I, I don't. If every person who wrote a children's book about diabetes, I the podcast would be over first, everybody be bored to tears, and then, like, you know, it would, it would be a book club. And I, and I just don't have, like, the, I don't have the content space for that. And that is one of those things. You don't realize how many people are doing that until you're one of them. You show one of them some kindness, and then all of a sudden, it's like, there's a line out. It feels like you, if I don't mean it like this, but it feels like you fed a cat tried to go out your back door the next day. You're like, whoa. Where'd you guys all come from? I'm really glad you did this. And I don't like, I don't have to keep you much longer. I just, I just wanted to hear about the business and hear about what it does and why you're doing it, and what it provides, and that's it. I just want to put it up, and hopefully people will come take a look for you. So it's deckmydiabetes.com Right,

Andrew 34:50
correct. Yep. You can find us@deckmydiabetes.com that would be our website. There's an About Us section. You can learn a little bit about our family. You can see. Photos of us, but attending some J ref events and things like that. And then there's a page for each one of our product lines. If you want to learn more about a specific product line, grip shields explains what it is, how it got its name, where your buddies, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, there's a shop now link and you can go visit the site and shop. And we're constantly running promotions and specials and and really just trying to find ways to market to different people that are in different stages of their life, right? So some people just don't have the finances or the income to afford things. So, you know, sometimes we run a sale and it'll be like a $10 grip shield, and I don't make anything when, when we do that, but it gets them out there for people to to try and wear, and they're not super expensive. So when we do something like that, that's all announced on our Facebook page,

Scott Benner 35:48
nice. So, so follow on Facebook, Instagram, stuff like that to get those kind of updates. Absolutely,

Andrew 35:54
yep, Facebook and Instagram are, are the two primary that we're on. We also have a Tiktok, but we are, I don't think we're super active in that. Emily, my wife, handles all of the social media stuff. I tell her, she's my marketing director. I like her as well as the boss, the CEO, the CFO, whatever else she wants to title herself, right?

Scott Benner 36:12
I chuckled under my breath a little while ago when you were like, you know, we have to change these things for SEO. And I thought I'd love to go back four years and say SEO to Andrew and see if he doesn't look at me and go, What are you talking about? Yes,

Andrew 36:23
well, and you know, what's crazy is like owning, owning a business, I've learned so many things that I didn't know I needed to learn. And one example, the warrior buddy line, the the toys that we produce, we we found out that if you produce a toy, you're supposed to get certified through the child protection safety agency or CPSC. I don't even know what the acronym is. There's a whole line of testing you're supposed to do on toys. When we first started, we didn't know that. So I had to go through a process and figure out, how do I get a third party tester to test the materials I'm using to make these and how do I ensure that they're safe? And so we, I mean, it was like a four month process, and we did finally get the CPSC certification. They're tested safe, they're lead, free, satellite free. And that's something I didn't know. I needed to know until, until we crossed that bridge. And so imagine that. But times the entire business, yeah, it's been an incredible growth as a as an owner of a business, I now understand more about how important reviews are. You know, I now like to leave reviews if I've had good service. Turns out people really like to leave bad reviews, but very few people like to leave good reviews that they don't see the need for you.

Scott Benner 37:33
Want me to read you my bad reviews, Andrew, they're hilarious. Yeah,

Andrew 37:38
and you, I mean, I'm sure you see it as, yeah, don't worry. You have a bad experience, you're probably 10 times more likely to leave a review that if you had a great experience, right? And unfortunately, that doesn't really give valid information as to whether or not the company met expectations of the majority of people. Yeah. And so it's, it's one of those things now, because I know that my behavior has changed. If I have really good service somewhere, I'm I'm leaving them a review. A great example, I just had some concrete board. The guys did a fantastic job. They're going to get a five star review, because I really appreciate the effort and the attention to detail they put into the

Scott Benner 38:13
concrete work. Yeah, they trust me. That's happened to me as well.

Andrew 38:16
I think, I think every small business, I think every business understands that. But if you don't have a business, you don't understand how important positive reviews are to a company and how they ultimately affect the growth of that company. Yeah, you know. So maybe a little shout out is, you know, if you, if you've had good experience with a company or or you really enjoy listening to Scott's podcast, leave a good review. That's you know, that will help other people find it. And it does. It changes the algorithm and how Facebook presents us, how Google presents us,

Scott Benner 38:47
yeah, the things I know now that I didn't know before about stuff that you would just be like, it's some of its mind, absolutely mind numbing down to, you know, I, I have, I put a post up the other day for end of the month, like, I do over, like, a review of the what was on the podcast this month. Because the truth is, like, I probably put out more content in 30 days than most diabetes places put out in a year. And so, like, they can get lost sometimes for people. So I'm like, Look, here's a recap of what's going on. And the person who compiles the recap list for me. Said, Hey, you haven't put that post up yet. I said, Oh no, I'm waiting for Thursday, because Thursday's a stronger Facebook day than other days, and you're and by the way, like my coverage on Facebook is very, very consistent. The podcast is. The podcast has a private Facebook group that is pretty much 24/7 busy, I guess ability or time to interact is different on certain days, like putting something up on Monday, you won't get a lot of responses from and then there are certain days of the week and certain times of the day and like that might sound obvious to people, but I didn't know that when I started doing this. Like, I like what you. I mean, like, it's better on Thursday after 4pm like, Are you kidding me? Like, I didn't even want to be on Facebook, right? Yeah. And, or the I got, I got an email this morning from someone like, you know, we want to pay you for these ads, but you have to pick a letter to your bank. And I'm like, I don't, why do you want me to do that? I'm like, I have other advertisers. No one else asked me to do that. Well, this is the anti phishing agenda that we're working on, and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, You think I like, it's just me. Like, I don't have right? You either get the podcast or I go to the bank and get the letter. I don't have both options available to me today. You know? I gotta package this stuff, or I gotta do this. That's the it's crazy,

Andrew 40:41
right? Well, our customers are very surprised to find that it's my wife and I that do this, like, yeah, for the for the for the way that the company is presented. We, you know, we intentionally try to give you the mom and pop attention, right? We want to be a mom pop shop, small business attention, but to give the big business experience, right? We want you to be able to come in and get a quality product, get a good price, be able to get all the information you want from the website, so you can make a wise decision. But ultimately, what comes down to it, it's if you send us a Facebook message or a email, it's my wife or I that are replying to you, you know? And it's the same thing, like, I can only do so much in a day and and sometimes we have to say, No. I had somebody the other day asked if we can make a custom color insulin mount. And I said, I'm sorry. I I do not have enough time in a day to do that, you know, I I

Scott Benner 41:33
don't know where my shoes are. I wore this pair of shoes last week, and I took them off, and I don't know where they're at. I don't have any time to even go look for those. I'm getting ready to do something with sanafi diabetes to, like, kind of raise attention about being tested for antibodies and stuff like that. And I was working with their PR company, and they said, like, you know, just give us everybody's email so we invite your whole staff to the meeting. And I was like, the what

Andrew 41:56
staff? What's that?

Scott Benner 41:57
I was like, Don't worry, you've invited everyone in the business. They're all, they're all coming already. She's like, you don't have a PR staff. And I was like, That's me. And she goes, What about content? I went, me. She goes, What about the ads? Like, who's gonna write that? I'm like, I'll do that. Yes, yeah. I'm glad it looks bigger from the outside, which is usually how I take it. I'm like, oh, it looks like a real business from the outside, you know, which is great, well.

Andrew 42:19
And you know, we found things like we have. I have to start unloading things because I I work 40 to 50 hours a week in my in my regular career, and then I'm doing that as well. And there's only, like you said, there's only so much hours, and it's so many hours in a day, and I don't want to spend all of it not spending time with my daughter. I only have a certain number of years before she's an adult, but I make sure to carve out time for her, specifically when she goes to bed, that's my time to kind of work on, yeah, on the business stuff. So, like, one of the things that I recently unloaded was our, a lot of our graphic design and I'm very fortunate that my sister in law is a graphic design artist, and so I contracted her business, her small business. You know, when you buy from our small business, you're supporting her small business. You're support you're supporting the sugar patch as a small business. I've told my father in law, he should probably make a business for all the stuff he does for me, and then he can write more stuff off. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of the way it works is, you know, as a small business, we like to support small businesses, and you help across the board. But yeah, I had to start unloading things because I just can't do

Scott Benner 43:20
it all right? I hadn't thought of it that way, but the person who edits the podcast is the father of a of a child with type one. So, you know, it's the money he makes to to edit the show goes to his family and his small business, really, you know, his recording studio. It's fantastic. I hope that I can get to the point where there are other people I can bring in like that, truthfully, you know, so it's always the goal. Absolutely, yeah, Andrew, did I forget to ask anything? Or we got did we cover Do you think I think

Andrew 43:50
we've covered everything? And I Scott, I really appreciate having me on and allowing me the opportunity to talk about, you know, what our what our mission is, and what our vision for our company is and how we can help people. You know, again, not to, not to negate, there's a ton of options out there. We know that diabetes is not a one size fits all or one size fits most, but hopefully, you know, the products that we offer can be helpful to some people, hopefully more more than less. But we, we really strive to be in the community, to walk alongside people as part of the community, and not, not just be a company that's going to be after the dollar, right? So again, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. Oh,

Scott Benner 44:33
it's my pleasure. Also, you're, you're, you hustle, Andrew, I love that because, you know, make hay while the sun shines. This offer ink forever. And, you know, like, and I kind of went out in the world, and I was like, I don't know if it didn't come across this way, but if you were here, what that, what that note actually said was, I'm in a pretty good mood right now, so I'm gonna ask for people to come on the podcast. Like, I don't need more content. Like, the only mean, like, so it's not, it's not a thing like, where I'm like, oh my god, I gotta get some people and so I have something to put up. Like, yeah. I don't have that problem. Yeah,

Andrew 45:00
we saw that. We saw your, your message go out. And I was like, I know that when I talk to you, probably it's been almost four years now, right? Almost four years ago, initially, pretty much the the conversation we had was, you know, you're just starting out, and I don't, I don't see the value in adding you to my show. And I was like, Well, I totally understand. I agree. And here we are, four years later, having a conversation. And that just goes to show how, how the growth in our company, and how we've been able to benefit people and make our business known as well. As you know, your generosity to opening that up and having this conversation,

Scott Benner 45:34
but, but you're very welcome. And by the way, it wasn't the value, it was the I just thought the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze for you. I didn't think you'd, I thought you'd spend money and not get it back. That's what I was concerned about. Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure. Because,

Andrew 45:49
well, that's, and that's probably was a true statement at the time. At the time we were, you know, we were just starting. We didn't have, we didn't have two nickels together. Everything basically goes back into the business anyway, of course.

Scott Benner 46:00
Well, listen, if you're ever looking for a marketing plan, and once you get, you know, get it out of your basement. You let me know, and we'll look at getting you some ads. So, yeah, absolutely all right. Hold on one second for me. Thank you so much.

The conversation you just heard was sponsored by Dexcom and the Dexcom g7 learn more and get started today at dexcom.com/juicebox touched by type one, sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org on Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d exchange.org/juicebox right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward, it will cost you nothing to help. Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less, a little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, if you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would, I think I see something here, but I can't be sure, once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the juicebox podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 when you support the juicebox podcast by clicking on the advertisers links, you are helping to keep the show free and plentiful. I am certainly not asking you to buy something that you don't want, but if you're going to buy something or use a device from one of the advertisers. Getting your purchases set up through my links is incredibly helpful. So if you have the desire or the need, please consider using juicebox podcast links to make your purchases the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way, recording.com, do.

#1330 Weekly News 10/11/24

For the week of October 11, 2024

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
OmniPod, Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of The juicebox Podcast. Today I'm going to do some new stories, but I'm behind on this, so I have a lot of them in front of me that I found interesting. So today I'm going to give you a brief overview and then send you off to find out more on your own. If that sounds good, we can get going you.

Music. These are the news stories that I found interesting this week. There are links in the show notes and links at juicebox podcast.com if you'd like to read the complete article. 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. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d exchange.org/juice box right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com 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, I know that Facebook has a bad reputation, but please give the private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast, a healthy once over juicebox podcast type one diabetes. This story is a news medical.net it says here that despite high use of continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pump therapy, fear of hypoglycemia remains a significant barrier to physical activity and exercise for adults with type one diabetes. Now this is according to a new research study that will be presented at this year's Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of diabetes in Madrid. Looks like that already happened in September. Here's a quote from Dr Farrell from the University of Dundee in Scotland. Regular exercise can help individuals with diabetes to achieve their blood glucose goals, improve their body composition and fitness, as well as reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, which is higher in people with type one diabetes. Yet many people living with type one do not maintain a healthy body weight or manage to do the recommended amount of physical activity each week. If you want to learn more about that. There's a link in the show notes. And if you'd like to learn about exercising with type one diabetes, check out the diabetes Pro Tip series at diabetes pro tip.com they begin at Episode 1000 right here in the juicebox podcast. I have one here from let's see smoking cessation and weight gain. Dr Luba Yamin from the from UT Health Houston is investigating the link between smoking and weight gain. Many people fear gaining weight after quitting smoking, which, of course, can discourage them from trying to quit. So they're using glps with people who are trying to quit smoking. They are studying the GLP one agonist, which, of course, is a class of drugs commonly used for treating type two diabetes as a potential aid for quitting smoking while managing while also managing your weight. Initial trials showed promising results with a higher quit rate among participants who received the GLP one compared to the placebo. Those on the GLP one treatment also experience less weight gain. The doctor says they're trying to conduct larger scale clinical trials to further evaluate the effectiveness of GLP one again, for smoking. So now there's a mix here, like, is the GLP helping to take away your craving for smoking, or is it helping to cover for hunger when you remove the nicotine? It's an interesting question, and if you'd like to read the article, there's a link in the show notes. This one@htworld.co.uk says that 10s of 1000s of children and eligible adults living with type one diabetes across England are set to receive an artificial pancreas thanks to cost effective deals secured by the NHS with suppliers of the technology. If you're interested in learning more, there's a link in the show notes. This one's from sciencealert.com While some speculate that trigger for type one diabetes could be a virus, a new study led by researchers from Cardiff University in the UK, points in a different direction, type one diabetes, it says, might start with proteins on bacteria, sparking an omnipodous shift in the immune system. The quote here is type one diabetes, of course, is an autoimmune disease that usually affects children and young adults. That's not completely true at all. Now where the cells that produce insulin are attacked by the patient's own immune system? Okay, they got that, right. Let's see this leads to lack of insulin, yeah, okay, come on. What's the what's the part about the the bacteria, his colleagues link the loss of insulin producing cells with killer T cells, a class of white blood cells that kill certain other cells, including cancer cells or cells infected by a pathogen. Killer T cells seem to play a key role in causing type one diabetes as they kill off beta cells. This new study, the researcher, found that the killer T cells begin doing this when activated by bacterial proteins, specifically proteins from bacteria known to infect humans. Like word here that I can't pronounce. If you'd like to learn more, I will leave a link in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now, and the corresponding web page for this episode at juicebox podcast.com, this one is from wash.edu potential type one diabetes treatment may stem from outsmarting immune cells. Berkeley leads preclinical research with a $2.6 million grant from the Helmsley trust. There is a lot of scientific what I'm going to call Gabriel in this little thing here. If you want to hear more about what they're trying to do, of course, look in the show notes for the WashU link and read all about it. This one is more type two related out of India. The print dot i n fried bake and ultra processed foods are fueling India's diabetes epidemic. This new study, says, studies published in the internal Journal of Food Sciences and nutrition, says having foods low in advanced glycation end products can mitigate burden of obesity linked type two diabetes. This is out of New Delhi, foods such as cakes, chips, cookies, crackers and fried foods, mayonnaise, margin and ultra processed foods, which are rich in advanced like glycanation, glaation and N price eight GES are a leading cause behind India's India being the world's diabetic capital. It says these ages are reactive and potentially toxic. Compounds form when proteins or lipids are glycated or modified by Aldo sugars, which are carbohydrates with within the aldehyde group. This is a government funded trial, if you want to read more about it, I of course left links at the website and in your show notes staying on this path. This is at Food and wine.com these four Ultra processed foods raise your diabetes risk more than others, according to a new study. The study, which was published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe researched analyzed data from more than 300,000 people across eight European countries for an average of 10.9 years. They found that for every 10% increase in the amount of a person's diet made up by Ultra processed foods, that person had a 17% higher risk of developing type two diabetes. But within the ultra processed food category, some were worse than others for diabetes risks. This goes on to explain what Ultra processed foods are, what type two diabetes is. But here are the four things they came up with, savory snacks, like salty packaged snacks and chips. These are often loaded with unhealthy fats, salt and refined carbohydrates, which can contribute to insulin resistance, inflammation and ultimately a higher risk of developing type two diabetes. Ultra processed meats, uh oh, like bacon, sausage and lunch meats usually have higher levels of sodium, preservatives like nitrates and unhealthy fats ready to eat meats. What does that mean? These meals are convenient, but may not help your health. A lot of ready to eat meals will include ingredients that are high in saturated fats, added sugar and sodium. Ready to eat meals are also low in fiber, protein and essential nutrients. The lack of fiber and high calorie content can promote overeating ready to eat meals, I guess, like frozen food and stuff like that. And then sweetened drinks. The study found that drinks sweetened with added sugar as well those with artificial sugars raise the risk of type two diabetes. Sweetened drinks will include a lot of added sugar, and added sugar has been associated with increased inflammation in the body. While artificially sweetened drinks don't usually contain added sugar, they may disrupt the gut microbiome and trigger cravings for sugary foods. Okay, if you want to learn more about that, you know where to find the link. Tickets for the 2025 juice cruise are limited. I'm not just saying that they actually are limited. We have a certain window to sell them in, and then that's it. Juicebox podcast.com, scroll down to the juice cruise banner. Click on it, find a cabin that works for you, and register right now.

You are absolutely limited. Buy time on this one. I'm so sorry to say that it sounds pushy, but it's the absolute truth. Juice cruise 2025 I hope to see you there. We're gonna get a tan, talk about diabetes and meet a ton of great people who are living with diabetes. It's kind of gonna be like floating diabetes camp, but you won't have to sleep in a log cabin. You'll get a tan. And it's not just for adults or kids, it's for everybody. Introductory pricing probably will change on October 15, so if you're really interested, put your deposit down now. I hope to see you on the cruise. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The Bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl 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. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? I.

Fear of hypoglycemia limits physical activity in adults with type 1 diabetes
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240912/Fear-of-hypoglycemia-limits-physical-activity-in-adults-with-type-1-diabetes.aspx

Smoking
https://eedition.expressnews.com/html5/reader/get_clipping.aspx?edid=ceab7156-207f-490a-b775-4588bc7e1e0e&pnum=61&time=20240922170019998

People with type 1 diabetes to get artificial pancreas in NHS roll out
https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/medtech/people-with-type-1-diabetes-to-get-artificial-pancreas-in-nhs-roll-out-nhs24/

Type 1 Diabetes May Be Triggered by Bacterial Infections
https://www.sciencealert.com/type-1-diabetes-may-be-triggered-by-bacterial-infections-scientists-find

Research with $2.6 million grant from Helmsley Trust
https://source.washu.edu/2024/10/potential-type-1-diabetes-treatment-may-stem-from-outsmarting-immune-cells/

India Processed Foods
https://theprint.in/health/fried-baked-ultra-processed-foods-fuel-indias-diabetes-epidemic-1st-of-its-kind-study-by-icmr-mdrf/2298905/

Food and Wine
https://www.foodandwine.com/ultra-processed-food-diabetes-risk-8723095

Adults with pre diabetes who took tirzepatide were 94 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes
https://www.everydayhealth.com/obesity/zepbound-reduces-diabetes-risk-in-overweight-people-at-high-risk/