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Podcast Episodes

The Juicebox Podcast is from the writer of the popular diabetes parenting blog Arden's Day and the award winning parenting memoir, 'Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal: Confessions of a Stay-At-Home Dad'. Hosted by Scott Benner, the show features intimate conversations of living and parenting with type I diabetes.

Filtering by Category: Jenny Smith CDE

#350 Diabetes Pro Tip: Bump and Nudge II

Scott Benner

Diabetes Pro Tip: Bump and Nudge II

Scott and Jenny Smith, CDE share insights on type 1 diabetes care

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 18th installment of our diabetes pro tip series. This episode is diabetes pro tip, bump and nudge. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod Dexcom and the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, you may be eligible for an absolutely free meter. Find out more at Contour Next one.com and the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor the same CGM that my daughter has been wearing for years. Find out about that@dexcom.com forward slash juice box. And of course, the tubeless insulin pump. The end all be all of insulin pumps. The Omni pod is available at my Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box. And when you get there, you can get a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod sent directly to you. Welcome to another edition of our diabetes pro tip episodes. Today, I and Jenny Smith. You know Jenny from integrated diabetes, Jennifer holds a bachelor's degree in human nutrition and biology from the University of Wisconsin. She's a registered and licensed dietitian, a certified diabetes educator and certified trainer and most makes and models of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitoring systems. Jenny is absolutely the bestest. She is. If you don't believe me, go back to Episode 210. And start over with the diabetes pro tips. Honestly, if you're just finding this series, check out diabetes pro tip comm you'll be able to see them all or like I said, you can go back to Episode 210 right there in your podcast player to get started. these really are designed to be listened to in order. If you're new to this, starting at the 17th episode of the pro tip episodes is probably not the way to go. Please remember while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please also always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. or becoming bold with insulin. Alright, you ready to talk about bumping and nudging? Here we go. So let's start like this. I just put up like the 300 and 45th episode of the show, which is mind bending to me honestly, what was the first first year first up because you'd been blogging for a long time before I blogged from 2007 consistently until 2015 when the podcast started. And now I have to admit the blocks a little more of a way of me sharing, I don't sit down and write from my heart as much as I used to. Because, right, it's so much easier to do on the podcast, and you reach more people. But I blogged for that many years the blog was strong, it was a million million and a half clicks a year 111 block of maybe two or three years, I got to like 2 million clicks, which was really big. But then I saw it kind of like trending away. And so in 2015 I started the podcast. And I really thought it was going to be I guess this isn't maybe a neat place to say this. I thought I was going to go back and read my most popular blog posts, like into this microphone. Because that was my expectation for us. Like, you know, some of these blog posts are really helpful to people. I'll read them and make them audio. I did that for 20 minutes one time, stopped, deleted the file and was like, This is stupid. Yeah, yeah. Nobody cares about this.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:40
And well, I can't say there are some people that would care about that. I've actually got a couple of clients who really, they love the podcast because their their audio. And when they read things, it doesn't stick. And so they have to reread and reread. And finally some of the adults that I've got are like, I just put the book down, because they're like, I can't keep reading. I'm not retaining it. But if I hear it, it's there. It's in my brain. So

Scott Benner 4:08
no, I hear that I and I should just felt boring to me. Like I thought someone would like it. But I mean, if I'm being honest, I was trying to reach more people, not just, you know, people who would literally be willing to listen to somebody read something dry. You know what I mean? Right? I mean, at least put some music behind it. I can imagine how funny that would be if I was reading with music behind me and there was like this guy's talking about it would be terrible. Yeah. And then it picked up and picked up. And, and like, you know, but for people who may be coming in late to it. After a number of years of the podcast, I started thinking there's like a real system here. Like I knew that while I was blogging, but when I could hear it, I thought oh no, it's this piece in this piece and these these four or five ideas and when you bring them together, there are 5581 say like you just do these things and that's what happens you know, and I And I had had you on the show, maybe twice. Mm hmm. And I always wanted you to be back. I thought she's the best guest I've ever had. Like, I mean, honestly, you, when you when it comes to diabetes, you and I think exactly alike about it from two completely different perspectives, which is right, weird and interest. Nice, right? Yeah. And it's nice. And so I was somewhere one day, and I thought I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to take the tenants of the podcast and break them down with Jenny, if she wants to do this, I'm going to get a hold of her and see if she wants to do it. And that was a weird leap for me, because until then, my real belief was that if you just listen to all the episodes, you'd hear things come up very kind of organically, and they would stick to your brain better, because you heard them conversationally, and I was a little scared to do just specifically with more bulleted specific topics, but then I realized I could do it with you. Because we have a rapport. Like, I've talked to other people in the podcast, and I try to talk them about stuff. And I find I'm stopping and starting and like, I'm like, oh, they're talking over me. I'm talking over them. I can't find a vibe, you know, I knew I had that with you. So I contacted you. And you were like, I'll do it. And at the time, I was like, it'll be like six or seven, Jenny. And I sent you a little list and you were really great. Like you took the list and you were like, I'd put them in this order. I think they make more sense in this order. And I was like, Okay, great. And now I'm going to look, I'm actually going to diabetes, pro tip comm now because that little idea now has its own website, which is even strange. It's great. 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 16 there are 17 pro tips. And this is going to be the 18th one, and then we're going to do pregnancy and we're gonna keep going right? And it's spawned like defining diabetes, which I never thought was a thing that was needed until this one person sent me a note that said, Hey, I wanted to thank you. Because until I listened to the podcast, I didn't realize I was on MDI. They took and you told me that right. And that made me think, wow, there's some people really not understand some of the terms we're using. Let's define the terms for them, but simply not an hour conversation. Right. Right. A little bit. Anyway,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:21
through that also not a not a dictionary definition. I think, as I said, you know, before some people get things because they hear it in a different way, or they read it in a different way. And I think the great thing about the podcast too, even with the pro tips, part of it is that it's broken down much more like layman's, applicable, it's, it's not what you get in a typical doctor education clinic. And we did

Scott Benner 7:45
it a couple of times. And I was like, Damn, this is good. It went so well that I was like, give me your address. Jennifer, I am sending you a microphone.

Unknown Speaker 7:54
sounds better.

Scott Benner 7:55
Let's go. But one of the things that we did was bump and nudge, it gets talked about in the episodes, but it doesn't have its own episode. And I always kind of thought that was okay. Until in the last year. I looked at algorithm based pumping, and saw how my bumping and nudging was too much. It had gotten out of hand and it didn't realize it because it was so easy for us to do that. We never looked back at the root cause of why we were bumping and nudging. And so this has been bothering me for like six months now. And I said the Jenny, I need a pro tip episode on this because not that bumping and nudging is a bad idea. It's a terrific idea. Right, but you need to understand it more. It's a bigger topic than I thought it was. Mm hmm.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:49
And I think you really I think you really like realized it when you guys started using to do it yourself. Right? As

Scott Benner 8:58
soon as day one came.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:01
We talked and I was like, how much are you using Temp Basal? Yes. How much? are you adding little micro corrections or adjustments or whatnot through the day? And you're like, Oh,

Scott Benner 9:10
I don't know. I never thought about it before. So So Jenny's The one who said it to me, because we were trying to find it was such an easy thing. Like you guys would hear me say before, like, I don't know, artists, insulin to carb ratio doesn't matter to me. I don't know what anything is. none of it matters, right? I know, we're basal rate. And I know food. I look at food and I see food. But

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:31
you're like, Oh, that looks like five units. Oh, that looks like I got to split it up and give some now and a whole bunch later. Right.

Scott Benner 9:37
Right. And being flexible, which is terrific and important. What I didn't realize it was doing to me. You have to kind of like step back and look at a timeline of months, maybe the develop into years is that at some point, you know, meal x took two units at this bazel rate of whatever it was and Then it took two and a half, and three and three and a half and four. But it happens so slowly, I didn't notice. I didn't realize that I was now bolusing, six units for something I used the Bolus for units work. I mean, I did. But I never stopped and thought, I wonder how much of this meal insulin is attacking the food and how much of it is staying in our system for hours afterwards, and maybe acting as bazel. Right. And so I had bumped so much with insulin that I lost track of what Arden's baseline need was, it didn't matter because we were doing so well. But it didn't matter. And I learned that when I when I said, I don't this algorithm won't work. This is ridiculous. Her blood sugar's all over the place, right? It's just crazy. And it's because I had lost track of how much insulin we were actually using versus how much my settings said, we were using that did I say that clearly how

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:57
much was actually needed, versus how much you were just intuitively correcting with right adding a little bit extra because you needed it, but not really realizing Hmm. In general, I'm always adding extra here. And it probably is a setting issue. It's an I shouldn't be adding this much more all the time,

Scott Benner 11:18
right. And it becomes such a way of life. Right? I didn't think of it anymore. So now, I want to leave that thought here. And we're going to come back to it later. Because I do think that being fluid around diabetes is incredibly important. And that you can't just keep resetting your basal rates every day for all the variables that are going to come up in your world. And I noticed a long time ago, that idea that concept is what causes people problems, right? The idea of like, well, I'll go to my doctor. And we'll find a basal rate. And oh, my doctor was great. They saw between 2am and 4am, we had some highs. So we moved our bazel, up at 1am or 12:30am. And it worked. But then they started getting low, you know, a couple weeks later, but I just fed the lows for two and a half months, then went back to the doctor, the doctor moved the bazel again, and that's how people that was considered a successful use of your physician and your insulin, right. And it probably still is in many people's minds. I saw that and thought this doesn't work. I don't want to be involved in this. And I've said it before. And I'll say it again, this podcast is a it's partly in place, because I don't like the math around diabetes. I don't like the waiting. I don't like the we'll wait and see. I don't all that stuff makes me uncomfortable. Like all the things that you're supposed to do. I just was always like, oh, that seems wrong. Like I don't I don't want to do that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:53
within it. I think you also have to say that the technology that we have available today makes it more user friendly for people to learn how to make their own adjustments in the here and now. That might work then for a while and then they make more adjustments. But you know, years ago without technology, going to the doctor every three months, every six months, like I used to do when I was younger? That that was the wait to make adjustments now. Could we have taken and done more the more data analysis in between the doctor visits we could have in my mom actually did. She was like, This isn't working anymore? Let's just adjust here, let's Nope, you need some more insulin here. And I don't

I don't think she ever like,

you know, set it like that. But her explanation was always like, Well, this was just too high. And if it's going to be too high again tomorrow, then you're just gonna use more insulin for the next meal. Right? Right.

Unknown Speaker 13:51
Okay, my Whatever. I'm

Scott Benner 13:53
with you, you're cooking, right? So you seem to care. So I'm gonna go right here. But another issue in the space of people talking about diabetes in the past. It's kind of it's a number of folds, but one of them is that nobody ever wants to say too much, right? They're always like, worried that they'll say something, and it won't apply to the third person that hears it. And I so that was part of what the pro tips were for was to take information down to a point where you know what this really does apply to everyone. Like not saying things that only worked for you or me or noticing that my daughter needed something different after she started getting your period than she did before. And taking the time to talk through those differences were writing about it is hard because you write something down. It's static, you know, I write a blog post around about my nine year old daughter. somebody reads it, it now feels like a rule. I don't spend time with my nine year old child is going to be the applicable method that I use and you don't take time to philosophize out that I bet you this will be different when she's 15. And you just Writing doesn't work that way. But you can conversate that way. And so a lot of people in the past who were impacting the diabetes space, were parents of younger children, who until your child gets older, you don't realize you think this is diabetes, but this is diabetes. In a kid that's not, I don't know, like, coursing with hormones or growing as much as you think. Or as active as you believe they are. Like, you know, like, when you're eight, you're like, Oh, my kid plays baseball, like yeah, okay, wait, or your kid really plays baseball, like like, Right Whale, they weigh 200 pounds, and they're flying around, it's 110 degrees outside, and they're throwing things through walls like it, it's an impact on your body weight, or your kids playing ice hockey, as a high schooler, like, you know what I mean? Like, we've got

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:51
breakfast from six until eight in the morning, they've got practice, again, from you know, four until eight, six o'clock at night. I mean, sometimes, those practices I'm amazed with the kids that I work with, their parents are like, Oh, she's got tennis for you know, from six o'clock until 730. And then she goes off to school, then she's got another practice from four to six and like, like, seriously, like, she's the tennis thrower.

Scott Benner 16:15
That's how you make a tennis pro. One in a million times. The other 990,000 times is how you make a kid who hates tennis eventually, right?

Unknown Speaker 16:25
Okay, exactly what

Scott Benner 16:27
these people were doing great stuff. And they were talking about these ideas. But they didn't realize how specific they were to the age group they were talking about. And, and I think that that's why this longer conversation why I mentioned how long the podcast has been up has been important, because in my heart as crazy as it sounds, I think if you want to have great success with your type one, diabetes, go back to episode one. And you'll listen through, because you'll take a journey through somebody who's talking about a kid with a nine or 10 year old body that, you know, you actually can hear in this podcast art and get older art and grow art and have problems her start to get her period, changing devices, meters, like all the way through me. And I know it sounds crazy, but in, you know, 347 hours as of today, I think when it's over, you'll go Okay, and then your kids just gonna have anyone seeing the fives it like if you want it to be or maybe you you'll make an adjustment. It'll be in the sixes, right? It'll also works for adults. And that was I was really cool. I hadn't had that, like greater expectation. I thought it would, but it didn't have a lot of a lot of adults weren't reading me as a blogger. You know, do you mean, there were some, but there weren't a lot. Anyway, at some point, I recognized that I was really long winded, I guess the people there, I guess there are used to that. Not at this point. But it's a very long way of saying that you can't just set your basal rates up, set up your insulin to carb ratios, and go with that's what the pump told me. And that's what the doctor told me to put in the pump, right? Because things are going to change, sometimes day to day, sometimes hour to hour activity to activity, there are going to be too many variables. And you can't stop every time like imagine if I had to get up tomorrow and go today is going to be a sedentary day. I will now go fix all of my basal rates for sedentary and change my insulin to carb ratio for sedentary By the way, do you realize that that could end up for some people meaning more for some people meaning less, it could end up meaning less for Basal and more for insulin to carb or vice depending who you are and what you eat. And so when all that exists, what ends up happening to people is they just go Ah, today was a good day, today was a bad day. Right? They leave the settings and then they have good days and bad days. And what I thought was, if we stay fluid enough, you can almost be ahead of what's happening and make these adjustments. Okay, right. All right. That's a long, long explanation. But to me, that's what led me to bumping and nudging. Now, for context, while Jenny and I are talking about it, I think of bumping as using insulin, bumping your blood sugar down. And I think of nudging as nudging your blood sugar up with carbs. Jenny thinks of it the exact opposite way. So don't get confused. If one of us does one thing and one of us does the other. But in the end, the idea is to keep yourself between these smaller parameters. Yeah, right, arrange a smaller range.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:39
And the range is defined by you,

Scott Benner 19:41
right? Doesn't matter to me what range you choose.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:44
Right? It's it's your chosen range, but the idea is to use food in an insulin and in a good advantage in both directions so that you can stay within that target,

Scott Benner 19:56
right. And so some of the things I learned as I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:59
was able to could see us by the way, your hands

Scott Benner 20:03
around good, bad. Oh my god, you keep saying that out loud. And someone's gonna ask you to turn this into a YouTube thing and then we're gonna be on camera and neither of us are going to be happy about that. Because you're gonna have to hang up that stuff behind you and I'm gonna have to get a haircut right. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:19
which by the way is just like bags and you know, it's not random strangeness. It's like bags and like coats. That's it.

Scott Benner 20:26
Jenny is now apologizing for something you can't say that's very Midwest of you. By the way. You're like, Oh, it's it's not unclutter. It's nice people, it's a very important thing for the children hanging their bags.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:40
The easiest for them to get to.

Scott Benner 20:43
We're off topic now. So anyway, so I'm gonna do a little thing here. And please jump in whenever you want. In my mind, I take the I guess I should first say that I understand this would be more difficult without a continuous glucose monitor. I really do. What I'm saying would be harder, you could do it. I still think you could do it, you'd have to do it a little less aggressively, probably. And you'd be testing more but but what in my mind, what I see is that graph that goes along my daughter's Dexcom has a high line and a low line. And I take those lines from running. Oh, my God, which way is this? Is this parallel? to the ground? Yeah, it is. Right? I correct? Well, yes, I was asleep a lot in high school, nothing to this podcast, just so you know. So I take those two lines that are spaced apart evenly, that run parallel to the ground, and I flip them up on their end. So they're a little vertical, they're running vertical in my mind. And now they are a video game. To me. They're like driving, right? There are it's a football field, I don't want to run out of bounds on the left, or on the right. That's all it is. To me. There's in play and out of play. So when I describe it, and like talks, I discussed it like driving is interesting because it's um, you make a lot of imperceivable moves when you're driving that if you jerk the wheel around, you swerve and you don't want to do that. So as you notice yourself approaching a, you know, the shoulder, you just turn the wheel back a tiny little bit and you come back into toe again, right, like you're, you're it comes back. Same thing with you know, if you're going to cross into the other lane, you just come back a little bit, you don't jerk the wheel around, because if you drive the wheel around, you end up in the in the ditch or in the other lane, or you end up with much higher or lower blood sugar's than you mean. Right? So I bumped myself back, I bump, you know, a nudge back. I used that insulin to help Arden stay in range. The problem that comes with jerking the wheel is that once you're in the ditch, you have to overcorrect again. And then you're on the roller coaster. Right now I've said rollercoaster which now takes the graph back to being you know, the way it belongs in your mind for a second not vertically, but you're up and you're down and you're just overcorrecting the whole way with food with insulin, and you get the timing of the insulin so far off that some people eat done doesn't stop. It goes, it goes into and you just keep going that way. Yeah. For for not just for a day, for weeks and months and lifetimes of just that's what my blood sugar does. It bounces up and down. And people say that it's heartbreaking me like No, just turn the wheel a little less like right, like, right, it's okay. I understand how it happens. And I think there are ways out of it. So I want to talk about some functional ways out of it. I guess people should understand the difference between a falling and a drifting blood sugar. So why don't you talk about that for a second?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:57
Yeah, drifting is slow. And dropping is fast. I think that's the easiest way, drifting down and or even drifting up, happens gradually over time. So again, if you're using a continuous monitor of any kind, you'll see this slow, continual change in blood sugar, little little nudges, kind of happening over the course of time. And since on all CGM, each of those little dots on your graph represents about five minutes, each little drift up or down. Could be a change in glucose over a five minute time period, right? Yeah. So drifting being slower means you have more time to implement a change right now. That could also be a smaller change, than having to make drastic adjustments with food or insulin, right. When you're doing Dropping or rapidly rising kind of the opposite. That requires more whether it's more insulin or more food, it requires more because the change is happening very quickly now. And usually I see drifts happening either with a horizontal arrow on your CGM. Or you might get that slight angled arrow either down or up. That's I consider those drips, yeah, I consider drops or rapid rises, when you've got arrows pointing straight up or straight down. That's fast. So you need to do something now.

Scott Benner 25:40
And so to start with lows, if you're 75, straight down on Dexcom, that could mean two or three points per minute. Is that right? So every five minute change, you could go, you could end up moving 50 up to 15 points or something like that. I don't hold me to that. But fast is the point. Correct? So yeah, you don't like you know, when you're, when you're 80, straight down, you don't say, Hey, you know what, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do a Temp Basal off for a half an hour here, that's not going to work. And there's reasons prior in the diabetes pro tip episodes, seriously, listen to them in order that will make sense to as why. But if you're just drifting down one of those situations where it's noon, and you're 100, and then it's 1215, and you're 95, and you just got this little drift happening, you could possibly be at the end of a bolus that ended up being a little too strong, right. And maybe there's, you know, an imperceivable amount of insulin left in there, quarter of a unit, a half unit, depending on your size, maybe it's two units if you're an adult, right. And if you take away your basal insulin right there, it's possible that you can trade that extra bolus that's left and create. What I sometimes talk about is like a black hole of Basal, right? So keeping in mind that everything you do with your insulin now is for later because insulin doesn't work immediately. Like, what if at noon, when you started to see that drift down, you took some bazel away, and that created a level. So now at the end of that, too strong Bolus was acting as your bazel. And your bazel wasn't there. But keeping in mind, if you shut your bezel off at noon, it's not going to probably start impacting you for at least one o'clock. Yeah, right for a while. But at the same time, you were only drifting Anyway, it was probably going to take you an hour to get from 100 to 60, where you'd then be drinking a juice. But instead, as you're hitting that 70 Mark, you're all the sudden into the timeframe where there's no basal insulin, and you just level out, that doesn't always work. I've done it and thought I'm a genius. And I've done it and thought, Oh, I missed that like, but trial and error will teach you because there are a lot of different.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:01
And I think some some visual into that, too. As you said, You know, sometimes it works. And sometimes it didn't quite hit the mark. But you weren't necessarily wrong to take these away. I think especially again, with the technology that we have today, not only can you see the drift, but if you are somebody who's using an insulin pump, you also have the visibility of insulin on board, right. So if you have an idea how much insulin is left, like you said, an earlier bolus, maybe you were a little heavy handed in it, or it was just you know too much, because you haven't quite figured out your ratios, or maybe it was, you know, a guesstimate completely, or whatever it was, you still have some insulin on board, if you have an idea of where your bazel is right now. And you know how much insulin is on board, taking bazel away could substitute for some of the iob that's left? Absolutely. And like you said it could nicely smooth things out and you just drift into a stable blood sugar. That might work if you've got iob of one and your basal rate at that point is like point eight or point nine or even one that could absolutely smooth out if you've got three units of iob and your Basil's at point five, not gonna hold you to half you in a way it's going to help a little but you're still going to ask him

Scott Benner 29:17
to get the result. Right. All right. So in my mind's eye Alright, we're gonna do it quick. The Contour Next One blood glucose meter is the finest blood glucose meter I've ever used with my daughter. It is small, but it fits in your hand nicely. It's easy to read during the night or during the day has a bright light for when you're checking blood sugars at night. And the blood test strips allow you to go back in to get a little more blood if you miss the first time. All these things together, coupled with the fantastic accuracy of this meter, make it my choice. That's the best blood glucose meter out there. Go to Contour Next one.com Now to find out if you're eligible for a free meter. And if not, meters aren't that expensive. Just ask your doctor say something like, hey, I've been using this old janky meter forever, I want to get it Contour. Next One. And I bet you that it'll be about as much effort as you have to put into it. All right, what's next Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor is what's next, see the direction and speed of your blood sugar at a glance right there on your iPhone or Android share a loved one's blood sugars, those same numbers, directions and speeds with up to 10 people. That means that if your child has type one diabetes, or you do, you can share your blood sugars, and the alarms and everything that goes with it, it's up to 10 loved ones, through the magic of the internet. dexcom.com forward slash juice box to find out more. This is an indispensable tool, you hear me talk about it all the time. If you don't have a dexcom Today is the day to find out if you can, if you should, if you will. And you can and you should. And you will dexcom.com forward slash juice box. My omnipod.com forward slash juice box will offer you a free, no obligation demo of the Omni pod right there, come right to your house. That's an insulin pump demonstration that you can wear. Try on, see what you think, in the comfort of your own home. After that, you decide I want this on the pop thing, contact them back and you're like, yo, yo, let's do it. And you move forward where you don't want it. They don't bother you. It's no big deal, right? They're not gonna, they're not gonna, you know, I'm saying they're not gonna shake you down. They're like, come on, we sent you a demo, they're not like that, but just want you to have the demo. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't, but you be the judge. And you can be that judge by going to my omnipod.com Ford slash juicebox. There are also links in the show notes of your podcast player, and that Juicebox podcast.com. Please support the sponsors. And now back to bumping and nudging.

In my mind's eye, years ago, I used to think of scales. So think of like the scales of justice, where each side has this big dish and you could, you know, pile weight, you know, and so think of insulin on one side, and carbs on the other or weight, the weight of your blood sugar on the other. And you can kind of imagine yourself throwing in a little on one dish and going Oh, that was too heavy and taking a little out. And you know, we're taking some out, like that's how I think of insulin, like put a little intake a little out. You know, and then, you know, I say a lot on the podcast, and that I think we talked too much just about how insulin impacts the number. And there's so many other things to think about how food impacts insulin, right, like, like, you'll hear me tell a story about like, creating a drop, and then catching it with food. And right to me, that's how the food impacts the insulin. And it's just, there's, it's a weird thing. But there's a lot of different ways to think about what's going on that little game that's going on in your body between, you know, the sugar that's in your blood, or that's going to be in your blood or the foods that's going to put the sugar there and the insulin that's trying to take it out again. So anyway, you can bump with a Temp Basal, right? It just is like to take it away like Jenny and I have explained. Also the same goes for going up. If you see, you know, a 90 that turns into a 95 it turns into 100 it's going to be one of those slow drifts up. There's nothing worse than that, in my opinion, I always think of it as the, um, the mountain climber on the prices right? That because every time you're like it's gonna stop, there's no way that guys falling off the end, they're gonna figure this out like and it just totally who and it just goes on forever, right? And then that little guy just pops off the end. And then Drew Carey takes your money back from you and you're screwed. You walk away. Right? So like, you see this 90 blood sugar that's drifting up. Two hours later, it's 250. And you think I did something? Yeah, like I should have done something, you know, maybe that's a Temp Basal increase, maybe it's a Bolus. But all All I know is that a 120 or one, you know, whatever you wherever you decide to be diagonal up, can be brought back to a stable 90 with far less insulin than it will take to address the 252 hours later. Correct. And when you're only using small bumps of insulin, you're very less likely to cause a low and so when you see that 120 To me, that's you approaching, you know the the line on the side of the road. And you just want to come back almost an imperceivable amount with the wheel or the tiniest bit of insulin to bring it back in line now, right? I have done this with my daughter for years with an amazing amount of success. And I've seen people, scores of people who listen to this podcast do it too. And it works. It really does. But the idea is that you're not always going to get your Bolus, right. You're not always going to have the right amount of Basal going for your specific situation that's happening right then in there. Correct? Wow, I'm more I think you're with me. Don't tell your husband.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:45
I think you know, and two of you want, if you wanted to add some definition to like people always ask, Well, how much? How much when I start to see this drift? How much should I add? Well, you know, one, again, everybody's physiology is a bit different your sensitivity to insulin. So a point one might be what works for you a point seven might be what needs to be in, you know, somebody else's case. But I think if you give definition to direction of blood sugar, again, using today's technology, beneficially. And you mentioned before, kind of the directional arrows, and what that indicates, as far as a drift up or a drift down, and how much is happening. If you're wondering how much to add with insulin, when you do start to see a drift up, the angled arrow is really kind of a rate of change of about one to two points per minute. Right? So if you're aiming to see, okay, I'm at 90, I've not done anything. And now my blood sugar, it looks like it's starting to come up. I don't know why, but it's happening. If you excuse me, you know, experience that a 90 with a angled arrow up one to two points per minute in the next 30 minutes. If you do nothing, your blood sugar could be 30 to 60 points higher. Right? Right. So if you use that to your advantage, and you say, Okay, I could be on the low end 30 points higher, it could be one at 120, I kind of know what I would use to offset, you know, a 50 point rise in my blood sugar, maybe I need to just add a little bit like point two, or maybe I need to take a point five extra, you know, that's kind of a way that's a little bit more, if you're the math person right, may help you to get a little bit more precise and not worry about then ending up on the downdraft later.

Scott Benner 37:39
And if you are me, what you do is you try something and then the next time you try something different if that didn't work, right, less or more, yes, just more or less whatever try. And it's important to remember that it's not, you're not going to get it right the first time. And even if you do get it right the first time, the variables may change the second time it becomes an art, like it really does like just knowing how much to push just a little bit like you know, you squeeze too tight and it's too much you're not laughing you're let go. And and using Jenny's example right there and flipping it to getting lower. You don't always need the whole juice box, you don't always need every piece of candy in the package that sometimes you can nudge with food, right. And I know that 15 carbs 15 minutes is the rule of thumb. But if you're using a CGM, you can see it better. You don't have to 15 carbs 15 minutes is when people are blind to what their blood sugar is. And they're trying to stop themselves from having a seizure. That's important. I'm not saying no. Okay, and I'm not telling you not to do it. But I'm telling you that if you do it, and find yourself to be 300 later, you didn't need all 15 carbs, right. And, by the way, if you do get into a panicky situation, and you've got to just horkan carbs, I'm not going to tell you to not do it. What I am going to tell you is that when you when the dust settles, you need to figure out how much insulin you've got a bolus for that food you just took, right right like maybe not for all of it, but some of its going to need insulin you have to stop the bouncing you've got to make sure you can't get on that roller coaster like don't get on it. it's maddening. And the only way off of that roller coaster By the way, in my opinion is you stop taking in carbs and you get back to level again, like like I can listen I can knock Arden off that roller coaster while she's still eating but that is a ninja level event. Like like you need to be really good at that to stop to stop a roller coaster in between food

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:46
and you'll get it takes understanding sensitivity. Are you very well known and I'm sure Arden does as well. You guys know her sensitivity and you've paid enough attention to say okay, we need this much right now. Because of all of these other variables in the picture, or you need this much less right now or whatnot, and you do get to that level when you start to pay enough attention, you know, to your personal sensitivity and the precision that you need. Um, I think you know, the 15 and 15 is age old. I mean, that's what I started with 32 years ago, it's 15 and 15. And we didn't have the visibility of blood sugar changes at that point, we didn't or even

Scott Benner 40:26
meter by the way that only takes a tiny drop of blood, right isn't and this beautiful Lance that, you know, it doesn't hurt that badly while you're doing it, you were right stabbing yourself with a sword dumping or dumping your rocks in a way we kind of

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:42
called it the guillotine It was like this big old drone that like hammered down on your finger. And like I would like I would like inch my finger like slightly away from like the little underneath platform from where it like jabbed my finger, I would like just hold it back. So it didn't quite jab it. That was my like, adjustment to the land set depth, right, that was the only adjustment I had at that point. But your point being really that you have some tools now that allow you a lot more precision in how you bump in know you do. And with smart tools. Today, too, I think this is a good place to mention it is with our, with our smart hybrid closed loop systems that are on the market today. That adjustment with carb, the 15 and 15 is 100% too much 100% too much with most of these systems on the market today. When you're adding a little bit of carbohydrate, we're talking like a little bit of carb, because the system has already been helping you coming into this drop in blood sugar. So 15 grams, hundred percent is going to be way too much. You might need two or three Skittles, which is like two or three grams of carbs, you might need half of a glucose tablet, you might need a quarter of a juice juice box. So

Scott Benner 42:06
what you know, I want to go a little deeper into this, like faster rises and falls. You see people online every once in a while it's very common, actually. They're injecting and they all put in the measurement for their slow acting insulin as fast acting by mistake like oh, I take like you'll see an adult like I take 20 units of Lantus every day. And I just gave myself 20 units of novolog. And they're online. What do I do? What do I do what I do? And I'm just like, figure out how many carbs that takes and eat them. Like, that makes sense to me. Right and and give that a try. So say you do that. Not that but say you have a meal that really needed five units. And for some reason you thought seven. And the next thing you know, 40 minutes later, there's an arrow down on your CGM, you're falling fast, you need to eat the carbs to stop that. So it's a much bigger nudge, right? It's more like a nudge with a sledgehammer now, and you need to eat the carbs to stop that. In the same thought process. If you miss greatly with that insulin, it should have been seven and you use five and 30 minutes later, your two arrows straight up. I don't mess around there. Like I am stopping those arrows, right? And you think, Well, okay, see, I don't know, say was literally like a mistake you meant to do seven and you did five she's like, okay, two units, that two units isn't going to do it anymore. Because you have all this momentum, right? Like there's this momentum, you have to stop the momentum, you've got a higher number than you thought about when you decided on the insulin the first time, there's a lot to think about. There's the number, the momentum and getting you back without making you Well, there are times that I'll take what I think the amount is that's going to stop the arrows plus the amount that's going to change the number back to where I want it to be. And I realize if I give her this insulin right now, she's going to end up low later. Mm hmm. But I still give it to her. And then there's a moment where I take the bazel away away, right? To try to do what I mentioned earlier, eat up that extra. So I needed all that force from that insulin up front because of the situation we're in. But I don't need the tail of it later. But the tails going to be there. So what if I took her bazel away so that it wasn't bazel plus the tail, right? And so I get the benefit of the up front without the kick in the pants. Again, what comes later, right, right. That's another way to think of bumping and nudging in my opinion. So there's any teacher

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:51
learning that tools it takes learning the tools to use, you know, things like people who are using MDI or multiple things injections, it becomes harder because you can't take these away. Yes, it's injected, it's there. So if you are heavy handed with a correction, because you really want that double arrow to stop, you're going to be have to be, you have to be ready on the back end with carbs. To stop right

Scott Benner 45:17
off, you want to do you want to know what a pump does that multiple MDI doesn't do, it stops you from having to take a bunch of injections, it allows you to do temporary basal increases, decreases, extended boluses. That's it. And you know, you don't have to carry pens with you and right, wonder if your insulin is getting warm while you're at the water park. Like Like that's, that's, that's it? I mean, I think, to me, it sounds like a very little bit. But it's a lot. If you're going to be reactive like this and stay flexible and things like that. I'm not saying you can't do it with injections, I know plenty of people who do you have a very commonly are adults, or, you know, kids who just don't care about the injections, because there's going to be a moment when you're going to put in a little insulin and realize it's not enough and have to put in a little more. And now that's two needles, you know, instead of two pushes of a button, I think there are

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:13
certain kinds of food which we've talked about, in other episodes, reading a pump to cover differently over a longer period of time. With a with an injection, you can't do that, unless you're willing to just take more injections with more insulin.

Scott Benner 46:26
So now here's the next thing about bumping and nudging, you get what you expect a little bit. And I want to just before I tell you about that, I want to tell you that what Jenny just said, shouldn't have been glossed over. There's other parts to this, I'm talking about bumping and nudging within a fairly perfect system, meaning I have my daughter's bazel well in hand, I'm not that far off with her meal boluses. If I missed like, we're not just like running around with our hair on fire gun, like, yeah, you know, like, and I just

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:54
hear feed here, give more here.

Scott Benner 46:58
be insane. And I do mean this without sounding like I'm trying to pimp the the content, if you go back and start at the beginning of the pro tips. Or if you want to power Listen, by the way, those of you who start at the beginning of the podcast and listen right through, you have my respect, I thank you very much. Because why the downloads are so good, and it really helps me. So thank you very much. But at least go back to the pro tips and listen through, because then you'll get to a point where bumping and nudging really is a good tool.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:30
But it doesn't happen not hundred percent of the time. It's not always gonna work.

Scott Benner 47:35
Right, right. Like there are gonna be times where it doesn't work. And it happened to me last night with Chinese food. So we came out of a pump change and went right into Chinese food, which just shows my arrogance, really, because I was like, this won't be a problem. But what I didn't take into account is this for the past 72 hours, Arden has just needed more insulin, like there are foods that don't make Arden spike that are making your spike for the last three days. I don't know why it's not important, why it's just happening, you know, like, like, soup, just having like a clam chowder out of a cannon. I can't get it under like 250, like 45 minutes later, like, I'm like what's happening, you know, and it'll go away. Because the day before this started, her blood sugar was like 85 for 17 hours in a row. So, you know, it'll, it'll cycle through, we'll figure it out. Maybe it'll end up being a variable that needs adjusting. I don't think it will be but I'll see. But that's not the point. The point is, we came from a pod change, right into Chinese food. And boy, look at that. I did not do well with that. And so I want to first tell you that when I say oh my god, I did not do well with that. What I mean is her blood sugar was between like 175 and 210 for a number of hours afterwards. I know you're thinking Shut up. I would love that. Right? Yeah, yeah, people are like, Really? That's your complaints? Not a complaint. It's just I missed, right. Right. And there was the time five hours honestly, where she needed I bolused a bunch of times and I never once got it right I was never strong enough with it. And I have to admit, it was because I was tired and I didn't want to be up all night. So I just I erred a little on the side of caution not a lot and and I kept pushing. So but I did not cause her to get low afterwards, which was which is a win. It felt like that to me and I'll tell you why. And I want to put this in this episode too. So very recently, I wore the Dexcom Pro continuous glucose monitor and I was very happy to find out that I am apparently not pre diabetic as I was texting Jenny's I was putting I'm like you know this I'm gonna find out I have type two diabetes, right like I'm I was very happy that I didn't. Obviously, I was grateful, but I got to see What a pancreas does when it's doing what it's supposed to do. And I have to tell you that there is nothing I ate no matter how low glycemic or high glycemic, they got my blood sugar over. Yeah, I mean, I told Jenna I had eat two pieces of cake to get my blood sugar to like 135 141 time, right? But as I look back over the day, my standard deviation was like 11. You know, my, my average blood sugar was I don't like 90 or 80 or something 85 or 90, right. But I still went up a little gracefully 120 most of the time back down again. You know, that happened when I ate. And I had already changed my mind about my expectations for Arden. It over the last couple of years, you guys have heard me loosen up on the idea of like stopping every spike like I don't, I'm not a flatline person. I don't feel like my daughter's blood sugar needs to be a flatline, I do believe that she has type one diabetes, and that letting a flatline get away from you turns into a disaster that takes way too long to fix, which is why all this is important. But I don't care if she eats in her blood sugar goes up to 121 30 and comes back down again. I think that's fine. As long as she's not low on the other side, I start getting a little hinky over 140 in my heart, I'm a little much, you know. And it's not to say I wouldn't try to stop at 120 if I thought I had the answer to it. But I don't know it just it seems important for me to tell you that if your pancreas is working your blood sugar is not always at five, it you know, it just isn't. So be a little easy on yourself, have good expectations, but understand that my daughter, you your kid, Jenny, you don't have the mechanism to adjust, it isn't just going to put the brakes on for you. So that's why you can't you know, I say you'll ever get high if you don't get high. That's sort of what I mean by that, like stop the arrows stop before it starts, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:03
Well into this kind of experience that you had to I think one of the funny texts from you was relative to Pre-Bolus.

Scott Benner 52:13
Yeah, I was

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:14
tested in your life. I Pre-Bolus better than my own prank. Pre-Bolus is I think is what your text was because you had seen a difference in what you had done for the same meal for Arden with her Pre-Bolus Yes, versus what your own pancreas was doing. And I think you said something like, I wish I could get my pancreas to Pre-Bolus. And I was like, well, your pancreas kind of does actually do that the working pancreas body kind of does do this like pre Bolus. Bolus, right?

Scott Benner 52:47
So Jenny's tried to explain to me I got if this is true, she said that sometimes when you smell food or you get hungry, your body anticipates that your blood sugar is going to go up and gets a little working on things prior. Right? That's really cool. But what she's pointing out and I am a little embarrassed is that after a couple of days, I would look at, like I'd be cooking and I would think to myself, like I think rubbing my stomach wherever I thought my pancreas was, you know, I don't even know. And so I was just like, man, now do it. Now, brother. We're about to have pasta. Go, you know. But no, Jenny's not wrong. And I'm not bragging. I was better at stopping spikes with Arden than my body was for me. And I was really, like, comforted by that. You know, I was like, wow, this, this post on that podcast really works. And I was I was just really, I was really thrilled. You know, it's like, wow, I because it felt like it wasn't overkill. Do you know what I mean by that, like, I thought, Oh, I'm not taking this too seriously. I'm taking this the right amount of serious, right. And it just really was it was a it was a great experience. I want to thank Dexcom for letting me wear the Pro. And it was really nice. I was the only that that was only worn by national media outlet people. And me, and I was very grateful. And I really appreciate that Dexcom appreciates the podcast and sees it as what it is. Yeah, not, not not I'm just not a guy with a podcast. Like I was like, wow, they really like made me feel good. Anyway, point is the last point, I guess if all this is, is that bumping and nudging is terrific. It's great while you're learning things, while you're learning about how to Bolus for meals while you're learning about activities. You know, all that stuff's great, but it's not a long term, everyday solution. And I didn't recognize that people wouldn't translate out of it eventually, like just go like, oh, okay, um, didn't happen to me. You know, I said at the beginning I didn't realize it wasn't happening to me. And then finally, and again, I have to thank the people listening, because we started the private Facebook group, which I'm not particularly active in. But see, every day, I started watching and this is when I said to Jenny, I need a pro tip on pumping. And I was like, Oh my god, these people are doing this all the time, like, constantly. I'm like, it's not for constantly. And so here we are. So if you heard us do defining diabetes, bumping nudge, which literally just came out last week, I said in there, what I didn't realize about bumping and dodging when I started doing it was that it's as much of a diagnostic tool as it is, you know, a tool for keeping your blood sugar's in order. Correct. So Jenny, when you start seeing yourself pumping and nudging too much, what should you be doing?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 55:53
Then you should be going back.

Personally, what I do, and with the people that I work with, what I do in their in data analysis is, I look at a cumulative and I say, over the course of this time, whether it's a week, or three days, or two months, or whatever we want to look at together, we can say, well, goodness, we've had a lot more use of Temp Basal that are not specific to like activity reason, or a food based reason, like you always eat Friday night pizza, or whatever it is, and you need that kind of a tool for but goodness we're having, there's a lot of corrections happening after meals all the time, or there's a lot of you know, you're using Temp Basal to cut off insulin all the time, if that's happening. And while it might be proving to give you the results that you want, there's a bigger picture, they're saying there's either not enough insulin for some reason now. So we need more in the bazel. Or we need to add a change to your ratios so that you do get more robust type of Bolus for food. And then you shouldn't have to follow it so heavily after and adjust with extra insulin all the time. So that becomes looking at information and saying, for whatever reason, I just need more bazel. Now let's pop it into place for whatever reason, my ratios look like they're not covering well, or they're covering too much. Let's take some away, let's add some in. And let's make sure that I'm not bumping and nudging now 100% of the day, because that shouldn't be the case. Right? Right. You shouldn't have to work that hard, essentially. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:29
one of the I think one of the benefits of the podcast is that it eventually should make the management of diabetes simpler and less impactful on your, your moment to moment, you shouldn't constantly be like, Okay, a little more, a little less, a little more like, that's no algorithms do that. But you shouldn't have to do that. Right? If you find yourself doing it, look back and and just try to separate a variable from a constant and address the constants and keep bumping the variables. That's, that's all it gets that easy. I took me a while to figure it out. And that's why I'm here saying it to you because I thought, oh, gosh, what if people don't figure it out? Like I started having this heart in my head that people would just be like, bumping

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:18
following my child until they're 50. And I'll be 89. You know, what's happening to their bush

Scott Benner 58:24
picture, people in my head that haven't seen the sun in three years have their hair all wired, like they've been electrocuted, and they're like, my kids, my kids, is 5.5, their blood sugar hasn't gone over 110 in six years, I'm fine. Like, please don't be like, Oh, my God, that would break my heart. If that's what's happening to you. And don't get me wrong. By the way, in the beginning, while you're starting to figure it out, you may be alone.

Unknown Speaker 58:49
That is one field, you should

Scott Benner 58:50
be able to get past that. Right. And I hope this has been helpful. Did we miss anything, Jenny? Because you guys, don't you really everyone listening should should just take a second to realize that Jenny, and I don't have any notes in front of us. Like we're not working off a list. And I still think we got in the timeframe through everything I wanted to say. Do you feel like Yes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 59:10
absolutely. You did a good job. I should

Scott Benner 59:13
ring a bell. I'm gonna spike. That's right. I want to say this is something I was going to say later when I was editing it together. But I want to say it was Jenny here instead. I appreciate that the people listening care about this. Like, I really do. Like, I think it's wonderful that you all want better or easier or simpler, and aren't just throwing up your hands and saying, I don't know. There's good days and there's bad days. I think it's really wonderful. I think that we're creating a feeling throughout the diabetes world that's going to help people in the future it might not help you as much as it's going to help someone else. But I got you know, it's funny, it's not a note, but some He posted this on social media the other day, and I'm not gonna put their comments and their name into it. But I want to tell you like how amazing I thought this was. This person is relaying that their child, a 13 year old who's only been diagnosed for four weeks, listens to the podcast with their parents went into the doctor four weeks later advocated for themselves for a pump, explained Wow, explained that she wanted to use extended boluses. She tried it with MDI showed her doctor how she tried it, explained that she wants to do Temp Basal adjustments in the anticipation of exercise and activity and started rattling off everything she learned from the pro tip episodes. Wow. And even rolled in with her on the pod demo, the cast and persuaded the endo to approve the pump at the next appointment. And that that's awesome that endo normally makes you wait six months. And that's from these episodes. And so I imagine not just the happiness for that child that's coming. But that maybe now the doctors like huh, why am I waiting? You know? Am I making people wait, couldn't I just do this with them? Right? That's exciting for me. And it's so it's everyone's desire to do better. And then your willingness to say it, when you get to the doctor's office, it's,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:26
well, then maybe even from that doctor's perspective, maybe you know, this person obviously went in and said, hey, I've learned all of this from this one place, maybe the doctor now has a reference to say, Hey, you know, if you want a little bit more, and you come back to me knowledgeable enough and can say, Hey, this is what I know. Now, this is what I want to be able to use why I want to be able to use it. Again, I think a lot of clinicians are just conservative because they're worried,

right? They're conservative,

for many reasons, but I think worry is a big one. And they want some outcomes showing. Yes, my patient is now ready for this. And unfortunately, I think again, with the technology we have today, I think people are more ready earlier than they may have been years ago. Um,

Scott Benner 1:02:18
so I think that I don't think that people should make the mistake that this is some special girl. Do you know, like she is seriously it's, it's, it sounds self aggrandizing I really don't mean it to be she just listened to the 17 or 18 prototype episodes. And in four weeks, look where she is. And, and I don't know that everybody could be but I think my experiences are that a lot of people are and so that it's possible. I'm in my heart. I hope right now that doctor is listening to this going, Wow, that sounds like something that happened. And like I hope he went was like, I wonder what that kid listened to, you know, like, that's what I want. I want everybody to be healthier, and easier and less encumbered and anxious and all the crap that comes with having diabetes. So, Jenny, I think that's good to hear that. Thank you.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:04
Yeah, no, and I think that's a good cumulative of kind of, I mean, my overall when I had set out, going to college, knowing what I wanted to go to school for and eventually what I wanted to become, just, it was a very, it was a very, like, General, I want to become a diabetes educator, because I had had really awesome educators as a kid myself. But I never like I didn't have a broad like idea of what I really wanted. I just wanted, I knew I wanted to be able to share what I knew, with people and I wanted it to make a difference. Like it made a difference for me when I was younger, you know, and didn't have the technology or anything that we have today. Right? So, you know, in what I get to do every day, that's, I love it. But what I like more is that

I love this connection that I've that I've

had because of you because of the podcasts and the and what you've put together. I feel like I've reached so many more people than just the individual people that I get to work with every day. You know, I feel like kind of especially these pro tips what we've put together it's just able to reach so many more people in a way that's it's free. Yeah, you know, great and I'm Thank you

Scott Benner 1:04:23
Are you made me I felt like little butterflies and I looked I looked away from Jenny last year just now embarrassed that I couldn't keep looking at her through a video stream while she was saying something nice. I need therapy. Anyway thank you i It is really is terrific. It would obviously not be the same without you. So I really appreciate it. Cool. All right. We did a good job here. I'm gonna go back to your life which is probably just talking to somebody else about IP. So the second

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:04:51
actually it will be my husband went off to work and my my kids are a band on the house. They're watching I think they're watching Dino Dan right now and I Hear my little man outside the joystick, Mommy, I want to snap

Scott Benner 1:05:06
a minute doing important work. Go back to what you're doing. Go take care of him. And thank you very much.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:13
Yeah, absolutely Have a great weekend

Scott Benner 1:05:15
to all of the episodes that include the words diabetes pro tip in their title are available right here in your podcast player, or at diabetes pro tip.com. The next pro tip will be out pretty soon. It's all about pregnancy with Type One Diabetes. Thanks so much to Dexcom on the pod and the Contour Next One blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of the show. Go to Contour Next one.com to see if you're eligible for a free meter. And if you're not, check with your doctor about moving up, right? You've been driving that old car too long, you deserve something new Contour. Next One. If you'd like a free, no obligation demo of the Omni pod sent directly to your house. Well, you sound like the kind of person who's ready to go to tubeless insulin pumping. I know what you're thinking. insulin pumps don't have tubes. Well, the Omni pod doesn't the rest of them do. But the Omni pod doesn't. My Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. no obligation free demo gets sent right to you takes three minutes to make happen at that web address. And of course, the continuous glucose monitor that has fallen from the heavens, the Dexcom g six, continuous glucose monitor, check it out@dexcom.com Ford slash juice box. If you have not listened to all of the pro tip episodes, I implore you to do so seriously go back to Episode 210. Or find them at diabetes pro tip calm, I think you're gonna really like them. And I think they're gonna make a really big difference in your life with Type One Diabetes. If you've already listened to all of those episodes, and you want more Jenni, find the defining diabetes episodes and ask Scott and Jenny there's more good Jenny goodness out there you can find it. I want to thank you for listening. And if you're a person who has shared the show with someone else, you have my gratitude. It is how the show grows. And I very much appreciate your time and effort. I will talk to you all soon.


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#315 Jenny Smith, CDE discusses Coronavirus

Scott Benner

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Juicebox Podcast conversation with Jenny Smith, CDE

Recorded March 20, 2020

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon AlexaGoogle Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

Scott Benner 0:07
Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 315 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's show was recorded on March 20. It is a conversation about Coronavirus with Jenny Smith. At the end of the episode, I've listed some important talking points from the CDC website. Make sure you get to those.

Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, becoming bold with insulin, or anything else that might come up. You know what I mean? Jenny Smith is a registered and licensed dietitian, a certified diabetes educator, and a person who's been living with Type One Diabetes for over three decades. Jenny has the exact same person you hear on the diabetes pro tip series during the defining diabetes episodes. And of course, ask Scott and Jenny. Jenny works at integrated diabetes. And if you want to check her out, or even higher, you can do that. Jenny's email addresses right in the link of the show notes.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. The Contour Next One is without a doubt the finest most accurate blood glucose meter My daughter has ever used in the entire time she's had type one diabetes, go to Contour Next one.com to find out if you're eligible for an absolutely free meter today. The podcast is also sponsored by touched by type one. When you go to touch by type one.org, you're going to see an organization that is working towards a cure, supporting people with type one diabetes, and putting on maybe one of the greatest dance shows I've ever witnessed. Go find out more about them. They're supporting people with type one diabetes all over the world. You might be one of them, go check them out. And if you don't need that support, and you want to help support someone else, this is a great way. Touch by type one.org is a great way to do that. Get yourself an absolutely free no obligation demo of the Omni pod sent to your house today. Go to my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. When you get there fill out a little bit of information. And on the pod is going to send you an absolutely free no obligation demo of the Omni pod. You'll be able to try it on wear and see what you think. And of course, find out more about the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor the exact same CGM that my daughter wears today. Go to dexcom.com Ford slash juice box. Let's get to the show.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:01
Hello. Hey, good morning.

How are you today? I'm

Scott Benner 3:06
we're hanging in there. How about you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:09
Yeah, I'd call it the same. Oh, I would assume calls home from school.

Scott Benner 3:14
Yeah, we didn't even make it through. My gosh, we didn't even make it through is I'm

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:23
sorry. I didn't realize I was all covered. A little post it notes.

Scott Benner 3:27
I don't want to know what you're doing with your computer in your private time. It's fine. So Cole was in Florida for his college tournament. He got there Friday. We got there Friday. On Sunday. He asked us for Azhar tech thinking that his allergies were coming on the runny nose. On Monday, he asked for another one. Kelly and Arden left on Monday to go home. I stayed behind Tuesday was his day off. And when I picked him up Tuesday, late Tuesday morning to take him to lunch. I was like, are you okay? And he's like now I don't feel right. And I was like, okay, so I took him out to eat. And he didn't look good. So I said hey, go back to my hotel and lay down for a while. So three hours later, he woke up. And he woke up to an email from his coach and said we're having an emergency meeting to talk about the season. So I had to hump him back like a half an hour to his hotel. He was feeling better from sleeping, but, you know, he didn't look magically better than me. Right. You know, and they announced that the season was going to be suspended. That's what they do at the time. And he definitely didn't feel well still. So now he's like ask me kind of like trying to be like, slides like I couldn't have the Coronavirus, right. And I was like, I mean you could you know I said you know what, what are your symptoms at that point he had a sore throat, a runny nose, you know Now you don't have a fever, you know. So, right. So the next day comes Wednesday, he ends up pitching his face off against the number one ranked team in the country. In Division Three, just pitches, these two amazing innings comes out of the game. The game ends, he gets on a bus and goes back to the hotel. I'm supposed to pick him up for dinner, he texts me, he goes, Hey, I'm not gonna go to dinner. But come over here. He's like, I felt like I was gonna throw up on the bus. And so I think he used every ounce of energy, everything he had, and realized that he was sick. So on the way over there, I just stopped at a like a Walgreens. I'm like, let me just get a thermometer. You know? Yeah, stuck the thermometer in his mouth. He must

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:45
be a dad. Yeah.

Scott Benner 5:46
100.4. I took him right to urgent care. Oh, my God. Now he's an urgent care with a mask on. And they swap him for flu. He doesn't have the flu. And the guy looks at his throat and says, Listen, you have strap? I can see it. You know, he's like, I'm gonna give you a antibiotic. And I said, Are you gonna swap him for it? He goes, man, this is strep throat. And I was like, okay, you know, fingers crossed and all. But I took him out of the hotel where the kids were where the poor kid had to leave his team. Wow, I just basically like shudder, like, just yeah. And the he didn't play the rest of the week, obviously. But the antibiotics did it. That's right. He had strap. Yeah. So but you know, in the moment, it was weird. And when he went back to watch the games, like from outside of the dugout, and the last two days, people were, you know, they're like, hey, how's he doing? Like, you know, we just want to make sure it's all right. It really what they meant. No, they really meant was Hey, got strapped we took given authority has exactly what I was saying. Just like just like, oh my god, are you allowed out of your house? What's the Wisconsin thing so far?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:03
So the Wisconsin thing is beyond the like, multiple levels of weather we have happening, like it was raining before and now it's like, fuzzy snowing, sorry, I'm looking out my window. But being trapped in the house. No, I mean, we can go outside. Our kids are out of school. The governor originally had a timeline of like, on April 6, but just two days ago, no, two days ago, we got another email from our school district specifically stating that according to the new guidelines, school is delayed or cancelled indefinitely. We don't know which my husband and I are like, okay, that means that Oscar is just not going back to school this year. That's what I think we will be homeschooling and I mean, the The good thing is that, you know, working from home, I'm here right? But the bad thing is that working from home, I don't have a clinic to go to so I have work that continues which is very good. It's good that people can utilize this type of telemedicine to stay up especially as things change and things happen and there are more questions that come in. But it also makes navigating my day a little bit more interesting.

Scott Benner 8:22
Okay, we're talking about the Coronavirus today. So here is on the pods website if you want to know more about how they're handling Coronavirus. It's it my omnipod.com forward slash Coronavirus. So if you want to get a free no obligation demo, go to my Omni pod comm forward slash juice box but if you want to find out about the Coronavirus and how Omni pod is handling it, my omnipod.com forward slash Coronavirus there they will tell you how insulin is responding to the coronavirus outbreak. They're going to tell you if Coronavirus is impacting insolence ability to produce its products, what sterilization processes are in place to ensure the pods are safe. may talk about reordering. I'm gonna jump through it really quickly. insolate continues to be vigilant monitoring and managing the global impact of the coronavirus outbreak. So that's how they start to talk about their response. They say they also have a comprehensive plan in place to ensure the safety and well being of their employees and they are going to continue to deliver on the pods to those who depend on the product manager type one. At this time. insolate does not anticipate any product supply issues. Pretty cool here. They talk about the sterilization process. Why don't you go check it out if you're interested my omnipod.com Ford slash Coronavirus. Next thing I have to share with you is a lovely email that I got from Rick Doubleday. Rick is the chief Commercial Officer at Dexcom. rick sent me a note and said at this moment, there are not any interruptions to Dexcom his ability to produce and supply product. However, we do anticipate near term delays in both customer service and tech support as we transition more employees to a remote work environment. wait times on the phone will be much longer than usual. We ask that customers Please only contact Dexcom support for urgent requests at this time. Dexcom is committed to communicating with their customers as the situation evolves, and customers should visit dexcom.com forward slash Coronavirus for latest updates. So that's directly from Rick. Now, if you want to get an Dexcom system going go to dexcom.com, forward slash juicebox. If you're already using it, you want to know how Dexcom is reacting to the outbreak, check that out right there. Now, when you start looking around the internet for a little break from all this, go to touch by type one.org. There, you're going to find an organization with the mission to elevate awareness of type one diabetes, raise funds to find a cure and to inspire those with diabetes to thrive. They've got great programs and services, all kinds of stuff. And hopefully, I'll be there and may speaking, if you know, we're allowed to travel again and get together with people. But you know, that's a long way off, I have good feeling about that. Anyway, touched by type one.org. Check them out today. Last but not least Contour Next one.com. That's where you can check out the Contour. Next One blood glucose meter, there's a little yellow tab at the top it says get a free Contour Next One meter today, check that out, see if you're eligible. This meter also has a wonderful app that works both with Apple and Android really helps take your data to a new level. Contour Next one.com. All of these links can be found in your show notes at Juicebox. podcast.com. Alright, let's get back to Jenny.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:57
My husband is on medical family medical leave right now from his company. They allowed employees who have family members in home or whatnot that could be at increased risk to take their family medical leave. So he chose to do that. I mean, he sees thousands of people a day at work. And he was like, yeah, I'm

Unknown Speaker 12:16
just gonna be at home with you guys. So I'm sure companies looking for some people not

Scott Benner 12:19
to come in anyway. They're correct.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:21
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, that kind of works out for whatever limited time he can use that for? I mean, he'll have to go back to work at some point. You know,

Scott Benner 12:34
we'll figure it out. We're gonna become a socialist nation pretty soon.

Unknown Speaker 12:37
Right? Well, yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:39
But I mean, I'm, it's interesting, because, you know, grocery stores and everything, those things are still open. I expect for like limited time. I haven't really looked at the websites to see Are you still 24 hours? I would expect? Probably not. But yesterday, I thought, I got the brilliant idea from actually somebody I was working with. And she's like, Oh, I just, I just go online. And I just ordered all my food. And I just pick it up at the door. And I was like, why did I not think about? Oh, so I went online. And I did that, oh, the next time I could pick up groceries at the grocery store that we most often go to is Monday, March 30. Like, at 6pm. I'm like, I'm out of all of the fresh stuff that I eat every single day. I'm like, I'm not living just on like frozen broccoli. So we picked

Scott Benner 13:27
one person. So one of us goes to the grocery store. Nobody the other person's not going. Yeah, tomorrow, we're supposed to go move cold stuff out of the dorm. I don't even know if they're gonna let us do that. But wait and see. But no, I think this is going to go on for months. I don't think the kids are going back to school this year. And everybody is now seeing, you know, for all the things we talked about that are important. If you can't walk outside without getting sick, nothing else matters. You know, it's really, really something else there. I there's that one model out of England that says between 600,002 point 2 million Americans could die in the next year and a half or something like that, which is it's funny. It's a staggering number, right? And at the same time, my son said to me, because he's, you know, he's younger, and he doesn't feel like he's gonna get sick. Right? He goes, how many people die anyway. And I was like, what, just like before this and I said, about 150,000 people a day worldwide die every day. And he's like, so was 2 million a lot. And I said, it is if it's you. Yeah, you know, there's a way to look at the world personally. And there's a way to look at the world,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:40
you know, globally, globally. And yeah,

Scott Benner 14:42
there's two things are they're very different. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:45
we are exactly I see no,

Scott Benner 14:47
I stopped my 20 year old son from going to play basketball. He's like, we're gonna go play basketball like you're not. Yeah, no, you're not PlayStation, that's your dream come true. You can play it as much as you want. So, um,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:01
we have everything closed. I mean, other than pharmacies and that kind of stuff. So yeah.

Scott Benner 15:06
Okay, so let me let me first talk with you about this. I think it's just important right now with the timing to put out an episode for as long as it needs to be if it's 10 minutes or half an hour or whatever it has to be talking about how to manage through a respiratory illness. Because, you know, it's gonna happen and we can at least have a baseline idea. We don't know what this you know, what do you call it? By the way, do you call it COVID-19? Or the Coronavirus when you're just chatting about it at home?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:35
I've just been calling it the Coronavirus because I just I feel like all of these extra like, names to things just it's confusing in my brain. So I'm like it's the Coronavirus whatever they want to call it beyond that. Fine. Right?

Scott Benner 15:48
We definitely go with Corona here. Because in the you know, in the monsters incorporated movie when the sock touches the thing, and they yell 2319 2319. So when people say COVID-19 Kelly, here's 2319. And it starts the whole comedy routine in the house. So we don't say that like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:06
That's funny.

Scott Benner 16:08
We go Coronavirus, though. So okay, so we don't see, I've seen I think two people with type one on social media who have had it so far, but haven't really heard much from them. We're starting, you know, you're you're not really hearing from people yet who have recovered from it. Because those recoveries have happened overseas, we're right, you know, we're, we're still in the spot where you're gonna see, I mean, today is the 20th of March, we had a big increase yesterday in diagnosis, and I'm gonna guess it's gonna double today, because we're now starting to see numbers from, you know, people who were tested five, 810 days ago, right. So there was

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:50
a really good post done, and you might have read it, The Washington Post did a really good article that had graphical of dots interacting with each other, and how, like, you know, no social isolation versus minimal versus extreme socializing, isolation, and how much difference that makes, but you still get a blowout of people, it's just slower, and it decreases that, you know, that you graph essentially, of how many people will potentially get it, I think the problem will be until we have hopefully a vaccination for it at a small level, and I think this is why it draws out how many months we're going to see things closed, and social interaction minimized and things. Because until we have a vaccination, it's just going to keep floating around, just like somebody is always going to bump into somebody that bumps into somebody that bumps into somebody that hasn't had it yet. And you know, they don't, but that being new from everything that I've read, the human body doesn't know what to do with it really yet, or how to form like the antibodies and things that it would normally form for the typical cold and the typical flu and, oh, I see this again, I had this, you know, two years ago. Now I can handle it better again. Yeah. I think

Scott Benner 18:11
a lot of people mistakenly believe that it's gonna have a season like the flu. And it'll just we'll get to a date, and you just won't hear about it anymore. And that I think, listen, I don't know anything other than what I'm paying attention to. But I just had Dr. Adam Edelman on the show the other day, in this episode with us going to go up right after that. He talked, I brought up the Washington Post article, and before I could tell him, it was out of the Washington Post he was was that in the Washington Post? And I was like, yeah, we've all seen that. Right? Yeah. Because it's such a wonderful visual visualization of how you know, spread happens. But I would say, this is gonna last two full Corona seasons, whatever this time is going to be, and then I think there's going to be a break, and then I think it's gonna come around again. And then it'll probably be a normal part of life, like the flu, and, you know, write SARS and MERS, and all that other stuff. But it just spreads so much more quickly. And easily then things in the past have. And so you're just seeing it, overwhelm everything.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:13
Right. I think that in terms of, you know, diabetes, I think people with diabetes, or even people with other, like chronic health conditions, where they've become, it's become a habit to be more careful about things like, you know, you change your pump site, or you take an injection, you clean the site, you wash your hands, or, you know, maybe you wash your hands before you do a finger stick or you put your, your continuous monitor site on or those kinds of things. So we we already are a little bit ahead of the curve of just paying attention to hygiene is in it cautiously in that sense, you know, but then, in terms of just management, I mean, the only the only one that I read about online with type one specific was, as you mentioned a guy over In the UK, I believe he was from he had gone on a ski trip in like, December, December, early January or something with a group of friends. And a good majority of the group got have Corona or had Coronavirus. He himself got tested because others in his group, he was positive. And his symptoms actually didn't show up for several days after he was tested positive, and he has type one. And he actually, in his article, he mentioned the fact that it wasn't so much the diabetes management. That was the hard part about it. It was he described it as like uncontrollable respiratory coughing. He said it was just so unbelievable that the only thing that helped was some type of medication, his doctor prescribed him and he went and he picked up steps to stop the actual coughing, but he said otherwise. And of course, this is an end of one experience, right? Everybody's experience with an illness is a little bit different. But I think it gives, it gives good information that if you were fairly healthy outside of just your diabetes, and you have fairly good blood sugar control, which is a huge key in a lot of this, then your management strategy for the illness piece of it shouldn't be that much different. If anything, you're you're gonna likely need I mean, most people with a respiratory illness who have a fever, or an infection, you're going to increase your insulin use. So

Scott Benner 21:35
I Well, it's interesting, because obviously, we this is a new virus, you know, for us and no one's really seen it before, but I've been managing Arden's blood sugar in one way or another for I mean, over 13 years, it's probably coming up on 14 years pretty soon. Viruses don't really change her insulin needs greatly. Now, I've seen it differently for other people, you know, but I just don't see a mass difference. I have to share this somewhere. So I'm going to do it here. So Vicki's been on the show before she talked about eating. What's the thing when you don't have any carbs?

Unknown Speaker 22:15
I can't believe that we're just Oh, like ketogenic ketogenic she was she Yeah.

Scott Benner 22:18
Vicki was on to talk about that. She and I were speaking this past weekend about something different. And she said something just hilarious. She's like, I'm not afraid of this fires. She goes, my immune system has already killed my pancreas and my thyroid. It could take this, it could take this Coronavirus. No problem. I was like, oh, but I think a lot of people with type one feel that way too a little bit. Right. Like, I mean, it's not everybody, but you talked to a lot of people are like, I don't get sick that often. You know, like my immune system is really great. I'm incredibly healthy with the exception of the fact that my pancreas doesn't work,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:54
right. I mean, honestly, I was until I had kids who started going that well, one child who started going to school, I rarely had even the common winter cold rarely. But, you know, so and even from that standpoint, I would say when you talk about you know, Arden's insulin needs don't really change so significantly, everybody is a little bit different. And I think the other thing to consider is the severity of the illness. And what At what point you are in illness, right, because I know myself with just a typical cold like the sniffles I might feel a little under the weather. But other than that, I'm going about my normal daily I'm not laying in bed like blowing my nose like minute after minute after minute. That typical cold, I maybe need a little bit more insulin like maybe five or 10% more it's not even as significantly noticeable and if I can remain at least moderately active, I actually don't even notice a difference in my insulin needs. Whereas if I have a really nasty cold my insulin needs will go up 40% from a basal level to start with and then if my post meals still aren't I'll adjust my ratios too.

Scott Benner 24:09
And there are there are illnesses that Arden needs more insulin for sure. It's those ones that are just sort of like she's got a little cough or her throat a little sore or has a little stuffy those don't seem to hit her but when she if she gets like, you know, knocked over by an illness when the body aches stuff happens and when the right rundown thing happens then and then you start getting like you said you start moving around as much you're more dehydrated, like there's a lot of stuff that goes into that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:39
well and I think you bring up a good he said hydrated right? It's we've talked about hydration piece just in general before but we talked about a respiratory illness specifically. I'm sure we've all seen the mucin x commercials right it's a little like blob of like mucus like you know haha I'm like in Getting your logs in your nose, and I'm not gonna let you sleep kind of thing. One of the biggest things to do is stay hydrated more. So if you're the person who's like, I drink eight cups of water a day, or I have five water bottles or jugs of water a day, you know what double that, because that fluid will help to move things faster through the system and keep that stickiness down. From the mucus standpoint. Listen, in

Scott Benner 25:27
plain words, if you have fixed not, and you hydrate yourself more thiess not will get thinner.

Unknown Speaker 25:32
That's right.

Scott Benner 25:35
It's just, you know, it's not something that's it's hard to, it's not hard to follow, it's hard to drink the water when you don't feel well. Right. That's the whole thing. It's difficult to maintain these good practices, when you feel like a truck ran you over and then backed up to see what it hit. You know that that really is the problem.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:54
There are some other things that are even not like, pharmaceutical, but things. I think that the Tea Company traditional medicinals makes a tea it's called throat coat. There's another one that they make, it's called breathe easy. All of them, they work very well. I've used them in, you know, a respiratory kind of bugs. So beyond going to your local pharmacy and grabbing everything off of the shelf, some of those things to kind of have stocked in your cupboard as a backup, um, peppermint and ginger can help to ease if you've got some stomach discomfort from like, post nasal drip and that kind of stuff. So there are a lot of things that we can do chicken broth, vegetable broth, all of those. I mean, there are there's actually really good research even just into chicken noodle soup when you've got a respiratory illness and the benefit of what that actually does for the immune system. Yeah.

Scott Benner 26:46
Well, you know, it's interesting as this is also new, and I think that it's going to continue to feel new even when we get deeper into it. Just the other day. You know, there's a wash of an article about you can't take ibuprofen if you have the coronavirus, it makes it worse. And I was like Now hold on a second. What just happened here? Like Did you know I started thinking about the podcast a little bit. I was like somebody stuck a pencil in their pocket and robbed the bank and was like, I know what this pencil just made me do. You know? And so and then it didn't take long for I think who to come out and say that ibuprofen is not a problem to take with the Coronavirus, right. It is really one of the problems with with social media, is it just anybody really could say whatever they want it and you know, if a person sees it, and they're scared, you know, they go back. So it's funny, we talked I you know, I talked about having you on for this to talk about management during a respiratory illness. But I mean, what really changes in management? Not a whole lot, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:47
Not a whole lot, honestly, I mean, you it's an illness. And unless you have another background illness, such as, you know, lung diseases or you know, there are some people with type one who actually have type one because of something called cystic fibrosis, right, which is already a lung disorder. So someone like that would have much more different management needs, even outside of the blood sugar component to it. So but when we're talking just about diabetes management with a respiratory illness, there shouldn't be much that you don't know in your normal Sick Day. packet of no checkoff, I got this. I got this. I got this.

Scott Benner 28:30
So when this all started happening, I thought, I'll put let me put some information out there'll be helpful people, and it was great to talk to Adam because he really did go over what the Coronavirus is and what it is and all that stuff. But as we were talking, and as I've been thinking over the last number of days, I think the most important thing you can do about the Coronavirus whether you have type one diabetes or not is be healthy, right like just be as healthy as you can be because a healthy body does a better job of fighting off viruses, colds and all kinds of things. Rock so much like well, you know, we're all locked up inside. Go back to Episode 210 and start the pro tips over again. It means like like get your blood sugar lower, stable, take out the variability. you'll move around a little bit even though it's probably gonna be in your living room for a while. We're here

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:24
by the way, we've got lots and lots of online videos now that are free workout options, even my gym my gym like stopped all of our memberships so that we would not like have to keep paying for something and not being able to go but they also sent out a connection link for 150 workouts online that are free for us to use, which I thought that was a really nice thing just from a gym standpoint to do for its members. Um, but their 10 minute workout their 30 minute workouts, there are a lot You've got some equipment at home, you could even use your peloton or whatever it is, you know. So

Scott Benner 30:05
I think it's it's stay moving, stay healthy don't fall into like really poor diet habits because you know, it's going to be easier. And I don't know how easy that's gonna be to maintain over time, I don't know how easy getting food is going to be weeks from now I'm sure it's gonna get a little dicey at some point. Maybe just because you're gonna be scared to go outside, I don't know. But I don't think if you're really paying attention to the day to day numbers, and not listening to political conversations around it, but actually seeing what, you know, the CDC is saying those kinds of things. We are, we are following the bend of that, that Italy was falling, like we're gonna get a really big spike. There are a lot more people here we are spread out further, we have population centers, not just one or two, like smaller countries, too. We have, you know, countless dozens of population centers. This is not ending anytime soon. You know, if I had to bet money, I'd bet my kids aren't going back to school this year. I bet that things are gonna change moving forward, even. Yeah, you might start seeing work from home days for school in the future. And, you know, I think the other thing that's gonna happen here is we're gonna learn a lot about things that we've been afraid to look at. So far, like telemedicine is such a god example, right? You guys, you guys have been, you know, who else is talking to people about their diabetes through, you know, through video interaction, except for you. And now suddenly, every doctor's office in the world is like, this is how you go to the doctor now. Right? Right. Okay, so I think you have type one. Are you doing anything differently? No,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:51
I really not. I mean, other than, I mean, in my diabetes management itself. No, I'm not. I mean, we have, you know, all of the Sick Day things in the cupboard that we could possibly need. I mean, we actually went about was like, two weeks ago, before any of these school cancellation and anything of that nature. I was in the aisle just picking up some band aids. And I was like, you know, let's just get some extra things. Just like I could see what was sort of like, coming down the line, right? So I got some extra, you know, like cough medicine and that kind of stuff, just to have got popsicles in the freezer. All that kind of stuff. But other than that, my normal management is it. I'm managing the same way. I'm trying to get exercise every day in my house, or going outside and taking a run with my dog or, you know, whatever. I know some communities even have some restrictions on that, but we don't right now. There are plenty of you. In fact, more people I think I've seen like, I have to get Brashear like, let me out of my house. Right. Fair.

Scott Benner 32:58
Two days ago, Colin, I went to an outdoor cage so he could hit Hmm. And afterwards, no lie. His personality was brighter. He had more energy. He was smiling. Like he just he's not a person who wants to be trapped and sitting around and you have to almost the same as you sometimes can get lulled into being like Oh, 150 is a good blood sugar. 180 is not bad. You know, 200 is not far from 150 you can start getting to the like, Well, you know, Doritos for lunch is fine. Today, three days a week with the Reno's isn't bad, you don't I mean, like I haven't moved around a month, but I've only gained six pounds like you can like

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:35
you can write, you can sort

Scott Benner 33:37
of just know that and slide into it and not know that it's happening to you. And then by the time that happens, you know, you're having that conversation with yourself like ooh, I've let things get out of hand. And then it's harder to get back from.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:50
I do think too, within that. from a management standpoint, we do have to consider some some things that if and when you can get to the grocery store, right? Because you're probably not going every other day or every three days Oh, I just need to pick up the milk today or I just need to do is you're like okay, everything on my list I can get it and I hopefully this will be stockpiled for like two weeks before I have to go back you know running in and out again. So from the standpoint of diabetes management and then making sure your list is full of all those things that you know keep you in line and it might even come down to making some more soups or making some more things that do last a little bit longer. I mean I know fresh fruits and vegetables and we certainly we have to go shopping either today or tomorrow someone in our house you know myself or my husband has to go because we're out of those we've got some frozen stuff but other than that our fresh is gone and I I like living on my frat

Scott Benner 34:50
Yeah, well listen, I am so the the I'm one of those people who usually goes grocery shopping like every few days. I'd much rather like bang in and Because that's how I like to keep the food fresh in the house, you know, I don't want to grab, you know, a ton of vegetables I grab enough to get me through a couple days. That's obviously a little upside down right now and might not be going as well. The other day, we ate leftovers, that I think in a regular situation, I would have been like, you know what, let's toss these out and start over again. But I was like, No, eat this. You know, like, What's another? What's another meal? Like? Let's get another meal. And prior to all of this? I guess not really prior to it. Maybe I just paid attention to it a little sooner. I ordered everything that Arden had a refill for I refilled. I'm starting to think I should have gotten to see but to just in case. She you know, I don't know. I don't know what, just in case three months from now, you know, other stuff starts happening me Meanwhile, pump companies Dexcom they all say like, we don't see this affecting our supply. But what if it? What if it's not them? What if it's delivery? Or, you know, what if it's, what if it's FedEx or, you know, whatever it ends up being. So I got all of our supplies, restocked. And I buy these juice boxes online that come in a big flat, and I was like, I'm gonna get to them, like garden could get low, like, I don't know, 150 times that I'd be okay. Yeah, right. Right, which I don't think she'll get low because you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:24
also have a goose box that works very well for her. Yeah, others don't. So you know, what works. And, you know, you kind of stockpile put it away, I know, my my glucose tablets that I really like to use have been out of stock online for quite a while. And so when I went to pick up my last insulin fill at the pharmacy, I grabbed two bottles of the only kind of that pharmacy brand glucose tablet that doesn't have artificial colors or anything in it. I grabbed two of them. And I actually, if I don't hide them, my kids will eat them. Like lip height these way away. So nobody else knows where Jenny's supply. I think,

Scott Benner 37:05
you know, I am not an alarmist person at all. But and I think this is going to be fine. Like I think this is gonna be a natural, it's gonna run a natural course. People are going to die. It's not going to be pleasant. I think we're all going to know somebody who died from the coronavirus next year. But at the same time, I did say to Kelly last night, I was like, let's start thinking more long term around Arden. Like that was the only thing I've said about diabetes so far. Like, I don't know what that means. Exactly. But let's always be thinking months in advance, not days in advance about Arden. And she's like, okay, and I'm like, I'm not worried. I'm just thinking we should change our focus a little bit. Right. You know, I did my best the week or so ago, I put up on my social media. I was like, Listen, if you have refills, filled, do it now.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:51
Yeah, absolutely. I know. That's actually one of the things that I also went through even my husband who pretty much leaves my diabetes management to me, I mean, unless I'm like, I need help with this or, you know, can you pinch my skin back here to put the Dexcom in or whatever, for the most part, it's all my management but even came to me is like, sure you're okay, on all of your supplies. You got enough insulin, you got enough of your pods. You got enough, you know everything and I was like yeah, I'm, I'm really good for you know, he's like, how many months? Like, hi, at least four months? I'm pretty good before I'd have like even maybe more than that, quite honestly. The biggest one is sensors, because I can't get more sensors other than what my insurance will cover. Yeah, I can't. The one the one thing to my pump right now is that I'm I'm kind of training on the control like you with hand up. So right now my pads are not being used a little extra,

extra.

Scott Benner 38:58
He's like, I gotta figure this other pump out for my job. So my my pumps are sitting in a pile I'm not gonna use.

Unknown Speaker 39:03
That's right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:04
My Riley link gets a little break. And

Scott Benner 39:06
it's funny. Yeah, yeah, little extra stuff here and there. You know, little stuff off to the side, if you can afford to grab it. It really does make you think about the people who can afford it who are paying cash, or just, you know, that horrible. It's got to be in the back of all of our heads somewhere, right that, you know, if I don't want to be like, I'm not a doom and gloom person. But I do think this and I thought this before Coronavirus society is a paper tiger. It really is just holding together because we all agree to let it hold together. Right? That, you know, I don't walk across the street with a bat, kick my neighbor's front door down and steal his television just because we've agreed basically not to do that. Right. Right. Right. And but you know, it's it's assumed that if you get sick you go to a doctor a doctor helps you even if you don't have insurance. Someone will help you right? Yeah. Now all of a sudden your doctors are like, Look, call us on the phone. Don't come here. You know, the grocery stores always got food right? Now, Wow, well again, but it doesn't right now. And it makes you think, like bigger picture, like would it make you realize is that 10 pretty smart people who were writers sat in a room one day and said, what would it be like if zombies came? And then they wrote what they thought would happen. And, you know, that's probably pretty close to what's gonna happen. You know, it's, it's just where human nature takes us in these situations. The toilet paper is a great example, right? People are afraid, what makes them feel better control. having enough toilet paper feels like control. It seems silly right now. But it's true, like, right, it gives you some feeling of control. I filled Arden's prescriptions and got more juice boxes, and I bought, you know, I got the G vote the kids, you know, like stuff like that, but, and that makes me feel like it's okay. And it is okay. Unless, you know, people just decide to be lunatics. And then I don't know what happens next, you know, and none of us do. And, and that's the real, that's scary for every living person. But more so for a person who has type one or has something else who is who is your ally is reliant on these things working on the on the traffic lights going on, when they say they're going to, you know that that stuff that we just take for granted. So the best thing you can do is be be prepared. And and do your best and not lose your mind. Right, you know, don't go Don't go barging through people's doors with the you know, the bat, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:45
Give me that. It's so funny.

Scott Benner 41:47
This must have been in the consciousness a month or so ago. Because Because Arden came up to me six weeks ago. And just out of the blue, she goes, Hey, the zombies come? What happens to me. And I was like, so

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:06
just a random teenager kind of idea.

Scott Benner 42:08
And she wasn't really talking about zombies. She was like, Hey, you know, this stuff gets upside down. You know, with the diabetes, what happens? It's like the first time she ever asked, and I said, I said, well, in truth. I said, If things really got sideways, I guess I would throw my morals away, go down to the corner and overpower as many people as I could and take as much insulin as I could for you. If we're if we're into the apocalypse situation, if that's what you're talking about. I said we'd lower your carb intake, which I don't think would be trouble because I don't think we'd have food. Eventually you I tried to keep the insulin cold. you'd run out of it eventually. And she goes, how long? I'm like, you'd be dead a couple weeks, a month later, probably. And she goes, Okay, that's what I thought. And I was like, I right on. And then we just sort of like, walk around the room. Yeah, it just she she wanted to know. I don't think she'd ever said it out loud. I think she knew, but she never said out loud. Like, what happens if these mechanisms go away? For me? I was like, that's pretty much it. It's like some of the Egyptians stayed alive a really long time. I was like, Oh, yeah, I mean, if you How long do you think you could eat kale before you just gave up?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:23
There are lots of ways to cook kale. I like

Unknown Speaker 43:27
that, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:28
the other. The other thing to possibly do is maybe you know, get your own pig farm started. And then directions about how to make your own insulin and your you know, pig farm out of the pigs that you're growing in your backyard. Or

Scott Benner 43:41
I'll tell you what, if that kids, if that kids hanging her hat on that on me figure that out, she's in trouble. I could maybe do a podcast about it, but I don't think anybody would care. Right? But anyway, like, I don't think of that as, like, I didn't think of that as a sad thing. She just wanted to understand her reality. She got to an age where she was like, hey, just real quick, like, you know, right? What, what is this about? And it's not something I was talking about. Maybe she was hearing something at school, or like, I don't know where it came from, honestly, but I wasn't gonna lie to her, you know, and I wasn't gonna just be like, that'll never happen. I mean,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:16
who knows? We don't know what the future is. in any circumstance. Even without this. We don't know what the future necessarily.

Scott Benner 44:23
And if it if it happens, you're not going to stop it. If it's happening. You know what I mean? Like, it's, you know, and I just I told her, I was like, Look, I said, She goes, do you think it'll happen? And I said, No. And she said, why I said, greed. She goes, what I'm like, we live in a capitalist society. Everybody wants things. The only way they get things is to go to work. They want to go to work, they want to make money, they want to have things. I was like, it's what keeps people chugging along. It's what keeps insulin being made. And insulin pumps being you know, people like they think there was a guy one day who was like, I could make a better insulin pump. I bet you I could do this without tubing and he made it and turn into a business. And it was like, that's what keeps society moving people's desire to do things have things be alive. You don't I mean, I was like everyone's desire to be alive is going to be why you're going to have insulin and pumps and needles and whatever else you need. And, and I said, so while I can, you know, I can think about your little scenario here that you've made up in your head. I don't believe that's gonna happen, you know? No. So we'll say even with this, it's gonna it's going to pass. There'll be a day in the future where you'll say to somebody, do you remember that Coronavirus thing? Wasn't that crazy?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:37
Right. Right, exactly. It's, you're right. You're right. But I you know, in terms of even like, your daughter's question, I think you also, you know, you kind of bring we've already talked about like the supply component. But the going back to like, the age old management strategy, like maybe your technology dies, and you can't get a replacement for it. Do you know what to do? To go back to an injection? Do you have pens? Do you have syringes? Do you have you know, your vials? Do you know how to use them? Do you know what your doses are? All of those things are, they should be in your marked down list of I would know how to do this. If this happened, or if this failed, I could go to this parameter. If this fail, I could go down to this like 1940s way of management.

Scott Benner 46:33
I thought about it last night, and we don't have slow acting insulin in the house. And I thought she'd get stuck a lot. But I could do it with just her pager. Like I know I could you know what I mean? Like it wouldn't be perfect. But it would be she'd be alive, he would be alive. Yeah, and in enough time to go get some slow insulin somewhere. Right. But I think I could do it, you know, it's just, you know, there's a certain I'm thinking, I would probably create layers with boluses, like rock, like like just, you know, put in a bolus. Think about where it peaks, probably right at the peak time, put in more and just keep those like dolphins like

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:15
flying through the muck have to do your own little like graphical chart, I don't sit here it should be done here. I dusted here, it should be done here. We kind of have to keep track that way, mentally, to not drive yourself like insane with a charged brain. But in

Scott Benner 47:31
my mind, if I know when it goes in, I know when it peaks and I know when it crashes, then I can put the next one in and create them

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:37
for next week at

Scott Benner 47:38
the crash and just keep the peaks covering the crashes. And that should make a reasonably level amount of insulin the whole time. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:46
and that that would work for somebody who has looked at and truly understands the total action time of their rapid insulin. This podcast for a while you're right, you do and I would say you know Scott definitely could do that. If you've not really ever figured that out. probably

Scott Benner 48:05
thinking a lot of people might kill themselves doing it. Yeah, oh, this is definitely one of those episodes where nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be conservative. But But I was really that's what I was thinking. Right? Like, would there be a way to bump insulin and over and over again, so that she didn't find herself without insulin? Or didn't find herself with too much? Right then? I don't know. I think I could figure it out. But, you know, again, it's because I, I can be like, I can be dispassionate about it. It's not me if I had diabetes, this is what the sound sounds like, Jenny, I don't know what I would do. If I didn't have so I can answer I probably just run around the house, I hit a wall and just passed out, you know, like, so it's, it's an interesting thing when it's for someone else,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:48
because you can step back and you can look at it for a second.

Scott Benner 48:51
Wow. And you don't have that Panic of like that your health is on the line.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:55
But overall, you should run to the pharmacy. And you should get well Jenny,

Scott Benner 48:58
I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna. I'm gonna send an email when we're done to Ardennes. And oh, and I'm going to ask for some slow acting insulin. There we go. And I guess maybe two, I don't have a backup. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And that's what we should all be doing. Right. It's just preparing.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:15
Just prepare.

Scott Benner 49:17
So did we learn today that at the moment with the information that we have, that a person with type one diabetes in the Coronavirus is going to get some level of sick and they're going to manage their type on the way they would if they got any other virus and

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:32
in a normal illness? Yes, exactly. And I would think, you know, unless you're really newly diagnosed, and you've been a fairly healthy person outside of the diabetes, and you've never really managed an illness with diabetes yet, then sure it will be very new for you, and it's going to be kind of scary, you know, but the biggest thing really is looking at the glucose levels looking where they're going and seeing Gosh, I'm you know, so 7500 points higher than I normally run. Clearly I need more insulin. So

Scott Benner 50:10
Jerry, what's your what's your level of commitment to the podcast? Are you willing to get the Coronavirus? So we can talk about what it's like to have it now.

Unknown Speaker 50:19
Can't get you to go look a couple of handrails or something like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 50:23
No, and I can go hang out at UW hospital. Sorry.

Scott Benner 50:28
Gosh, do you think health care workers who are in situations where they may be more susceptible? Do you think they should step back from their jobs? Like, what would you do if you are in a hospital right now working?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 50:43
So, you know, given my profession, I know that my position would have been not necessarily cut, but I would have probably been sent home because I would have been outpatient, I wouldn't have been necessary to be there. Right? If I were a nurse, or a doctor or any other profession that's absolutely needed. And you We need people I mean, what, what would happen with all the sick people, if all the doctors were like, all the nurses were like, nope, okay, I just gonna go hang out at home, I can't get sick. I can't do this, you know. I would have to say that I would, I would do my job. It's even if I had, you know, people at home as I do little kids, a husband, or if I had, you know, an elderly parent, or grandparent or something living, I guess I would just live at the hospital then. Yeah, I wouldn't come home with it.

Scott Benner 51:37
You know, yeah, we're in a situation now where everybody's got a row, the boat, whatever, where they have in their hand they need to use and it's very similar. You know, when you think about police officers, right, or emfs or firemen? What do they just gonna be like how your house gonna fire? I don't know if you have the Coronavirus or not. So we're just gonna have to burn your life. At some point, there are some a lot actually of professions that just you don't get to think about yourself first. Well, that's, you know, what ends up? Kind of,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:08
you're doing social good. By continuing to do what you professionally chose to do. It is. I mean,

Scott Benner 52:17
well, when I was speaking to Adam, the one thing I said that was interesting that I've kind of noticed from afar is that we have set up a society that, for the most part for most people, goes the way you want it to go. Do you know what I mean? Like there's not a lot of, like, I remember my parents, you know, talking about getting a car, and it taken them seven years to get money for a car. Do you mean like, we're gonna get a new car one day, they never got a new car, they would always get a newer car, right? But no one ever woke up and was like, I will just take out a loan, and then I will buy this car. And then I don't need the money today, I'll give it to them. Like, like, we've set up a situation where if you have any kind of income and need something, you probably can get it. And that goes for entertainment, as well. Right? Our entertainment are amazing now. Like, we're all at the point now where we're like Disney plus nothing on here. I want to watch it. Like we're a little spoiled. Right? Right. This is the first time in my generation, and definitely my children's where someone said that you're being limited and there's no alternative. Right? You just have to do this. Right? It's very interesting. And people are so far, I think doing a really good job with it. Yeah, I don't see people freaking out or anything like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:34
I think it's hard. Even from a from the from the child standpoint, though, you know, our kids have gotten so used to social interaction. Right? I mean, very minimal numbers of kids are homeschool. These days. I've got a couple of clients who have I work with Who are they do homeschool their children. And I've actually email I'm like, I bet you're glad that you've been doing the homeschooling you'll know exactly how to do this. I however, do not. So we've been after school or after I'm done with work in the afternoons. Now we've actually just been getting in the car, and going and taking a drive around the city. Just to like physically, like,

Unknown Speaker 54:16
get out, change,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:18
and change the visual and change and see that, you know, the world is still there. Everything is still in place. It's just that we've got limited interaction.

Scott Benner 54:28
It really is we're all just trying to stay away from each other so that we don't overwhelm the healthcare system. Right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:34
And for explaining to kids it's also something for explaining to I mean, you know, with a seven and a three year old, they don't really quite understand, you know, why can't we go to the coffee shop and get a flowerless cookie? Why can't we you know, well, they're closed so we drive past the coffee shop. You have to kind of visually explain to many younger kids and well it's closed you know, we can't go and see all the chairs are up. But why Mommy, can't we get a morning muffin. Let's go home and let's make morning muffins. So now we have morning muffins sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Yesterday,

Scott Benner 55:06
I had that conversation with my 20 year old son. I was like, Listen, you can't play basketball. And here's why. Because Do you want to wonder for the rest of your life if your buddy's grandmother dropped dead because you had to go play basketball, you know, like, just go outside, you have a net play by yourself. And that's what this is gonna be for a little while. It's tough because you because it isn't. It isn't hard to look at what you're missing. Like, I watched kids on my son's baseball team and every baseball team who were seniors, who were eight, eight games into their season, be told That's it, you're never gonna play college baseball again, say goodbye to everybody and get back on the plane to go home. Wow, it was hard. It was really interesting. All these kids weren't going to graduate from high school at a ceremony maybe or from their college. You know, that's all total. But like I said, I think at one day, it will just be it'll just be a story to tell people. You know, like, remember the time I'll tell you this. And I mean, this, I said this to Kelly last night, I was like we are parenting through. Our parents never had anything like this, that I can remember that they had to be parents. And my wife's like, my parents just sent us outside anyway, we'd be dead. They'd be like, go outside and play, you know. So I really feel a feel like we're gonna be professional parents when this is over, like really good at it. Because this is just another level Jenny.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 56:22
It's really funny. I said that to Nathan, the other day, I said, this is really kind of a it's a social experiment in teaching people who've been so used to and nothing against it. This is the way that society work. Because moms and dads all have jobs now and you send your child to daycare or you send your child to school. It's teaching parents what it actually means to like spend majority of your time interacting with your child. I wonder if somebody else isn't raising your child? Yeah, somebody is else isn't teaching them. It's on you now. 100%? That's,

Unknown Speaker 57:00
that's hard. Yeah.

Scott Benner 57:01
Yeah, I listen, I've raised two kids, as a stay at home parent, right? That means you get up in the morning, and you're with them 24 hours a day. And it gets long after a while. And you really have to have the fortitude to just push through and find the good and what you're doing and not make it feel like oh my god, this is my whole life like that, that whole thing. But I'm wondering how many people will maybe I wonder how many people will try to go back to a single, like income, like how many people are gonna like this and think, Oh, this is nice, you know, right. I never thought it was possible.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 57:33
I didn't know my kid could do this. Or I didn't know I liked doing this type of thing with my child. Or look how good my child is that like reading and we can read together and we can learn all these things. I mean, I think of all the like, books that hopefully people are reading and the games that they're getting out of the closet that have cobwebs on them and like, Yeah, because especially with kids, you know, specifically, as you know, you have to entertain them up to a certain age, you kind of have to do the entertainment. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 58:06
I've got my pile of books right here. I'm hoping. Yeah, really only five fingers crossed. So okay, so stay healthy. Keep your blood sugar stable. I think the other thing we didn't say that I think is really important is get sleep. And as

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:19
bunk water.

Scott Benner 58:20
Yeah. And try not to make yourself nuts. Like stress, people don't sleep well. People don't sleep, well don't fight off colds. Well, like the really the things you can really do is, you know, take care of your health, get some sleep, keep your stress down. And you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:36
and some of that keeping your stress down ultimately is just keeping as much normal in your day as possible. Yeah, you know, you get up every day at seven o'clock, keep getting up at seven o'clock. If you always have tea at nine o'clock. Keep having your tea at nine o'clock. You know, it's just keeping some of those normal scheduled things, helps to keep the stress level down to I think, too, if you're working from home, I know everyone's interested, but don't leave like cable news on 24 hours a day in the background, because they're repeating the same thing over and over again. And it's getting into your brain. So right.

Scott Benner 59:07
Yeah, right, Jenny, I appreciate you doing this. And I hope you guys all stay healthy there. And I hope you do too. Thank you. I hope hopefully this will help some other people do the same. So I'm going to read to you from the CDC website for a second. Older adults and people who have severe underlying chronic medical conditions like heart or lung disease or diabetes seem to be at a higher risk for developing more serious complications from covid 19 illness, please consult with your health care provider about additional steps you may be able to take to protect yourself. The site goes on to remind us to stay home if you're sick. But I think at this point travel bans are starting to go into place as I'm recording this on March 20. So you know that may be that may just be a given at this point. Cover your coughs and your sneezes cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough sneeze or use the inside of your elbow. Throw used tissues into the trash. Immediately wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not readily available, clean your hands with sanitizer that contains at least a 60% alcohol. If you're sick, you should wear a face mask when you're around other people, even if you're sharing a room or a vehicle with them or before entering a health care providers office. If you are not able to wear a facemask or a sample because it causes trouble with breathing, then you should do your best to cover your coughs and sneezes and people who are caring for you should wear a face mask when they enter the room with you. If you're not sick, you do not need to wear a face mask unless you are caring for someone who is sick and they are not able to wear a face mask. face masks may be in short supply and should be safe for caregivers around the home clean and disinfect. This includes tables doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, desks, phones, keyboards, toilets, faucets and sinks. If surfaces are dirty, clean them use detergent or soap and water prior to disinfecting. The CDC goes on to tell you about disinfecting most common EPA registered household disinfectants will work. Use disinfectants appropriate for the surface. options can include diluting your household bleach. To make a bleach solution. Mix five tablespoons or a third of a cup of bleach per gallon of water, four teaspoons of bleach to a quart of water. Don't forget the manufacturer's instructions about proper ventilation when you're using bleach. And if you're going to use an alcohol solution to kill bacteria or the virus, ensure that it has at least a 70% alcohol content. This is all available@cdc.gov there's guidance from the CDC around the 15 days to slow the spread. Listen to and follow all directions for your state and local authorities. If you feel sick, stay home Do not go to work, contact your medical provider. If your children are sick, keep them at home Do not send them to school well. Think that cats out of the bag to around most of the country contact your medical provider if someone in your household has tested positive for the coronavirus. Keep the entire household at home Do not go to work, do not go to school, contact your medical provider if you're an older person stay home and away from other people. And if you are a person with a serious underlying health condition that can put you at an increased risk, for example, a condition that impairs your lung or heart function or weakens your immune system stay home and away from other people. Okay, so here are my plans for the podcast. Next week. There'll be two episodes that are just stories from people with type one diabetes stuff that's more entertaining. We're going to do some after dark stuff, you know stuff to keep your mind off things keep you entertained. I will come back with Coronavirus information whenever it's necessary. Dr. Needleman we'll come back on Jenny and I'll talk again. But the podcast is going to be here for you. I'm trying to figure out how to do a live chat for us all. So if people just need to feel a little less alone, they can get together and talk. that'll probably happen through the Facebook page. So keep an eye there. Perhaps even Instagram and I'm looking for a way to bring everybody in. Maybe in a third party platform. I'm doing my best on that. The Juicebox Podcast will run as scheduled. It's not going to go away. And I appreciate that you guys are such supportive listeners. I hope this information has been valuable for you. Please just use your common sense. Stay well stay away from people. Don't touch things. Wash your hands. be cognizant of your surroundings. Do your best to stay safe. Do your best to stay healthy. If you feel sick in any way, please contact your physician immediately. I'm going to read you one last thing the symptoms of coronavirus. People may be sick with the virus for one to 14 days before developing symptoms. The most common symptoms of coronavirus disease, the COVID-19 virus are fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Most people about 80% recover from the disease without needing special treatment. More rarely, the disease can be serious and even fatal. Older people and people with other medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease may be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill. People may experience cough, fever, tiredness, difficulty breathing in severe cases. Now having that in your head. Don't forget what Jenny and I talked about today. If you're a healthy person, if your blood sugars are well maintained, you don't fall into that category just because you have type one diabetes. Be healthy, keep your routine going. Keep your mind fresh, get some fresh air. Try not to go crazy in your house a little bit. You're going to be okay. The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omnipod Dexcom touched by type one and the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. You can go to Contour Next one.com touched by type one.org My Omni pod.com forward slash juice box or dexcom.com forward slash juice box to learn more about the sponsors. There are links in your show notes at Juicebox podcast.com. If you can't remember those links, now might be the perfect time to check into some new gear, the stuff you've been thinking about getting, I mean, you got a lot of time to read up, right? I genuinely meant what I said to Jenny earlier, I'm not just trying to get you to listen to the podcast more. If you want to work on your variability if you want to work on keeping your blood sugar's more stable. Go back to Episode 210 of the podcast and listen to the diabetes pro tips again, you can figure it out if you're struggling. And if you knew what you were doing in the past, but you've sort of burned out a little bit. This podcast episodes can help bring you back around again. I want to wish you all a ton of success. I'm gonna see you soon. You guys are going to be okay. I'm gonna be okay. We're all going to be okay.


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#311 Diabetes Pro Tip: Long-Term Health

Scott Benner

Scott and Jenny Smith, CDE share insights on type 1 diabetes care

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 311 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is a pro tip. So you know what that means. It's not just me today and a guest, it's me and Jenny Smith. Today Jenny and I are going to talk about long term health as it relates to type one diabetes. This one's a little less pro tip and a little more conversational. The information rises to the level of pro tip. But the style of conversation is more like Jenny and I got together as friends and I said, Hey, tell me your thoughts about this. And then we chatted about it a little more laid back a little more conversational. But the information is definitely something you want to have in your tool belt. And that's why this episode is part of the diabetes pro tip series that begins back on episode 210. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored proudly by dexcom, makers of the G six continuous glucose monitor. And of course, on the pod, the tubeless insulin pump that my daughter has been using for 1112 years, a long time. It's been an honor every day for that time, must be good. I'll never forget the day I was sitting in a hotel lobby when a person asked me what's next for your podcast? What are you going to do to innovate and keep it moving. And I said, I'm gonna do a pro tip series, I think I have all these ideas, and how to bring them all together and really talk through them with somebody equally knowledgeable, but who will come from a different perspective. And I had that person in mind already. That person was Jennifer Smith. Because Jenny holds a bachelor's degree in human nutrition and biology from the University of Wisconsin. She's a registered and licensed dietitian, a certified diabetes educator, a certified trainer on most makes and models of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. Plus, she's had Type One Diabetes for over three decades. And bonus, I like Jenny. I like the way she talks about type one. It just, there's a goodness about her. She seemed like the right person. And she certainly has been. It's been over a year since the first pro tip episode came out at Episode 210. And today is the 17th. In the series, I believe you got to go check them out. They're all listed as diabetes pro tip is a colon and then the titles afterwards. One last thing you know what it is? Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical, or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:47
What are we doing today?

Scott Benner 2:48
We are going to do a pro tip episode that you suggested and prevention of long term complications you said and you said What does optimizing glucose long term do for keeping things healthy? So I feel like what you meant by that is below less variability not low but in you know, lower than what a lot of people go for less variability, lower standard deviation, how is that going to help you throughout a lifetime? And so I feel like between that, and some other safety ideas that I'd like to bring into the conversation. I think we're gonna have a good a good talk here. So I guess first, why don't we talk about a little bit through time, right? Where does everybody and by everybody, I mean, doctors, where do they get the information that they put on their patients? You know, I'd like to see you have an A one C of x. Does that come from the American Diabetes Association? Do they set the tone who sets the tone for what we should be shooting for? Because somebody does it?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:51
As far as targets? You mean? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, well, targets calm. It's funny. I just had a conversation with somebody who listened to the podcast, and I had a first visit with her just before this. And she asked the same exact thing. She's like, I'm getting all of these different targets from different people. And she's like, I don't even know what to believe anymore for a target. She's like, I know where I feel good. I know where I kind of want to be, but what am i aiming for? And I said, Well, there are a couple so the American Diabetes Association aims for your post meal target under 180. Okay, it comes from the American Diabetes Association, through research and gathering of all of this information and, you know, whatnot and looking at complications down the road. cumulatively. They aim for what less than 180. Now, the American Association of clinical endocrinologists recommends less than one six.

Scott Benner 4:48
So less than 160

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:50
less than 160. Okay, so there are two high in the ranks of diabetes management. Yep. That are different. Already, right. And then we bring into the mix. Well, what are recommendations even further than that, like pregnancy? pregnancy recommendations, you know, are for the most part under 120, fasting under 100.

And post meal no higher than 140.

Scott Benner 5:20
So M is what I'm hearing good good for the shift. Oh, fusion.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:24
Yeah, confusion entirely. And then I had a woman in a couple of years ago postpartum, I had her visit with her. And she's like, so I was aiming for all of these targets in pregnancy to keep my baby growing healthy, and myself. And she's like, and then my doctor tells me to loosen up my target in my palm, and tells me I don't have to be so you know, quote, unquote, tightly managed, and she's like, sick, I want to ask your opinion, Jenny's? Like, why wouldn't I want to stay this tightly controlled if it was good for me and pregnancy? And these are targets that people without diabetes? maintain? Because their body does what it's supposed to do? Like, why wouldn't I want to maintain this? Whether I'm pregnant or

Scott Benner 6:03
not? Yeah, yeah. So here's right here. Exactly. And here's what it's making me feel like, so much like, with everything about diabetes, when you try to give someone like this just, I don't know, this is how things are right? Like it 181 6120 whatever anybody ends up saying, that's not personal. And and personal, between should be consideration should be you, your intent, your involvement, your intellect, your understanding, then it should be, am I injecting? Am I using a long acting insulin that's been I was made 20 years ago, or my using one of them that's, you know, been made more recently that people find more stable a lot of the times, am I using a pump? Do I have a glucose monitor? Is that you know, is it a Libra? Or is it a dexcom? Is that the G six? Or is it the G four like, it would seem to me that all of those variables would would make it more or less likely for me to be able to maintain targets that are lower or higher? Right? And so then you get the doctor, like what you just said about the pregnant person? I feel like that doctor was like, Look, you must have had to have killed yourself to keep your blood sugar that low. Right? Like, obviously, it ate up nine, you know, nine months of your life, you did nothing but keep your blood sugar in check, have to pay and watch television, that must have been your whole line months, right? Like, like, you're talking to a guy in 1920. It's like, you know, you didn't even have time to make me my pot roast. Like, like, like that, like Reagan old time idea, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:41
And now you come into the office and You look like you've got baby spitting your ear, you look like you haven't slept or combed your hair. So let's loot some things. Sure. Right.

Scott Benner 7:50
Right. I think that what would make your day easier is if you were less healthy. But it's not it becomes about and I get that right? Like, I think that out away from the ideas that we talked about on the podcast. Maybe that's real. Do you know what I mean? But when you start telling people, we, when I started asking people, you've been at this for a while now six months, eight months? Is it that hard? They say no. Like most of the people, I don't want to say most of them everyone I've ever spoken to who's picked up the ideas of the podcast, put them in practice, and gotten to the point where it's just second nature. They don't think about diabetes, very much these these targets are meaningless because you get to a spot you stay at that spot. If you leave that spot, you know how to get back to that spot? Right? That seems like it to me, honestly.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:40
Right. And from the standpoint of, you know, prevention, I mean, that's the that's one of the biggest things that brought out beyond Well, here's your insulin, here's how to inject it. And oh, by the way, insulin can cause your blood sugar to go too low. complications are always within the first like, new onset diagnosis, discussion. Always something about complication, right. Always, like you have to control things. I love that word control because like, like a moving target and control.

Scott Benner 9:11
Not only that, by the way, it gives you the impression that you're going to be out of control and it's your job to control the chaos.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:17
Correct. Right. Exactly. It's like your job to hurt all of the million cats in your yard with no fences. Yeah, right.

Scott Benner 9:23
What if I just didn't let the cats in? How would that be?

Unknown Speaker 9:26
How would that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:28
play? Yes, exactly. So you know, the prevention of complications that I mean, there's no, there's no set solution, really, on how to 100% prevent complications. In research. We've seen people with many years of diabetes, some of them poorly, you know, managed, some of them tightly managed, and complications can start for people at different points of time. And that makes it seem like well, gosh, I'm just gonna throw my hands up in the air if I can't 100% prevent anything. But what we do along the way makes you feel good. on a day to day basis with tighter containment of things overall, yes, we are likely 99% likely avoiding the complications down the road, right at 1% that something could happen. Sure, it could be there. But I don't think there are many things in this world that are 100%.

Scott Benner 10:29
Right? perfection. And so to your point, it's, it's presented incorrectly to people. It is like right away, like, you know, it's not your goal not to die. Right. It's your goal to live really well. until you die. Right. Right. And and if you can extend those years, wonderful. But you know, it's just and you just said to about how people feel? I've been talking about that a lot lately. I don't know why people don't think about that. Like just how they feel every day. Like, you know, are they tired? Are they sluggish? All the stuff that we've spoken about over and over again? Why is that not important to them? And I don't think it's not, I think they find it to be something they can't impact, which isn't true. It just isn't like there are times there are times genuine, I'm afraid people will realize that when I keep saying over and over again, it's about timing and amount and common sense. They're gonna go, Hmm, I don't think I need to listen to that podcast. That guy might be right about that. Like, why don't I just tie my insulin better? And when I see something happening, go, Hmm, that makes sense. I should do this now. Yeah. Right. Because, I mean, honestly, there's no pot, if you guys all figure it out, the podcast is over. Basically, I, you know, obviously there'll always be newly diagnosed people who are going to get this terrible information and start down the wrong path. I just I want I want people to think more about how they feel. And I spoke about this in my talk this weekend. And I've said it here before, too, but you have to, you have to believe that if your blood sugar is constantly high, you're altered. You just are like there is a person

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:09
without short term and long term.

Scott Benner 12:11
Yeah, there's a person you would be intellectually articulately that you don't get to be when your blood sugar's high, or crazy low or bouncing around, right? Because your brains always just, it's, it's, it's just, it's not where it needs to be.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:27
I don't know. And within that, even within that day to day feeling, are those behind the scenes. Unfortunate what's happening in the body that you aren't feeling? Like, we know how high blood sugars make us feel. And if you're paying attention, you know, the containment of them, you get out of that you can think better, you can act better you can do the things you enjoy doing. But behind the scenes, internally, what's happening with better management is you're not causing damage to cells. You know, I mean, especially heart disease, I mean, heart disease is a huge component that we have to take into consideration. But it's not like it has to be there in your brain every single day. If you are managing the blood sugars, you're also managing a healthy heart. You're also managing healthy kidneys, healthy nerve cells, healthy eyes, you're managing those internal pieces that until they are damaged enough and give you indication that there's a problem. you're managing that along the way so that you don't get to the end of the road and have heart disease or kidney problems or whatnot, right? Yes.

Scott Benner 13:37
Oh, and where do you stand? Have you ever heard me explain how I think of it with the sandblasting? Have I ever said that? Because here's the place to say if I've ever said it to you, okay, so the way I think about high blood pressure, high blood sugars, and back when my kid was little, and I was looking for motivation, like seriously, like, what, what's gonna get me up at two o'clock in the morning to correct a 150 blood sugar. But when my doctor is telling me That's okay, like, what's the motivation. And whether I'm right or wrong, technically, in my mind, it feels like this. My body is built to withstand a certain amount of certain content of sugar, glucose in my bloodstream. And when there's more there, on a cellular level, glucose is still sharp, right? It's like, it's like if you take a sugar and you spill it on the table, you look at it, its course and you know, it's sharp, and even on a molecular level, like smaller, smaller, it's still sharp. So when you pack too much of it into your veins and your arteries that run through your heart and your eyes and your legs and your fingertips and everything else that's sharp. This is scratching at the inside of that soft tissue and those veins and those arteries, and one day, it'll wear through a little hole. And if it were through a hole in your heart, you have a heart attack. If it wears through a hole in your eye, you have vision trouble if it starts wearing through in your feet, you might not be able to feel your feet and honestly And again, so all of the diabetes complications that are on a list somewhere in your doctor's office to scare the hell out of you. What it really means is, if your blood sugar is too high, you know, what inside of your body, is it going to rub through first and create a breach? And you know, and will that breach, you know, and that breach will hurt. You might, you know, we talked recently about my friend Mike who passed away, he was on dialysis. So the first thing that it rubbed through worse his kidneys. And then as he was on dialysis, the second thing it rubbed through was his heart. And then he had a heart attack and he died. And that's it. And he'll he'll his death certificate says he died from complications of type one diabetes, though. That's it,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:43
right? And that's a great, it's a very layman's way to understand it. Because I think that the textbook explanation is, it's too clinical, it's to medical. And I think that's why, for the most part, people are aware of complications. But when you explain it, such as that damage piece, and I used to explain it in the class, the type two classes that I used to teach is that my sugars, cause damage to the inside of your vessels cause damage to the outsides of the nerves and everything and almost like eat it away. So like a sandblast. Yes, it's like cutting and cutting and cutting and calling causing small abrasions, right, scratches, scrapes, that the body actually tries in your body is a it's a, it's a self healing.

Like organism, right, which

Scott Benner 16:36
is why it doesn't happen to you right away it wrapped fixing little making little patches, it's like your road crew in town filling potholes, when you think you just repave the whole road, they're like, nope, best we can do is pop in a little patch in this hole.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:49
And it's more inflammation, I mean, long term, those little holes are really from inflammation in the lining, and along with cells and whatnot. And over time, I mean, if that inflammation causes a tear, the body tries to patch the tear. Well, if more and more tears happen, and more and more patches get placed into the vessels, you know, and I know visually, this isn't a podcast, people can see. But as you can see, my hands get closer and closer together to indicate the constriction and the narrowing of vessels. So then we have heart disease and potential for stroke and problems with blood flow, getting to the kidneys to do what they're supposed to do, and circulation to your fingers and your toes and never anything see. And Jenny, the way I think of it is I was just there one day in my house trying to talk myself into not giving up before I understood what was going on, right? So what do I need to do to not give up and this is how I put it, it's really no different than a football coach who just has a player has three brain cells in his head, and he goes, look, see this line right here. Don't let that ball go past that line. And that really is how I dumped it down for myself. I was like, I can't let that ball go past that line. Like I have to try to figure out how to stop that.

Scott Benner 18:05
And I think everything that everyone's listened to since then, is born from that idea. Like, how do I stop this from happening? Right. And I've had that moment where I realized I may not be stopping it from happening to like, maybe my kid genetically is just the one who can't withstand having type one diabetes. I don't know, you know what I mean, but she certainly has a better chance, the way the way she lives right now than she would if I just listened to, you know, just keep her under 200. You know, don't let her spike over 180 or 160, or whatever, after a meal if you right, you know if you can. To me that was just that just made sense. In the moment when I was scared and alone, and it didn't know what I was doing. I just thought like, I need a I need a I need a goal. You know, right? Why? blood sugar? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. No, good blood sugar is gonna say blood sugar is a big piece of it. But you know, the other components to those complications, too, are the other factors that also contribute to blood sugar management, right? So the kind of nutrition you take in that interior sedentary versus more active lifestyle, all of those are also huge benefit for long term health, outside of just rolling or managing your blood sugar. And all of those things become exponentially more important. When you have type one diabetes, they're important to a person who doesn't have it. It becomes even more important when you do like sometimes you just feel like, you know, like how many, how many gunfighters are gonna be on the other side before I just I don't have time to get to the mall, you know, you'd be like, I'm gonna get overwhelmed because there's just so much over there. So you have to give yourself a chance. You know, and aside from the idea that exercise helps you keep lower blood sugars like that aside, exercise does all the other things that exercise you know, it's funny, it's worth mention Hear that I realized the other day that some people refer to me behind my back is like, somebody who pushes carbs on people. And I thought, That's odd. I've never considered that before. Excuse me, but I guess more low carb people kind of can feel that way a little bit. But I listened to it. And I thought it through and I don't feel like I do that. I feel like this podcast teaches, talks about preaches maybe how to use your insulin, like how insulin works. And I say all the time, once you know how your insulin works, I don't care what you you know, you do whatever you want. But I think you need to know whether you're low carb, or whether you're a person who's like, wow, I think I could eat that whole box of hohos. Like, like whether whoever you are in that scenario, you know, one side or the other. If you understand how to use the insulin, you can accomplish it. I'm not saying because I know how to bolster Chinese food. You should do it every day,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:54
every day. Every day. I know how to Bolus the chocolate chip muffin and the chocolate milk and the Hershey syrup on top doesn't mean it should comprise every meal. Because is that better than an apple with peanut butter? Right? And nutrition wise? Probably not. But

Scott Benner 21:11
is there a danger I found myself wondering of people focusing on themselves so much as diabetes that they forget to think of themselves as person. Like, you know what I mean, like Does, does a piece of this a big cupcake not seem unhealthy anymore, because you know how to stop a spike from happening when you eat it. And that's important to remember that it's still it's still a cupcake. It's still something that's, you know, a once in a while thing, not an everyday thing, because I can Bolus for it. And I think that's so I think Jenny's point is important too, is that there's just a lot more that impacts your health than just your blood sugar. And we sometimes we talk too much, not too much. But we're so focused on trying to understand it because there's so many components that people don't understand that you stop thinking about like, Hey, you know, what else is easy to Bolus for broccoli.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:05
It's learning to manage the insulin around what you eat, you decide what you're going to eat, and you figure out how to manage it, like not encouraging people to eat a high carb diet.

Scott Benner 22:17
Not at all. I don't see it that way at all. I see it as understanding insulin. It's it's just how it is I I was speaking somewhere recently, and I looked down and saw a person in the crowd who this has happened to me about three times since I've been doing public speaking around diabetes. But I've looked down to see what I would call like an old school person in the diabetes community. And when I'm talking I can see on their face, they're just there somewhere between angry and horrified that I that I would even deign to talk about insulin, and how to use it. You know, like, you can't tell people. When I'm on when I'm up on stage, I tell people, no different than, you know what I say here, right? I'm like Basil's first beat, we have to have your bazel, right, because we can't just start Pre-Bolus saying and doing other stuff. Because if your Basal is wrong, it could end up being dangerous. So first, we get your Basal right. Now after that, step two, you have to Pre-Bolus your meals. And that's usually when I look down and see like somewhere like a 60 year old mom whose kids had diabetes for 30 years. Like, you know, like their arms are moving around and like, Oh, you can't say that to people, you're gonna kill them. You know what I'm like. And so I'm like, you're thinking about this in a different way. Before that, you're not considering the technology, you're not considering that these are not the same last lambs that you talked to 30 years ago, right? Like these people are here to find this out. They want to know this.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:52
And long ago to bring in long ago, timing was an insulin issue. Long ago, I've had diabetes 31 and a half years, okay, I started on our insulin, and the cloudy, but most people started on something called nphr. And I was on L, which was Lily's brand. Okay. Um, I did no carb counting. I use the exchange diet. I took exactly this amount of searches and fruit portion and vegetable and protein and fat at every meal and my mom or dad gave me my insulin mixed in a syringe at breakfast and at dinnertime and I eat it strategic times in exactly the same amount of food there was no other than measuring the food for the right portion. There was no carb counting, there was no insulin based on carb. It was you take your insulin and from the dosing standpoint, my insulin regular insulin you know, it's slow. I mean, we call it short acting balls forever. I mean, it may man would dose me 45 minutes an hour before I even started to eat in order to curb that post meal,

Scott Benner 25:06
right? Yeah. And so everything you just said, is about using the right amount at the right time. Yeah, it's timing. It's all timing. Like I, again, I that I figured it out. I mean, we should all be able to figure it. Really I know myself, trust me, it's there's not a lot like I'm not, you know, I'm not over here. Figuring out the Pythagorean theory after or a theorem, whatever it's called. I see. I don't know, after I get off the podcast. Yeah, I just don't think i think there's so much fear in now that we forget later. And, you know, what we're talking about right now is long term health. And so let me jump to I can't quote it, I don't have it in front of me. I don't know where it came from. But I think everyone's fairly aware of this article that came out in the last six months that tried to say that lower a one C's aren't necessarily an indicator of health. And that, did you see that one they started talking about, like, you can have an A one see it like this here? It'll be fine. It tried to give the impression to me, that the way I saw it was someone trying to say, Look, I know a lot of you are using this technology to do better, but you really shouldn't do that. Like it's not necessary. And I thought, Well, how do you know? You don't mean like, like, I thought the same thing? I thought when I saw vaping The first time I was like, I have no interest in that. But if I did, I wouldn't do it. Because I don't want to be the one to find out 10 years from now what happens? Because no one knows, you know, right? So is there any in your mind, if you're safely at, if you're in the fives, and you're a one, say and look, you know what I'm going to do here, I'm going to actually pull up an email. To make my point, hold on one second, it's going to take me a second to find it. I apologize for that. But I got this email this morning from a person I know who listens a lot. And when she emailed I thought, wow, this is gonna work right into what Jenny and I are talking about. It's crazy. And it's from Laura. And this note from Laura mimics many, many, many, many notes that I get. Scott, I achieved a 5.4 a one C, first time I've ever been under 6.4. But my doctor freaked out at the number of lows. And she's asking, what's an acceptable amount of time under 70? Like, how many times can I dip under 70? And you know, and so I there's First of all, it's it's a two step thing, right? Everybody who goes to any kind of a doctor who's more like the lady in the crowd, who's thrown her arms around yelling, don't talk about it like this. When they get their blood sugar down, and they find a way to keep it stable, and it starts impacting their variability and it starts impacting their agency, the doctors flip out, they make this assumption that they have all these crazy lows and it's throwing them off. So I know what I'm okay with. But what Where do you stand in your personal life? I guess like how often do you find yourself under 70 DFA.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:19
So personal versus professional, I kinda, I really aim for the same thing, quite honestly, overall, and this is where I think that that data is very helpful from a CGM standpoint. Because especially and I speak for clarity. The other reports are the other CGM do give you something similar as far as data. But from a clarity standpoint, clarity always gives you that overview gives you your glucose management indicator, their quote unquote a one see right from CGM, not from your blood glucose, right? It gives you your average glucose, it gives you your standard deviation, and also gives you this little like chart that shows you time in range, right? And it is based on what you have your time in range numbers set for 70 to 180 60 to 140 90 to 200. So you have to adjust those parameters, but clarity has it set 70 to 180, for the most part, right? We aim for the lows specific to be less than 5% of the time. So from all of the gathered data, whether it's two months or two weeks, or one week or whatever you're looking at that percentage of time, we're aiming for less than 5% to the low and low being less than 70

Scott Benner 29:43
less than 70.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:44
That's that's the goal is to be low less than 70 or less than 70 less than 5% of the time. So from the standpoint of overall a one see though, you know if if a clinician is coming in saying hey, you know why? That's way too low. And they're looking at data, which proves that, well, gosh, you're hanging out in the 50s. consistently. And that's why you're achieving a five point for sure. And if you're low, let's say 12% of the time, okay, there's some work to do to bring that back up into range. So that that 5.4 is actually better for lack of a better word. better, right? It's, it's more real 5.4 in a target range, that's healthy, safe. And good for you overall. Yeah, you're

Scott Benner 30:33
reaching that number with quality decisions, not with not with, you know, being low. Correct. And that's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:40
coming out and saying 5.4% is it Oh, my goodness, that them that's way too low and not even looking at what other stuff 5.4 the person could have very low standard deviation, maybe their variability is 20. And they're ranging somewhere between 70 and like, 120 pretty consistent or 70 and 100. Great, fabulous. You're, you're knocking it out, have at it, and you what you're doing.

Scott Benner 31:09
So when I gave the explanation of a Pre-Bolus this week, this weekend, I used something that had happened an hour before because my wife was at home with Arden and I said actually my wife did a great job this morning with breakfast. About an hour ago Arden's blood sugar was 70 and it was time for lunch. Now Arden's at school, and I think 70 is a great blood sugar right before a meal. Arden's blood sugar was able to stay at that level for a number of reasons. But those reasons are evident to us as they play out, because we can see her blood sugar in real time with the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. Not only can ardency her blood sugar right there on her iPhone, but I can see it here at home on my phone as well. Because of that knowledge and seeing the stability that had existed within Arden's blood sugar for the hours prior to lunch, we were able to make a good Pre-Bolus and give her a nice launch into her meal time. Now that hour later, Arden's blood sugar is 132. The data that comes back from the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor is life altering with Type One Diabetes, but being able to see it remotely, that takes life altering to another level. So if you'd like to know what your blood sugar is, the speed and direction it's moving, and find those things out without a finger stick. The dexcom g six is something you should check out. I have a link you can use dexcom.com forward slash juice box. There are links also right here in your podcast player notes at Juicebox podcast.com. But I think you should check out the Dexcom Arden's results are hers and yours may vary. But I'm telling you right now Dexcom is a game changer. Now moving from continuous glucose monitoring to insulin pumping. I'd like to talk about the Omni pod until you first I have just as much affinity and love for the Omni pod as I do for next time. Arden has been wearing the Omni pod tubeless insulin pumps and she was four years old, she'll be turning 16 in just a couple of months. The Omni pod brings so much freedom along with the ability to pump your insulin right no injections all day long. No slow acting insulin and fast acting insulin let the army pod take care of your background basal insulin for you. It does that put your insulin pump you get your basal insulin from the pump. And when it's time to Bolus for a meal or to crack the high, same insulin, same pump, no tubing, right so not an infusion site on your body somewhere that's attached to this plastic tubing that runs through your clothing out to a controller that has to clip to your belt. You know whether you're an adult or a little kid, you're not looking to have something clipped to you. Here's what you can do. Go to my on the pod.com Ford slash juice box there, you can ask on the pod to send you an absolutely free, no obligation demo of the new pod. It'll come directly to your house. You can try it on and see what you think for yourself. You can see the difference between wearing a shirt and not having tubing running down your sleeve. Every time I've worn a demo pod. What I thought first was it's amazing how quickly I forget that it's there. This is super important. This is something you have to do every day. You don't want it to be constantly bugging you. Check it out my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box with the links in your show notes. Were the ones you'll find at Juicebox podcast.com. And absolutely free no obligation demo can be in your mailbox before you know it.

Actually, my wife did a great job this morning. With breakfast. She made a Pre-Bolus at like 83 right and it was a big kind of bread First, and Arden drifted down drifted down and she actually hit like 63 for like a split second and came back up. So imagine this 63 probably happened 30 minutes after my wife pushed the button, right? And probably 10 minutes after she had already started eating. So if you want to say she missed, I guess you can, but it's funny. Had she been at 68 everyone would have been like, That's amazing. But 63 is a number that somehow gotten to somebody said, so I'm like, so she hits 63 one revolution of the CGM and right back again, and I said, if she didn't have a CGM, you never even would have known that that happened, right? She's She's wasn't dizzy. Nothing happened like that. I can see it cuz I'm looking at it that this same person in the crowd, this person who's you know, you know, from a property from a different era with diabetes, you know, fell just shy of, you know, back of the hand on the forehead. Oh, Scarlet, what happened? I've got the vapors, you know, I mean, like, that kind of thing. And I was just like, I looked over second, I was like, You got us. I was thinking to myself, like, just stop, like, don't like, look at the rest of these people. These people are in Thrall. They're excited. These are people who a half an hour after they put their insulin in, or running around with their blood sugar's 250. And are you really telling me that that's what you want to say is okay for them. Because when I speak to them privately, when they come up to me, as I'm trying to walk around you guys, we're all delightful. But people would come up and be like, hey, look, this is my, you know, my 23 year old son's CGM, kids like 400 and 300 all the time. Like you tell me, it's not worth trying to do better for this kid. And so I think sometimes, both in the community, in people's minds, in doctors minds, in some older doctors minds, there's just more of that idea. And we talked about all the time, like, it's better not to like, like, I don't want you to have a seizure. Like that's it, like when I say don't die advice, like, that's what they're trying to say that I don't want you to have a seizure. I don't want anyone to have a seizure, either. But I don't want your blood sugar to be 300 all day. You know, it just it's, it's not okay. Because we say these nice things out loud, and other people who are maybe well meaning but don't have good information. They're like, Oh, you know, I want you to be safe, blah, blah, blah. But those people you're talking to online, or whatever your whatever that person's ability to get to people is, you don't get to see those people 20 years later, you don't know what's happening to them. And so I'd rather take a bet on what I'm saying being good for them 20 years later, than what I hear some of those other people saying, I think that if you're going to if you're going to roll the dice one way, you ought to roll the dice and try to be healthy, not hope, hope that your body's the one impenetrable thing that diabetes can't find its way through? Yeah, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:47
right. Right. Well, and there's also the safety of bringing those high numbers down to, right. I mean, it's like, you don't want to end up going from an average of 280, which means you're drifting well above 300, and not quite into the low to hundreds to average a to 80, right? Yes, you're not gonna say, Okay, today, we're at, you know, an average of 280. And tomorrow, you're gonna be averaging 100,

Scott Benner 38:11
right, that goes on?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 38:13
Well, that would be a pie in the sky one, it's, it's not actually healthy, drops that fast, drop that fast. I mean, you will have efficient changes in your body. And you know, I remember when I came home from the hospital for two to three weeks after I was released from the hospital. And I think I started with an A one C in the 12, when I was first diagnosed, and my blood sugar was coming down and coming down. My vision changed so much, that my mom had to read me my homework in order for me to answer and she had to write things down. Because my vision was so blurred, I couldn't actually see well enough to read what I needed to get my homework done. Right. So and that was gradually. So again, you can imagine bringing a really high blood sugar down that's been consistently stable high. Yeah, it will be problematic.

Scott Benner 39:11
What I said to this group of people was luck. Like, don't go home, I'll shot out of a cannon, you know, and be like, I usually give a unit for this, but now I'm gonna do five I'm like, No, no, a unit in half, maybe, you know, and I was like, the next time go, ha, that could have been more I said, you know, over days, bring it down over weeks, bring it down, not like don't go home and just be like that. Because that's probably not going to go so well. You know. And, and again, bazel first, and it's funny, no matter how many times I say it, and how many times I preach how important it is. The look on people's faces. When you say to them, I need you to get your basal insulin right is like up then I give up. Like it's quick. It's they're so quick to be like, that's not possible. I can't do that. And I'm like, No, of course she can. And that's why I've got it down to like, they're like, well, how and I was like, Look, there's a great app. pisode on it that you could go listen to them like, but if you're looking for how I think of it, I think of it like volume, like I turn it up until it's too loud, and then I start bringing it back down. So you turn it up a little, not loud enough, turn it up a little not loud enough. And what I mean by that is turn it up a little, my blood sugar is not sitting stable, where I want it to, you know, blah, blah, blah, and then all of a sudden, you get to a spot and you go, alright, that looks like it. Or maybe it's Oh, I went a little too far. I'll turn it back down a little bit. I'm like, but don't you know, one woman's like, by basals? point nine. You know, should but my blood sugar's are 250. Should I try one? And I'm like, I mean, okay, and I'm like, but an hour later when that doesn't work. But could you push it up a little more for me? Like, I was like thinking about what you're saying? You your blood, your bazel is holding you at 250. But, you know, point nine, like, but you want it to come down 150 points, but you only want to move it up. point one. I was like, that doesn't make sense, right? Like, don't you feel like it might need more than that. She's like, yeah, I guess you're right. But that but that's a doctor that scared her not to touch her basal insulin. And so she's, it's just it's, I don't know, I'm a little heartbroken. Like, it's a little it's, it's very exciting and uplifting to talk to people and see them have some ideas they're going to take and at the same time, when they come up to you, and they show you how bad things are. You know, after the fifth, sixth 10th one, you start feeling like oh, gosh, like I'm never gonna reach enough people to make a difference in the world like it starts feeling

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:28
might even like from the adjustment standpoint, sometimes comes from the people who had diabetes, a long enough time to have actually had a long enough experience with bazel injected insulin, and how long it did a week to really see the difference in an adjustment up and or down in the actual dose and the imprecision in which that basal insulin works on a 24 hour scale. Right. And I noticed immense different, going from lantis to using an insulin pump. Right, an immense difference. It was

Scott Benner 42:10
amazing. Is that where that kind of that that adage is like making adjustments here bazel wait three days and see what happens is that what that's from,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:19
for the most part because the well, you know, the basal insulin clears technically within like a 20 to 24 hour time period, right from let's say, for the example of Atlantis is supposed to work 24 hours, most people somewhere between like 20 to 24 hours. And so you adjust, you need kind of at least a 48 hour period, at least after that adjustment of incremental change by let's say two units, to see if that was enough to now hold things level and steady. And then it also depends on where you taking your basal insulin in the morning, or were you taking it in the evening, you know, the evening time was a little bit easier to see. Because you could notice an overnight with only true basal insulin there. No boluses no food, no activity component, you're sleeping on that right? And then through the course of the rest of the next day. How did things look in between meals or after the meal bolus was gone? Did you kind of get into the next meal on a nice stable level? Were you where you want it to be? Were you still too high? Or are you drifting way too low? And then we adjust again, you know, so I that it is probably where that like, adjust wait three days to see if the adjustment held things where you wanted them and then adjust again. It's kind of where that would have started. I like Spock because

Scott Benner 43:39
someone from the crowd asked me, How long is it going to take me to get my bazel? Right. And I was like, well, I said if I think if you listen to that episode, and you really understand it. So maybe a few days, you know, she says how long would it take you? And I was like What time is it now? She goes it's like It's one o'clock. I'm like I could have it done by dinner, you know, like so. And then we would adjust off the the rest of the clock moving forward, like but there's a there's somewhere there's a good number. And it's funny because I just I realized, um, I could just keep looking at the CGM and the side I said, Now, if you didn't have a CGM, it take me a couple days to write, right? Because now we're kind of blind. And we're testing and seeing things and, you know, making sense and seeing if we can see repeating that and stuff like that. It was like but, but looking at it. That's like, That's cheating, almost like that. That's pretty easy. But I also infer things from pitches and lines and and there's no and then people all the time, like can you do an episode about how you see that? I don't even know how to talk about it. Like I wish I did like I just look and I'm like, okay, that's not enough insulin. That's too much. This is here. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, I don't know what pops into my head, but I don't know. I really don't know how to quantify it. If I'm being right. Come on. I'm not joking.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:55
Well, you've you've looked at things enough and you understand, you understand insulin. Action, I think better because of the way that you've looked at things and the way that you've taught about things. But sometimes it is hard to just nail it down and explain, hey, if this is happening here, this is why and this is how we would adjust for. And that's kind of, that's kind of what we do. Get people's graphs and information and their insulin here. And like bazel testing for a pump, especially, you know, we'll do a bazel test within a time segment, I get the data The next day, I look at it, adjust here, test again tonight. They do great, that looks awesome, we're perfect. We've got it like checked off, move on to the next. So it shouldn't be like six days in a row that you have to test that to make sure that each single one of them exactly was nailed. Because we adjusted it four days ago, nope. If you adjusted, it looks beautiful with the adjustment. Great, we're moving on. We got it. I've learned

Scott Benner 45:53
from talking to people face to face to that. The stuff they want to tell you that they think is going to help you help them is never the stuff I need to know. Do you know what I mean by that? They start giving me like and it's it's not I don't even mean to be funny about it. Like, they're they've been paying close attention. And they're like, okay, like, here's a piece you absolutely have to understand. I'm like, I don't care about that doesn't matter. You know, like, like, I'm like, how much do they weigh? How old are they? What kind of insulin are you using? What's your basal rate right now? You know, where do you sit steady, when you don't have insulin, you blah, blah, blah. And then from there, I'm just like, okay, turn this up, turn that down, make this this. And then let's wait and see what happens. But it's interesting, because the information they've been given so far has led them to ask almost all the wrong questions. Right? That's the part that I find fascinating, right, is that somebody has been directing them along the way. And now I talked to them. And then I talked to them again, two weeks later. And now they want to make a small adjustment. And they're asking the right questions. It's very interesting. Like, it's just where you, it's who talks to you first. Like it really is, it's like, whoever talks to you first, you win, or you lose, like right then and there. You don't even realize it when it's happening. There's somebody being diagnosed right now, in the world, who's talking to an endo, who understands, and they're going to go on one beautiful path, they'll never find this podcast, because they don't need it. And then there's somebody else being diagnosed right now who's being told all that stuff that we, you know, have to debunk, and then reteach. It's just, it's bizarre. I mean, you don't like, get cancer and get two wildly different ideas like this one, cancer, doctors say to you, hey, listen, we're gonna try a little radiation. And then if that doesn't work, we'll try to cut it out. Is there another doctor that says you should go home, blow up balloons and eat birthday cake, and I'll fix the whole thing? Because it feels like it's that far apart. You know, like, one ideas, right? And one ideas? I mean, I'm sure there's variations in between?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:54
Well, I think the extremes truly are the people who still to this day, for whatever reason, will go into their clinical diabetes team, and they get the hand me your pump. It's like handing over like, you know, your foot. I think I said that before. And so it did nothing. And you're like, Hey, thank you. Your pump is like, like your butt. Like, no, not really my foot, just a body part over, they like, take it away from you. You're like, oh, my goodness, you've taken like my body part from me, you know, and then they bring it back to you. If they've dumped this data in, they look at the data. They don't ask you anything. The doctor might actually sit there and actually might push your buttons on your pump. Yeah, physically make all the adjustments for you. And your left, then handed back reconnected with your pump. The doctors like, Oh, we adjusted some of the bezels or we did this and this because I thought I saw this happening here. what's lacking there the education do? You adjust? What were the explanations that person could go home and say, Okay, I understood the doctor adjusted here because he was seeing this. I'm going to Now watch this. I'm gonna see did it help? Does it make it better? Did it make it worse? Do I need to readjust this? How should I readjusted? that's missing chunk. Yeah. And, you know, I think that that ease of not educating people nor even letting them push their own pump buttons to make the changes or add in Hey, b d is in a row this past week. I was at gramma Joe's eating like sloppy joes and birthday cake, and is please don't pay attention to that data. It's not my true trend, but the doctor is basing adjustments off of it.

Scott Benner 49:45
It messing up everything else that may have been working better than that. I brought a poor kid up on stage from the college diabetes network this past weekend. And I just we stood arm's length apart. We put our palms together you know standing side to side I said, you know, I'm going to be insulin, and he's going to be body function and carbs. And I was like right now, he and I are pushing, you know, an equal amount into each other. And we could stand here forever like this. I was like, but as soon as I don't push quite as hard, and he started, like overpowering me, I was like now the carbs and the body function or winning, which means my blood sugar is going up. And it should I push too hard. I start driving that down and your blood sugar gets too low. But as long as we stay balanced, and we're pushing equally on each other, this could go on like this forever. While I'm saying it, audibly I can hear people going, Oh, like out in the audience like, Oh, wow. Okay. And I just as I was saying it, I thought a doctor couldn't think of that. Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, cuz dumb me figured it out. And and, you know, put it into words, like, like, that was it and just them watching that. And it's something I'd done before with my own hands like palm the palm. I've explained, I've gotten people on the phone, and I've made them put their palms together and like, and, like done it. And I just think like, it's, it's just, it was so simple. You could see like nodding going on. And people were like, Oh, Okay, I get it, I found a million ways to talk about it. Since then I talked about like, bringing in more blockers to like, you know, stop by Blitz, like in football, like, I've talked about it a million different ways. And every time you kind of paint a picture around it, you get somebody else to understand it. I just don't know. It just doesn't make sense to me. So these doctors are telling you, I want you to be healthy forever. But then they kind of some of them don't tell you how. And so. So optimizing your glucose, right for long term is going to keep you as healthy as hopefully possible. Right?

Unknown Speaker 51:41
Yes, absolutely.

Scott Benner 51:42
What about gaps of fall off? Right? I don't like the word burnout so much. But what if they just stopped paying attention for a week that turns into a month, it turns into six months, is that if I if I come back from it, now, I'm not trying to give people like, like, I feel like I'm saying, you know, you can go off and, you know, go off and do heroin for six months and come back, and it's not gonna hurt you, right? Like, not me. But I'm saying like, if you have one of those moments that a slip up or your life gets, you know, busy, and all of a sudden you start leaving your blood sugar at 140 instead of 120 or 180, instead of 150. Is there any way to quantify what that means to you long term? Or there isn't really right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:27
It really isn't? Because again, there's nobody has kind of quantified exactly what amount of mismanagement equates to this amount of complication down the road? Yeah, if you don't do this for three years, you will have this amount of heart damage 10 years from now, right? There's no, you can't quantify it. But I think you can also not bank

control that was optimal, yes.

Or the next month and saying, okay, I was really, really awesome for six months. And now I'm going to go on like an eidl convention, blow out in Italy, and just that care or pay attention, detrimental stuff could be happening. I don't know what's happening in your body, but you don't either. It's not great for you. But it's, you know, but you, you're not, you can't bank on the six months previous being like a code over for smoothing that out and being like, Okay, this whole month of like, mismanagement doesn't really count because I was so good before

Scott Benner 53:35
it's like sleep, you could get great rest six days in a row, and then stay up 24 hours, you're still going to be exhausted, you can't run, you can't bank sleep, you can't bank health, you can't like that. That kind of stuff is really super important to understand. But you know, it's funny because at the same time when I'm teaching people how to get going, like with a one season I started trying to impress upon them that overnight is easier than you think you know, and like once your Basil's right, you're not bolusing too much or too little, you're not going to get these wild swings. Now you've got this third of the day, you know, and it's like so if you see a 160 in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, you can feel a little better about it because you had like, you know, your 85 or eight hours last night, right? It doesn't make whatever impact the 180 spike has. And like you said, I don't know what it does or isn't is or isn't doing your body. But if it is doing something being at all night long, doesn't stop that. But you know, like being safe right now doesn't mean that if I burn my finger five minutes from now it you know, it doesn't make it go away. It's still happening. I think that's really that's good information. So what are we in your own personal life? Is that how you think about it? Like just I'm gonna do my best and hope this works out?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:51
I do because like, you know, I

I try really hard not to like I go to all my checkups, right? I mean, I Get like, my heart checked, I make sure that I go to the podiatrist, I make sure that I get my feet checked, I've never had any problems, thank goodness. But I still go for all my checkups. I go on, I see my ophthalmologist to make sure they check all the vessels and you know, do the test for the puff of the air in the eyeball, right? is like

Scott Benner 55:23
an idiot when it hits your

Jennifer Smith, CDE 55:26
anticipation of that puff of a puff of air is worse than the actual puff is. But you know, I do all of those things, because I know that they are a check in the long term. And you know, what, if something does come up, then the checking is also prevention for furthering problem, then maybe you say it, check on something and up now something is happening. Okay? One, I might beat myself up a little bit of I could have done this better, I could have done that. But that doesn't help that's asked, you can't go back and fix it, what you can do is continue to go forward and say, Okay, I can try to do better here. Or maybe I need to add this or now I just need to see the doctor every three months instead of every six months or once a year, or they've got this treatment that could help me and it could make it better. And if I continue to do what I need to do, then I can prevent further complications down the road. So

Scott Benner 56:26
yeah, I also want to say that, I think I've never met anybody so far, I should say, that has told me, I decided I don't care, I'm going to run full force straight ahead, I'm not going to pay that much attention to my diabetes. And however long I make it, it's how long I make it. Whenever one of those people runs into a complication, they have always said the same thing to me, I wish I wouldn't have done this, like you don't mean like, I wish I would have bla bla bla or tried something else. Or it wasn't my fault. Even I didn't know. But I wish I would have kept searching. And and I think that that's the truth like it, whether you make it, you know, till you're 40, when all of a sudden, you're finding out at UT dialysis, or you make it to 70. And you're like I made it to 70. And then all of a sudden you're having a heart attack, a 70 year old type one is having a heart attack doesn't go at least I made it this far, you start thinking oh, I would like to stay alive a little longer. You know, like I get it, I don't think many people get to the point of no return whatever it is, and go, you know, I did my best. And I'm happy with this. I think I think that people such really do feel like that, like, Oh, I wish I would have whatever that means, you know, whatever they wish they would have done. I mean, if you're a person who can make it the whole way and just be like, you know, 35 years old, jumping your car over a canyon and realizing you're not making it the other end to go, Oh, well, I did my best. Like, you guys, like that's a special like, that's a special gear you have. But what I'm saying is that caring now will keep you from that feeling of I don't know what that feeling would be what how to describe it. When people talk about their they are disappointed in themselves. And then they can't shake that feeling for the rest of their life. Right? Like every day, they wake up with a problem. And they have this feeling like, oh, maybe I could have done something about this. And then you have to live with the problem and the guilt. And it's hard, you know, so I say all the time. I think with what we talked about on the podcast, diabetes becomes pretty. You know, I don't like to say easy, but I think it becomes like second nature thing for you. I would rather put that effort into understanding Pre-Bolus or, you know, something like that, then I would spending six, eight hours a day fighting with high blood sugars that cause a low that have me eating, that make my life feel like turmoil that I'm not living, I'm just existing through rock. So that's how I feel

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:56
having and that I agree. And it's kind of the way that I feel about my own management is I do the things that I do every day to make it less of a visible upfront in my face, to let it be more of a Yes, I have to manage it. I still have to look at my blood sugar, I still have to take my insulin, I still have to count my carbs and Bolus the right way and whatnot. But those are like more second nature things that I just do now. And until I have like a bad site or something that I really have to completely put my focus into and you know, take care of

Scott Benner 59:37
the normal things that I do every day are just part of my day. Exactly. And those bad sight moments, because I recognize what you're saying is how Arden's life is and mine with helping are is that most of the time we are just sort of cruising along. And when something really goes funky, and you're all the sudden you have to stop thinking about life and you're now you're focused on this diabetes thing in my heart. I know that some People live like that all day long every day. Right? And that's just because that's an explanation to me like your bad sites a great explanation because you're but all that means is you're not getting insulin the way you need to. Mm hmm. And if if your bagels off if you're not Pre-Bolus if you're not doing all those things in every moment, you're not getting insulin the way you should. And, and so your life's always gonna be, you know, I like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:22
And in the instance, then of

blood sugar's being all over, you never really know unless the pump tells you if you are on a pump, that you have an occlusion and that there is a real problem. You never really know. If there's a problem you should be addressing. Yeah, I mean, I know when I know even ahead of clusion alert coming, that something's not right. Yeah, I can tell. Yep. Um, because things are contained. And if I see something odd happening, and I know that nobody is like, injected me with like the sugar to

Scott Benner 1:01:03
go,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:04
right, then clearly, I'm not getting in. For

Scott Benner 1:01:08
whatever reason, I don't know, change it out. I don't care what I'm going to address it, I'm going to take care of it. I'll just change my pot out and move on. Let's see you and Arden have a scenario, a life where your expectation is a lower, more stable number that reacts the way you expect it to. We said this the other day, when we were talking like I, I talked about how I think of the site as doing what I expect it to do. So the minute I don't see it, doing what I expect, or I see a blood sugar, that's all the sudden 150 my my I start thinking like, I can look back if I didn't mess this up somewhere. This is this is I'm not getting enough insulin. So I don't mess with that either. Like there's a moment. Like I think some people end up looking at a bad site for days. And then and then they they'll change their property. Oh, it turned out to be the pump 48 hours later. Right? Yeah, I'm not into that. You know what, the second or third time I bolus and what I want to happen doesn't happen. And I'm getting out of it. Yeah, I actually had

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:02:08
it this morning. I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't actually supposed to change. My pod out until this evening is when it was supposed to expire. And I woke up this morning. Not at my normal like, he ish blood sugar. I was like 130 something I was like, kind of odd, right? And like, that's not where I should be. And I could see all this, like, positive temping that been kind of happening. And so I look at my site. And it's bloody in the window, or my pod site, right? And I'm like, had I not checked, I just gone I've got about three, though I'm higher than I normally am this morning. And I'll just correct some insulin, I'll eat for my or I'll take for my breakfast. And hope all goes well. Well, I just I know that that's not the norm for me. So what did I do? I changed out my pod. And that's it.

Scott Benner 1:02:58
Yeah. Because you're you would have been fighting with that all day.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:01
Otherwise, right? Oh, correct. In my post breakfast would have been for it. I'm sure. I'm sure. I bet she gets

Scott Benner 1:03:06
to 20. That in that situation? Right. Right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:09
Yeah. Right. At least. Exactly.

Scott Benner 1:03:12
So, Jenny, if you and I were one person, we'd be a super diabetes brain.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:17
Oh, my goodness.

Scott Benner 1:03:22
place? Oh, my gosh, all right. I know you got to get going. I'm not sure if we talked about what we said we were going to talk about, but I found this to be a really great conversation about, about long term health and, and ideas of how to get to it and why it's important. So thank you very much.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:37
Yeah, absolutely. It was, it was good. I think sometimes, you know, the stuff about complications and whatnot gets, it gets to clinical. And I think people just need a return to all that. That's why I'm aiming for just keeping things tighter, or why I'm keeping things more in this range, or whatever. I mean, they know that the complications are out there. But this is the reason I'm doing that

Scott Benner 1:04:04
instead of talking about a thing that seems like it's so far away or so impossible, that there's no real reason to try to plan for it not to happen. Because it's so far I will always use this example. My father smoked cigarettes all day long, two and three packs of cigarettes a day and not like not some like Marlboro light thing like Chesterfield kings, no filter, you know what I mean? Like it was left over on the floor of the place that they just roll up and sold the people you know, and in his 30s in his 40s, in his 50s, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke so 60s, he'd come back from doctor's appointments doctor says, I can't even tell you're a smoker and he would wear that with a badge of honor right up until smoking killed him. right up until he had COPD, and then and then he died. So you know, can only you can only you You only stay ahead of a charging bowl for so long right and right you don't want to be you just you don't want to give yourself

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:07
up off the path and be like, let it run by. run by.

Scott Benner 1:05:12
My dogs are barking like crazy. I think someone's breaking into the house. I might be killed soon we'll find out. For me, Kelly, probably Yeah. Oh my god finally dating. Oh, I hope not. All right, I will talk to you soon.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:29
Okay, awesome. Bye. Bye.

Scott Benner 1:05:33
I bet you didn't know that you can hire Jenny. She works at integrated diabetes, just go to integrated diabetes comm or there's a link right there in your show notes that you can email Jenny directly. Jenny is not a sponsor of the show. She's a friend of the show. But that doesn't change the fact that she's got a mortgage to pay. huge thank you to Dexcom and Omni pod for sponsoring this and so many other episodes of the Juicebox Podcast, my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box go there today. Get the demo pod get a pod experience kit sent to you and get your Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor right now stop waiting dexcom.com forward slash juice box. This episode is the 17th of the diabetes pro tip series. It began back on February 25 2019. With an episode called newly diagnosed you're starting over and there was 211 to 12. That's all about MDI and all about insulin to 17 to 18 and to 19 Pre-Bolus in Temp Basal and insulin pumping to 24 to 25 and 26. mastering a CGM bumping and nudging and the perfect Bolus, Episode 231 about the variables that come with Type One Diabetes, Episode 237 setting basal insulin 256 exercise in Episode 263. We talked about how fat and protein impact your blood sugar's and they do. Episode 287 illness, injury and having a surgery with type one diabetes in Episode 301, glucagon and low blood sugar emergencies and Episode 307 emergency room protocols different than illness injury and surgery. This is what happens when you're thrust into an emergency room. Not something you were planning for. And of course today's episode 311 diabetes pro tip long term health. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Please leave a rating and review in Apple podcasts if you're enjoying the show. But moreover, if you like what you've heard, find someone else who could use it the only way a podcast grows by word of mouth. So I appreciate it when you tell somebody else about the show.


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