#1426 Horse Without Wheels

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Julianna, a dietitian, shares how her daughter's type 1 diabetes, dyslexia, and ADHD shape their active, travel-filled life, plus insights from her work in food service.

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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
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox Podcast.

Today I'll be speaking with Juliana. She's the mother of a child with type one diabetes. We're going to talk today about dyslexia, ADHD traveling to and from cold and warm climates with a child with type one and much more, 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. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a nonprofit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Maine or Vermont, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org you know why they had to buy an ad? No one believes it's free.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management. Imagine fewer worries about mis Bolus is or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses, learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box. Us. Med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us. Med, for years, you can as well us. Med.com/juice, box or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, are you tired of getting a rash from your CGM adhesive? Give the ever since 365 a try, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, beautiful silicone that they use. It changes every day, keeps it fresh. Not only that, you only have to change the sensor once a year. So I mean, that's better. Hi.

Julianna 2:37
My name is Juliana quarterman. I am a registered dietitian that lives in Louisiana, and I have a 14 year old T, 1d, female,

Scott Benner 2:47
your daughter has type one. How old was she when she was diagnosed? 11? About three years Yep, but you're a nutritionist.

Julianna 2:57
I am, well, a nutritionist and dietitians are completely different things, as I'm sure Jenny has probably told you along the way, but I am a dietitian.

Scott Benner 3:04
I'm sorry. I apologize. I've misspoken. You're a dietitian. I'm making my notes right now. My brain doesn't work. I haven't recorded in like I went on vacation Joanna, so I haven't recorded for 11 days. So fun. I'm out of practice, so

Julianna 3:23
like, you need a vacation from the vacation probably,

Scott Benner 3:26
I'll tell you what that didn't happen. I'm announcing to you and still be, of course, six months later. Really nobody's business. But in the strangest of turns, my father in law passed away while we were on an airplane going on our vacation.

Julianna 3:44
Oh, man, I've had that happen. I was in Mexico when my uncle died, really, yeah, was not fun, but it, you know, it's when it's time, it's time, and then you just come back and do we gotta do? Yes.

Scott Benner 3:56
So we came back and took 24 hours to pull ourselves together, and went to his funeral yesterday, which was cruelly, I guess, on my mother's birthday. Oh

Julianna 4:07
no, so Papa whammy. You know, things happen in threes, so that just means that you got one more thing coming at you.

Scott Benner 4:14
Well, great. I'm gonna put my shoes on stuff my toe or anything like that. I spent the first 20 minutes of his funeral sitting there with a crystal clear view of my mom laying in her hospital bed at the end of her life, and couldn't shake it. And finally, I just was like, Scott, what are you doing? I wouldn't be crying like the widow here in a second. You know what I mean? So like, I pushed it out of my head, and then my memories of him came in, and I was like, this isn't any better. So it was a it was a tough day, but, uh,

Julianna 4:46
how little triggers can be. Can put you down in a hidey hole very quickly? Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:51
I tried my best to, you know, but it just, it is what it is. Anyway, he was sick, and it kind of came quickly at the end. But my wife is her family are together and working through that. So anyway, what an upbeat starts. Liana, let's go. Where do we go from here? Welcome back from vacation. Your kids got diabetes. My father in law passed away, and our vacation had a veneer of sadness just draped over top of it the entire

Julianna 5:19
time, yeah, it makes it hard to have any fun, right? Our first

Scott Benner 5:23
vacation in six years as a family, we were like, okay, all right, anyway, they will have any fun. Oh, it was very sunny. There were times that you just, you know, it was unavoidable, too. I have the best hand that helps I look, I look lovely, right now, perfect. Yeah. So tell me something. When you thought to come on the podcast, were you thinking I'm a dietitian, who's the mom of a type one, I want to come from that angle, or, like, how did it occur to you?

Julianna 5:55
So Morgan is my daughter, and when I was thinking about the podcast, like, well, so I am a dietitian. However, even, like, even though anybody who has science background, medical background, sometimes you don't want to be said title. You just want to be the parent. And you don't want to be like, Oh, you've got this. And I looked at them, I'm like, you realize when I first learned this was like, 15 years ago, when I was in college, not to date myself, and it was nothing like it is now. And they're like, it's true, but I also, well, Morgan's a competitive athlete. She also has dyslexia and ADHD, so on top of the T 1d It's like, all these things that make up her I just wanted parents to know and going back to school, because we just went back to school on Monday. So this is my Morgan second day school. She's a eighth grader. So it's kind of all accumulated, kind of all together, of basically as collective group. We got this. We can do this. You can do anything, no matter what is presented to you, whether it's using the information from the podcast or the Facebook page, there's always someone there that kind of can steer you into a different route if you're stuck and don't know what to do. Most of the posts on your Facebook page right now are about kids going back to school and all that fun this that happens along the way,

Scott Benner 7:11
yeah, boy, that turns into a it's a title way for a few weeks, or just

Julianna 7:15
Yeah, and then it comes down. Usually it starts in the south, and then it goes to the north. And I was like, Oh, I hope the people in the North, because people are right now up north, are in vacation mode, like, oh, we have a month, and then we're good to go and and then you're like, oh, I should have done this a couple weeks ago. So that's why sometimes living in I think when you're as you're reading the post, like, oh, I use it as I scroll it away, it's like, Ooh, I could probably use that for later. And I scroll it in my brain, and it comes up again, like, Hey, we're gonna try this. And my husband looks like, did you get that from the podcast? I'm like, yep. So it's just, you know, you just kind of using all the information, all the tools you have in the toolbox, yeah, to not only help your your kid or your adult child, your I call them the itty bitties, the the babies who have just got diagnosed, and yourself just to be able to get through every day because your kids functioning at school, which is awesome, but you also yourself personally, have to function too to make yourself happy on daily basis, because, like, it's really hard as you're helping your child, or children to something else too that I've known. You know, if you know, if you can't function, they can't function. Let's put it that way, yeah. So it's kind of accumulation of everything altogether. I just, I have a bonus, because I have the dietetics background to kind of understand how food works with the body and all that kind of stuff. But sometimes it's just thrown out the window because it's not cooked the same, like you cook it like, you know, when Aaron goes back to college, she's like, Oh, cafeteria food. Oh, boy, this is gonna be fun. You know, it's just, you know, everything all together.

Scott Benner 8:44
Yeah, that's interesting. So how much of I don't wanna, like you said, you know, I don't wanna date myself. But how old are you? I'm 4545 and you went to college, obviously, a couple of days ago or more. Yes, are you still working as a dietitian? So this

Julianna 9:02
is what makes it even more fun. So I was in, I was a dietitian working in corporate dining. Corporate dining for everybody means basically nutrition for older people, you know, adults working in I was in business and industry, so I was where they were at corporate office, and they had a cafeteria, and I would help them. They didn't necessarily use my diet to exp background, because I kept forgetting dietitian. I was like, statistician. I was an operations manager, so I helped run the food service operation. That contract dissolved 15 years later. So I did that basically my whole since I got out of college, and then I always wanted to get into school food service. I always had a passion to help the future generation start eating healthy sooner than later to be able to give them a different approach of how to eat healthy, eating school, food service is very tricky, whether you're in public or private, so I kind of finally got that job, like a dream job for me, but I didn't realize how much went into the whole process. It's that just as easy as heat and. Serve. There's so many different rules and regulations you have to follow. If you are in a public school, private school, they don't have any rules. They can pretty much spend as much money as they want to do whatever they want.

Scott Benner 10:10
So is that the limitation is that financial that like you have to make everything work for everybody, make it as healthy as you can, etc, but that you don't have an unlimited budget to do that with. Today's episode is sponsored by a long term CGM that's going to help you to stay on top of your glucose readings. The ever since 365 I'm talking, of course, about the world's first and only CGM that lasts for one year, one year, one CGM. Are you tired of those other CGM, the ones that give you all those problems that you didn't expect, knocking them off, false alerts not lasting as long as they're supposed to. If you're tired of those constant frustrations, use my link, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, to learn more about the ever since 365 some of you may be able to experience the ever since 365 for as low as $199 for a full year. At my link, you'll find those details and can learn about eligibility ever since cgm.com/juicebox check it out. I have always disliked ordering diabetes supplies. I'm guessing you have as well. It hasn't been a problem for us for the last few years, though, because we began using us Med, you can too us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, to get your free benefits. Check us med has served over 1 million people living with diabetes since 1996 they carry everything you need, from CGM to insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies and more. I'm talking about all the good ones, all your favorites, libre three, Dexcom, g7 and pumps like Omnipod five, Omnipod tandem, and most recently, the I let pump from beta bionics, the stuff you're looking for they have it at us. Med, 88887211514, or go to us. Med.com/juice, box, to get started now use my link to support the podcast. That's us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514,

Julianna 12:20
with the public schools, they have to follow certain they have to follow the the USDA rules for what you have to offer minimally to get a reimbursable meal. If a meal is reimbursable, you get money back from the government, and you can keep going. You can you're going with your food service operation, which means public schools get what they call commodities. They get a big truck of food shipped to them, and they have to figure out what to use it because it's basically free. So what it makes it so tricky for public schools is because they have to combine what they get from the government and what they're purchasing themselves, stay on their budget and also serve healthy food and meet requirements. It's crazy. It's quite intense. And then every five years, they get reviewed by the government to make sure they're following the rules. And the rules change a lot, folks, if they're paying attention to the USDA there, they have released new requirements that are starting next year for the sodium content in foods. They're trying to reduce it, and they're also trying to reduce their sugar content as well. But those are the two big ones that are gonna be coming over the next couple of years for sure. And just makes it tricky, because, like, I work for a company, a food management company, right now. I was a food service director, doing my job I like to do, and then my husband had to get relocated to Louisiana, so I wasn't Wisconsin. And then I moved to Louisiana. And then once we moved, Morgan got diagnosed with very, very intense six months, for sure, I think, happens, learning everything all new you possibly can, and digging into a new job at the same time. Like, oh boy. The world was spinning. It was absolutely spinning.

Scott Benner 13:51
It's interesting to think of a school getting like, a truckload of food. Them saying, like, well, here, make something out of all this.

Julianna 13:56
Yes, and that's why you have to hire the the requirements to be a food service director have gone up. So you have to have actually an educational background to get that job like yet, there's so many years of food management, yet there's some nutrition background, because you have to run a team. Usually it can be anywhere from like two people to like 10, depending on what grade level you're serving, and each grade level has different requirements for portion sizes. You have to serve the kids. You can't just give them willy nilly. Going to give everybody a cup, because the babies, that's way too much food. They'll be like, just thrown half of it in the garbage, which is really hard in the food service environment. So interesting.

Scott Benner 14:35
My grandmother, God, when I was little, she'd she'd get up super early in the morning and go to her job like she was there, I think at like five in the morning, she was home by noon, and she just made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sandwiches by hand.

Julianna 14:52
And they still do that. Still. It's still thing. Yes, most of lunch ladies, they call as everybody knows I'm coming in around six. Dollars, and they leave about 132 o'clock, depending on what's going on. That's

Scott Benner 15:04
something. Yeah, I just remember her doing that. That was great. Also, she brought these great cookies home from school. They were awesome. Does this help you? When you like, I know people were like, oh, it's gonna help. But did it help you? Your kid gets diabetes? You're like, Oh, I'm a dietitian. I know what to do. Or, like, I felt

Julianna 15:21
like it was more like, I should know what I'm doing, and I didn't. It

Scott Benner 15:25
was like pressure. Yes, I see very similar

Julianna 15:29
to like people like you. You've had people on the podcast that like doctors or like kind of stuff. And sometimes like, like them, they don't get a lot of they get training in that global type of sense, right? And then when they get down to the specialty, then they can really dig into So, like, not all these doctors are becoming endocrinologist, so they just give it, they study for it, they pass the test. Okay, next, next thing. It's kind of the same thing with, yeah, yeah. It's like, then you get your feet wet. You're like, holy, symbolic. This is like, I have to do what, I gotta wake up at two o'clock in the morning and check your blood sugar. Oh, my goodness gracious. I want to sleep. Want

Scott Benner 16:02
to sleep. One of the craziest private conversations I've ever had was a person put me in touch with a friend and said, Hey, I've got a friend. Kid was diagnosed, and you know, would you spend 20 minutes on the phone with him, just chatting with him? I was like, Yeah, sure, whatever. So I helped out. I got on the phone, and the person who got on the phone was an accomplished and intelligent surgeon, and, yeah, humbling, isn't it? Oh, were they confused and and, and really scared, like, and that was like, just tell. Like, I did my best, but I was telling for me because I got off the phone, I was like, Oh my gosh, that person's they don't know what to do. Why would you settle for changing your CGM every few weeks when you can have 365 days of reliable glucose data? Today's episode is sponsored by the ever since 365 it is the only CGM with a tiny sensor that lasts a full year sitting comfortably under your skin with no more frequent sensor changes and essentially no compression lows. For one year, you'll get your CGM data in real time on your phone, smart watch, Android or iOS, even an Apple Watch, predictive high and low alerts let you know where your glucose is headed before it gets there. So there's no surprises, just confidence, and you can instantly share that data with your healthcare provider or your family. You're going to get one year of reliable data without all those sensor changes. That's the ever sense. 365 gentle on your skin, strong for your life. One sensor a year, that gives you one less thing to worry about, head now to ever sense, cgm.com/juicebox, to get started, right?

Julianna 17:46
And they're trying to, it's the pressure of like, I should know this, I'm this awesome surgeon. I have all these skills, but when it comes down to something that's not your specialty or your expertise, you're like, it's like, going back to kindergarten again, learning over and trying to make it like I always try to, because of Morgan being dyslexic and all that other stuff, I try to keep the kiss method, keep it simple stupid, like we used to in the beginning. I used to count on the carbs. I was teaching her how to read nutrition labels, and because, because the reading is not the best. And like, I'm like, Okay, this is you. This is what the word looks like. This is what this means. And we were, like, being exact, but that could put me in a bad spot, because I felt like I was constantly having to watch and, like, director and all that kind of stuff. I'm like, You know what? We're just gonna I'm gonna put on the plate, and we're just gonna sway it. We're just gonna Morgan, what do you think? Kind of take out the because her math skills with the dyslexia are the best. He relies, relies on Siri lots. Like, Hey, Siri, what's 10 plus 10? I'm like, Morgan. She's like, whatever. I'm like, Okay, fine. So he's using technology as her tool, which is great. So now, where we are right now, I'm like, she looks the plate, what? I think she's like, she's like, 35

Scott Benner 18:53
I'm like, Sure. Which is, it's pretty close, yeah. So it's

Julianna 18:57
this amazing removing the pressure from her too. We were part of a study, I don't remember the Yale or Harvard or something, where they were teaching us how to talk to each other, to not like, I use the analogy beating our kids over the fat because they're I took blood sugar 300 what's going on? Like, changing your turn. Like, hey, Morgan, what's going on? What the when's the last time you ate? What did you eat? And what did you do? Like, having her tell the story to me, instead of me going through her pump phone and because she's on the Omnipod five and trying to figure her history, you know, like kind of stuff, I'm like, I knew it was making me wacky, like I wasn't able to function outside of diabetes world, which is why I was told in the beginning, like living the dream, because I've now been able to step myself back, take a breath and, like, let her

Scott Benner 19:44
lead the way. Is that? What got you there? Like that, walking her through things over and over again till she understood better what was happening? Yes, yeah, I'm a fan. Because then

Julianna 19:55
when you throw in swim practice, because it comes, like, two hours, um. In the summertime, it's first thing in the morning. It's from 630 to 830 so that's just I prefer. I prefer that because it's way easier. She gives up, gets up, eats if she needs to, goes to the pool, swims, then she comes home and has the rest of the day. But then when you switch it and have it at the end of the school day, at the four o'clock at night, it just your body is not used to that at all. Whether you're diabetic or not, you have to like a time change. You have to like shift to when your your body is ready to do something. So it's being I always consider myself a scientist, being looking at the graph, which I try hard to not go into numbers too hard, and I know a lot, but you can see what they are. You generally speaking, can understand and but you're like, Okay, so we need to make sure that you're at least 200 before you get in the pool. And that gets challenging because she's on ADHD medicine for schools. She doesn't really want to eat. So taking medication in the morning, go to school, don't really want to eat. Having a protein shake for lunch just to get something. Otherwise, she wasn't going to eat all that. You got to eat something. And then trying to figure out what to eat before practice. So you don't take after warm ups, which is only 30 minutes, and you still have an hour, 30 minutes to go. How much

Scott Benner 21:09
swimming happens in time? Like, miles wise, no time even. Just like, how much activity in the water is there? They have it about two hours. Oh, okay, geez, that's a lot.

Julianna 21:20
So she gets out halfway like, usually she'll do the warm up. If she feels fine, she'll keep going. But then halfway through, people get out and go check her blood sugar. Really, she connects her Dexcom, or she does a thing, or whatever she wants to do. It doesn't matter. Usually, when she goes back into the locker room and she connects, I can see her numbers like, it's fine, she can keep going. But there were some times where she was like, 70, going down to maybe 60. I'm like, need a juice box or something. And she's sitting in the locker room, and I'm working out at the gym, because I know that became a pattern after I'm like, I need to know, I there's something going on the coaches, I understand that she has diabetes. Say we were in the when we got diagnosed. First thing, like, most athletes, can I still do this? And the doctor's like, absolutely you can and, like, two weeks later, we were on the bus going to San Antonio, and I was like, Oh my gosh, it was, like, nervous. That was the scariest trip I've ever had. Was that, because we just newly out of the hospital, he was on a Dexcom, thank goodness, but we were MDI, and, yeah, learned a lot that trip.

Scott Benner 22:18
I mean, have you learned yet that without active insulin, exercise is easier, and maybe you're not going to drop as much. Yes, yes. I was wondering, have you ever had the opportunity to roll her out of bed and put her right in a pool without eating, without Bolus thing, without anything? No, I'd be so interested to see what would happen there

Julianna 22:37
from my like dietitian brain, she needs a little bit of fuel to be able to burn it off, because if you don't have any in the tank, you're just going to burn off what's there, then you will potentially drop

Scott Benner 22:47
let me jump in. I'm going to tell you something that I think that fasting blood sugars that don't have active insulin, this is much easier to do with an algorithm that's set up well, quite honestly. But you know, I've seen Arden get out of bed and live five, six hours without her blood sugar moving, Yep,

Julianna 23:09
yeah. And that happened yesterday when we went to first day of school after the first official day that she wasn't super hungry. I'm like, Okay, this will be fun to see what happens. And she was fine. Literally, pelvic. It was like, Yeah, I have her target because of swim practice. We have offers from practice, and it starts next week or something like that. They're trying to get the kids used to school and all that kind of stuff. So I have her target a little bit a little bit higher. I think it's at 140 or something like that. You know, it's on the higher end. But whatever, it works for us,

Scott Benner 23:36
and you're trying, and you're trying to get acclimated to school again, yes,

Julianna 23:40
yeah, yes. Because that way before it was, like, I had it set at like, 110 and because of her not eating at school, and then as soon as she gets on the bus to go through some practice, all the adrenaline were things just kind of coming down. So she had to eat too much to get into the pool, and the exercise mode for her doesn't work. It just makes her skyrocket. So she can't use exercise mode. So she'll eat a little something sometimes, and then they'll be fine. They'll go up to, like 200 then she'll come back down. But meets, that's a whole another monster. A lot of competitive swim parents understand that sometimes you just she'll start an activity mode because it's all jacked up ready to go. And then we take it off, we turn it off, and she just has to give herself, like we manual variety. We give her, like one unit or two units, just to kind of have some active insulin there, to kind of slowly bring

Scott Benner 24:24
her down. Can I ask you to swimming act mostly as aerobic exercise on her impact, or is there some anaerobic feature to it? It's both for her, it is. It all

Julianna 24:35
depends on what they're doing. I mean, every practice is different. It's not the same. So I can tell when it's easy practice, because she'll eat something and her blood sugar won't come down. Or if it's hard, she'll eat something and she'll be like, 80 when she gets to be in the car. And like, All right, we'll see how this goes. And on top of this crazy swim practice, he goes to lift some prostrating right out. Or swim practice for an hour so

Scott Benner 25:01
she can go from aerobic to anaerobic, like aerobic, like Swim, swim, swim, to lifting. All of a sudden, does the lifting push the and the drop from the aerobic back up again?

Julianna 25:15
He's usually fine, because her body's gonna she usually eats uncovered, and then she will go to lifting, and then she'll come back, and she'll eat again, and we half dose, because she's kind of sensitive at that point, because of all the three hours of exercise you just did. Okay, so we had to be really careful at night before she's going to bed. What we do? Because if for her, if she has over five active units on board. She will tank, yeah. And it's like an hour and a half of not fighting the low really, just kind of giving her, like a juice box 15 minutes, okay, not working. Here's another and say, Stop. She think I just want to sleep. I'm like, Dude, you gave yourself too much insulin. So it's, you know, yeah, having to relearn all that over again. And then I'm, you know, and for her, she likes to do her Dexcom fan changes that night. And we're still on the g6 so we, you know, that has a lot of that's always fun, too.

Scott Benner 26:11
I It's the bane of my existence. I'm like, please change the equipment during the day. Please, please.

Julianna 26:17
Do you like to do it the night before? Because so when Morgan wears over patches for swimming, she starts getting irritated by it. So she actually doesn't wear any over patches, and it stays until 10 days. Okay, do I do skin tech or any of that stuff? We just plop it right on there. And keep in mind we live. I consider Louisiana Hot Box, particularly for right now. It's supposed to be like 110 today, or something like that. So, and a lot of people have to,

Scott Benner 26:39
yeah, no, I know the over patches are necessary for a lot of people. If you, if you have the right, you know the right type of skin, and they don't come off you usually, that's lucky. Yep. I just meant when you know if you're gonna put a CGM on, I don't know how accurate it's gonna be in the first handful of hours. Could we not do that overnight? Yep.

Julianna 26:57
And I, we, I beg with her all the time, and she's like, nope. Also,

Scott Benner 27:01
we know how the clock works, right? Like, so, like, let's not change your pump at 11 o'clock, because you know for sure it's going to expire at midnight or something like that one day, or you're going to be up in the middle of the night changing it. Like, just, please while the sun's up, no one listens to me. So that doesn't actually happen. I have a question about your move. She didn't have diabetes in Wisconsin. Is that right? I don't know. She might have, but it wasn't diagnosed in Wisconsin. No, she was not. She was diagnosed Louisiana. That's right. Okay, so you don't have a big like knowledge bed about hot weather versus cold weather?

Julianna 27:36
Actually, we, I do, because I have so we travel quite a bit. We're fortunate enough to be able to do that, and we don't like lot of people. That's why I was saying before living the dream. Because we like, Okay, we're going to go to Costa Rica, or we're going to go to Panama, or we're going to fly to Portland and go skiing for two weeks. So the weather changes. When Morgan goes to the beach, she tends to because of all the extra activity, even though she's very active young lady, when she goes to the beach, there's even more and so she gets even more sensitive. And we were in Costa Rica. It was on the this was before the five came out, and I literally the first four or five days, it was just the basal running in the background. We could not dose her for food, because she would drop to like 60. And so it was, like, amazing. And then the environment, and then we went back to the normal schedule. Was

Scott Benner 28:26
that towards the beginning? Do you think there was a honeymoon happening? Or is that probably

Julianna 28:29
with some honey? There was probably some honeymoon going on there? When we were skiing, we couldn't use activity mode, and it was not super cold. Mean, it's colder than here. That's when we were skiing over Christmas, and her pancreas died, and so we ever like, had to readjust everything to get her into range. There was several nights that it was not the

Scott Benner 28:53
case, yeah, when the when the the honeymoon just suddenly kind of shifted and stopped. Yes?

Julianna 28:58
Yeah, crazy. And then on top of that, she was also getting ready to have her nutrition

Scott Benner 29:03
as well, or what, I'm sorry. Oh, menstruation. Oh, yeah, yeah. So

Julianna 29:08
we, we all could tell, even my husband, like, Oh, she must be getting her period soon. Like, yep, because as soon as he hit that pillow, they would go up. And so we would go and give her a correction, and then she would slowly come back down. But hormones are real.

Scott Benner 29:22
Yeah, they're really something is what they are. Hey, do you have other Do you have other kids?

Julianna 29:26
I have a older son. He is 16. He's a junior in high school, okay?

Scott Benner 29:30
And is there any other autoimmune in your family? No. Anybody else with the ADHD. My mom, my mother in law, okay, no thyroid though.

Julianna 29:42
She actually, she does take um, thyroid medication. So

Scott Benner 29:45
yes, Juliana, is that right? Yes, yeah,

Julianna 29:49
she's, she's quite a funny lady. Sometimes she takes it, sometimes she doesn't, but yes, but it

Scott Benner 29:56
might be why she's a funny lady. Okay. So there's thyroid on your husband's side, ADHD on your husband's side. I just, I don't know. I was having a conversation last night with a group of people. They asked me some of the things that I learned from the podcast. And I said, it's fascinating. How many people, if you dig through their life and their family a little bit, will say things like, oh, there's ADHD here. Or we have some anxiety. People are depressed. I have an uncle who's bipolar, this type one. There's other autoimmune stuff, like, it's all just very, I don't know it's

Julianna 30:30
all connected in some way. Yeah, whether it's genetic or like, I have I'm dyslexic. I got diagnosed when I was in high school, and my biggest fear was that my kids were good dyslexia, because even though I'm very high functioning adult, I helped to run like a $4 million business before I got into this stay at home job. So it just you know you, once you learn how to adapt to your your new you, most people can be highly successful, and you would have no clue that something was potentially hindering how they are processing something. Like, I always tell Morgan, like you were the same as this person. You just take longer to get there, yeah, or you do it your own way, and you're still there. She's like, and she's finally truly understanding that like her. She was in resource for a couple classes. Her goal was to be back into gen ed, and this year, she accomplished that. For math she made she made good grades she was in. They had resource, and then did inclusion, which is some kids with learning disabilities or exceptionalities, is what they call Louisiana. And then then they have some gen ed kids, and they combine it, and they have a helper, and now she's fully immersed back into Gen Ed this year. Yeah, that's excellent. They they get there. Just takes them longer. You just gotta keep trying to be positive as much as you can.

Scott Benner 31:45
Learning different skills too is really valuable. Yeah, I

Julianna 31:49
never really know what she tells her classmates, because every year you have students with some of the same classmates and some new people, and she does not hide her her gear, she people can see it. So I never either. Was one little kid that asked her, our neighbor kids like, what is that? So that melts in my heart. I'm like, oh, because it's hard to explain to a six year old. Yeah, what that is. I was talking

Scott Benner 32:11
with these people last night, and I said somebody said something about, like, I don't understand why. They just don't, speaking about a person with ADHD. And I said, if you knew somebody was born with a limp, would you say to them, like, I don't understand why you don't just walk without a limp? There's this interesting thing that happens when you're things happening in your mind. People sometimes look at it and say, why don't you just stop doing that? It's not easy. It's not even not easy. They don't know it's happening. It's like anything else, like, it's a function of your body. You don't understand it's even going on. Maybe you see outside, you know, reflected back at you, and you realize, oh, maybe, you know, I have ADHD, or I don't see myself the way other people see themselves, or that kind of, like, you know what I mean, like you see it reflected back at you, but you don't know internally, what's happening is, you're just you. I was fascinated that they couldn't. People are having trouble wrapping their mind around that, like, I'm like, that person's not being flighty on purpose or because they don't want to try harder. This is just, this is how it works for them, you know. So when my

Julianna 33:11
daughter is on her in Asia medicine, she's very she's gonna, I equate it to her kind of being stoned, you know, she's calmer. She when she's not on it. You can tell, because she's constantly bit firing questions. My brother in law called her the pistol because it's constant, like, one question, I don't know. Let's do this. Let's do that. Like, there's no, like, calmness, no, it's just it's kind of intense, if you're not used to it, yeah, she does not take her medication on the weekends or in the summertime. We kind of let her be, let her be her,

Scott Benner 33:41
to her. So interesting that conversation moved on to other things later, but I just can't I can't wait to see how some some of the newer medications maybe end up helping people where they didn't expect. But that's not for this conversation. Let's see you talked about in your notes to make sure you take care of yourself. You were talking about being a parent of type one.

Julianna 34:06
So what? When Morgan first, before Morgan got diagnosed, I was trying to take care of myself, because I usually let make sure my husband and my kids are doing their thing being successful. That the move here was rough around my son at first, but then he finally kind of turned the corner, and now he's thriving and doing great in high school. My daughter was supposed to butterflies. She met everybody, and I'm like, Okay, now it's my turn. And I was like, started doing more exercising I like to do. I found a trainer who was doing Olympic training. I'm like, Sure, I'll try it. And I was doing great losing weight, all that kind of stuff. And then she got diagnosed. It all fell off the wheel. I fell off the horse. Then I was started getting depressed on my end, because, like, oh, I can't take care of her and do this and some finally, what, three years later, trying to get back into a routine for myself, to make myself in a better head space. But it does take time. You just have to. Kind of I would like this morning. You just gotta breathe. You just gotta work through it every day. If you have a friend who, lot of times, when you have a kid with a medical condition, you have friends but they don't truly understand it, I've been fortunate enough to have people like, tell me about this. Like, what can I help you? Can I follow numbers? You know what you know? So it's trying to slowly introduce them into what we have to deal with. In the beginning, it was very bumpy with the honeymooning and trying to figure out carb ratios and all that jazz. It has much calm down so you wouldn't even know she is a diabetic until you saw that she was had her technology on her. Can

Scott Benner 35:37
you do something for me? Can you explain to me what your life was like before, and what it was like when you realized I'm in trouble here, before diagnosis, yeah, like, where? What is the thing you were trying to get back to? And where had you where did you start? Where did you end up? What were you trying to get back to? For

Julianna 35:53
me, I was just wanting I was not happy. I was in a place where I didn't know anybody. I was working out of the house. But then I kept getting fur load because of the times that were going on, and I really couldn't get out of the house. I was basically I called this my prison. And jokingly call my house my prison, because I work here, live here, sleep here. I do everything out of here. And I get very nervous in social situations because I have a My call myself. I have a very funny personality because I don't have a filter. I've been doing a very good job here. I usually just say what I think, and just usually what other people are thinking too, but usually comes out of my mouth and they're like, look at me, like, I'm a crazy person. And then I'm like, Oh yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Like, well, I'm the one who just said it. So I was struggling to find that a new group of friends or acquaintances that I could just get out of my prisoners talk about life and make me realize that I'm not the only person who has a kid who's having trouble making friends or, like, I can't figure out how I need something more crock pot recipes, because we're constantly go from, you know, that kind of thing, right? And so I started doing, like, Okay, I put myself out there, and I was incredibly nervous, because I don't didn't want to say anything wrong that would offend somebody, because I'm a Yankee trying to live in the southern world. Took some time, and then I was finally felt like I was going out with friends. I was we're going to dinner party, like on double dates and all that kind of stuff. And then Morgan got diagnosed, and I decided my husband travels a lot, so I basically became the de facto lead on the management in the beginning, my husband does a great job when he is here. He follows her, like, when he's traveling, he'll call and say, Is she okay? Like, all this stuff, but I'm usually the point of contact for school, swimming, everything is me, because it's easy when I'm working out the house.

Scott Benner 37:38
Yeah? So that was exhausting and isolating, yes,

Julianna 37:42
okay, very depressing. Was not in a good head space. Felt like I sucked. Not gonna lie, you felt like you sucked. Yeah, it's like, I don't people want to do things that being it like is because I was putting my my kids, my daughter's management first, like it was consuming me, like I was she went back to school. We're very fortunate in Louisiana, in the beginning, like most places, and nurses were rotating between schools, but then three weeks after Morgan, so Morgan got diagnosed in June, and we started school in August, so we had some time to kind of kind of figure out, maybe potentially, the nice thing was that when the paperwork got back to the schools, the nurse called me instead of me trying to get ahold, like, Hey, I saw your paperwork. We got this, we will get back to school. That kind of was a little bit more relieving that, okay, I don't have to be sitting at school making sure everything's going because I was really worried that I had to be the right amount like, I because they're

Scott Benner 38:34
like, you just have to sit outside for the rest of her life and wait for something to go wrong.

Julianna 38:40
Yeah, just like, kind of sit there figure out that. I'm like, Well, I'm not so I'm like, Okay, this is not, you know, that wasn't the case. We and then three weeks after her she got diagnosed, they made state law that there's a nurse in every school in Louisiana, in Louisiana, can you believe it? That's awesome. I was like, No way. So, and we've been very fortunate to have some very fabulous nurses, and as people are going back to school, just give them some grace. This is a teaching moment for you to teach them how you manage. Keep in mind they also have lots of other obligations to help other kids too, not just your kid, and that it gets easier as your kid gets older. Like, this is Morgan's told me before, especially, like, I want to be independent. We had an endocrineologist appointment before getting all the paperwork ready. And she's like, well, I can't fill out. There's nothing in my paperwork that will that I can do to say that, but there is something for school. And I was reading the school paperwork, and sure enough, I clicked independent talk to the nurse. She's like, Yep, she's good. She doesn't have to come here. Like, I'm like, okay, there we go. Morgan Sophie, you have to you're independent, and go back to where she's Yep, you're independent. Sunshine. And that's like,

Scott Benner 39:46
we checked the right box. It's all okay now.

Julianna 39:50
Well, I mean, it's every school district is different. Like, there's a lot of places like you have to be no matter what, you have to go check in at lunch. And there are some right middle schoolers that say that they're good. They got this, they know it better than you do, and then they'll just make a roll. But they're also going to have times where they're all wackadood, like they have a test, or they're sick, or their gym class got switched before lunch, and it's just there's so many things that can potentially happen. But as you give your kids the confidence to speak up for themselves, because Morgan really struggles because she doesn't want to call attention to herself. She's not the leader. She likes to be led, but she also likes to do it the right way, not break the rules. Like she said, I remember, she's like, Oh, am I going to get in trouble? Like, No, we're just kind of talking about this. I had

Scott Benner 40:32
a question. Where'd it go? Jesus, let me dig it out of my head. This is my first day back in a while. How about that?

Julianna 40:37
I'm like, I'm kind of rambling too. So I apologize. No, no.

Scott Benner 40:40
Listen, you are who you are. Do you have ADHD? No, okay. Has anyone ever said to you? You do? Nope, yeah. Well, I'm

Julianna 40:52
pretty good at focusing. I have an office upstairs. I'm in the guest bedroom, and once I get down and sit down and start working, I could, like, work to five o'clock. I'm like, oh my goodness, it's already five o'clock. I gotta do my I gotta do my family thing. So no, it's more of me with the sex, because I process things a little bit differently. I have some high level people that I work with, and I'm like, You need to dumb that down just a little bit. You don't make any sense to me. But we all learn from each other. Like, I kind of re approach it a different way. Like, do you mean like this? And they're like, yes, like, Okay,

Scott Benner 41:24
does that impact like, because you just used the word rambling. And so, like, does that impact that for you? Like, do you feel like, do you feel like, do you feel like you're all over the place right now? Or no, no, I don't think you are. You jump around a little bit, but I do, yeah, but you jump around within the within the topic, Yep, yeah,

Julianna 41:43
I somewhat circle back to the home conversation. I never like for for taking care of yourself. You just have to find the five to 10 minutes that you can do something for you. For me, my kids go to school earlier in the morning before I start work, I do a little workout routine, video thing that I follow, where I go for a walk every morning and walk every night. Like, that's, that's what I do. So

Scott Benner 42:07
that's a good example of, I don't know why you're telling me that in response to what I just said. Like, so I'm missing something. What you do that to help what

Julianna 42:17
well you were in. You asked me a question, like, like, where I started, what happened, and then where I ended up, and I never told you where I ended up.

Scott Benner 42:24
That's interesting. So I can we go back for a second? I said, Is there something about your dyslexia that makes you jump around within conversations, and you then told me the end of the original story? I did? Yeah, not the, not the answer to my question. So is there something about dyslexia that, because I There might not be, but I'm just asking, like, is there something about

Julianna 42:47
not, for you, me being it's just, it's just me being nervous. You know, are

Scott Benner 42:53
you nervous still a little bit? Yeah, people come on, and I know they're nervous, but sometimes it clears up for them. But yours, yours hasn't cleared up at all. What do you think you're nervous about saying the wrong thing? Interesting, so you said earlier about you didn't want to say the wrong thing being a northerner in the south. And I was going to ask you, did that ever end up being a real problem? Is that something you still think about?

Julianna 43:17
I think about it all the time, making sure that I'm being respectful of the climate, the environment, the State of the Unions going on. You know, you just gotta, you have to be able to read the room and know what is appropriate and what is not. And sometimes, when I'm with people that I can trust, I can truly like, just let the guard down and play it

Scott Benner 43:38
in conjunction with a geographic change, you're aware of that, and it's still, still something you're aware of. Now, in the specific example of making the podcast, you're nervous about saying the wrong thing to who,

Julianna 43:51
when somebody listens to a podcast to get ideas about something, you can give someone like, oh, this lady said this, I'm going to try this, and I'm just trying to be informative. Oh,

Scott Benner 44:01
you're worried. You're worried that you're going to say something is going to lead somebody to do something that isn't correct, potentially, yes, yeah, that's interesting. I thought you meant that you didn't, you just didn't want to offend anybody. But that's not a that's not a concern. And

Julianna 44:17
with with your group, I don't think that's truly possible because you have such a wide net. I mean, maybe, of course, someone's always going to get potentially ruffled. Are you always going to

Scott Benner 44:28
say something that somebody's not going to like? That's every word I speak, by the

Julianna 44:33
way, but you also, for me, I tried to filter, not filter, really, just kind of and not hold back. Just be respectful. I guess I try. I just want to be liked. Who doesn't want to be like? That's it.

Scott Benner 44:46
Don't make a podcast. I got myself in so much trouble over and over again at some point. So I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but I make this this series about my weight loss thing. So I started, I started using a GLP. Weight Loss, like, I mean, God, it's, it's been, like, a year and a half now, I think maybe, honestly, don't even know. It's a long time. And I thought, Oh, I'm gonna sit down and record a couple of minutes every time I inject the medication once a week. And I'll, like, reflect back on the week before, talk about what's in my head, or something. Inject the medication, move on. And after I do this, I don't know. I make an episode say I do it like four or five weeks in a row. You know, the episode ends up being 2025, minutes long. It's five or six injections. I'll put it out as an episode. And I guess at some point in one of the episodes, I was starting to lose weight and seeing like a real difference in a lot of different aspects of my life. And I said, and I don't even know the context, I promise you, I don't know because you're just talking. And anybody who's never done something like this, like, honestly, like, shame on you for, like, thinking you know what this is like to sit down, flip a microphone on and just start talking without a script. You know what I mean? Like, you don't know what it's like. And I guess at some point in one of those episodes, I said, Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, which is just a thing I heard someone say at some point in my life, right? It's not contextual, like whatever. My goodness, do some people have a problem with that sentence, and I don't actually know why, but I also well, it could

Julianna 46:25
potentially be that they're gonna unfilter myself. They could potentially that they're jealous that you're actually on the GLP one, because it's hard to get on, hard to get and can be very expensive.

Scott Benner 46:35
Oh, it could be a million different things. I had one person tell me it's triggering. One person started talking about their body image problems and like and I like. I am not indifferent to how everybody feels, but I just can't imagine that people don't understand that if a person, anybody forget me, but if me or someone else who's putting their voice out into the world, if they made sure not to say anything, yeah, that potentially, anyone could have a problem with what you would hear is a lot of nothing. There'd be dead noise. Yeah? Because that's not possible, but it's, it's super fascinating. I think, even to take it away from that example, for someone to think, you know, I have the right, the moral the just opinion about this, and anybody else who's different than me, You're offending me and you're wrong. Like, what if we all did that to each other? Like, it just, it's such a strange thing to me. Like, I can't I'm not doing a good job of articulating it, but it's a big part of my life. You know, where, where you get, I mean, no, I'm not kidding either. Like, you know, 98 of 100 emails that come or, like, oh my god, the podcast was so helpful, or Thank you, or what, you know, whatever, that kind of stuff. And then there's two of them where, like, you know, you might think I started, you know, a World War. And, you know, I'm a horrible, horrible person, but that's

Julianna 47:59
what makes your group so great is from the varying difference of opinions. That's how we learn together. No, yeah, I understand. I just nobody's nobody's perfect, and, you know, that's just, and it's unfortunate some people have to vent there. The

Scott Benner 48:13
crazy thing Juliana is that overall, I think most people, you know, whether it's this conversation or, I mean, even probably politics or anything really, like, most people fall into the middle, like, somewhere, into, like, a reasonable pot of like, yeah, like, do you you know what I mean? Or like, you know, even if you heard me say nothing tastes I don't know what the hell the saying is. Like, I don't even know where I heard it. You know, years ago it just, I was talking freestyling, and I just It popped into my head and I said it, you would think that I went to, I don't know, an outpatient facility for people with eating disorders, and yelled at them and and said mean things to them. I'm just telling you that I what I figured out is, is that there's some foods I used to eat that I'm now able to avoid, and as good as they tasted in the past. I'm enjoying being healthier more. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing thing. Yeah, it's also not a crazy statement that, Nope, it's fascinating. Like, so anyway, my point to you is, I would just say whatever you think and come to the conclusion that not everybody's going to agree with you, and that's going to have to be okay, because that's because I don't I feel, I feel like you're slinking around Louisiana trying not to say anything, to pick anybody upset. Okay, I'm good, good, good, yeah, because I have a an exploded view of that problem, like my life is more, I don't know. I have a bigger scope of of understanding on this one, and you just can't, like you know, all the sayings that you know throughout the years. You know. You can't. You can please some of the people, some of the time, whatever. I don't know if Lincoln said that. I don't know who said that actually, but I can tell you right now that by referencing it, I've just pissed off some Lincoln historian, and I'm. Certain they're gonna leave a horrible review about how I'm getting Lincoln's quotes wrong on this terrible podcast. I don't know. I think it's mental illness if I'm being completely candid. I don't understand the desire to like I've heard so many things in my life I don't agree with and I have never once thought I have to go track that person down and let them know they're wrong. I don't get that part. But anyway, sorry, I took, I took a left turn for you. You talked about in your note, we got pretty much to everything, but you talked about, and I'd like to see you dig into this a little more, trying not to be too rigid in your parenting.

Julianna 50:38
Oh, if you're constantly on. In my opinion, if you're constantly on your your kid, like I was, I had instance with Morgan, where her she was constantly eating, that seemed like all the time because she was hungry. She's an she's an athlete, she has to eat food, all that kind of stuff. But she was just constantly either bored and did something in her mouth because he was bored. So I'm like, Did you dose for that? Because she wasn't coming into range, okay? And she was like, my dad stopped leaving me alone. And she'd be like, be sneaky, and she would shut off her follow and all that kind of stuff. Like, well, that is loud, sorry. But the endocrinologist too is like, okay, Morgan, you need to space out. Space Out. You're eating. You can eat. Just make sure that you're eating more food less frequently. So instead of eating like, cheez, its every two hours, have have more with it to give a little bit more substance, so you're not hungry all the time. You know, I just say I was just being able to teach her, like, hey, you know, we just got to let go. Don't need to keep eating all the time you can. You just need to space it out. And then she eventually did it. She figured out. She's like, Okay, fine. I'll eat every two hours. I'll do it for it, and then keep going. And she actually did that this summer. And her her range went up, and the endocrine was like, oh, that's the first time she actually said, Good job to my daughter. Keep in mind the endocrine dollars, ladies, I find her. She's very clinically. I don't know how else to explain it. Good job, Morgan that I last visited, so I was excited about that. Excellent. Okay,

Scott Benner 52:05
a lot of type ones can experience kind of like insatiable hunger. It's not crazy. Have you ever heard of Amylin?

Julianna 52:17
Okay, well, like a lot of times it's what they're eating as well, if there's no protein involved, like makes you feel fuller, or having some fiber that they're going to be

Scott Benner 52:27
constantly eating. So being able to round about weight teach them what to eat. Yeah, let me give you another perspective on it. So I've been talking to chat, GPT while you were talking for the last 20 seconds. Amylin is a hormone that is CO secreted with insulin by the beta cells of the pancreas and type one diabetes, where the beta cells are destroyed by autoimmune process, both insulin and Amylin production are deficient with type one so the way that could intersect is regulation of appetite, slowing gastric emptying, glucagon inhibition, impact of Amylin deficiency in type ones, because people with type ones have little to no Amylin due to the deconstruction of beta cells, they often experience issues with appetite regulation, faster gastric emptying and more significant blood sugar swings. These factors can contribute to insatiable hunger as the body struggles to achieve a balance in blood sugar levels and appetite regulation. So there was a time, I don't know when, but there was a time when doctors were giving Amylin to type ones, but it's a daily injection, so I guess it's the thing people end up not doing. But you're seeing a lot of people now get some regulation back with these things, with GLP medications. So there's a ton of reasons why somebody could be hungry. I mean, your daughter could have just been growing. You know what? I mean? Like, yeah, yep, but, but it's important to point out that that if this continues for people, that they should maybe fall down this rabbit hole a little bit looking for an answer. That's all. That's the only reason I brought it up. But bigger picture, rigidity, not a great way to parent, one way or the other. No, it's not. It's

Julianna 54:08
not good for you and it's not good for your kid, because eventually you want your kid to go to college, be able to function on their own, be able to drink alcohol, have relationships, have a baby like all this, all this stuff, is you just using as because you're they're guiding you as much as you are guiding them, and not, not every kid's the same. So you kind of have to, you know, figure out what works best for you as a as a team, because that's exactly what you are. As you are a team. You have

Scott Benner 54:36
to figure out the difference between parenting and lording over.

Julianna 54:41
I think the best thing for me is when Morgan switched from the OmniPods omnipot Five, where I can no longer see, like when she was dosing in middle school, it was great, like a hey, because she was honeymooning, trying to figure it all out, I could see when she gave her correction with that follow thing that Omnipod have with omnipot Five. 1000s, and I was really upset in the beginning because I couldn't hold her accountable. But as she's getting more savvy with she uses an Apple watch because she hates sticking out her phone at school. She uses the Apple Watch and she can feel her lows. She doesn't feel her highs at all. She's good at associating a number with something, whether it's good or bad, or in range or whatever. So that's how she's, you know, this is she's doing her he's figuring it out every single day.

Scott Benner 55:26
You're happy with her progress over the over the years? Yes, yeah.

Julianna 55:30
I mean, she's not like her ANC is not the best. Her time and range is getting better. But like everybody says, it's like, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. They got to live with us their whole life. You know, you don't diabetes. I was getting diabetes burnout myself as a caregiver, and so that's why I had to back off a little bit. So that way he could, I mean this, I can't. I kept having time myself. This has car disease. She has to live with it. I just have to make she stays

Scott Benner 55:53
alive. It's a lot, is it's just a lot. It is a lot.

Julianna 55:57
It's very overwhelming. But if you take it day by day, which is why, when everybody, anybody asks me, no matter what, I always say, I'm living the dream. We're all alive. We're functioning. She's thriving. She's doing great in school. She has friends. What else can I ask for?

Scott Benner 56:11
Do you see slow progress with like, a 1c with like, time and range, that stuff? It's very slow. Yes, yeah,

Julianna 56:18
okay. I know it's important and it's but sometimes in my head, I'm like, it's just, it's okay, we'll get there. Like, do I want to be in the fives and the sixes Absolutely, there was one time where you wouldn't see was 6.8 Yes, but that's also when I was being rigid with her management, like I was constantly correcting her, like, doing all this. I'm like, can't keep doing this. It's

Scott Benner 56:38
going to kill me. Why do you think that blood sugars get high. What do you think is happening? Yeah, with when her blood sugars get high. Why do you think it happens eating and not dosing correctly, not dosing at all, skipping insulin or just getting the carb

Julianna 56:52
count enough, not dosing, not Pre Bolus. Okay,

Scott Benner 56:55
so she's bolusing while she's eating. Kind of an idea, yes, and you think that would put her a 1c, into the sixes, if you would do it? Yes, is the ADHD. What stops her from doing it? Do you think her age? No, she just doesn't want to do

Julianna 57:09
it in the beginning. For her. She was nervous about seeing that number on her and some of the how much. And since she already had working in her body, no, I already have, like, eight units on board. I'm like, well, that's from the past, reporting in the future. And it actually this is showing a whole nother curve ball into this conversation. Is she's been going to diabetes camp. There's a lion's camp here that is fantastic. And she came back from that camp this year. She's like, I'm no longer afraid of the number. I just have to dose

Scott Benner 57:36
for it. Yes.

Julianna 57:38
So nice. Now that she's finally over that hump. It's gotten that's where the time of range went up. Good,

Scott Benner 57:45
good. Oh, good for it. Well, she said, Listen, you guys sound like you're doing well, honestly, do you feel like you're doing well? I Yes, good. Some

Julianna 57:53
days are better than others, of course, but that's just life in general. For anybody, you have good days and you have bad days, that's

Scott Benner 57:59
excellent. Oh, I'm glad for you. That's wonderful. Wow. Can you give people any kind of like advice about like things that have been valuable for you so far?

Julianna 58:08
Patience, make sure that you have, if you can find someone that if you need to vent, vent to somebody that's not necessarily within your your family, but outside of it, to get a different perspective and just take time to take care of yourself, because you're in it for the long haul, just like they are.

Scott Benner 58:26
All right, that's excellent. Thank you. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have? No, I think we're good, excellent. Are you still nervous? No, good. I'm glad. How do you think this went? I don't usually ask people while it's being recorded. But how were you with us? You liked it. Didn't like it. Think I'm an idiot. Now, what do you got?

Julianna 58:44
Like you said, sometimes when you're talking on on a microphone, it's kind of like a talking journal. I guess you could say you don't have an audience, that's just you and me, but yet, at some point it might get posted for the whole world that is following you to hear it. So it's, you know, it's good, it's it's kind of weird, but cool at the same time, I'm glad.

Scott Benner 59:03
Can I ask a question that has nothing to do with diabetes for a second, do you like it better in the south, or did you like it better in the north? I

Julianna 59:11
love the South. It's fantastic. The people here are great. Everybody. The everybody's very helpful. The common saying here is, like, I know a guy, whether it's male or female, to help you with something. We were fortunate enough when we got diagnosed that I have a neighbor who's a type one diabetic. He's older, he's almost 60, and then we have met multiple families that have two type ones and their families that live close by two. And you know, when you get into the club, it's you kind of get steered to a different way. But the weather is great, the people are nice, the food is great, you know, and there's constant sunshine, which has helped overall, everything

Scott Benner 59:47
that's excellent. Good for you. All right. Um, I'm glad you're happy, and I'm glad things are going well for you. I appreciate you adding your voice to the podcast. If you hold on for just a second, I will say goodbye to you when you're not being recorded. Okay? You.

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#1425 Voluntold

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Jason, a military veteran with type 2 diabetes, shares his daughter's type 1 diagnosis, Mounjaro success, and his mother-in-law’s misdiagnosis.

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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
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Jason is the father of a child with type one diabetes who was volunteered to be on the podcast today by his wife. He also has type two diabetes and has used Manjaro to lose a significant amount of weight. 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. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached. Just free. Currently, if you live in Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Maine or Vermont, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omnipod and the Omnipod five. Learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juice box. The episode you're about to listen to was sponsored today by a g1 you can drink a g1 just like I do by going to drink a G one.com/juice. Box. Check it out. Hey, good morning, Scott. My name is Jason. Jason. Am I correct in saying that you were cajoled into this.

Jason 2:04
You know, I was voluntold, that I was going to do this by my beautiful bride crystal. But, you know, we're big fans of the show, so, so I agreed to do it wholeheartedly.

Scott Benner 2:14
Did you know that, Jason, that you would name your episode in the very first sentence? I did not. I've never heard the word voluntold before, but I bet you it's a common word that men know all over the country. How did I not know that one so,

Jason 2:28
you know? Well, I spent 22 years in the military, and we were voluntold. We were going to do lots of stuff on a regular basis.

Scott Benner 2:34
Okay, it's excellent. Well, this unless you say something crazy, this one's called voluntold. I'll figure out how to spell it later. So I brought it up because I was picking through your notes this morning. I was laying in bed trying to, like, get up, the energy to stand up, and I was picking through the notes for today. And there's just this moment here. It says it's my husband. He's type two, but he's not on insulin. He has managed with manjarno and metformin and diet. She gives you all your, like, your a 1c, stuff. And then we have a daughter, she has type one, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, why is and like, and just, there's so much more. And then I realized that at the end, she's like, I just, I don't want to be on the podcast. I'm making him do it. And I was like, Ah, excellent. So why don't we talk about, talk about you first. How long have you had type two?

Jason 3:21
So I've had Type Two for two years. I was diagnosed in May of 20 what is that 2022?

Scott Benner 3:30
How does that come up like? What do you notice? What gets you to the doctor?

Jason 3:34
Well, obviously, you know, my our youngest daughter, or our only daughter, I should say, is type one. You start doing all the research, and you start looking for sign. You start reading what reading what the signs are for high glucose, you know, low glucose. Obviously, I was very much out of shape, you know, you know, my eyes. It was really my eyes, is what? What got me concerned. You know, they started getting foggy and goopy and and I just didn't feel right. And so, you know, we've got a plethora of glucose monitors at that house and finger poke kits. And so my wife, just out of the blue, said, Hey, let's have you stick your finger and and see what your blood sugar is. Now, one thing to know about me is I absolutely despise needles. I always have, and so it took an act of Congress to get me to poke my finger. So my daughter's laughing at me. And at the time she was 10, you know, my wife had a folk poke my finger in order to get it done. And, and I pretty much was very reluctant to do it, but they took it, and my blood sugar was sitting at 426 if I remember correctly,

Scott Benner 4:36
oh my gosh. So by the time you're at blurry eyes, that's gotta be, you know, quite the the marker to pay attention. But tell me about I was out of shape. What does that mean,

Jason 4:48
you know? So I retired from the military in 2015 at the time, I was in great shape. When I got out, kind of told myself I wasn't going to do any more exercise. I was tired of running, still eating a. Like, I was working out every day. I let my weight get a little bit out of control. I actually got up to about 320 pounds. Then when I got diagnosed and went in to the doctor, I was 320 pounds, not doing any, any sort of exercise, eating, like, I like, I was still,

Scott Benner 5:15
like, you were running five miles a day,

Jason 5:18
running five miles a day and going to the gym for two hours a day, right? You had the same

Scott Benner 5:22
thing happened to you that, like, defensive linemen have happened to them. Yeah, they leave the NFL like they don't. My son played college baseball. He had the same, like, adjustment period. He was eating like he was trying to be 200 pounds and playing a sport every day. And then he stopped playing, and he got home, and I was like, Hey, you gotta, like, slow down, man. Like you're not burning this off anymore. You don't need all this fuel. What was your weight when you left the military? I was 210, wow. You put 110 pounds on very quickly. How tall are you? Six, one. Okay, so for a little while it was okay, right? Yeah,

Jason 5:57
sure. You know. You know, fear, you gain a little bit, you know. And you always look at yourself and go, you know, I still look good in the mirror, you know, at least to me. And 240 he was, was okay. 262 70 was, you know, was good. And then after that, you don't really weigh yourself anymore. And then it just kind of continues to go and go. And next thing you know, you look in your closet and you got clothes, you know, from a size 36 all the way up to a size 48 Yeah.

Scott Benner 6:20
And you've beat a couple holes into a belt, and, yeah, you've

Jason 6:25
got, you know, a ton of belts, you know, hanging on the rack, you know, and all different sizes. And, you know, I'll get back down, you know, it's just going to take me a little bit and I'll start working out again. But it never, it never happens,

Scott Benner 6:35
right? Well, do you think you had any metabolic issues prior and you weren't noticing them because of your insane, like, regimen. Or do you think that gaining the weight kind of piled stuff on top of you? Or,

Jason 6:48
No, I was gaining the weight that piled everything on top of me, right? You know. So got out in 2015 like, like I said, you know, got out the military in 2015 kind of moved around a little bit from the country. We were originally up in Seattle, moved down to Arkansas, you know, lived there for about five years, went up to Ohio, you know, and then Oklahoma, and then eventually ended up down here in Houston. So, you know, we moved quite a bit. You just, kind of, you know, just everything kind of piles up. COVID, obviously, didn't, didn't help much, you know, during that time. So, you know, just, I think it just all compounded. I

Scott Benner 7:21
understand, actually, I completely understand, once you have a diagnosis, what happens, you know what I mean, like, what's your first call to action in your mind? Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omnipod, and before I tell you about Omnipod, the device, I'd like to tell you about Omnipod, the company, I approached Omnipod in 2015 and asked them to buy an ad on a podcast that I hadn't even begun to make yet because the podcast didn't have any listeners. All I could promise them was that I was going to try to help people living with type one diabetes, and that was enough for Omnipod. They bought their first ad, and I used that money to support myself while I was growing the Juicebox Podcast. You might even say that Omnipod is the firm foundation of the Juicebox Podcast, and it's actually the firm foundation of how my daughter manages her type one diabetes every day. Omnipod.com/juice box, whether you want the Omnipod five or the Omnipod dash, using my link, let's Omnipod know what a good decision they made in 2015 and continue to make to this day. Omnipod is easy to use, easy to fill, easy to wear. And I know that because my daughter has been wearing one every day since she was four years old, and she will be 20 this year. There is not enough time in an ad for me to tell you everything that I know about Omnipod, but please take a look omnipod.com/juicebox I think Omnipod could be a good friend to you, just like it has been to my daughter and my family, I've really been leaning on my ag one lately because I keep forgetting to take some of my other vitamins and supplements. But ag one is such a part of my everyday routine that I never forget it. I know most resolutions are hard to maintain, but I am having a lot of luck with remembering to drink my ag one every day. And even if you didn't make a New Year's resolution, you can start right now. You don't have to wait till next January. Get going drink. AG, one.com/juice box. That's all you have to do. AG, one is offering new subscribers that come through me a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five, free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drink. AG, one.com/juice box to get this offer that's drink. AG, one.com/juice box, just start your new year and this new month on a healthier note.

Jason 9:57
Well, you know that's that's interesting. Right? So blood sugar is over 400 wife says, hey, you know, you need to make an appointment now. And I said, you have what? Obviously, you know, that's, that's the first thing we need to do. And, and we sat down and came up with the plan. We said, you know, hey, we want to be, you know, we get you on Metformin, obviously, but we, you know, let's get to a long acting insulin, right? You know, let's, let's take care of this and start figuring out what we need to do. And I had a tremendous doctor, so I So, so I went to this young lady here, you know, just random pick out of the blue, went into her and and said, Hey, here's, here's everything. I had kept a chart, you know, they couldn't get me in for two weeks. And so I actually kept a blood sugar check, you know, a booklet on what my blood sugar was. You know, I was finger poking myself probably 12 times a day, 20 minutes before a meal, 30 minutes after. And I just kept a very regimented log through this process. And so when I went in, I was like, All right, so here's, I know, I'm type two diabetic. You know, this is I want metform, and I want to be put get this insulin, you know, get Atlantis or something, long acting, and get put on insulin so we get this under control. And she was great. She she looked at my book, and she goes, Well, I've never seen this happen before. You were definitely type two diabetic, but we are going to tackle this from a different perspective. She says, yes, absolutely. We're going to put you on metform. I think that's a great call. We're going call. We're going to put you on a low dose. Think it's 500 milligrams, twice a day, morning the night. She goes, but I do not want to put you on insulin once we go down that route. You know, it's really a game changer. So, so she talked about ozempic monjaro, and I, you know, I never heard those at the time, two years ago. And she goes, let's, let's start you with this and and just basic exercise, walking 30 minutes a day. And I reluctantly agreed to do that. Now there were now that. Where was the reluctance? Jason, say again, what was the reluctance? What did you Oh, because I, because I really thought insulin would be the best way to go, right? Let's get this under control. Let's get it down, and let's get the weight down, you know, having, again, having type one daughter. You know, I thought that was the only way to really start working through this process. But there were some other things going on, you know, on that as well. She took my blood pressure. And this is, this is kind of funny, but it was a type two hypertensive. It was like 349, over 220, something. And, you know, astronomical. Wait,

Scott Benner 12:23
what?

Jason 12:25
Oh, yeah, it was, in fact, what she told me, she goes, she took it the first time. She said, I need you to calm down. I said, Hey, I'm perfectly calm. Doctors, don't scare me. I'm good. So she turned off the light. She goes, I'm going to come back in 15 minutes. I just want you to sit in

Scott Benner 12:42
here, find your zen place, right and right? Yeah, find

Jason 12:45
your, find your zen place. I want you to calm down. I'll be back in 15 minutes to take your blood pressure again. So I sat in a dark room for 15 minutes. She came back, and it dropped a little bit, but it was still over 300 over 200 and she actually wanted, she says, I think you need to get you to the hospital. And I said, Hey, you know, we can get this under control. I fought back with her a little bit, and so we her, and I came up with a plan. We did some blood work, went out and bought a blood pressure monitor, and was monitoring myself, you know, six times a day, going through that process, she kind of scared me. And basically said, you know, we've got it. You've got to make some life choices. This is what the plan that that we're going to do, as long as you're in agreement with it, and otherwise we're going to be burying you in in 12 to 18 months. She was that direct? No, she was very direct. Did you appreciate that in the moment? It was eye opening. So what was the plan? Tell me the plan, Metformin. Exercise. Metformin twice a day. We started on Manjaro immediately. We started the lowest dose, right? So you do the lowest dose for four weeks, and then you double your dose. So I went from 2.5 and four weeks later, I went to five and then 7.5 and continued up, and actually made it up to 12.5 over the course of several months. And again, I was walking 30 minutes a day to start, 30 minutes the first one didn't realize how out of shape I was. I made it, I think, a mile, a little over a mile in 30 minutes. And then and but did that every single day, and eventually got up to I was doing, you know, five miles every morning.

Scott Benner 14:21
What were you running a mile at when you were in the military?

Jason 14:25
Oh my, my mile time was about 614, and my two mile time was 1305. Wow,

Scott Benner 14:33
disappointing. The first time you went for a walk. Or was it more eye opening? More eye opening? Yeah, you realize how far you kind of fell right? Oh, sure, yeah.

Jason 14:43
In fact, you know, you get out there the first morning, you feel great, and you start walking right. I'm warmed up. I'm going to try and run. You make it about 20 steps, and you realize, well, that's not going to happen. But I was also very cautious, because I knew my blood pressure was so high

Scott Benner 14:57
when you start. The exercise, and you you recognize, you know where you've slipped to. If I put you back, I don't know, a month before you end up at the doctor, if I would have asked you about where you were, would you have assessed yourself anywhere near accurately? No, do you have any idea why that is like, Can you give any insight about that? Yeah,

Jason 15:21
just yeah, you know, I wish I did. I would have just said, you know, hey, you know, hey, I know I'm heavy, right? Probably need to do some more exercise. But, you know, for 20 something years, you know, I exercise every single day. I've still got, you know, still some residual I guess I would have said, but yeah, no, never, never in that situation. I never would have guessed it.

Scott Benner 15:42
I have the same exact experience. I know you listen, so you must understand that I've lost weight with GLP, right? Sure you know that, yeah. So I the same exact experience. I have this one photo that Arden texted me like six months ago. Maybe it was a picture from her high school graduation, of which you were standing on the football field taking pictures. And taking pictures, and I'm not recognizable as myself today in that photo. And I know that if you would have said to me back then, hey, explain your health to me, I would have said, Oh, you know, I do okay. You know, I told you probably my back gets stiff and My knee hurts. You know, I have some issues with digestion. I don't seem to like, absorb iron. Well, I never would have, for some reason, stepped back and gone, Jesus. You just listed seven things that are wrong with you, because at the end, if you said, How are you doing, I would have said, I'm doing well, it really is fascinating. Like, I don't understand it when I'm talking to you. I don't understand it when I'm living through it. I don't like. It's just a weird human thing where we just, I don't know, we're like, so hopeful, you know what? I mean, you're like, I can get back to it. I'll figure it out. Or you remember yourself in a different way, or whatever. It's been a journey for me. So were you eating more? Obviously, you were eating more than you needed. That's how you were gaining weight, right? You're taking in more calories than you need. But were you unable to stop yourself or, and you needed the Manjaro for the satiation, or were you using it more for the other stuff that it did, I

Jason 17:09
was probably using it more for the other stuff. And got the the added benefit of kind of that appetite suppressant. You know, my wife, you know, teases me all the time now, and so does my daughter, you know, where? I guess maybe it was growing up, you know, not, not to put any blame on parents or anything, right? But, you know, they're starving kids in China, right? Me, you know, clear your plate. You know, make sure you eat all your food and do all that stuff. And, or I could clear a plate, you know, and then half my wife's whatever she left over and, you know, go back for seconds, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:38
you were saving, you were saving little kids in China. My parents, by the way, would say, Africa. Yeah, absolutely the same thing. Like that idea of, like, you leave a morsel on that plate, you're doing something really, really horrendous, sure, yeah, it's something I don't think they knew any better, but, you know,

Jason 17:57
and you brought back, you know, you know, you brought up the fact, you know, you look at pictures, right? And, you know, I looked at those pictures, you know, we've got the Amazon scrolling on the TV when it, when it, and so forth. And at the time, you look at pictures and go, that's a great family photo. Yeah, I'm a little bit bigger than I was, you know, you know, from the previous year's photos, but it's not bad. You look back on them now and and it's, and it's brutal, and we keep them up there for that specific purpose, right? I mean, I like to have them up there because it's a reminder.

Scott Benner 18:24
I actually have this picture from my brother's wedding, and it's of my wife and I, and I'm waiting for the right time to show it to her and say, I think we should hang this up so we don't forget, right? But, yeah, I have the same The same thing happens, like, those, those images go by, and I'm like, I don't even like, see myself there, right? I really started recognizing it when I you start bumping into people. I talked about this in my in my weight loss diary, but the number of people who I bumped into who assumed I had cancer really was eye opening for me. That's that's interesting, yeah, yeah. Because they're first, they're like, it would go, are you okay? How are you? And I'm standing there thinking, like, is the best I've been in my whole life. Like, why? You know, then I realized I've lost so much body mass, they think I'm dying. Well, I went from

Jason 19:14
a 3x shirt to a large today, and I ran into some old co workers, and this is, you know, six months ago, and I hadn't seen him in three and a half years. And it was, you know, if to them, they said it was shocking, and that, you know, it's, you know, I lost half of a person, is what they say. And

Scott Benner 19:32
you know, me, I'll talk so, you know, eventually, through that conversation with those people bumping into I'd say, Hey, why were you so stunned? And I swear to God, three people said I thought you had cancer. And I was like, Oh, I said, I just I'm on a GLP medication. I actually was with Arden at her doctor's appointment the other day, like her endo appointment, and her endo is the same person who manages the kids thyroids and helps me and my wife with the GLP. It's such a nice thing. We use our individual doctor's appointment. Sense, but we will talk about everybody because of the autoimmune aspect of our family. We think it's important for the doctor to know what's happening with all of us, because, because they can kind of, you know, make assumptions about other things that way. We were just sitting there chatting away and and she's like, Scott, you look completely different. And I was like, Yeah, I know. She goes, How do you feel? And I said, I feel like I'm 15. Yeah, it's great. She goes, You are not nearly the only person to say that to me after being on the GOP for a while. So I don't know Anyway, your a 1c at that hospital was, What do you recall, 11.9 and where to get to, and how long did it take? So

Jason 20:41
in four months, I got it down to 5.2 and then I just had a redone. I haven't done it every I had it done every three months, and it stayed consistent at that 5.2 5.3 and now I'm doing it every six months. And my last one that I just got done last month was 5.4

Scott Benner 20:58
and you're still on Manjaro. I am. She decided

Jason 21:01
to keep me on. She says, it's doing great. She gave me my choice if I wanted to get off or keep going and maintaining where I'm at. And I decided to stay on it. 12.5

Scott Benner 21:12
12.5 that's where I'm at. Somebody asked me the other day, how long are you going to have to take this? And I said, you're going to have to take it from me, if you want me to stop taking it,

Jason 21:21
that's, that's my sentiment, exactly, absolutely. My God,

Scott Benner 21:25
just my digestion alone and the fact that I haven't had to get an iron infusion in almost two years, you're kidding me. I take it just for that. You

Jason 21:34
know, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I have, you know, you know I and have you experienced? And I'll ask you a question, have you experienced any stigmatism in taking it from other people? Like other people are reluctant to tell somebody that they're taking it, because I haven't. People ask me all the time, what did you do to do this? And I don't tell my story. I'm free with it and say, You know that? You know, hey, I'm a man Jaro. I still take it. And they're like, oh well, you cheated. Oh heck no, I didn't cheat. You know this, this was a life saver. It's a game changer. I have people coming up that are, you know, not as healthy as they could be right now, and they say, Well, do you think it would work for me? Would you do it again? Absolutely. And I'm a big proponent for anything that helps somebody get healthier. Listen,

Scott Benner 22:18
I'm going to tell you something. I've gotten the you're cheating. I've got the like, just that it's shitty, like, you get shitty from people. They're just like, Oh, you're fat, and you don't know how to not be fat anymore, and you took this medicine and now you're not fat anymore. And that's not fair. I can't even understand that. Thinking, like, what do you care? Forget what I looked like. I was unhealthy. I wasn't able to get more healthy on my own. This thing made me healthy. Why are you not happy for me? Why are you not asking about like yourself? Because to your point, this is frequently coming from people who are not at their optimal weight and absolutely not without their complaints about things. So a couple of examples, actually, I can give you like three of them. I don't want to name people, obviously, but there's a person you know that I know, who I'm going to tell you is was well over 400 pounds. Every time I saw them, I care about this person. Every time I saw them, I thought, well, they're not going to be alive much longer, like every every time. And they finally decided to do something about it. And they're like, Well, I'm going to do it with restricting calories. And you know that that kind of thing, God bless them. It's working, and they are losing weight very, very slowly. But the thing is, is I've seen this happen in their life a number of times, and I don't wish ill on them, but if it actually works this time, if they actually get down to where they probably should be 250 I'm going to be thrilled for them. But I've seen them go through this a number of times, and you know, we're together at one point, and I said, Hey, you look terrific. Congratulations. Is going really well. Tell me what you're doing. Explain to me how they changed their cooking process and when they eat, kind of closed their eating window a little bit like, did a whole bunch of different things. I was like, oh, it's really fantastic. And I'm standing there like, I'm not mentioning me. I'm definitely not judging them. I'm giving them nothing but praise, and it's genuine. And at the end of the conversation, almost like they couldn't help it, the person said, Yeah, I was able to do it without any help. I had that. I was like, Oh my God. Like, after all that happiness, I just dumped on you. Your last thought is, let me on him. I was like, that's fascinating, you know,

Jason 24:38
I've had that happen. And you look at it and, you know, somebody says, Well, you know, how much did you lose on on on Jaro? And I said, you know, I lost 70 pounds in the first five months. I think it was actually about four and a half months. And persons like, you know, I've lost 15 pounds and in the last two months, right? You know, through, through this. And I'm like, I just don't understand, you know? And the one, one guy told me. His doctor recommended and said that they would prescribe Manjaro to them. They turned it down because they felt it was cheating. And so I just don't understand that mentality. Man, there's

Scott Benner 25:10
so many things I don't understand. We can make a list. Actually. Arden and I are making a series together called I don't understand. I'll put this on the list of things I don't understand. So another example, I saw another person who is a type two with an A 1c in the fourteens, and they happen to have a job where they have to have a lower a 1c or they'll lose their job. I don't want to be more specific than that, sure, and the doctor puts them on manjarno. Person loses weight, you know, their a 1c comes down. They go to their doctor's appointment to get their a 1c for the job. And then as soon as they have the A 1c they need, they stop taking the menjaro And I said, and then they gain the weight back, and the A 1c and the A 1c went right back up against this. Person's not using insulin. They're not managing their type two diabetes in any way, and I asked. I said, I'm just so sorry to ask, like, just this directly, but I've known this person my whole life. I said, Why don't you want to, like, lose weight and have a lower a, 1c he said, I you know. And then these are the answers that freaked me out. The first one was, I like to eat, and that stuff won't let me eat. And the example of what it was stopping him from doing was coming home at the end of a work day, taking a bag of frozen french fries, putting it out on a pan, cooking the entire bag, pouring cheese over top of it, needing it. And he wasn't able to do that on the Manjaro so he stopped taking it. And I said, Well, what about just like health, like your a 1c and everything that he doesn't even acknowledge that a 1c is just a number that stops him from doing his job. And so I said, Man, I was like, Look, I love you. I was like, You're gonna die with an A 1c that high, he will not acknowledge that. I said, What about just losing weight? Wouldn't you like to lose weight? Size? He told me is power and getting smaller is being weaker. And then we weren't talking, and then the conversation kind of ended while he was saying that his children were standing behind him looking at me like, my dad's gonna die. We know that's crazy. Yeah, it just absolutely I don't even want to call it insane. I don't know how many therapists or psychiatrists that would take to get him through those feelings, but there's an example of something that's, that's, you know, having an impact on his life. Now, the other thing I wanted to tell you is that a friend of a friend come to me and say, my mom is on GLP, but it's not going well. But I know I'm seeing you do it, I know you could help her, like, get through like, the thing. I think she's probably having little problems with her, like, you know, going to the bathroom and stuff like that. And I said, Yeah, like, let's just get on a phone call and I'll ask her what's happening and see if I can offer any advice. She said she won't tell anybody she's using it. And so if, if I told her, you'd be willing to speak to her, she'd be mad at me.

Jason 28:02
Yeah, you know, yeah, no, I get it. So my father is type two diabetic, and you know, when I went through this transformation, you know, I said, I said, Dad, you know, you've got to, you know, if you've tried ozap, if you tried my gen or if you talked to your doctor about it, and the answer I got was, oh, yeah, you know, I did ozempic, and I did it for I did the first shot for a week, and it made me feel, feel sick and just kind of nauseous, and I wasn't, and so I stopped doing it. I'm like, well, that goes away. And that goes away, you know, after the first week, week and a half, and the benefits are incredible. No, not going to do it. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 28:41
don't know, even when I had trouble, like, there were times I didn't have a lot of solid bowel movements for a while, and what I would think was, well, I feel better, and I'm losing weight, and I probably did a lot of horrible things to my body to get here, they're probably going to be a couple of horrible things are going to happen on the way back. So, you know, and I talked to my doctor, and my doctor and my doctor is like, look, you know, we can try to mitigate it, but you know, it's not hurting you. And I was like, Okay, I actually took some I found this stuff that fixed it, but I stopped losing weight. So I was like, Oh, nope, I wish I can tell you what it is. I can't. I can never remember the name of it off top my head, but as we're talking, I'll find it for you, in case people are interested,

Jason 29:21
super greens, right? You know, you can buy them any Amazon, supplement store, grocery store, but they're just a simple super greens that are, like a lot of folks that use a gym, that's what I took that, you know, just tons of fiber. So

Scott Benner 29:33
I didn't go the fiber route. I went the like somebody, I'm finding it for you right now. I'm so sorry. And people are probably like, Oh, this is super is super interesting. Scott goes through his Amazon orders

Jason 29:46
slippery elm bark. Interesting. 4000

Scott Benner 29:50
milligrams I would take, like, two of them at a meal time. And my, I don't want to be in delicate Justin, but my poop came out like Jesus intended. But I. Started to not lose weight. Now, my weight didn't go up, but I was just very I wasn't losing weight. And look, I don't know why, but I was like, I'm gonna stop taking this I'll go back to having less than pleasant bowel movements and continue to lose weight. And then I'm gonna get to the weight I need to be, and then I'll figure out what to do next. Maybe I'll take some of these then and say, you know, whatever, I don't know, but my point is, is that there was nothing happening that would you would have gotten me to stop taking that like it was. It's just making too many positive changes for me. And then you start hearing the stories in the in the news, articles lowering heart disease, lowering kidney disease, liver disease. I think it's possible that the biggest thing it's doing is just the inflammation reduction. Absolutely, it's fascinating, what it's doing for inflammation reduction. And Arden, Arden's doctor, put her on it for, you know, what she called insulin resistance. She's like, Look, if Arden didn't have type one diabetes, possible she'd have type two with the resistance she has to insulin. And so we put her on just the lowest dose. She's just was taking 2.5 but she couldn't eat enough, and she was losing weight. And some of the weight loss wasn't, you were like, okay, she wasn't, maybe at her ideal weight. So there's nothing wrong with losing a little weight here. She lost a little too much, and so we took her off of it. We wanted her to gain back about five to seven pounds, she gained that back, and we just this last week, for the first time, gave her less than 2.5 and the way I did that was I took a clean, sterile vial that you can buy online, and basically just injected the pen into the vial, and then I used insulin needles to measure how much liquid was there and cut it in half and gave it to her with an insulin needle. That's brilliant. Yeah, her doctor's all for it. And 123, she's four days into that injection. So we're watching her blood sugar, because her blood sugar off of the Manjaro versus on. It was a holy mess, like, because we had dialed her insulin back so far on Manjaro, like, significantly back. And the minute she comes off of it, you know, once it's out of her body, you start seeing the roller coasters, and she can't cover her food as well. Like, everything happens pretty immediately. So I think it's going to take us a couple of weeks to figure out exactly how much we can give her so that it impacts her, her metabolic stuff and but doesn't impact her eating like that's the line we're trying to to walk. So we're working on that now. It's probably take a while to figure out, but it's well worth it. Talking to the doctor the other day, I said, in a couple of years, I bet you this GLP is going to be in a vial, and type ones are going to have it in the refrigerators, and they're going to be doing something similar with their doctors, finding the right dose to find a balance for for the people who can tolerate it, because some people just genuinely can't tolerate it. And, you know, that's a shame, but definitely true. But I'm going to tell you that the biggest like, you know, you asked, you know, have I run into people my biggest problem I've had being on glps, outside of my personal life, where there have been a few people who tell me I'm cheating or something. Is that by talking about it on the podcast, I've run into so many interesting responses. In the beginning, I got the you're on the side of Big Pharma pushing this GLP agenda some podcaster when they first came out, made a big deal about muscle loss during weight loss, and that's kind of stuck in the zeitgeist for a while now. You just need to, like, lift something and, you know, offset, you would have lost muscle losing weight anyway. You lost it. So I got pushed back from, I guess, just people who think that, you know, it's propaganda that was interesting. But my biggest thing, and this one breaks my heart a little bit, is because I'm me, like Jason. I'm 53 I'm a guy. I was born in the 70s, like I was fat. I don't know another way to say that. If I knew another way to say that, I would probably just say I was fat. Still, I know I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings, you know. It's just, it's how I talk like, you know, and I'm not going to spend a ton of time completely relearning the language so that a few people aren't, I don't know, insulted or whatever. I don't even know how to put it exactly. So I get a lot of notes from people that say that I don't use the right language when I'm talking about it. That's the biggest pushback I get, actually. Now

Jason 34:18
I'm Scott, I'm 51 I was born in 73 so I'm right there with you. And I mean, you know, I grew up, you know, very, very heavy in fifth grade, I was 200 pounds. Went through a transformation, I guess, in high school with sports. My freshman year of high school went from 210 I think, down to 150 playing football and then wrestling kind of maintained that weight. You know that 165 to 180 through high school, you know, went into college, you know, and then wrestling part of college, and then into the military, you know, I got, you know, I had fluctuations. So there's times that I would get big, even. In the military, where I get big and then I come back down, and then get big and come back down. But, you know, I could always pass a PT test, but I fluctuated through that process, and then, and then coming out, and really not kind of going back into that non physical, not doing anything on a daily basis, and I it's like going back to being a kid and just ballooned right back up. So, so I understand it. And, and, to your point, listen, I was, I always bad, I mean, to the point that when you looked at the scale, I mean, it was pretty much off the charts. Obese.

Scott Benner 35:29
Do you think you ate that much, or do you think you have a metabolic issue?

Jason 35:33
I think it's, I'll be honest with you, I think it's both okay. I think you know, for, you know, and, and I'll go back to, kind of back to high school, you know, wrestling, you know, I, you know, I played football in the fall, probably at 185 190 and then I wrestled at 158 to 168 and so I would start cutting weight and try and do that very, very quickly, you know. And I'm sure that had something to do with my metabolism. It's a great excuse, and I'll use it as much as possible. But the reality is, is, you know, I was eating, you know, probably 8000 calories a day.

Scott Benner 36:14
Wow, that's a lot. So I don't know. I grew up poorly, like, with direction about food. So I'd honestly, I couldn't tell you how many calories I was eating, but I have looked back. I was having this conversation with Cole the other day. I worked in a sheet metal shop. I had a really difficult job under like, harsh conditions. It wasn't great, but I was also poor, and so I'd go to a local like, 711 at lunchtime, and I had basically $2 to spend to eat. I remembered, when I looked back that I would buy a drink, and these two cinnamon buns, because they were, they were two for $1 you know, they had, like, sugar on them. And I know you're thinking like, oh, you know, I bought it because it was cheap. Sure, I look back now I don't know how many calories from those things. The truth is, is those two cinnamon buns could have been more than a daily allowance of calories, and then I'd still go home. My mom would feed me at the end of the day, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I was probably eating way too much, but I didn't know it. Like, I genuinely didn't know it. And this GLP, like, if, if there is such a thing as a GLP deficiency, or your body's inability to use the GLP that you have if that ends up being something they figure out. I'm not going to be surprised by that, because just like you, lost so quickly, I lost like in the in the first four days I was losing weight. Yep, absolutely listen, in my life, I had stopped eating for you know, I'd tried fasting at times. I fasted and didn't lose as much weight as I lost after shooting the GLP at me once, the doctor is telling me, like, you shouldn't be losing weight yet. That's like, not even a therapeutic dose of this. But I was so, something's happening. I don't know. You know.

Jason 37:52
No, I agree. My doctor had me coming in every 30 days to check, you know, I, you know, I was so, you know, my health was so poor that I was seeing her every 30 days. And my first 30 days was 28 pounds down, geez, you know. And then it was, you know, 20, I want to say was 25 the next month, or something close to it. But, I mean, I was, I was consistently in the low 20s, you know, mid to low 20s every for the first, you know, 90 days that I went in, yeah,

Scott Benner 38:20
like, how many weight did you have to lose before your blood pressure regulated? So

Jason 38:24
my blood pressure regulated in two months, you know, it got down to where she felt better, you know, she never put me on on high blood pressure medication. She said the moderna would help with that. I would say it was probably two, two and a half months, you know, that I was, you know, I was checking it, you know, like, I said religiously, daily basis. The walking, obviously, I was walking, you know, consistently, I think, really helped through that process. Yeah, we'll say two and a half, three months, yeah, before under concern that

Scott Benner 38:55
was going to kill you. Just that 100% Yeah, that's what I would say. When people at first were like, What are you doing this for? I'm like, I'm gonna have a heart attack. That's why. Like, I finally, like, you know, I've said it on on here before, but like, Arden went off to college, and I had five seconds to think about myself, and I was like, I'm not okay, you know. And I went to the doctor and I said, I'm not okay. And she's, you know, she said, Well, let's try giving you this GLP. And it's like, a year and a half later, and all I can think is, like, why didn't somebody invent this 40 years ago? Like, you know? So,

Jason 39:24
no, absolutely, I, you know, I I tell anybody that asked, I said, you know, it's a, it's a wonder drug. I really do believe that. And if you can get onto it, you look at all the medications, you know, the people are taking on a daily basis, lose the weight, and then the medications start dropping. I

Scott Benner 39:39
actually, I've had the thought like, if I don't get hit by a bus, I'm gonna live forever. That's how it makes you feel, sorry.

Jason 39:44
I feel great. I feel I feel like I'm, you know, my late 20s, Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:49
no kidding. Your daughter was diagnosed with type one before you had type two. Yeah.

Jason 39:54
My daughter was diagnosed the day the world shut down. So we took her into the hall. Hospital, children's up in Cincinnati, Ohio, wonderful hospital on March 23 of 2020. Really, yep, look at you

Scott Benner 40:11
trying to mark the occasion. What happened to her that made you realize she had to go to the hospital?

Jason 40:15
Oh, yeah, it's actually my wife, you know. To make a long story short, I had taken a new job and moved up to Cincinnati. I was living in an apartment. My wife was a school teacher at the time, and she was on spring break. And they, they were originally going to finish out the school year down in Arkansas, and then eventually, you know, move I was going to look for a house. They were going to move up when school ended, and and everything is going to be great. And so they came up during spring break, I guess, I guess that was on the 20th, yeah, they came up to Ohio. And, you know, daughter was just lethargic, you know, on the 23rd my wife was, you know, meal prepping for for me, because, you know, single, you know, a guy living by himself, you know, was probably not eating healthy. Obviously, that's where I got, kind of got to where I was, but she was milk prepping for me, and my daughter was lethargic, and so she did some research on it, and took her to a local pediatrician on the 23rd and this is so this is the day that that COVID really started coming out, and they're starting to shut things down. So she's out of state. She begs and pleads, and gets her into a pediatrician up there and says, I really think this is her blood sugar. They get her into the pediatrician. They finger poker, and she is, I mean, it just says, Hi, on the, on the, on the finger poke kit. And they immediately sent her to the Children's. We were in children's for I want to say it was a week wonderful staff, but it was, again, it's the date everything shut down, you know, wife calls me. I leave work, I show up at the hospital. She's in the, er, we're trying to go through the, you know, get her blood sugar down, drinking mass of water, my daughter starving. And they finally admit it, admit us. I actually left to go, you know, I had to go back to the apartment. There's, you know, food still out, because it was a mad rush to get out. I go back to the hospital, and they almost didn't let me back in, because they had between the time that they admitted her to the time, you know, I want to say it's an hour and a half, two hours. They had shut everything down and locked it down, and then I had to go through the whole screening process, and then it was one parent, was only one parent was going to be allowed to be with her. And we had, you know, argue that case through there. They finally let us both in there, and we both stayed in the hospital for for a week with her, and just because we were on lockdown, yeah,

Scott Benner 42:37
wow. What? There's timing, huh? Geez.

Jason 42:40
Horrible timing.

Scott Benner 42:43
What did you learn in the hospital? Like, was it so crazy that everybody just kind of forgot you were there? Or did they actually go through diabetes protocols? And if so, what were they?

Jason 42:55
You know, we hear horror stories. You know, we're involved in several type one groups in the local area. And you hear these horror stories about, you know, they got to the hospital, they gave them insulin and sent them home. We had a wonderful staff at Cincinnati Children's good they were fantastic. They walked us through it, I would say the first two days. Again, I'm 51 so the memory is kind of gone, but the first two days, you know, they were giving her all of her injections, right, monitoring everything, finger poking, and we were just there, kind of observing and watching. They handed us a book that that my wife read, you know, front to back probably three times. And then they brought in an educator, and then we started doing that. So within a week, we were, I almost say, comfortable, you know, with the whole process, because it's still a shock. When they discharged us, we left there with an abundance of knowledge on how to at least keep her alive, tons of follow up appointments. I want to say it was on a weekly basis. We were going back and just doing some follow up appointments. We went through, you know, the education process. They got us on a pump and a Dexcom, you know, CGM as quickly as possible. So they were fantastic.

Scott Benner 44:10
That's excellent, good I'm glad. How do you find the podcast? Then my

Jason 44:14
wife found it. I, you know, again, looking for support. I mean, it was more of a support mechanism. We left, you know. And I remember thinking this, and my wife thought it as well, is, how do we keep her alive? How do you get any sleep? How do you, you know, feed, you know, do you go full keto? Do you go, you know, 100% protein? And I remember there was something, and it was a podcast you did, and, and I cannot remember the episode, and I apologize, no, but it was somebody sitting there saying, you know that, you know, it was a mother saying, I just wish everybody would know that it will be okay, and at some point through this journey, you know, I won't say you're comfortable with it, but you're going to understand it. Yeah. And it did. It is truly amazing how again, never comfortable, but you learn, and then then you want to be an advocate and help other people go through this process. It's excellent.

Scott Benner 45:12
I'm glad it's truly how I feel about it. I I'll say it to anybody who's newly diagnosed, over and over again, the way you feel today, you're gonna look back a year from now, you know, go listen to the Pro Tip series, listen to the bowl beginning stuff like, meet some other people, listen to some stories. And a year from now, you'll look back on yourself and not recognize yourself. You'll think, what was I even so worried about? Absolutely, yeah, and that's super important, because you can get caught in that, that uncertainty and, oh, I'm killing them. I don't know what I'm doing. This is just diabetes. There's no way to actually do this. You get caught up in that very quickly. It's hard to get away from after that. And,

Jason 45:50
you know. And then there's other you know, you know. Again, you join support groups, but you hear some people just, you know, how dare you give your kid? And you still see it today on, you know, out there's, you know, 12 year old daughters, a type one diabetic, and you're, you show a picture of her, you know, eating, you know, an ice cream, right? Or a cake at a birthday thing or something, and somebody wants to make a comment about, you know, why would you ever give a type one diabetic? You know that you're going to kill them. And it's like, obviously you're somebody that does not understand, you know, diabetes, or you get the portion of people that don't understand the difference between type one and type two. And it's like, well, have your daughter lose weight. Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 46:32
just not going to happen. Jason, you know, I got to a certain age, I just resolved myself to the fact that here's one of those things. I'm like, I shouldn't say this, but here we go. I saw some news coverage of a protest the other day. It doesn't matter what the people were protesting. There was a person there holding a sign that said, God hates you. And I thought, You know what? There are some people it's not important to take their thoughts into account, you know? Like, absolutely, yeah, it's okay. Like, it's not my job to help that person. I hope they figure their way through this life. But I have to stop looking at everybody and giving them the same weight as well thought out people, and I don't mean like people who agree with me, like, there are plenty of people who don't agree with me who are well thought out. Obviously, like intelligent people, they just have different beliefs. I'm all okay with that, but there's, there's just a certain segment of people who just say the first thing that pops into their little head. And I'm done worrying about what they think, and I didn't give a lot of thought to them to begin with. But if someone comes on my Facebook group and puts up a picture of some giant sundae at some restaurant, and says, Can you please help me Bolus with this? Does anybody have any idea how many like, first of all, it's not my expectation that they're eating a giant sundae every day. Like, it seems like they're having, like, you know, they got caught in a situation. They're out. They're like, I'm gonna do a thing. You know, in my group, it's very limited, because we do a really good job of limiting this kind of stupidity. But if you come in and say, just don't eat it, or that's why your blood sugar is going to be higher. Like, we all know that. Thank you, Captain Obvious, okay, like, we all know we shouldn't eat a Sunday. That's as big as our face. Like, but obviously this is happening one time. If you food, shame people, if you like, if you come in and do stuff like that. I have no time for that anymore. I used to try to say to people, like, look, just be helpful. If you if you can't be helpful in this question, don't jump in here and say no more. Like, just be a reasonable person. Or don't it's not your job to tell them not to eat the Sunda they're asking. Do you know how many carbs This is? If you don't know, you have no business answering. That's it? Yeah,

Jason 48:42
absolutely. I mean, some, sometimes the Idiocracy on on social media sites is astounding to me, you know, swipe up, I guess, right,

Scott Benner 48:52
yeah, I don't even believe in God. And I was offended by that sign. I mean, my God, like, why would you show up at somebody's thing and say to them like, you know, God, he hates you. What mental illness made you take up your day with this cause, right? If it's online, or if it's in person, or if it's if it's a guy I'm standing next to who says to Me, who who doesn't have any trouble, a not understanding that his size is not his power in the world, and that by saying that it is if I was, like, if I was a person who was easily triggered, I'd go, Oh, he's telling me I'm not a powerful person because I've lost weight. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I hear that and I think, oh, gosh, I'm I'm sorry for him. I hope this is something that he's able to get through. But I'm not offended by it, and I am not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it either, like I feel badly. Like I talked to one of his children afterwards, and they told me, we've given up. He's just not going to live very long, and we all know it. He's getting anyone seen the fourteens like, consistently. That can't be my burden. Like. If I say nothing tastes as good as whatever the hell it is, I don't even remember what I said. If I said that and it made you upset, I'm sorry. This probably isn't the right podcast, or you shouldn't listen to it. That's right. That's all like, I can't agree, and I'm not equating the two. I'm not equating the god sign with the person who said, Please don't say this on the podcast. Like y'all got different feelings, and I don't understand some of them. These are mine. If you don't like them, that's cool. Like, just, I don't care. Just, this is me. You can like it or you cannot like it. I'm not judging you. I hope you don't judge me. That's sort of the end of it. But absolutely so okay, I'm so sorry. So your daughter's diagnosed. You get her home. You've got good direction. You reach out, you find good community, you find the podcast, you do everything. Podcast, you do everything. How does she manage? How's she doing now? Like, how have you found the process over the last, geez, four years now? So

Jason 50:49
she's managing. She's great. We went through the phase of, you know, when's diabetes gonna be over? When am I not gonna have it anymore? You know, we manage well with the pumps and the CGM, you know, I would say, from our daughter standpoint, you know, being 12, she wants to be just a kid, and we try and keep her as much of a kid and, you know, let her go to those parties, let her have the food that she wants. We don't really have food restrictions. We're not on a low carb diet. Her a 1c last time was, I think 6.1 my wife is probably, is the is the human pancreas right now for and we're okay with that, you know. And again, that goes back to a lot of people making comments, you know. Everybody says, Well, why isn't your daughter managing her own diabetes? Well, she does, and she understands that she needs to, you know, be dosed when she eats. And for the most part, we still have some sneaking issues with food, and we correct it kind of our thought process on this whole thing is, yes, our daughter knows how to do she knows how to run her own pump, she knows how to count her carbs and look through that process, but she is going to have her entire life to do this, and if we can take some of that burden away from her for the first several years of her life, until she becomes an adult, we're happy to do that. But overall, she's, she's doing great, excellent.

Scott Benner 52:10
And how old is she again, right now? She's, she's 12, yeah, so I couldn't possibly agree with you more, like, I just think it's a lot to put on a person, and they obviously need to understand what's happening. They need to be able to do it on their own, but you helping alleviate some of the burden, especially at a younger age. Like, Listen, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a doctor, I'm an idiot. Like, who, like, figured out how this microphone works okay? Like, so, and I'm just telling you my experiences. I'm also now, 10 years later, a person who's had a lot of conversations with a lot of people who have diabetes. I don't think anyone's ever said to me, my parents were too helpful, and it really hurt me exactly. Yeah, I've heard a lot of people say my parents put it on me. Thought I could handle it, you know, it turns out I couldn't. Here's what happened to me through college, you know, I didn't even pull myself together till my late 20s. Like, you know, if, luckily, I talked to people in their 40s were like, I never pulled it together. I'm in trouble. Now. I've never once had somebody say, You know what the problem was? My mom and dad cared too much. They helped me too much. I get the idea that you'll turn them into a snowflake that can't help themselves. But that's not what people are saying. They're not saying, you know, they're not infantilizing their kids and just treating them like they're six months old. You're just saying, Look, you know, there lot going on, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, we're gonna share the burden more evenly. Maybe I'm gonna be wrong, man. Maybe I'll wake up one day and my 30 year old daughter will be just like a show, I don't know. And the people will be like, Ah, he was wrong. And I'll go, Okay, fair enough, I was but I this is how it appears to

Jason 53:49
me so far. Yeah, absolutely. And, like I said, She's, she's gonna have her entire life, you know, to deal with this, and so, you know, taking 10 years, you know, she was diagnosed when she was eight, you know. So if we're doing this for until she's 18 or and goes off to college, so if we have to do it for 10 years and again, not saying on it on a regular basis, you know, through high school and stuff, but if we can take some of that burden away, more than happy to do it, she'll have the she'll have the next 80 years to deal with that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 54:17
yeah, I agree with you. I'm glad. Hey, there's a note in here. You're the stuff that crystal told me that you would be talking about. My mother was diagnosed, Lada after type two diagnosis that almost killed her at 65 about two years before our daughter was diagnosed. Is crystal talking about her mother? Her

Jason 54:34
mother, yep. What happened there? So her mother? Yeah, and he wasn't feeling well. They, they went in, they, and she's a skinny little little thing, a bean pole, but she went in, they, they diagnosed her with type two diabetes. And about a year, you know, it actually two years. So before Lily Lillian was diagnosed, yeah, type two for her mother at age 65 and. Because, and what they found was insulin almost killed her the way that they were doing it. You know, giving her, give yourself 20 units in the morning or 30 units in the morning, that kind of covers you throughout the day. We'll come to find out she's late onset type one it put her in the hospital, almost killed her, really? Yeah, huh, wow.

Scott Benner 55:19
So the autoimmune is on your wife's side. That's on my wife's side. How about on your side? Do you see any at all?

Jason 55:26
My father passed away. My real father passed away. Oh, 1015, years ago, of leukemia, I had a cousin who was diagnosed type one diabetic, a first cousin who passed away at the age of 40, a couple years ago. That's That's it on my side. How about that? Do you see

Scott Benner 55:49
other people on your side of the family with just like, I don't know, I'm probably misusing this phrase, but just who don't appear metabolically healthy. That's

Jason 55:58
funny. My my family, with the exception of grandparents, have all been, you know, very, very fit, okay, skinny their whole lives. I was always the heaviest one out of the entire family, my wife's side, they're all physically fit for the most part. No, there's no immense obesity, you know, in either one of the family. So it's very, it's very strange to have, you know, in a very condensed amount of time, you know, have, you know, all these issues, you know, come forward, yeah? So just kind of you, huh? Yeah, oh yeah, I'm the black duck of the family.

Scott Benner 56:34
Well, you know, it's funny, because the way you explained it is so common, like, heavy when I was younger, but then I got so involved in sports that you kind of couldn't almost be overweight because you were exerting yourself so much. Then you go into the military, where that's still happening, and so that stays ahead of your problem, like, if you don't do sports in the military, this probably all happens to you a lot sooner you you think that, right?

Jason 56:56
Oh, 100% I would have been 300 pounds by the end of high school. Had I not gotten involved with sports? Okay,

Scott Benner 57:02
yeah. And then you stayed in the military so long that you just didn't have, by the way, what you do in the military. So

Jason 57:09
I did several things, you know, I was mostly, I was in the Reserves. I started out as a stinger missile gunner, so I've gotta fire a shoulder. Fired heat seeking missile off my shoulder, and then I went into nuclear, biological, chemical and then I spent the last 15 years in psychological operations, and that's where I deployed out overseas with with SIOP. Do

Scott Benner 57:32
you look back on it and think I did the right thing, being the military was good,

Jason 57:36
absolutely good. The structure for me, it's not for everybody, and I get that for me, the structure was, was fantastic.

Scott Benner 57:44
You your wife, your kids, any anxiety, depression, anything like that.

Jason 57:47
I don't think my wife or kids have any. Obviously, I've probably got some, if my wife likes to tell me on a consistent basis, you know that I have, obviously some conditions from overseas deployments that we're working through, but

Scott Benner 58:01
that's almost an impact of your job, not something you think you grew up with, or something

Jason 58:06
like that. Yeah, absolutely. So that's an impact of the job. Yeah, I'm looking

Scott Benner 58:10
for like, other, like inflammation related issues. That's what I was kind of thinking about at all. Okay, wow. How did you find this? Did you did you enjoy what we did.

Jason 58:20
This was great. This was this was a lot of fun. And, you know, I came into it with an open mind, and this was fantastic. And I hope it inspires other people. I appreciate

Scott Benner 58:31
it very much. I really do. Is there anything we didn't talk about that we should have, anything you'd like to talk about? No,

Jason 58:37
I spilled my guts out to you. So I feel great.

Scott Benner 58:42
Really, you probably owe me $40

Jason 58:43
Yeah, there you go, checks in the mail.

Scott Benner 58:47
People say all the time they get off and they're like, Wow, that was like therapy. And I'm like, I know, right. Isn't it great? That's good to talk about it. Yeah, no kidding. I can't. Thank you enough. I think you know what I said earlier. I really believe, I think, that you're going to see more and more people with type one diabetes be given GLP medications over the years. You're going to see the FDA approve them for type ones. You're going to see the ability to dose them more like insulin, I think, over the years, where instead of just telling somebody, this comes in 2.5 it comes in five, it comes in seven, you're going to say, look, here's a vial of it. You figure out with your doctor how much of this is right for you. I

Jason 59:20
think you know, through the weight loss side of it, you know, outside the type two, but they're starting to do that with some of the compounding, aren't they? Well,

Scott Benner 59:27
Lil is it? Lily? Lillian, yeah, yeah, this, yeah. Lily just announced that they're going to make zepbound available in vials, 2.5 milligrams and five milligrams. I think that's the first step to this because injecting the pen into a vial, I was like, here we go. I'm gonna screw this up. And Arden was looking at me, like, watching this up. And I was like, No, hold on. She was staring at me. I think that's gonna be one of the first steps. Then you got to get, you know, I've had Dr Blevins on to talk about, you're gonna need, you know, people are gonna have to do research. It's gonna have to go through. The FDA, etc. But, I mean, at this point, I'm not the only one noticing this, right? You know, like the impacts it's having on inflammation for people, and all the other ways that we actually had a conversation. This is so early to be saying this out loud, but this is the end of the episode. So many, like real fans, are listening now, so listen. So everybody, listen to me. I don't know if this or any accuracy to this at all. Okay, Arden went through a time over the last couple of months where she was very spotty with her thyroid medication. So she went to the doctor yesterday, and she was real honest with the doctor. She says, I gotta tell you, I haven't been taking this. So doctor said, That's okay. Let's get you back on track. I want you on it for at least six weeks. We'll do your blood work again, make sure you're okay. And while we were sitting there, I said, Can I say something, and if she hasn't been taking her person with any regularity, I said, Arden, then that means you haven't been taking the t3 with any regularity, the cytome, right? And she said, No. And I'm like, where's exhausted? Arden,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:01
where's like, can't

Scott Benner 1:01:02
stay awake, sleeping 18 hours, no energy. Every time she sits down, she falls asleep garden, that person doesn't exist anymore. And the doctor and I looked at each other, and I said, I don't want to say what I'm thinking out loud, because I don't want to influence you. But and she goes, you think the GLP is doing something for and I said, Yeah, right. Doesn't that make sense? Because she wasn't taking the thyroid medication, but she is taking the GLP, and she's not exhausted. And if you've listened back long enough, like Arden would come home from high school fall asleep face down on, like, hard surfaces, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Like, couldn't, and without a t3 she couldn't, she couldn't function, but she's functioning completely fine. Doctor goes, All right, get back on the terrace and don't take the t3 let's see what happens. And I was like, okay, and she said, and we'll get your blood work done, make sure your levels are right, and then, just as an experiment, we'll start taking we'll take away a Tirath pill. And I'm like, Okay, I'm like, What do you think? And she goes, I don't know what I'm thinking, but let's experiment. And I was like, Okay, I have no idea how accurate any of that is. I might be talking right out of my ass, okay? And I want everybody to know that, but it's a conversation that was had, and we're going to look into it and see

Jason 1:02:19
what, what's up so, and if she feels better. I mean, that's, that's fantastic, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:02:24
And if you can take away medication, I'm always for that too, 100% Yeah. So anyway, all right, Jason, I can't thank you enough for this, and thank you for your service. That's really lovely, that you gave so much your life to the to the US armed forces and keeping us safe. I appreciate it very much. Appreciate it. Scott, thank you. No, it means a lot to me because I make a podcast. And obviously, if I've got a fight, we're all if it's down to me, if they're like, Scott, you help, I'll be like, Oh, God, has it gotten to this?

Jason 1:02:53
Well, yeah, hopefully we never get to that, right?

Scott Benner 1:02:55
We're in trouble. If you're asking me, Can I make a podcast about it? Is it possible I could talk incessantly about it? I think I could help there. There you go, dude, hold on one second for me,

I'd like to thank ag one for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast and remind you that with your first order, you're going to get a free welcome kit, five free travel packs, and a year supply of vitamin D that's at AG one.com/juice box. A huge thanks to Omnipod, not just my longest sponsor, but my first one omnipod.com/juice box. If you love the podcast and you love two plus insulin pumps, this link is for you, omnipod.com/juice, box. Earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. It's live right now in five states, Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Maine and Vermont. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle. Health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Maine or Vermont. Right now, it's ready to go. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 That you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start that series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.

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#1424 Para-Cyclist, Type 1 Warrior, Paralympian

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Kate Brim is back with another compelling story of living with type 1 diabetes as a person with quadriplegia.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Kate brim is back sharing her story of what's happened to her since we saw her last. It's uplifting and a portrait of how to not give up. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to Juicebox podcast.com. Up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast. Private Facebook group, Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome. Type one, type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox Podcast. Type one diabetes on Facebook. Us. Med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us. Med, for years. You can as well us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number, get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med, today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at contour next.com/juice

Kate Brim 2:15
box. Hi. My name is Kate brim. I have been a type one diabetes Since 2021 I was a pretty late diagnosis, and a lot has happened between now and then, and even before then, Kate,

Scott Benner 2:30
you were on episode 819, January, 2, 2023 Yes, and you're back. What made you want to come

Kate Brim 2:41
back? You know, a lot has happened since then. I've been to the Paralympic Games. I, you know, had some pretty crazy, crazy things happen in lead up to the games and stuff. And you know, when I was first on with you, back in 2023 I for sure, was still so so new to the diagnosis, and little did I know there was going to be so much more learning and discovery and challenge and triumph and stuff. No, it's been an absolute whirlwind of the last couple years.

Scott Benner 3:17
So if people want to get the because we really dug through it in your first episode, but if they want to go back to check, I think it's incredibly interesting. You were very open, but you're a quadriplegic. Do I have that? Right? Yep, yeah. So we discussed a lot about how you, like, you know, live your life, get through your days, stuff like that. If you really want to know more about that, 819, is the place to go, because I don't feel like we're going to get too far into that this time. So let's just give people a high level overview. Though you're an athlete, tell people what you do. Yeah.

Kate Brim 3:47
So I'll give like a very dumb down intro to myself. December of 2017, I underwent a pretty routine surgery for her needed disc that ended up leaving me a quadriplegic, so I was living a very stereotypical life. I was at university, going to school for construction management, was super proud of myself, thought I had my life set. Career was figured out. I knew what I was going to do the rest of my life. And then this injury happened, and it completely flipped my life upside down. I define new a new path of life, which is very hard the first couple of years, just rediscovering myself. And you know, what does my abilities look like? What am I capable of? And thankfully, I was sent to an amazing rehab hospital whose whole mission was getting people back to doing the things they love, whether that be the community or through sport. And for me, it ended up being through sport, doing cycling and hand cycling and wheelchair rugby. Yeah, I became very in love with hand cycling and wheelchair rugby. Hand cycling in particular, because it was the one thing that I felt like. Like, you know, I got into the bike, and in many ways, I just, I felt normal, you know, I could go out on the road and just go, go super fast and have the wind going through me. Feel good, feel powerful, like I'm capable of stuff. And was doing group rides and stuff with others who are in very similar situations, and it was kind of the intro and just the beginning of rediscovering myself. And so, yeah, I fell in love with it. Eventually, a few years into hand cycling, I finally decided to take up racing, and did my first race, absolutely fell in love with it, hired a coach and went to my first para cycling specific race, which qualified me for the final World Cup and World Championships. Everything happened very quickly, you know, I I went from okay, this is a race where I'm going to figure out what hard looks like to now you're going to go to one of the biggest stages in the world and race at the international level. And it was absolutely incredible, a very quick start to an amazing, amazing journey. And so, yeah, I went to that first World World Cup and World Championships. Ended up getting gold in all the races that I did, which was just unheard of, and it was absolutely huge. And then after that, I moved out to Colorado Springs, to the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, you know, have just been fully taking on what being an elite, elite level athlete

Scott Benner 6:42
takes. How long have you been at that piece of it now?

Kate Brim 6:45
So I've been out here at the training center about two and a half years now. Wow, getting ready for, getting ready for the Paralympic Games. Yeah, you know, at the when is that is my question. So it just happened this past September, it was in Paris, France, yeah, so I moved out to Colorado Springs, and then shortly after moving out to Colorado Springs, as many know, there are anti doping rules within elite level sport, and we have To follow under what's called the water guidelines and stuff going into racing. I had thought that all my duction were in a row and all the paperwork that was needed, I thought it was all there. It happened to not be there, so I got put into the testing pool on the US side, and they came, come to my door, common drug test me. I disclose all the medications that I'm taking, one of them, Which of was human log. And they come back to me a month or so later and say, Hey, we see you're taking. We see you declared use of human log. You do not have a therapeutic use exemption. And I was very shocked. I didn't even know what to say. I and they, they had said, okay, we can apply for what's called a retroactive TV and in this situation, all should be good, give a letter of explanation, make sure all the medical documentation is there, and we should be good. So I do exactly that. Write my my statement, you know, just explaining, hey, I thought all the ducks were in a row, and I really don't know what happened, and they granted me a retroactive tea I raced the whole next year for them to then reverse their decision of the retroactive T, U, E, oh, gosh, yeah, at this point, I'm in Europe at our final World Cup, when I get this notification that they have reversed the decision of the TV and I am just chatter to pieces, because I I know The consequences of this, and I know the severity. Mind you, we were little less than two years out from the games. And fast forward, they disclose to me what the consequences are going to be and how we're going to have to go about this. I had two options. I could appeal it, but appealing couldn't take up to four years to do, or I could serve a one year backdated sanction from when it was initially granted.

Scott Benner 9:31
Can I ask a question here on this one? So obviously you have type one diabetes, so yeah, the problem isn't that you don't require insulin, it's that you didn't have the exemption for the requirement of insulin Correct, yes. And how were you supposed to know that?

Kate Brim 9:46
You know, I still, still have wonderance To this day, because, like I said, I went into this thinking I had all my paperwork, and I did that whole first year of racing, letting everyone know, hey, I'm type one diabetes. Vedic, this is what needs to be done if this happens. You know, especially around low blood sugars when racing and stuff, they can be very, very severe. I was very open, very public to every single person I came across on the international stage and within my team, on us prayer, cycling around my diabetes and the precautions that we need to take. So I thought all the ducks were in a row, and they very clearly were not, and because of the time frame we were looking at, I just had to bite the bullet and take the sanction, knowing and it was very hard for me to swallow, because I took that sanction was stripped of all the points that I had earned that previous year and not allowed to compete for the next six months.

Scott Benner 10:46
Did you lose your any your medals, or your wins, or anything like that? I lost

Kate Brim 10:50
all my points. Yep, exactly. So all the earnings that I had had made, I lost them. You know, I looked at this, you know, I was very fortunate in that we were able to keep me afloat for the time being, that I could not race. But the thing that really hurt me was I looked at this as, look, this is not someone who is trying to go out and dope up and get some benefit. This was there was some logistical errors and stuff that happened. Right? Mistakes happen, and I was very fortunate here in the US, we were able to keep me afloat. But for some other countries and some other people, this could literally mean the end of them, yeah, ever competing

Scott Benner 11:33
afloat, meaning that you have to make money somehow while you're not racing.

Kate Brim 11:38
Yeah? Yep, you know, thankfully, I was still able to have a roof over my head and, you know, health insurance and stuff, because in a lot of situations, that would all be stripped, because that is the one thing is my health insurance is dependent on my performance. If I'm not on national team, I don't have health insurance. And so, you know, I was very fortunate to be able to still at least have health insurance and a roof over my head. How did

Scott Benner 12:06
you work that out? Who stepped up for you? The usopc, okay, yeah, if you can't say I understand. But is this targeted? Like this was somebody coming for you? Because what a weird thing, like insulin, yeah, a type one,

Kate Brim 12:19
yeah, no, it's exactly there's been, you know, lots of doubt around that. And like I said, it's just it shattered me in so many ways, that we have such a fraud system that they're going to pick a bone over a logistical error for someone who is using a medication to keep them alive. But then we have people within our system, who you can see a violation for using performance Hansen drug. It be the same violation, the the same violation, but their penalty every single one is different. One you'll see is three months. One you'll see is just a little slap on the wrist warning. One you'll see is a year. One you'll see is four years, all for the same violation. And so there's just this lack of consistency and this picking and choosing, and how do we go about, you know, these violations and stuff

Scott Benner 13:09
you got screwed for winning too much, huh? Yeah, yeah, you think so,

Kate Brim 13:13
that's what it felt, felt like at at times. It's interesting. Do you have any, like,

Scott Benner 13:17
is there any proof that that happened, or is it just a feeling? It's just the thing. It's hard to get rid of. It's just

Kate Brim 13:22
a feeling. And it's, you know, one of those things I in the moment because, you know, I wanted to make the Paralympic Games. I had to bite the bullet and now live with this label on me. Of okay, I had to serve a sanction. And, you know, I'm very fortunate in that, like everyone I've come across, both on the international stage, UCI, usopc, everyone that I have talked to, and even USADA, our anti doping agency here, has been, this is absolutely insane and just completely ludicrous. Does

Scott Benner 13:56
insulin have a performance benefit? Like, why can't somebody, like, why is it on some list somewhere? What does it do?

Kate Brim 14:03
I haven't completely looked into it, but there's some talk about it being enhancing and like, track and field and weight lifting. And I just look at it, and I am like, no, never in a million years would I ever see this, like it's a drug that if you take your body doesn't need, you're going to bottom your blood sugar out like it's absolutely mind blowing to me. And you know, from day one of me being diagnosed, I was very unique case in that, like I my life didn't stop. I kept riding my bike and I went into the deep end, as far as figuring out management. Saw some really scary highs, saw some really scary lows, like I from day one, have fully understood the dangers of insulin, even when you have good management. Yeah, it's absolutely ludicrous. It's very sad, but yeah, so I serve that sanction. So

Scott Benner 15:00
can I tell you? Like, what I'm getting here is that a non diabetic athlete can misuse insulin as a performance enhancing drug to increase glucogen storage and improve endurance. However, this is dangerous, because without diabetes, additional insulin can cause severe hypoglycemia, coma, death. That's the whole bit of it, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And so it's in your system, and so it's on a so it's on a list somewhere, because at some point somebody did this and cheated, and they're like, Okay, well, we'll put this on the exemption list, but without a plan for what do we do? Well, I guess the plan is you have to get your exemption far too often. We accept the blood glucose meter that someone hands to us. The Doctor reaches into a drawer and goes, Here, take this one. That is, that is that the one you want, is it accurate? You have no way of knowing. But if you want accuracy, and you want to be confident in the blood glucose readings that you're getting from your meter, you want the contour next gen. It's incredibly easy to get the same meter that Arden uses. Just go to contour next.com/juice box, that's all you have to do. The contour next gen is easy to use and highly accurate. It features a smart light that provides a simple understanding of your blood glucose levels, and, of course, Second Chance sampling technology that can help you to save money with fewer wasted strips. Contour, next.com/juice box. I have always disliked ordering diabetes supplies. I'm guessing you have as well. It hasn't been a problem for us for the last few years, though, because we began using us Med, you can too us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, to get your free benefits. Check us med has served over 1 million people living with diabetes since 1996 they carry everything you need, from CGM to insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies and more. I'm talking about all the good ones, all your favorites, libre three, Dexcom, g7 and pumps like Omnipod five, Omnipod tandem, and most recently, the I let pump from beta bionics, the stuff you're looking for, they have it at us. Med, 88887211514, or go to us. Med.com/juicebox, to get started now use my link to support the podcast. That's us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514,

Kate Brim 17:28
exactly. Yep. You have to have A, A, T, U, E, on file. And

Scott Benner 17:32
now that all that's happened, and I'm assuming you put it on file correctly now, is that right? Yep,

Kate Brim 17:37
yeah. Now it's on file, and every four years you have to reapply, which is awful. Another absolutely ludicrous thing. I'm like, It's type one diabetes. You know, the pancreas checked out. It ain't, I ain't miraculously getting cured.

Scott Benner 17:51
If it goes away, we'll all know, don't worry. Exactly, yeah, I want to point out here for people that doping with insulin for performance reasons is insanely risky and like, please don't even look into it or do it. I mean, I'm looking here. I've asked our little friend online, and he's telling me or she I guess it doesn't matter, telling me about it, suppressing cortisol, faster post workout recovery, increased glucogen storage for endurance, enhanced muscle growth and recovery. How about that? I'm so sorry that sucks, especially because you got off to such a nice start you were doing so well, you know, yeah, how did you find the management of type one while you were competing with, like, you know, you see people online talking about exercise and type one all the time. And you know, how hard some people find it. So, like, how did you find it to be

Kate Brim 18:40
at first, it was very hard. I really struggled with it. There was times where I would be riding and I'm like, Man, why is my blood sugar just stuck here in the three hundreds, even despite me, you know, increasing my basal rates and stuff. And, you know, it was figuring out a fine balance of like, okay, because when I'm on the bike, I'm taking in carbs while I am biking to reduce the effects of post ride, essentially crash or glycogen burnout, you want to keep the carbs coming in. And so figuring out how to be able to take carbs in while on the bike and also managing the blood sugar was is a huge challenge. It's something, yeah, I struggled with greatly at first. And at first I was like, Oh no, I'm I'm burning calories, so I should need less insulin. And for me, a lot of the times it actually is, I need more insulin. I have to increase my basal rate while I'm taking in these cars. Now, this is something that, as we all know, it's very different for everyone as far as management, when it comes to activity and not not activity and stuff. And for me, even it, it ebbs and flows and stuff. But it was a lot of trial and error. It was a lot of, you know, comparing my CG. Am data to real life data, sitting on the trainer and testing my blood sugar several times throughout the ride manually and stuff to see what what is happening, figuring out what's happening when I'm doing efforts and stuff, and how I need to to react to it. I feel like, for the most part, failed fairly dialed in my first probably two, two and a half years, there were times where I had some really scary lows, and, you know, I saw the number and I was like, Holy crap, this is not good. And also, I do not feel my low blood sugars. I've been damn near close to single digits and still fully conscious. And just looking at the numbers like, this is not good. All

Scott Benner 20:41
right, before we move forward, I'm gonna ask you a question. I don't want you to be shocked by it, but I'm gonna ask it because I think people are listening, and it might be incumbent upon me to ask, did you ever use insulin to cheat? No, okay, I just wanted to put that out there on the record that's all because, I mean, you're explaining what happened to you, but there's somebody hearing it going, you know what I mean, like, so I just want to, if you're comfortable saying that, I yeah, I just wanted to ask you, that's all I appreciate, just such a situation, honestly, no,

Kate Brim 21:10
it really was because I, like, when I first served, accepted that sanction. You know, I for many days, just one, I was just angry over the situation and hate, like had a lot of resent and just frustration towards diabetes and stuff because I was sitting over there like, look, I'm going in, day in and day out, busting my butt to have remotely good management and be able to ride my bike and live a fulfilling life and live a healthy, safe life with this diagnosis and with my spinal cord injury and stuff, and now here I am being punished for using the drug that's keeping me alive is essentially how how it was looked at for me, and it was really, really, really hard bullet to to bite. But, you know, like I said, thankfully I had amazing support to get me through it. And coming back to racing, it felt really, really good, and I was happy to be able to come back to racing. It was definitely hard, and it still is very hard at times. You know, it crosses my mind a lot of like, you know, I just want to see change around this type of situation where logistical errors happen. People make mistakes all the time, as far as paperwork or forgetting to do something all of us do that. Every single one of us do that. Were

Scott Benner 22:36
you mistreated based on how they treat other people who also try but get it wrong, trying to do the right thing. Were you hit more harshly than other people have been in that situation? Or do you not know it

Kate Brim 22:49
feels like I was hit more harshly, especially because, you know, I did. I did go down that rabbit hole of pulling up the published sanctions and stuff, and I'm looking at some of these violations, and I'm just like, What in the world? This is a little slap to the wrist for a true violation of using a substance that someone shouldn't use. And then I'm over here, you know, with with the medication that I need to keep me alive, how much

Scott Benner 23:14
time did you actually have to serve? Because some of it was time served already, right? Yep,

Kate Brim 23:18
yeah, it was a backdated one year sanction, and I had to serve an additional six months with no racing. And so

Scott Benner 23:25
did it put you behind, like athletically or in competition? No,

Kate Brim 23:31
I Well, it did points wise, because, like I said, all my points were stripped, so when I came back to racing, all my competitors had had a year and a half worth of points into the quad. And when I say quad, so each Paralympic Games, there's typically four years where people are earning points to get slots to make the Paralympic Games. So my competitors had about a year and a half's worth of points, whereas when I started, I had zero points. So there was a lot of pressure when it came to that, as far as knowing, hey, I'm starting from ground zero and way behind everyone else. So it was a lot of having to work really, really hard and be very diligent on my training and stuff and racing and really, really just being on top of, you know, performance management. When the sanction happened, I still continued to train. I was more so taking those six months, I went a bit looser on the structure. As far as training, I was not very strict. As far as you know, making sure to get intervals in. I just I took that time to, like, okay, look, the sanction sucks, but like, go back to square one of why I ride the bike. I love the bike and everything it's provided me the independence that it's shown me, what it's shown me I'm able to do, you know, with my disability and stuff. Yeah, that's what I turned to. And. Was very, very helpful, and I saw a lot of growth just naturally happen doing that. And so, yeah, that was definitely what, what got me through. I

Scott Benner 25:10
was wondering, because you hadn't been doing it that long, but you did have great success, and you did, I mean, you called it freeing, you know, so I didn't imagine you just walk away from it, but it had to be difficult to find something that was helping you, that you were good at, etc, and then have it taken from you, and then to keep up the momentum to get through the six months, I was wondering how that was, yeah,

Kate Brim 25:31
yeah, it's it was solely just turning back to riding the bike like I did those first couple years before I started riding, which was writing, because I love riding, and that's been, like my biggest message within racing on the big stage is great, but for me, it's not the metals and the glory and the podium and stuff. It's like I said, it's the message that it's brought to me, and the message that I've been able to bring to others, as far as showing like, what is truly possible, even despite really challenging circumstances. That's been the reason, reason I ride, and the reason I race, and why I, you know, continue to continue to race, even despite all the challenges I've had. Yeah, your

Scott Benner 26:13
situation is so specific. Are those accomplishments something that you want to share with the world, or is it just something you need to get through.

Kate Brim 26:21
I have never been a big one for, like, gloating my success. Every single race I go into, I've always gone on it with, like, a learner's cap. Like I still feel like it's day one so many times. And every single race I've done, we're going on three years of racing under my belt, I still feel like I'm going into the race saying, okay, what can I take away from this race and learn to better, improve myself for next time and strategy and stuff? And there was a lot of that, especially this last year, leading into into the Paralympic Games. This last year was the year, the most important year of the quad, as far as making the Paralympic Games, and it was very stressful, but it was also very, very fulfilling and just incredible. Like everything that I learned throughout, you know, I told, told myself, leading up to the games, you've got the performance, you've got the drive, you have all the training under your belt right now. It's, it's staying consistent, staying on top of training, but most of all, staying healthy. I did that and got through our world cup season. Did amazing. Was loving where I was seeing my performance, the one thing that I was chasing so the Paralympic level, the UCI level. We all have classifications based upon our disability. So for the hand bikes, it goes h1 through h5 h1 being the most disabled and h5 being the least disabled. I'm an h2 athlete at the U, C i level. We all race our own individual classifications. I'm racing other h2 is h3 is a racing h3 is H fours are raising H fours. But at the Paralympic level, there is only a certain amount of metals that can be dispensed amongst all the sports and so what ends up happening is categories get combined. So for me, I was racing against h2 h3 and h4 when people like, look at it, you're thinking, well, how, how is that even remotely fair racing against people who have a lot more ability than you like, I had that thought, and I had that frustration, definitely, but it was just my driver to work that much harder. I looked up to the h3 and the h4 girls as the girls that I needed to chase, and I started working towards that. And you know, when it came to our road races, we have two big events, the time trial and the road race. The time trial is a race against the clock. We all have our own start time, and whoever has the fastest time at the end is the winner, and it goes down from there as far as times, whereas the road race, think of it like a marathon. We all start at the same time. Whoever crosses the finish line first is the winner. Time Trial is the the race of strength, whereas the road race is the race of strategy. You know, I was looking at the age three and age four girls times being like, Okay, I want to, I want to work towards this, and I want to do all that I can to get as close to those girls as I possibly can at the Paralympic level. Our Time Trial, we had what was called a factor. Think of it like a golf handicapped card. So the lower the classification, the higher the factor percentage you got. And so we were going, based off of that, to kind of look at my training and stuff and the goals to chase. And like I said, I was just put my head down. Did the training worked as hard as possible? And. And the three World Cups, I was getting closer and closer to those girls the road races. We pushed for me to start with the age three and age four girls, because typically they stagger at the starts. And I was able to, you know, keep up with the girls. And I was loving seeing where things were going. It felt absolutely amazing. And I left that final World Cup feeling really, really strong and really, really confident in you know what I was going to be able to be able to do if I make the Paralympic Games? Mind you, I left that World Cup, the World Cup season, still not even knowing if I was going to make the Paralympic Games, just because of how our point system worked. It was absolutely crazy how the points were dispensed, and very stressful. So the World Cup season is over. Now we have the very final event on the US side, which is our Paralympic trials open event that was held in Loma Linda, California. That was the last event to get ready for before they announced the team. The weeks leading up to that I was training, everything was going great. It was about two weeks before we were supposed to be going to the event that I discovered my bike that was barely a year old, the whole back end of it, the carbon fiber was cracked. I was very stressed in the moment, because I was like, we have two weeks, and the whole back end of my bike is cracked, making it not race legal. So I was calling around all of Colorado as far as places that could potentially repair it, and nobody wanted to touch it, because they were afraid that it was essentially where the crack was, was going to impact the structure of the bike. It was a special essentially, if this cracks anymore, you're going to break the spine of the bike and it's going to crumble underneath you. So nobody wanted to touch it and like have the liability of

Scott Benner 31:58
that take replacing it is how much for the whole bike? Four grand.

Kate Brim 32:02
Okay, so I last minute find a prosthetics company who does a very quick just on the spot job. He epoxies the whole end of it, and we got it so that the draft bar would stay in, which is the bar that protects the back wheels, so in case someone hits you, they're not hitting you, they're hitting this bar. We got that in place. It's very shortly, epoxied together. I'm like, okay, the bike is at least temporarily fixed. You know, if I make the team, I'm going to have to figure out a permanent repair as far as this. And so get ready to go. Let our director know and our mechanic know, hey, this is the repair job that we got. And then I'm let know your bike could potentially not pass inspection. Come race day, be prepared for that. Mind you, I'm hearing this news as I'm on the plane to Loma Linda, California with my mom, and you know, she's very excited for the trials, very anxious. We're all, you know, like, Okay, this is the final event. This is the last, last chance to get get the points needed in order to make the team. And I get that call, and I'm just sitting in there on the plane, reminiscing over the fact, holy crap, I have a bike that could not be race legal. I may not get to start, and like we all had to do that race in order to even be considered for the team, regardless of how many points you have, we land. My mom and I happen to not be sitting next to each other, I kind of stay silent at first, and I'm just trying to, like, be as calm as I can. Just all I can do is show up, show up, race day, and whatever happens, happens. I let my mom know of the situation, and it kind of just like, really set in. That set in, then the severity of the situation of like, wow, this is actually a really big deal. Again, she and I both agree it's out of our control. At this point. We got the repair that we could get. I just have to show up race day and be ready. So to say I was nervous was a huge understatement. Performance and numbers that was all out the window. Me, it was, am I going to be able to even race or not? And so time trial day is there. I show up to the start line, the bikes inspection starts, and it's the most nerve wracking moment I had in my life. They typically biking inspection is very fast. They do a couple measurements to make sure that we're within the specs and you're on it's done within 15 seconds. They start banging around on my draft bar and stuff, saying it's too close to the wheels, the heights wrong and stuff. And then they let me know, hey, we're going to let you race today, but in order for you to continue racing, a better repair job. Up. Needs to be done. This is this is not safe. So I get into that star pen knowing, okay, I'm going to be let race, but I have a bike that's not race legal. I tell myself, okay, it's out of my control. All I can do right now is just get the race done and we'll take it from there. So the race starts. I get it done, I complete the race. It goes very well. We finish after that. They do the podiums and all the awards and stuff. And then is the dreaded everyone has to wait the whole next day to receive the call on whether or not they made the team or not made the team. So my mom and I and her friend, we go out to lunch. We're just trying to, you know, stay calm in the situation. Just enjoy the time that we're having in California. Find some nice restaurants. And I get the call from Ian, our director, and he lets me know, hey, congratulations, Cate, you made the Paralympic team. Gives me some logistical stuff, as far as, like, what to expect over the next couple of days. And I just froze. I couldn't even express excitement, because I was so stressed in the moment, and I just went straight to business mode. And I said, I need a bike. No, that's literally what I said you did. Yeah. I said, Okay, I'm very excited, but my bike is not race legal. What do we what do we do? We have less than a month and a half to figure out a race legal bike. And so, yeah, we go immediately to business mode. He's like, Okay, I'm gonna contact carbon bike, the maker of my bike, and we're gonna get this, get this figured out. Can

Scott Benner 36:39
I ask a question? Do you wear any devices like an omnipot or a libre or a Dexcom or an eyelet or any of that stuff?

Kate Brim 36:47
So I'm on the tandem Tesla next to, okay, they haven't

Scott Benner 36:51
talked about maybe throwing you 10 grand a year to sponsor your bike or something like that. Yeah.

Kate Brim 36:56
No, I so my one big sponsorship is Novo Nordisk, actually. Okay, so, yeah, they've been a huge support. As far as, just like helping me with my diabetes management, you know, just helping me with my mission of, you know, showing people what's possible and stuff. Absolutely Are you allowed

Scott Benner 37:15
to have two sponsors? Yeah, right. You want me to introduce you to somebody?

Kate Brim 37:19
No, it was absolutely insane. So yeah, like I said, Ian contacts carbon bike, they get back to us initially tell us, okay, this is what it's going to cost for a new frame. They originally told me they wanted me to pay the full price, which was close to eight grand. And I said it's four grand to replace it. That's the original price was eight grand. And I said, Look, this is my situation. This bike is not even a year old. Has never seen damage, has been taken care of, like, miraculously, I didn't run into a wall or anything. Exactly, yeah, yep, the bike should not be cracked in barely a year's worthy. Is there a warranty or something, you know? So that's what we initially had tried going for. It was like, hey, a warranty route, but it didn't happen. So we had to dump four grand on a new frame. Originally, they had told us. So my bike is very customized to my disability. To shift the gear system, I shift with two blip buttons that sit right behind my ears that are attached to the frame of the bike, and then I break with my elbow. So it's a very unique system. It's not something that you can just go to a run in the middle bike shop and and fix. They initially tell us, hey, this is when we can get you to the frame by which was, like, a couple days before we were supposed to be leaving for my Orca, our training camp. And I, I just looked at Ian and Steve, I was like, No, we need the bike sooner than that. We have to completely move all the components over to a new frame. And so thankfully they they got it to us quicker. We got everything figured out. I have a new frame. All is good, and then I end up getting sick.

Scott Benner 39:04
Kate, listen to me. Have you been cursed by a witch? Like, what's happening? The quadriplegic thing should have been it like the the universe should have went like, all right, you know what? She got her whole load right there in the one thing, we don't have to do anything else. Like, no kidding, does anything go right? I'm not even I'm not being funny. Like, have you had a moment where you're like, oh, that worked out. Yeah,

Kate Brim 39:25
it was. It was two days after Loma Linda, not even two days actually got back from Loma Linda had the whole stress of the bike and stuff, and we were getting that figured out. I rode the first day that I got back. Notice my heart rate was little higher, but I was like, it's just stress, getting back to altitude, not going to sweat. It still felt fine, riding on the bike easy. It didn't feel feel terrible. And then about two o'clock in the morning, I woke up with a really high fever and the worst pain in my life ever. And it was just that light switch where, you know. If something is seriously wrong, there's no if ands or buts about it. It's code critical, like you need help, and so I end up going to the hospital. At first they tell me, Oh, it's just a bad UTI. We're gonna keep you a couple nights, do some IV antibiotics, and you should be good. Well, it ended up being two weeks later that I got out of the hospital because I ended up going to my kidneys. So here I am, you know, just having finished the trials and get this serious infection, I lost a ton of weight, got down to 97 pounds, being almost six foot tall, and had been stuck in a bed, unable to do anything for myself for nearly two weeks, and now I have to, you know, be ready to race in a matter of a few weeks,

Scott Benner 40:51
a common quad problem

Kate Brim 40:53
within spinal cord injuries, they can be Now, the thing that was Very shocking for me is I fortunately have not had many UTIs at all I did when I was first diagnosed with the spinal cord injury and stuff. I had issues with it, but it was just figuring out a regimen that worked for me, and then I didn't have UTIs for a super long time. Up until this recent one ended up in the hospital for two two weeks, it affected so much. It was more than just my kidneys. It completely destroyed my gut. Ended up being on a feeding tube and stuff to try to get food into me, because I was just throwing up constantly and couldn't keep anything down. Was sent to rehab for a couple days and then discharged. My body just got completely depleted from this infection, and now I have to go be ready to race on the biggest stage in the world. It turned into me just having to essentially trust that I have spent the last two and a half years working my butt off in training, and I was sick for two weeks. But it doesn't mean that I am completely destroyed. And I didn't want to count myself out. I said all I can do is the best that I can do. And that was the mentality I went into it. We went to our my orca camp. I rode very well. You know? It felt good to be getting back on the bike. Was definitely rough the first couple of days. The one thing that I was still dealing with, and still am to this day, was GI issues, as far as, like, what I couldn't, couldn't eat and stuff. I was having a lot of dead like, just digestion issues and things not

Scott Benner 42:31
was that after the antibiotics, yeah, yep,

Kate Brim 42:35
it was. So it started when the infection happened in the hospital, and has just persisted. That was, like, a really big challenge, was getting, like, fuel in me and stuff, and refiguring out just the whole eating aspect. And so, yeah, training camp happened. Felt good. We're now in the the Paralympic village in Paris, and it's, it's setting in, like, holy cow, I'm here on the biggest stage in the world, and you know it's gonna be go time in a matter of a few days. You're not your best self at that point. No, I'm definitely not. And but like I said, all I could keep reminding myself was, look, all you can do is the best that you can do. And I had to just go back to the roots of like there's something that we try to use a lot, a lot within racing, which is relative perceived effort, which is just when you're riding, listening to your body as far as how you're feeling. And that's exactly what I did come that race day was very challenging. Believe the days leading up to it, you know, there wasn't for me. I felt like I did not have the true, you know, village experience of like mingling with others and meeting a lot of people is lots of days in Sports Med and really keeping training controlled and checking in all the time and just making sure I'm feeling all right and things are going okay. And then, yeah, race day is here, and I'm now on the biggest stage in the world. And I mean that start pen and you know, very similar to Loma Linda, I said, I have to just put everything behind me, all the stress, all the worries, all the concerns, and I just have to go out there and give it my all the time trial is a unique a unique race. And we, when we're racing, we get a headset and we have what's called a follow car, which is essentially a coach who is following behind you, letting you know, hey, yep, you're doing good. Effort wise. Is your time? This is how far you are from the person behind you or in front of you. They they're able to, like, let you know all that information. And that was one of the biggest helpers that time in getting me through that. Race was just having that voice of like, you're doing awesome. Keep pushing, keep pushing. You're doing great. And just like that one time hearing those words was never like, more beneficial, yeah. So I did that race, and I was like, Okay, I did everything I could. You know, the numbers, the numbers were lower than they typically had been, but I still was able to go out there and do an amazing performance, and I crossed the finish line. And the unique thing about the time trial is when you cross the finish line, you typically have to wait for everyone else to finish before you know your result. Cross the finish line say, Okay, I did as good as I could, and then it probably wasn't even a minute later, my director, who was also in my ear piece, comes running out of the car and lets me know, Kate, you did it. You got first place. You're a Paralympic gold medalist. And I just froze like in the moment to think everything that had just happened over that last month, between the bike falling apart, having to get a new bike, ending up in the hospital for two weeks, I did it. I got Paralympic gold by nine seconds. And it just felt so surreal. I just froze in the moment. I was just so proud of myself for like, pushing through everything that had been thrown at me, and it was just that huge reminder of like, through the tough battles we can accomplish. So freaking much so so freaking much if you just, like, believe in yourself and you trust in the support that you have and lean on those that are helping you and stuff that was exactly what happened that race. Kate,

Scott Benner 46:47
what's the secret, though? What is it about your experiences that allows you to stop and say, I'm just not going to think about all those other things. You know?

Kate Brim 47:01
That's a good question.

Scott Benner 47:03
Everything you've said, I don't know that. It's not common sense. It's the doing it that's hard. You know what I mean, like? And so there's so many people listening, and they're like, Yeah, I I was upset. Like, I was upset this morning, Kate, because the company that cleans my gutters missed a part of it. And I was like, What now, I gotta call them and, like, and you're out there, like, Oh, my bike broke, and then I got a UTI. And, by the way, my legs, you know, they don't really do a whole lot. And, like, this is happening, and that's happening and, you know, and I got, I got kicked out over here, and I had to sit for six months, and, you know, I get into the shoot, and I'm like, Okay, I'll leave that all behind me, and I'll race this race, yeah, as a metaphor for life and day to day activity. And, you know, hardships and how come some people can get in that shoot and it just eats them alive, and they can't race. And some people get in and and just start with a fresh slate. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to figure out where you get that slate, that clean slate, from. I think

Kate Brim 47:59
for me, especially this last year, it's been the support that I've had. You know, the team that's been around me continue to tell me, like between my coach and all the usopc staff, from sports medicine to sports physiology, strength conditioning, like, if people believe in me, believing in me, and just that reassurance of like, you are capable of doing this immediately after that was like, one of the first things that came out of my mouth is it would not have been doable had it not been for the team behind me. You know, cycling, so often in the public light, is viewed as an individual sport. It's the work that that athlete puts in, how much they're doing on the bike, what they're eating, but at the same time, I looked at my situation and I said that, yeah, there's definitely the self performance and self drive portion of it, but it is also that team behind me that helped me be able to do that and push my limits and find the strength and stuff to, like, get me through that race, like I explained, you know, having having our director in my ear just reassuring me, like, you're doing amazing. Keep going. Keep going. You've got this far left, and next, you know, I cross the finish line, and I've done it. It's definitely the team behind the

Scott Benner 49:21
team. Were you this person before your spinal cord injury? Or do you think this cascade of problems would have hit that Cate? Would you have just been like everybody else and like that sucks, and I'm getting screwed all over the place and I give up.

Kate Brim 49:33
No, I definitely, I definitely was not that way before. I was a lot less confident in life. I was very much, so I keep my feet planted on the ground. Didn't really try new things, but my injury happened, and it just the one thing it taught me is like we just have so much to be grateful for, and we take so much for granted. Getting outside of my comfort zone and you're pressing the limits and. And doing things that make me uncomfortable is just taught me so much and just continued to, you know, fuel that fire, as far as, like, pressing the limits and just showing myself and allowing me to be able to show others even what is truly, truly capable in life.

Scott Benner 50:17
So you had to lose something to gain that. Or do you think you could have found it through a different Pro, like, I'm trying to find out, did you get look? I'm not saying, You know what, I mean, like, your spinal cord injury was, like, lucky, or anything like that, but I'm saying, Is there, like, did you have to go through so much to give yourself that perspective? Do you think that you gained two lifetimes worth of perspective and one injury? Or, like, how do you feel, like you made the leap?

Kate Brim 50:42
I think it was me getting knocked on my, quite frankly, knocked on my ass, that showed me that perspective. And, you know, it's one of those things I have asked. I'd like, Why does it take some of us having absolutely detrimental things happen to us for us to learn, you know, what is truly, truly possible, or, you know, what greatness we we have and don't even realize. But for me, yeah, it, it took getting knocked on my knocked on my ass, to really realize what is out there and what I'm capable of, and the limits, and, you had the benefit of trying new things and getting myself out there. It's

Scott Benner 51:25
not that you're not impacted by bad luck, like it hits you still, like we heard that through your whole story, right? Like, it's still like you're like, Oh my God, this happened. This is happening, and that's happening this step, but it's when the rubber hits the road. Oh my god, literally, when the rubber hits the road. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I wasn't trying to make a pun, but when that happens, then it's time to give it away and just go exactly right, yep, huh? Well, you ought to bottle that and sell it. I think you could buy like, 1000 bikes. Yeah, wow, that's really crazy. Good for you, not, awesome, yeah, when you wake up from that surgery, you didn't know you're going to be this person. You know what? I mean? Oh,

Kate Brim 52:05
100% never in a million years, would I have imagined myself moving out here to the Olympic and Paralympic training center to be an elite level athlete. Yeah, never even being able

Scott Benner 52:14
to tell this story from your perspective now is just new. Yeah. Can I ask you a question that you may or may not have an answer to? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Yeah, you get diagnosed with type one diabetes. Somebody does anybody right? Somebody's kid, they do, etc. It's clear to me, in hindsight, if you're a ship on a course, this is a wind that blows you in a different direction. Then there are some people who say, like, well, I want to get back to normal. And there are some people who say, Well, this is my new normal. I think I'm of the opinion that once you're blown in a different direction, there's different impact, there's now different variables to your life, like you're never getting back to where you are. I think the truth is, is that you wouldn't have stayed on that direction anyway, like other things would have changed in your life, changes constantly, so but it happens very abruptly with type one like you get, boom, there's a diagnosis. Bang, my, you know, my course has been changed. How do you accept that course? Because I don't think that it's so much that the one course or the other is necessarily better or worse than the other one. It's just this one's different than what I expected, and it happened so quickly that I didn't have time to adjust to it. So when, if this is all making sense, so if, when your course is abruptly changed, what's the secret to accepting it? It's

Kate Brim 53:33
a question, especially in the last several months, since the Paralympic games have been over, that I have asked myself a lot. I've had that question a lot of like, you know what? What is it truly that is keeping me, keeping me going, and keeping me dealing with all this just straight up bullshit that many would look at this situation as, like, What

Scott Benner 53:56
stops you from putting a fork in a socket? You know what? I mean? Like, yeah, yep, it's been a

Kate Brim 54:02
question I've had a lot recently because after the Paralympic Games, my team completely shut down my training and said, We've got to get get this gi stuff figured out. Because at the Paralympic Games, I was living off of smoothies and Cape farms Supplemental Nutritional drinks and still throwing up constantly and dealing with nausea and stuff, and I'm still dealing with it to this day, and we've been trying to figure it out. I've been absolutely thrown through the ringer as far as diagnostic testing recently, and it has been a very, very big thought of mine, of like, God, what does keep me driving? Because, you know, like I said, they shut down my training. They said no riding the bike until this is figured out. Just due to because I was dealing with autonomic dysreflex You, which is essentially with a spinal cord injury, the body saying, yo, Code Red, something's wrong. We're going to shoot your blood pressure up super high. And so I was dealing with that and stuff. And. I said, We got to get this figured out. You have to take a take a step back from the bike, which was very hard for me to digest, because, you know, like I explained to you earlier, the bike, for me, it was very freeing. It's very it's been a huge role in showing me what I am capable of, but also on the physical aspects of it. It was a huge part of my specificity and pain management. I deal with neuropathic nerve pain due to my spirit spinal cord injury and specificity due to your signals being sent incorrectly down the spinal canal to the injury. And it also was a huge role in my diabetes management. So having all that taken away, it was a huge bullet to bite because one pain, spasticity, diabetes management all started getting a little worse, and it was very hard for me to eat. And I just, you know, I was, like, really realizing how much, how much the bike has helped me deal with all this. And, yeah,

Scott Benner 56:09
it's purpose, right? Like, the one thing people need. It doesn't matter what the purpose is. People need purpose, yeah, you know, it took me a long time my my mom is gone now, right? But she worked. My mom worked, you know, as a kind of jobs that she tripped into when she was young. She was a stay at home mom for a very long time. Eventually, she had to go back to work. She took a retail job. She was basically just at a cash register in a in a pharmacy. But if you asked her about the job, the job was like helping people. It was talking to people. It was having conversations, and, you know, building communities of people who came in there and being supportive. And like, if you talk to her about her job, she wouldn't have mentioned the the exchange of the of the cash back and forth at the cash register, right? Like that, wasn't it? I think if you take my mom at the end of her life and say, hey, you know, you tell me your impact of your work life on the world. She would have spoken about it really lovingly, yeah, about like, you know, kids that worked there, and she'd help them with stuff and overwhelmed pharmacists that really, you know, were being asked to do too much. So people would pick up the slack and give people their prescriptions on time and, like all this other stuff. But in the end, what my mom had was, and it doesn't matter how you measure, she had some level of purpose and, and, I mean, I do the same thing, and I get up every day and I think, Oh, I'm gonna go try to help people with type one diabetes. Say that's, that's a purpose I have, right? I yeah, I raised my kids. It's a purpose. You know, people buy pets, they take care of them. They feel purposeful, like you lose the ability to walk. And I can see how very quickly your sense of purpose would just turn to self care, and that eventually you'd turn in on yourself, and there wouldn't be anything outside of you. And I think that could be difficult for somebody. So the bike, to me, is it's a hill to conquer.

Kate Brim 57:59
Yeah, yep, 100% it's the bike to me, has definitely been my, my purpose, you know, it's been my, my STI and my diabetes management. And it was very hard for for the few months that I had to completely take off the bike, of just having to sit there and taken the spasticity and really increased nerve pain and also all this gi stuff going on, and not having any outlet, I realized that my me riding the bike and me doing wheelchair rugby was my outlet, as far as managing all that, and it was very, very hard, and like I said, we're still to this day, searching for answers. I just had a colonoscopy the other day that went absolutely haywire. You know, she's been this test after test after test as far as trying to figure out what is going on, but just not having any answers. And so it's been hard to digest because, you know, so often I feel like I felt like I've just been in this big black hole of uncertainty with all this of like, okay, this is a really big issue as far as me being able to, you know, get in the nutritional support that one needs and stuff, but we just don't have any answers. You know, especially in the sports world, someone breaks their ankle, okay? Here's the surgery, here's how long the recovery is going to be, and this is what coming back to training is look like. It's pretty concrete as far as what the Road to Recovery looks like, whereas me, it's just been this big black hole of uncertainty since the infection back in July, and trying to figure out answers which has been, I think, a big reason why I've struggled so much to one step away from the bike, but also just cope with it and accept, like, Okay, this sucks. These are, these are my symptoms. What are the answers? You know? How do we move? Move on with this? And. And if this is my new normal, how do we approach it and how do we deal with it? Because right now, it's definitely I, in many ways, have felt like my life has just been completely shut down, and it's been super, super hard. What a doctor say about the gut stuff, there's kind of wonderance of gastroparesis. We did a gastric county study, but they weren't able to do it like they typically want, because the majority of the stuff had dairy in it.

Scott Benner 1:00:26
Kate, can I make a suggestion? Yeah, yeah. Let me make a suggestion. You haven't had type one very long, right? So the idea that you have gastroparesis because of poor diet, like type one insulin used or controlled, it's pretty unreasonable. So do they think it's because of the injury? Or Has anyone talked to you about the fact that, you know, a lot of type ones just have digestive problems? Yeah.

Kate Brim 1:00:51
So that was something that was looked at. Looked at they looked at like the pancreatic and liver enzymes within blood work and stuff. When I was in the hospital, they did a small bile duct study, they did an endoscopy, and it's just we're in this big black hole of uncertainty. And I'm actually currently awaiting a call today, hopefully to figure out what our next steps are, because I've just gotten to the point of it, of like, you know, there's some things in life we may never have a complete answer to but the one thing that just has not happened for me recently has been okay. I want to search for answers, and I want to figure out what's going on, but I want to address symptom management as well. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:01:33
but wait what? What's happening is your stomach just hurt. Are you just not your meals aren't moving through you as much nausea

Kate Brim 1:01:40
and vomiting, throwing up meals six hours after the fact of eating them, as if I just ate it.

Scott Benner 1:01:46
Okay, listen, I want to be very 100% million percent clear. I barely graduated from high school. Okay, yeah. I'm definitely not a doctor, but I think you should take a couple of minutes just to look into a simple over the counter digestive enzyme, yeah, which helps a lot of people with type one.

Kate Brim 1:02:04
Yeah, it's so that has been mentioned, and that is something that I'm I had brought up with GI and is part of the call that I'm awaiting, yeah, but it's just yeah, figuring out the the right course to go about it and stuff, also, with all the anti doping stuff, because I can't just go pick up a bottle of digestive enzymes and just take

Scott Benner 1:02:26
it. You have to make sure. Don't want to reopen that can of worms. Yeah, exactly. Do you listen to the podcast at all? Yeah? Yeah. 792 episode 792 is called owner of a useless pan grace. It's me and Jenny talking about the other things that your pancreas does, besides, you know, insulin. And in that conversation, you'll hear me talk about how I, at some point had to add digestive enzymes to Arden's diet because she was having the same problems you're having, not the throwing up, but a lot of the other stuff, right? Also, I'm not saying you don't have gastroparesis. I'm just saying that these digestive enzymes are over the counter. If you look at the you know, I obviously would want you to really, really, really look at the ingredients. There's nothing in them that I can imagine off the top of my head. That would be a problem for you. Yeah? Yeah. There's a couple of companies that make really good ones. I'm looking at the label right now for one that I'd be completely comfortable telling you is valuable. Amylase, protease, protease six glyco my lace, lactase, lipase, beta glucanase, invertase, Celia alpha galactosidis, protase three, Fauci and hemo cilia. I don't know, I don't know what any of that is, okay, but, like, I do know that. I've seen it help a lot of people, yeah, yeah, a lot of people. I sometimes they just take them with, like, high fat or meals or like protein, you know, like, like meat. I don't know how you eat even, but if you can go use those without it being a doping issue, yeah, if they work for you, you'll know really quickly, yeah, like, it's not a thing you got to do for months and go like, well, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean, like, in a couple of days, you'll just be like, Oh, this is helping, yeah, and it kind of gives your gut a chance to maybe heal. Then at that point, yeah, I don't know. Like, by taking some of the load off of it, I honestly, I'm just using, I'm using phrasing and words from my experience watching it happen for somebody else. Like, obviously, there's nothing medical about what I'm saying, but I'm telling you, like, it's a really, really strong possibility that this is the only problem you have. So anyway, I would listen to 792 Yeah, before that diet. And if you, if it really, you know, catches your attention, you think, Okay, let me, let me look more into it. There's 767, where I just talk briefly about everything that Arden takes as a supplement. And honestly, if you go to Juicebox Podcast com and just search the word digestive, you'll get a. Lot of episodes where people are talking about it, yeah,

Kate Brim 1:05:02
no. It's, it's something that I have been very familiar with and, like, aware of good and it's, yeah, that's definitely kind of the next route that I am kind of going. I

Scott Benner 1:05:13
think you need an easy answer once in a while. Is what I'm saying? Oh, 100%

Kate Brim 1:05:18
Yeah. No. Like I said, it's especially after this colonoscopy, I just have felt so burnt out, as far as you know, going into these, these tests and just not getting answers and stuff. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:32
no, no, of course. Listen, my my daughter, who's a 1c has been between five two and six two. Now maybe what she went off to college. So five, two and six, five for, like, I don't know, I don't even know, like, a decade, right? Yeah, and she's got, you know, her stomach hurts, and you know, you do all the things I'm sure you've gone through too, and then eventually she ends up at an endoscopy, right? So down there, looking in her stomach, doing a gastric emptying test and everything. And the doctor just comes back to us and says, Arden has gastroparesis. Yeah, that doctor might just mean slow gastric emptying. That's not a thing you say to the parents or a person with type one diabetes, because we have a completely different perspective on what that might mean, right? Yeah. And so I'm like, standing I'm like, that's not possible, but maybe it is, like, who knows? You know? And if I didn't have Jenny to talk to privately, who was like, listen, Arden does not have gastroparesis. Like, let's look into other stuff. And they gave her this gastroparesis diet, which Kate was terrible, and didn't help any. She did it religiously for a month, and it just didn't change a damn thing. And I'm not, I'm not lying to you. Like, this is exactly what happened at the end of the month. She goes, I want a cheeseburger. I don't care if my stomach hurts. I'm done with this stupid diet. It's not helping. Yeah, I remember this, right? And she's just like, My stomach's gonna hurt. And I guess this is my lot in life. And I was like, All right, I'll get you a cheeseburger, but you have to go to the health food store with me first. And we went to the health food store, and all I did was took the crunchiest lady in the place who looked like she was in like, good shape, and I told her what happened, and she gave her a digestive enzyme, and she took two of them and ate the cheeseburger, and she was okay, yeah,

Kate Brim 1:07:13
no, it's definitely something I am wanting to, like, explore, yeah. And have have brought it to the attention of the GI because, like, the thing is, it's been a very good experience. He has done a very good job being very thorough and stuff on the diagnostic side, but where we're lacking is just the symptom management side. And so it's yeah, now I'm to the point where I'm like, Okay, we what can we try and like something

Scott Benner 1:07:41
you can buy on Amazon and have at your house today? Yeah, I mean, keep in mind this, and I'm not bad mouthing anybody, but like the doctor you went to can't make any money if he just gives you a digestive enzyme and says, Oh, your belly hurts. Try this. He's got to do a test. He's got to stick a tube in your butt. He's got a lot of things he's got to do if he wants to charge your money. So, I mean, what I ended up doing was listening to a lady who, in the end, I believe, might have been a wish doctor. That's fine. She's just this lovely hippie. And, you know, she was just very helpful. Now she has said stuff to me too that I've been like, okay, focus, focus. Thank you. Yeah, and I don't listen. But on this one thing just really worked out, you know. So anyway, I wish you a ton of luck. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have we're getting

Kate Brim 1:08:26
a little long here. I don't think so. No, awesome. Think we hit the nail on the head.

Scott Benner 1:08:30
I appreciate you doing this again. I love you're such a good shepherd of your own story, which some people aren't. I like this. I like talking to you because I really, genuinely think, and I say this to people once in a while, like I could have said, everybody, this is Cate. She was on the podcast. Kate. She was on the podcast before I could have gotten a sandwich and come back, and I would have been like, are we done, Kate? And you'd been like, yep, told my whole story. And I think, Oh, you're just very good at it. So thank you. I appreciate it. No, I really appreciate it. That's a pleasure. Can people check you out online somewhere?

Kate Brim 1:08:56
Quad Cate on Instagram. Nice. You.

Scott Benner 1:09:05
This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med. US med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, US med is where my daughter gets her diabetes supplies from and you could too use the link or number to get your free benefits check and get started today with us, met Ardyn started using a contour meter because of its accuracy, but she continues to use it because it's durable and trustworthy. If you have diabetes you want the contour, next gen blood glucose meter. There's already so many decisions. Let me take this one off your plate. Contour, next.com/juicebox

Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I Bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in? A little less, a little more. If you're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 if you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that, it really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

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