#956 Diabetes Myths: Type 1 Diet Restrictions

July 18, 2023Scott Benner

A brand new series examining the myths surrounding diabetes.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 956 of the Juicebox Podcast

Jenny is back and we're gonna do another diabetes myth episode today's topic was sent in by listeners. And they say that people think that they have diet restrictions because they have type one diabetes. Jenny and I are going to talk all about it and read some listener feedback. While you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan, or becoming bold with insulin. Save 10% off your first month of therapy@betterhelp.com forward slash juicebox. Get a free year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first order at drink a G one.com forward slash juice box. And you will in fact save 40% off of your entire order. When you use the offer code juice box at checkout at cozy earth.com I actually use that offer code the other day and bought myself some clothes, cozy earth.com. If you're looking for the bold beginning series, the diabetes Pro Tip series, the type two Pro Tip series or any of those sorts of things, go to juicebox podcast.com. Look up in the menu or in the feature tab of the private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omni pod five, you can learn more and get started today at Omni pod.com. Forward slash juicebox doesn't matter if you prefer the Omni pod five, where the Omni pod dash, my link is the place to go. omnipod.com forward slash Juicebox Podcast is sponsored today by better help better help is the world's largest therapy service and is 100% online. With better help, you can tap into a network of over 25,000 licensed and experienced therapists who can help you with a wide range of issues. betterhelp.com forward slash juicebox to get started, you just answer a few questions about your needs and preferences in therapy. That way BetterHelp can match you with the right therapist from their network. And when you use my link, you'll save 10% On your first month of therapy. I was thinking that we could tackle the myth today that people with diabetes have diet restrictions. Sure seem fair. Okay, that seems fair. So I'm going to just go right to the first piece of feedback. Okay, this person said, people tell me that type ones can eat certain things. And I have a couple of family members that tell me about my type one, and oh, how he can't have this. And he can't have that. And, you know, maybe they should shy away from this. Like, like, it's a lot of that verbiage is being used, like, you know, so this person is trying to tell them, Listen, my kid can eat food. And here's how it gets handled. But people don't want to hear it. It seems to be the biggest problem. Next person says, everyone thinks I have to eat sugar free everything. That everything I eat has to be diet, but a lot of that stuff tastes gross to me and I don't want to eat it. So even that even that is interesting, right? Like the person does not want to eat the thing, but they're getting so much pressure from someone that they've tried it. They now know that they don't like it, but they still feel the pressure. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Does this happen to you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:46
Ah, let's see. Recently, no. But in the past, in the past it has and I think and I think we met we talked about this in one of the other myth episodes as well is there's some old school thought to what's being told about what you can and can't right have. I mean, years ago, when I, the years after I was initially diagnosed, there were things that were just, I don't do them anymore, right. But they're also things that my family just, they just didn't do either. So it wasn't a my brother gets this but Jenny doesn't get this. My parents were like, No, it's going to be fair and clean. Everybody is just going to do it the way that Jenny does it right. At holiday kind of types of gatherings with friends or family my my favorite aunt actually, she would always make the vegetable tray right? Because those at that time were considered free food. And so Jenny could always have Have those items versus the other trays of things that were all of the cookies and treats and the bars and whatever, which did my parents let me have that occasionally? Sure. But they were definitely more of a, I'm not the greatest to have or indulgent or have four cookies at one gathering with friends just because I wanted them. Could I have had them? Absolutely. At that time, though, we didn't have the knowledge of how to take care of that. Today, we have the technology, we've got the information. And so I think it we have to transfer that old school thought into today, we've got insulin that works faster. We've got technology, we've got a visual on our glucose levels, we've got machines and pumps and things that they leap over that, yes and no food, and they allow people to absolutely eat what they want to

Scott Benner 6:01
eat. Yeah, it allows the separation between what should I have nutritionally? And what can I do without it impacting my diabetes poorly? Because you know what I mean by that, like the Cookies, cookies are a great example. No one, none of us should be eating four and five cookies at an event? No, no, but we. And I think these things get blurred together sometimes. But if you're going to eat them in your blood sugar is gonna go to 325 for four hours. Well, then that seems like a more imminent, you shouldn't do this. I think that's the two things to get blended. Right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:37
Correct. Yes. Well, and I think you brought up a good a good point there. Like, nobody should eat four or five cookies at one time, you just shouldn't. And so there's a whole nother avenue of a discussion that is a little different than this, but it it kind of gets blended in because if all the kids or all the adults are doing something at a party or a gathering or a social event, or at a business meeting or whatever. Sure, you can follow suit. But in general, is it really good to do it all the time? Yeah, no, it's just not.

Scott Benner 7:18
And I see, you see where the resistance comes from, from the mother of a child, a father of a child or the adult living with? Because you don't want to be told what to do? Like, that's the that's the worst feeling in the world. Like, you can't I mean, you can't eat that as a statement, or a direction. Right has to be incredibly difficult to hear, right? And then you go, Yes, I can. And either you think, yes, I can, because I know how to cover it with insulin, or you think yes, I can, my blood sugar is gonna go up and I don't care. Like I'm not going to be stopped by this thing. Right? These things are, again, they're completely different. It's so interesting that you said about the plate of vegetables, because the next thing on the list says, I wish that people understood that candy is, you know, I'm told all the time that candy is the root of all evil, but somehow fruit is okay. And so she she gives an example. I'm not saying By the way, you should eat candy over fruit. This is her bigger point. A family member that meant very well made a beautiful tray of fruit for a holiday party, brought it put it down and came over and said, Hey, I made this because I know you can't eat the other stuff. You can't have desserts, right? Meanwhile, the impact from a fruit tray or the impact from a piece of cake is probably the same. Maybe worse. If it's the fruit like who knows, you know? So again, nutrition and blood sugar, two different ideas. Are you better off eating a plate full of fruit? Sure you are. Right, then then having a plate full of cake nutritionally, of course, that makes sense blood sugar, right? Maybe no difference.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:55
Maybe no difference and or, you know, maybe in fact, depending on the cake, or the cookie or whatever it was with cream cheese frosting. Maybe the cake actually doesn't hit you like the big plate of grapes and cherries that you're planning to eat instead. So it's a spike now versus a spike leader. So but they're absolutely it's a great point. I mean, it's sugar is sugar is sugar. Sometimes there's more complex sometimes there's a little bit slower, something that mixes up how that sugar impacts your blood sugar. But yeah, I mean, lovely that the person was like, Hey, I brought the fruit for you. You're thinking that's great. I'm still gonna have the key I got you

Scott Benner 9:36
covered. Don't worry. I know about I know all about your bees. I'm on top of wonderful. I don't know wait here go. My most recently my father said to me, oh, about my son. His blood sugar must be so well controlled because of the diet weed. And the person said it's not because of that at all. I know how to use insulin. And so by But that's not but that's not what the father sees. The father sees, oh, the kids not spiking all over the place, it's got to be this food that gets so interesting how people see ghosts and so many things, they think they see something, it's not really there. Now, sure, the other side of this would be if you ate a very low carb existence, and you had type one diabetes, you would require much less insulin, you'd have much less variability. And there is no doubt that from just that blood sugar perspective, things would be easier, very likely, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:32
Very likely abs, yes, 100%, the majority of people who really are following a very low carb, or what a lot of people call a ketogenic diet, right, there is a lot of stability following that. And if you're doing it the right way, nutritionally speaking, you're not necessarily doing all of the fancy stuff that's on the market, but you're actually just eating clean food, and getting in really low carb intake and high fat intake, to complete your caloric need, right, you're gonna get stability, you're probably going to get some weight modification, you're going to go down in insulin need, although your insulin needs will change in a different way you'll learn insulin effect, to work with that type of fueling plan, in a very different way than covering for carbohydrates. Yeah,

Scott Benner 11:30
I once had lunch with a type one who ate completely like, no carbs, all meat, this and 45 minutes later, they picked up their controller and gave themselves insulin to Bolus for the protein and the fat rise that they knew where it's gonna come. It was much less insulin, etc. I think again, the problem comes when this is a little different than the other thing, but in the diabetes community amongst the group of people together, who all have diabetes and have different experiences and have figured out different things. If you say, Hey, I don't know how to like, stop this spike, my kid went and had ice cream and this spike happen. You're gonna get somebody who is very low carb, keto, something like that. And they're gonna come in and say, oh, you know, don't eat carbs. And that won't happen. And you're like, well, that's not helpful. You know, like, like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:24
Oh, that's not what, that's not what I want to do. Right? It's not the masking, right? That's not the question, right?

Scott Benner 12:30
Yeah, no, that that's, you know, it's not a Hey, Doc, it hurts when I do this. Don't do this anymore. Like, it's a decision you've made as a person eating that way, which I think is terrific. If anything, you figure out what works for you is amazing. You know, so but you can't just show up at somebody's door and say, you can't you can't eat carbs. That's the problem. You can eat carbs. I'm not going to bore you with it. But artists 24 hours, or just last 24 hours include a late night meal. I'm talking like 10 o'clock at night. Rice, steamed carrots and shrimp. Now, were there concessions made its basmati rice, not white rice like sure, right? Correct. All right. And there's not a bunch of there's no breading on the shrimp. It wasn't fried was sauteed like, okay, right, those things. But there, I gave her a bowl. I mean, between the rice and the carrots, and there had to be 45 carbs in there maybe like more maybe? Who knows?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:30
Let's not have been a very big bowl. It was pretty. It wasn't huge. I've been here. Okay,

Scott Benner 13:36
fair, a fair amount of rice, more carriage than rice, the shrimp except her blood sugar has not been under 70 or over 120 in the last 24 hours. So that it's doable. I saw her during the day, have a little chocolate thing where she ate a bunch of those little dove, like dark chocolate hearts. Sure, you know, like, I don't know, like, it's just do people with diabetes have a diet restriction? Yeah, no, but no,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:07
no and. Right. It's a little bit of both. Like somebody actually asked, I think this definitely fits here. Somebody asked me not long ago. Well, do you restrict yourself? No, but I also have certain preferences. I have many years of learning what I can do almost all the time, and I know it well enough to take care of it and handle it right. And then there are the things that are there not the 80 to 90% of quality food that makes up from a fuelling standpoint, from what I want to put in my body because it needs good nutrients, right. Those are the foods that I don't restrict them. But when I do the non typical foods I tend to do them when I know I can I say good got away with it. I don't. And I don't mean it in that way, but it's kind of the way that it works out. Like, if we're, if I've had a day that I've had just a lot of activity, or I've had a really good run or something like that, I have a sensitivity component that I can get away with. Now we're gonna go out for like the dinner,

Scott Benner 15:24
a lot more insulin, because you've got all that exercise on board. That's gonna correct,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:27
right. So I'm not restricting. I'm just, I guess I feel like I'm saving those types of things that I may want to do occasionally, for times, when I know that it's really going to work out to my advantage, and that I've figured out how to work it in.

Scott Benner 15:41
I feel like the word restricted stems from this idea that we should be able to just eat as much of anything that we want. So it's like, it's like an American freedom idea. It's like, you're not gonna study, right? We're gonna, I'm not going to make a pork chop for lunch, we're going to kill a whole pig. And you know, that kind of thing. Like, like abundance, like that whole, like, bigger is better. I mean, you go to some restaurants, and they give you food. And I think is this for all of us? Like, like, I but eventually you just eat it. You're like, Okay, I'll eat this. And then that like clean your plate mentality comes into your head. It's interesting how, in the 50s, it was clean your plate, right? So that's how our parents, my parents were definitely raised that way, like clean your plate. This foods expensive. I mean, if you grew up at my time, and somebody didn't tell you, there was a child starving in Africa. So you had to eat all this food, like I don't know, like that happened constantly. Well, and there

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:39
were commercials for it on television. So wasn't just that you were hearing, or seeing these poor children.

Scott Benner 16:45
Oh, my parents knew they had television, right, like so this was the way people spoke. So now, we shift into a more kind of abundant lifestyle in more modern times, but we were raised with, like, eat all that food. Like if I think back to the amount of food my mom gave me versus the amount of food a restaurant makes, and then I start making for ourselves, those are significantly different portions.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:09
Yeah, I was actually going to ask comparatively, if you remember, what was the difference between what was put on your plate as an expectation, you will eat this, versus what we now have the ability to put on our plate, you know, if you have access, and enough to do it, it's probably at least double if not maybe triple. In some people's eyes,

Scott Benner 17:31
my simple example is this, my mom would buy five pounds of potatoes, and try to figure out a way to make them last until spuds started growing out of them. I open up a bag and I go, Oh, just make these five pounds of potatoes like this. As far as someone said they wanted mashed potatoes, obviously, five pounds is the way to go. And then. And then eventually they go into the refrigerator. And people kind of pick it them throughout the week. I'm not saying we'd five pounds at a sitting. But I do think you put more on the plate because it feels like generosity, it almost feels like love, like here have a bunch, you know, like that kind of thing. And so I think that again, these things get blended together. And that's where these conversations end up coming from. Yeah, absolutely. I realized, Jenny that the myth series was going to be more about psychology when we started it, by the way, but Oh, been fun so far.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:23
It has Yes. And I think that's another piece that as you talk about portion, I think it's a really big missing piece in education overall, it really is. Nobody, nobody these days gets educated about a real portion of meat or a real portion of vegetables or what a portion of fruit should look like or like your potatoes, like half your plate shouldn't be potatoes. I don't care if you like, half your plate doesn't need to be potatoes with three sticks of butter on it. So necessary.

Scott Benner 18:56
I just recorded with Jake leach yesterday from Dexcom. And that he discussed how they're going to present a sensor next year that's going to be for people with type two who don't use insulin. And my Oh, which is terrific. Right. And I immediately talked about how you know Arden moved from G seven from G six. And we had two sensors left and a transmitter. So I put it on my brother who has type two diabetes. And in 10 days, the light bulbs that turned on for him that hadn't been turned on in years of doctors yelling at him you don't eat right, like, you know, like, probably not trying hard enough. Like all that stuff. He suddenly was like, Oh, I see what happens now when I eat these foods. And it's so quick. It turned the light on for him. But people don't know about food. Like it's just so this is it. This is exactly what happens here. You get diagnosed, somebody tells you you can't do a thing. You brusque against that because you don't want to be told what to do. Somebody else who has no idea what they're talking about says something to you like let me read a quote here. Oh, I didn't know she could eat that. Or when this woman says her co Workers brought snacks pass them out to everybody skipped her

Unknown Speaker 20:03
except

Scott Benner 20:07
as she cruised by, I'm picturing a cubicle said I know you can't have this and rolled right past her. Right? So, or even when somebody here says they're trying to stop a little blood sugar with a pack of Smarties, and during the low blood sugar incident, someone a loved one looks at them, he goes, Do you really think you should eat all of them, you have diabetes. So, so when those things get blended together with just the misunderstanding about food to begin with, and this generational inclination to eat more, give more. It's what led me to say, when you and I did an episode about like ozempic, and things like that we did like a type two, it was part of the type two series, I had this kind of like whimsical idea while we were talking that I've not let go of yet, which was if you injected everyone right now with this stuff and took their hunger away, that in one generation, a whole new group of children would not eat as much food, because you would draft you would teach them to eat less by example. Absolutely. I'm saying we should like put it in the water or anything like that. But like, you know, it's not wrong. Like if everyone's parents used less food, more nutrition, it would literally take a generation for that to flip flop around. Right? Yeah, yeah. And I saw it just recently, because my son has been gone for seven months, he's been living on his own. He flew back to spend a couple of days around my birthday. And he had a couple days off from work. And while he's off on his own, he's cooking for himself, pre making his meals, he's trying to be very conscious about money. But also he realizes he's not as active as he used to be, like, all that stuff. And he came home, and he started eating more like he was a kid than the adults that he is off on his own. I noticed that in a couple of days.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:00
It's because mom and dad's house has more up here,

Scott Benner 22:03
because we have more money, because we make more money than he does. And so there's extra stuff here. And he's like, Oh, I haven't had these in a while, which was I didn't want to pay for these. But then his stomach started hurting. And I was like, Yeah, you're eating better on your own because you're eating less food. It's for you. It's because you don't have as much money. But who cares why the truth is he's making clean meals for himself. And I don't know, it just it's all so freakin obvious.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:34
And the interesting thing is that he's learned that almost on his own, it's not like you gave him a big a big sit down lecture before he left the house to be like, You know what, you really have to think about all and maybe you did, maybe you talked about some things in terms of budgeting, or he just saw that while he was growing up or whatever. But he's kind of taken this on, on his own, which is, it's really adults, like good for him.

Scott Benner 23:01
That's fantastic. I'm excited for him the extent of what I mean, listen, we're careful with money in our house. And that stems from me. You know, while we're talking about where everything comes from, I grew up broke. It's not hard to figure out right? And so, but on the food side, I've told them throughout their life growing up when they were old enough to understand, I grew up like a monster with food, like everyone, for the most part did unless you had a nice granola mom like Jenny who's like was going to be like, hey, I'll grow some stuff in the backyard. Like the rest of us. The rest of us grew up eating like Kentucky Fried Chicken and drinking orange drink and thinking it was juice and like anything you juice was good for you, etc, and so on. And like so I figured it out as I became a young adult.

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And I did my best to change the course of the ship. But it wasn't that easy. So, you know, so I told I would tell them along the way, we've done our best to give you a better view of food. But the truth is, you do not have a completely correct view of it. Like it's better than what I had. And I'm moving in that direction again. But and they took that seriously. So, you know, I got lucky there, basically, yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:40
I know. I mean, we've tried to do the same. You know, with our kids, we have a garden, we teach them where food comes from, we've taken them to farms, they know what a chicken looks like, they know what a cow looks like they know where food comes from. And a lot of people just don't have the opportunity or understand that that's an important thing to teach. I mean, we've teach we teach portion, like my kids know how to read a food label. Not many kids their age, without diabetes, know how to read a food label, you know. So, you know, these are again, they're things that aren't being taught. And we need to remember to teach them I would say that people with diabetes are probably a step ahead in terms of understanding compared to the general public, which isn't a bad thing. Yeah.

Scott Benner 27:25
So I've so that's my public service announcement, you should eat better, you should eat whole foods and limit sugar intake and like you shouldn't, you know, your day shouldn't be 600 carbs or something like that, you know, like, like, all that's aside. Now, having said all that, if you can't accomplish that, for some reason, the answer isn't give away your diabetes health on top of it. Like right, that's it. So maybe you'll get the eating thing together, and you'll figure it out. But in the meantime, we don't just go Oh, sugar makes my blood sugar go up, and I don't do anything about it. And I can't stop eating ice cream. So I guess I'm gonna die. Like like that's, that's what the at the core of what I think this podcast is about, I think it's about taking the correct amount of insulin for what you're eating.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:08
Correct. And that goes right along with not having to think about the word restriction, right? It's learning how to use this medication that we have to have in order for the food that we choose to put in to actually work well and keep our body healthy. Long term. Yeah,

Scott Benner 28:27
I choose to take a bigger, holistic view of the whole thing. I don't I think that it's obvious where we all are as a society. I don't think that you just changed that with a light switch because someone told you you have type two or type one diabetes. So we're going to take care of our health, learn how to manage that. And then hopefully over time, you will come to a better understanding about your food. And if you don't, at least your blood sugar's have been under your control threshold. And by the way, at least, amazing, you know, right? That's always been my, my perspective. Like if I step back a little bit from like two people having a conversation and talk to you like the person who makes the podcast, it was my expectation that we didn't you can't make everyone do the right thing. So they should have as many tools as they have to apply to whatever their thing is correct. Yeah. And I don't have any trouble with it like to say that. I don't want people to hear that and go, Oh, he says Bolus for whatever but he's at home eating quinoa. I've never had chemo on my life. I couldn't identify. And I had three chocolate chip cookies last weekend. But, but what happens again, like Jenny, our pediatrician diagnosed us and the first thing I thought is I can't bake anymore. I love baking. You know like so that's that's how that hid a person who didn't know anything about diabetes five minutes before. People think I have to bring or drink something special because they don't provide drinks for me when I come to fat family gatherings. This is a big one. And isn't it? diet drinks? There's a divide in the world. There's people who don't worry about their blood sugar who say, I don't eat that aspartame, it makes mice go crazy or whatever they say. And then there's people like I, I can't have a drink with sugar and it'll make my blood sugar go up to 400 That's that one happens constantly, doesn't it?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:22
It does happen and I'm, you know, I'm in a different sort of lane altogether. I don't expect somebody to have something for me for a beverage. I always bring my beverage along. If I want something outside of water, which, these days most people have bottled water or something available for people to drink. Great. I'll have that. If not, I will bring my own stuff along that I know what's in it. I know that it's not you know, whatever color such and such. That's going to turn my eyeballs green.

Scott Benner 30:54
Well, Jenny, now that I jacked up on the Wii govi I'm bringing, I'm bringing my own drinks places. Not that I would, I would never drink a sugary drink. Like I just was beyond like my I can't even tell you what it tastes like if I drink something like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:11
Did you? Did you grow up with sugary drinks? Or did you not because I I also don't prefer sugary or sweetie types of drinks. But we didn't grow up. We did even before I was diagnosed. It was not in the house because my that was just it was either milk or water. That was what

Scott Benner 31:28
we drank cut rate soda. So whatever like the you remember the Did everyone have a grocery store that the bags didn't have printing on it. So they were cheaper. And the labels were all white is like poor people grocery store, you might not have had one I had one. And that's where we used to go. So like off brand soda juice, like in, you know, giant tubs of sugary crystals that you dissolved in water. Like that's all we drank. But I as I got older, I was like, That's stupid. I'm not going to do that. And, you know, and so I changed that. I think I went to diet soda first. And then I lost my flavor for it. Like now I can't like I was in a restaurant in Atlanta visiting with my son. And they had Mexican coke. So like real cane sugar, Coca Cola, and I was like, give me one of those please. I would like to try that. It was like a 12 ounce bottle. I was halfway through it. I'm assuming that's what meth feels like. Like, holy hell. I was like, I can't keep doing this. So I just I stopped. I was like, Does anyone else want to try this? I can't completely drink this gel on my stomach. It felt weird in my head. It tasted horrible. Like as far as I could tell. But no, I grew up with it. I just changed my palate. On that one. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:50
So I think the last sip of like real soda actually had was we went on a trip to Peru with some friends who were Peruvian. And they insisted we had to try this, like neon yellow soda from the bodega down the street. Like, okay, like there's no label on it. This is a total like, swig of sugar, or whatever.

Scott Benner 33:16
I guess I'll see what happens. I don't even know where this came from.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:19
I don't know what the flavor was. I have nothing to compare it to. But I could not believe that this was the like it was the beverage. Yeah, it was like the thing did

Scott Benner 33:30
you know what also changed my palate is that I grew up with like legit sugar. Like my example here is if you eat Fruity Pebbles, or Apple Jacks, if you're a person who's doing that right now, in real time, you are eating a terrible version of Fruity Pebbles and Apple Jacks because they were so much better in the 80s that I don't know why I have no idea why. But they changed the food that I grew up with. And so I was like this. I don't even like this anymore. It's not good anymore. It got me away from it too. I can't tell you how many here are just like my son. They they told me my son can't have cake. My daughter has dietary restrictions. This goes on and on. Here's one though. I hate that people think my child cannot eat sugary foods or junk foods even because he has type one, or that his diet somehow caused this type one. a teaching assistant at school tried to deny my eight year old non type one son ice cream because his brother has diabetes. So that lady turned to the sibling and when you people you're prone to this you can't have no ice cream. Like that's that's something

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:40
I also am what I'm astounded about in this whole line of like discussion is how somebody who has not lived it is taking it upon themselves to make a decision for somebody who clearly is living with it. Right like where where do you get one Sorry, where do not make my decisions for me, if I want to down those five cookies, I'm gonna down the five cookies and I'm gonna figure it out and take care of it. And it's, it's not on you. It. So don't worry about me, please,

Scott Benner 35:14
this might be a dangerous part of the conversation for me. I'm fascinated by all the things people think they're qualified to do some way your life is is a dumpster fire this year. Sure about like, fascinating, you know, absolutely fascinating to me. You know, that's a different conversation. That's the conversation, Jenny, I'll have them private when we see each other. On the podcast, maybe. Let's see, people brought meals to our house after my daughter was diagnosed and asked, or told us they didn't bring desserts because they didn't want her to get worse. There you go, Oh, or to keep having diabetes. That was another thing they got. I understand their intentions were pure, but I just kept saying, Oh, she can eat anything. diabetes isn't going to go away. It's a lifelong autoimmune condition. And sometimes sugar saves her life even. She said the looks that she got made made made her feel like they were looking at her like she didn't know what she was talking about. So same thing. And she throws in something else here that has nothing to do with this topic. So I'm going to jump over the I mean, what I'm getting is that people hear constantly Oh, you're diabetic bla bla bla. But here's one, an endo ask them. I was once asked by an endo should you should should you be eating that? Like not their endo and endo in a in a social setting? Wow. What are you gonna do there? I don't know.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:44
Maybe that was an endo. who clearly doesn't see a lot of people with diabetes in their practice. Maybe they focus on like hormone regulation, or? I don't know, I'm trying to give them I'm trying to give them some reason for being silly. And what their what they said to that person.

Scott Benner 37:00
You want a funny one? A friend of mine told me I shouldn't eat onions because they're just pure sugar. Think that goes back to your other. Your other statement of like, how do people talk about things that they don't know about? Right? That's it. He's more fruit and vegetables. My gosh, there's so many things here, way back, a school principal asked my mom, if she could wean me off of the snacks. We, oh, that's a quote wean me off of the snacks. And she's saying these were the snacks I use to bring my blood sugar's back up when they got low.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:41
I'm curious how it probably isn't in the post. But like that, that sounds almost like when I was younger in school, I did have snack times that were very specific because of the type of insulin I had and the way that it worked. So they were timed. And it almost sounds like this person has had diabetes a long time and remembers that being asked, without the understanding that there was probably something in effect there that the snacks were necessary for not necessarily just for low blood sugars. But maybe that was just the way that it was because that was the way her insulin was working right? And again, we'll weaning you off. Like, when are we going to get to the point that you don't have to send the snacks to school with your child? Well, when the pancreas starts making some more insulin,

Scott Benner 38:35
where are they thinking? Well, the snacks are the problem like one or the other. It doesn't matter. It's it doesn't matter. I'm gonna skip through the your feet will fall off comments. There are a lot of them. But here's the one I was once treating my low blood sugar with Smarties, my husband's grandpa regaled me with a story about how his mother's feet at age 90 lost. She lost a toe and he said you shouldn't eat that. That's how my mom lost a toe. So by the way, that might be how his mom wants to tell. Like maybe she had untreated type two diabetes for most of her life. And like, I have no idea by the way it 90 If the worst thing that happens to be at 90 Is someone takes one of my toes. I'm gonna be like I'm killing it here. But

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:17
I didn't need it anyway.

Scott Benner 39:19
No kidding, though, Jenny. I'm scrolling past a page of comments about people who have been told about feeds or feet. Yes. People who love to say, oh, that's diabetes on a plate, or that's diabetes in a cup, that that sort of thing. She says I hate that. And I hate it when comedians use it as a joke. This one's interesting. My family was shocked when I explained to them that we actually have more juice and candy in the house now that my child has diabetes than we did before they did. And this one's interesting. This person was told that you can't do intermittent fasting as a type one. I'm going to tell you right now that's not true. That's definitely not true. Arden's I mean listen Arden's on a, on an algorithm. So in fairness, like there's a thing trying to stop her from getting low, but it's very successful. And she is definitely a person who eats at a window. Like I would, I would bet that in a 24 hour period, Arden probably only eats for eight or 10 hours of that. And she's not running around low constantly. Right? Yeah. That's it. That is the end of the diabetes myth. For that we have diet restrictions you have anything to add to it?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:34
I don't think so. Not about the diet restriction stuff. Do we have more myths to deal with? Oh,

Scott Benner 40:39
my God. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:40
don't we, I was gonna like we had 52 pages, there have to be more

Scott Benner 40:44
complications are inevitable that there is a cure, that there are strict rules to follow like strict do's and don'ts. And insulin pump will fix everything. These are all episodes, you will still hear coming in this that you have the bad type of diabetes. Type ones can't be overweight type twos are definitely overweight. Type Two can become type one, vice versa. i You should see. Oh, that this isn't a myth. This is just people who don't understand insulin is what you get when your blood sugar's low. Oh, yes. Insulin pumps are bad for diabetics.

Unknown Speaker 41:27
Huh? Yeah. Really?

Scott Benner 41:30
Yeah. How about that you're doing drugs?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:35
Yeah. I mean, that was that's a funny one. I mean, it is and it isn't, I can understand from one perspective that clearly it looks very weird. From one angle to some outsider who just doesn't know. I mean, my friends. I mean, I did not have a pump until I got married. So I was MDI for a very long time. And all of my friends, they love to hang out. Jenny's got a shoot up, it's time to eat. Like they thought it was hilarious. And I did as well. I mean, I was not bothered by that. I'm, I let a lot of things just sort of roll. I'm like, Ah, doesn't, that doesn't hurt me. So whatever. It's kind of funny. So listen, it's

Scott Benner 42:13
one of the all this falls under that category to some if you think it's funny, it's funny. Like, right. Arden does not care if you joke about diabetes. Yeah, she goes so far as to say I don't understand why people are upset by that. So it's just her personality. It doesn't bother her. But there are plenty of people in this document are like comedians that make jokes a diabetes infuriate me. So it's just it's personality. That's all. Alright. Well, I appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you very much. It was fun.

Hey, isn't it nice to have Jenny back. Thank you so much, Jenny. If you'd like to, you can hire Jenny. She works at integrated diabetes.com Thanks so much to Omni pod for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Don't forget Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox Get started today with the Omni pod five, where the Omni pod dash and everything check your eligibility. Take a Test Drive. It's all there Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox. If you're looking for community, check out the Juicebox Podcast private Facebook group, which now has 40,000 members in it and adding more every day. Check it out. There's something there for you. Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Hey, everybody, better help as a sponsor of the podcast, and they're offering my listeners 10% off their first month of therapy. It's a great deal. I hope you can check it out. Better help.com forward slash juicebox. Now better help is the world's largest therapy service. That is 100%. Online. They have over 25,000 licensed and experienced therapists, they can help you with a wide range of issues. All you have to do to get started is hit my link. answer a few questions about your needs and preferences and therapy. And that way better help will be able to match you with the right therapist from their network. Better help.com forward slash juicebox you're gonna get the same professionalism and quality as you expect from in office therapy. And if for any reason your therapist isn't right for you, you can switch to a new one at no additional charge. Do therapy on your terms, text chat, phone video call and you can even message your therapist at any time and then schedule a live session when it's more convenient. So if you're looking for someone to talk to check out better help