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Podcast Episodes

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

Filtering by Category: Type 1 Diabetes

#1330 Weekly News 10/11/24

Scott Benner

For the week of October 11, 2024

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

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

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

You are absolutely limited. Buy time on this one. I'm so sorry to say that it sounds pushy, but it's the absolute truth. Juice cruise 2025 I hope to see you there. We're gonna get a tan, talk about diabetes and meet a ton of great people who are living with diabetes. It's kind of gonna be like floating diabetes camp, but you won't have to sleep in a log cabin. You'll get a tan. And it's not just for adults or kids, it's for everybody. Introductory pricing probably will change on October 15, so if you're really interested, put your deposit down now. I hope to see you on the cruise. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The Bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? I.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon MusicGoogle Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio PublicAmazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.


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The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

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#1329 Unpixelated

Scott Benner

Jon is the creator of the Sugar Pixel. 

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon MusicGoogle Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio PublicAmazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

Scott Benner 0:00
We are all together again friends for this next episode of The juicebox podcast.

Some of you may know John as the creator of the sugarpixel, and some of you might know him as John from episode 9081 way or the other, he's returning to have another titillating conversation with me about type one diabetes. 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. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes, or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, ag one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com

this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, 87211514, get your supplies the same way we do from us med. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box.

Jon Fawcett 1:59
Hi, thanks for having me, Scott, this is John Fawcett. I'm the creator of sugarpixel, and then also loop follow app that many are using, and even the loop patches that a lot of loopers are using. So thanks for having me on the

Scott Benner 2:12
show. And John, you've been on the show before, right?

Jon Fawcett 2:15
Yes, I have. We talked about my daughter, Lily's change from being a looper for four to five years over to the OmniPod five. That's

Scott Benner 2:25
right, and your episode is smartly called from loop to OmniPod five. Episode 908. These people find you compelling and want to hear more. Thank you. Yeah, please. I enjoy talking to you very much. Now today, my my schedule's a little tighter, so I don't think we're gonna be able to go on and on like we did last time, John, I made a I'm going to tell you about it, because it's got to go somewhere. I don't know what happened to me, but a few weeks ago, I was like, I'm so tired of waiting for some of these other companies to contact me. Like, I get the idea that, like, OmniPod, for example, has been sponsoring the podcast since, like, you know, the very beginning. But I, I've always been baffled that, you know, tandem has never reached out. And been like, can we have somebody on your show? And I don't know why that is. And so I was like, All right, like, I'm just gonna put the call out. So I put up a post that was just like, hey, listen, if you have any kind of tech, or if you're helping people with diabetes or whatever, you can come on the show and tell people about it like, you know, contact me. Well, I think I've got an insulin coming, another device that reached out, which I thought was great, but mainly it was just like, more like entrepreneurs and people like you when I'm thrilled for you know what I mean. But anyway, so the last time you were on, we didn't really talk about the business of what you do very much. So tell people, give them like, a quick catch up. Like, how do you find yourself in this position?

Jon Fawcett 3:49
Yeah, so Lily was diagnosed when she was 12. She's 18 now, within weeks of her diagnosis, I had night scout up and running. We were using the spike gap at the time to get better alerts. And so I just dove in head first with all of the Hey, what's out there? What can I implement on our, you know, in our house, to make things easier for us managing this new diagnosis? So we were even tracking rudimentary, rudimentary tracking. Io be and see would be using night scouts built in decay just from manually entering that so we were using night Scout instead of that paper log book that they sent you home from the hospital with. And at the time, I also owned a company that made smartphone accessories, so I had all kinds of tech and product background, and at some point it just hit me that we're still waking her up for alerts overnight, and this was when she was 16, so she would sometimes wake up, but Mom and I still have. And our alerts set, and our alerts were going off all the time to get up and make sure she would have low carbs or take a correction for a high and I realized we're potentially only two years away from her moving out on her own, living in a dorm room, first time on her own, anything like that. Yeah, and I needed to solve the ability for her to wake up on her own, her alerts every single time. So that's how sugarpixel got started. I used my background in designing and manufacturing tech products to basically create a better alert system for her Dexcom, and it has so so a couple things that we added to it is the audio alerts peak around 105 decibels, so it's drastically louder than your alerts off the Dexcom app. But it also randomly creates the audio as it plays in real time. So there's a lot of studies. It's called Brain habituation. Clinically, we call it alert fatigue, where your brain hears the same sound repeatedly and then just literally starts to ignore it and you it just basically won't wake you up anymore because your brain has heard the sound too often. So we implemented that. And then we also have haptic alerts. So there's a vibration talk that you can put underneath your pillow to give vibration alerts also. And sort of like we're trying to combine as many things as possible to ensure that you're going to wake up to your alerts every single time reliably. So that's sort of the high level of what sugarpixel is and how I created it.

Scott Benner 6:45
That's amazing for people who may not know that you can, you know, like, how could this blaring alarm from your phone go off and it not wake you up? I will tell this brief story. I, as I've highlighted on the podcast, number of times, grew up very broke, and we lived in this place that was the front door was 12 steps from the sidewalk that butted up against a five lane highway. All right, so prime real estate, John, everybody was clamoring to be there, trucks like semis all day long, cars all. It's one I was literally 75 yards away from one of the top 10 most deadliest intersections in Pennsylvania when I grew up. Okay, that literally, I'm telling you. There was never not traffic moving, but every once in a while, that would go, and it would come and everything. But you lived there for a while, the trucks would go by, the building would shake. But I met my wife, and I was dating her, and she came over one time, and we were all sitting sort of in the living room watching television, and it was later at night, so the traffic had died down, but then a truck came cruising by, and the house shakes and does the whole thing, and the windows are rattling and everything. And she literally stands up off the sofa, like, what is happening? And I looked and my rest of my family, we didn't know what she was talking about. We had no idea what she was talking about. We're like, are you okay? What's wrong? She's like, why is the house shaking? What's that noise? And we're like, oh, that's a truck. Like, we never would have heard it. So I take your point. And you know, from my kid having diabetes, I've slept through an alarm or two, so yeah, yeah,

Jon Fawcett 8:32
not even just audio that your brain does that with. It's any stimulus. So a lot of people feel this is like phantom vibrations from their phone in their pocket where the phone didn't go off. It's because they're just so used to feeling that same vibration that it's tricking them. So even with the the vibration just it randomizes the vibration pattern, because your brain can get used to even the haptic alerts or the house shaking, or just about anything that it's a constant, repeated

Scott Benner 9:03
stimulus, that's amazing. And so you just have, like, I don't want to call it an algorithm, because everybody says everything's an algorithm, but it just randomly. It just randomly goes through and and makes changes to the vibration and to the sound, into the pitch, to the bot, like, the whole thing. If you take insulin or sofanylurias, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries G vo hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes, ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO khypoped. How to use it, they need to know how to use GVO kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys, called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. I don't know how you guys order your diabetes supplies, like CGMS, pumps and testing equipment, but at our house, we use us Med, and I'm gonna walk you through the entire process. Right now, I'm looking at the email from us med. It says it's time to refill your prescription, dear Arden, please click the button below to place your next order. Then you click the button that was it. Two days later, I got this email, thank you for your order from us. Med, we wanted to let you know that your order and it gives you an order number was shipped via UPS ground. You can track your package at any time using the link below, and then there was a link, and then it showed up at our house. Now I'm going to walk you through the entire chain of events. On the 29th which was a Saturday, I clicked on the email. On that Monday, the first I got an email that said the order had been sent four days later on the fifth the package arrived. If you can do it easier than that, you go get it. But if you can't, us, med.com/juice, box or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, get your diabetes supplies the same way we do.

Jon Fawcett 11:45
Yeah, every time. So sugar pixel runs on a millisecond loop, basically as it's doing the alerts, and every time it hits that, it says, Okay, pick a new tone, for instance, a new pitch for the audio and pick a new duration. And obviously we have some top and bottom parameters that it can choose from, but it's, it's sort of like saying, every time it loops, pick a random number from one to 10,000 okay, and you're never, you know, you're never going to get that same number, like same pattern of numbers, sequences matching in any repetition. That's

Scott Benner 12:26
pretty cool. We've done two things already. We've just said night scout out loud, as if somebody understands what that is. And so let's start with that. What do you think of night Scout as being like, I'm, people know I'm I'm tech savvy, but I don't understand back end stuff. So I know that night scout is on my phone. I know that Arden has a night Scout URL. I can tell you that Arden's vision AI, which is not a thing I've told people about, yet, runs off of her night Scout link. And yet, I don't honestly know what night scout is.

Jon Fawcett 12:58
Yeah, so night scout is, there's two pieces to it. One is just a database behind the scenes, running on a server somewhere. And when I say database, you can think of just like an Excel file to greatly simplify it. And this Excel file has Your blood glucose reading every five minutes that it's grabbing from dexcomber libre or wherever. Loop even uploading it and then it has your carb entries, your bolus entries, your basal changes, depending on what system you're using. Night scouts flexible from the database back inside to utilize all kinds of different capabilities. So for the DI wires, using a loop, it can grab all the data possible to the very simplest form that I mentioned. We were using it just with MDI. We were just manually going to the night Scout web page for my daughter and clicking a form and typing in 30 carbs and hitting submit, and it would save that. So it's not really on that end much different than just an Excel file sitting in the cloud that has all of the data and then the other half of it is a front front end, and the front end can vary drastically. So night Scout, in and of itself, like the open source project has a web based front end, so you just open the website link that's for your night Scout site, and it shows you, sort of like looking at your Dexcom graph or the follow after libre graph, but it has a bunch of other data with it, such as little dots for your carbs and dots for your boluses. But the ecosystem with night Scout has gotten pretty large to where you really don't even necessarily need to deal with the front end anymore, the website running and only looking at it in a browser most of the apps out there and download the night Scout data and display. Them in a different app. You can display them. You can sync your sugar pixel up tonight. Scout, to display it. You can sync the loop follow app that I mentioned earlier, that I wrote up tonight. Scout, not sure about like the sweet dreams app. Guru, I know you can sync up tonight. Scout, so there's this big ecosystem of all kinds of things that can sort of plug in and utilize all this data. That's your data sitting in the cloud for your back and night Scout site.

Scott Benner 15:33
So you just did a thing where you just mentioned a bunch of other like, I'm assuming, like third party apps or that kind of stuff. They come and they go. I don't mean the ones you just said, or anything like that. I mean, over the years, I've seen people say, I've have, oh, my God, such a good idea, right? I'm gonna do this. And some stuff takes off, and some stuff doesn't. The apps, especially, they come, they go, they come, they go. It's constant. You came and you stuck. So that's my next thing. Is, like, we say sugar pixel, sugar people, again, they're like, a sugar pixel. I know you explained what it does, but like, visually, it's this little, let me see, is it about six inches long?

Jon Fawcett 16:11
It's, yeah, it's six inches long, two inches tall and two inches deep. It's about the size of an alarm clock.

Scott Benner 16:18
Okay, yeah. And it's time. It's smaller than that, I think, but, but, and then there's a screen on the front, and it just tell me everything that that screen shows me.

Jon Fawcett 16:28
So we have 25 or so different screen display options to choose from. So I won't get into all of them, but

Scott Benner 16:38
you can choose how and

Jon Fawcett 16:42
what you want to display on that the default things are going to be your blood glucose reading, the trend arrow, and then your delta, which is how much your blood sugar change between the last two readings. So did it drop by five? It would list the negative five, or did it raise by 10, it would list plus 10. But we have all kinds of options for you. Just don't want your blood sugar shown to the world sitting on your kitchen or in your dorm room. You can just display it as a clock, so it'll show the current time. And the clock is color coded, so green means you're in range, you know, red means you're urgent, low, things like that. So the time, the color of the clock just changes all the way through to we have full emoji and icon sets. So you can we have a lot of parents that that's the one they use. It shows a picture on the left, and then your blood glucose and the trend arrow, so if they have toddlers that might not even going to read, they can start associating a picture with how they feel, and the parent can still look and see the exact BG value. And we actually just had a parent email us a few weeks ago with a story where she said the pictures are absolutely fabulous because her three year old, I think, came up and said, Mommy, it shows a thunderstorm. That means I need to wait an extra 20 minutes before I eat. So the kids started associating the thunderstorm with lightning. Is one of the icons that we show for a high blood glucose value. Now

Scott Benner 18:21
here's the downside, John, that kid can't eat it's raining. Did you know that? They haven't figured it out yet, but whenever it's cloudy, she's not hungry. That's amazing how old I think the kid

Jon Fawcett 18:36
was three, and it was just a really interesting story. And we had thought of that, but that was sort of the first parent that reached out and said, you know, my kid learned to do this on his own just by, you know, the parent child communication of, no, you should wait to eat. And then the child associated that with the pictures that they were seeing on their sugarpixel,

Scott Benner 18:58
yeah. Terrible. Postscript, they eventually moved to Seattle, and he starves to death. So when you hear that story, can you tell me on a personal level, like, forget the business for a second. What's your reaction to that when you hear that? Because I have experiences like that, and I'm wondering how they strike you,

Unknown Speaker 19:16
well, and how it strikes

Jon Fawcett 19:18
me is, that's why I'm still here doing this. And he sort of back to your point about the app, you know, come and go and things like that. So I came out of consumer technology as the company that I was running, and that is, I got to see the worst parts of everything from corporate greed with competitors down to just absolute fuming customer support requests to us. So you flip the script here to making a product that's helping people, and that's quite frankly, the reason I'm still doing it is because. Is of how many times people just send us a note and say, oh my gosh, this, you know, my kid is now learning how to understand his blood sugars. Or last night, this saved my life, because my phone alert didn't go off, but this alert did go off, so all of those, that's the reason I do this, and that's the reason, you know, every morning, I get up and I basically

Scott Benner 20:23
search the 200

Jon Fawcett 20:27
Facebook type one groups that I'm part of to see if there's anybody that's having a problem or needs help with setup, or, you know, has a question

Scott Benner 20:35
about it, because

Jon Fawcett 20:38
it's, it's so gratifying just to be able to know you're doing something that's truly making a difference in 1000s of people's lives. John,

Scott Benner 20:47
that's customer service. You don't wait for them to come to you. You go find them. I mean, I do

Unknown Speaker 20:52
it, sort of a weird thing. No, I

Scott Benner 20:53
do it. I know what you're talking about. Yeah,

Jon Fawcett 20:56
I know you do it. If you look at people having Dexcom problems and you know, or pump questions. None of the major companies seem to do that, but you're a great example too. Is you hopped up on there all the time when there's stuff that needs addressed from your end,

Scott Benner 21:15
I answered a woman's question last night at 2:48am I was I was asleep, and I got a text from Arden that said, I need help. I'm working on a finals project, and I don't understand something. I said, Oh, I'll get out of bed. So I got out of bed, I came into my office, and I FaceTimed her, and I helped her work through it, which reminds me, by the way, in two minutes, I have to wake her up, but that'll be the end of the story. And when I got back in bed, I just, I was awake, and I opened my phone up, and I went to my mentions, and I just went through and answered people's questions about diabetes stuff for a couple minutes. And, you know, I take your point about the companies not doing it. They can't, like, they're they're restricted by the FDA, they can't give medical advice. And so no matter, like, you know, when it's you or it's me, I'm just a guy, I get to go on and say, hey, look, you know, here's what I would do. But you know, I'm not a doctor, like I'm nobody's, nobody's counting on me to be right. As soon as you put a company in that position, they, they have, they'd have to be correct, and everything would have to go through legal. And it just they, it's not a it's such a it would be such a valuable thing. They'd have the most popular Facebook group in the world. But there's not a thing they can do. So yeah, you know well,

Jon Fawcett 22:30
and there would be ways I think they could do because there's even times where, no matter how much we ask people to contact us directly for customer support. We can't stop people from posting to the Facebook groups, so that's the reason I do it, is I don't want someone who maybe they forgot to click the help button and contact us through there to the post to Facebook. I don't want them getting upset and not having a sugar pixel work because of a setting that needed changed or something. So that's why we do it. But there are times where I even have to say, Please, email supported custom type one.com because I'm not about to ask them to post their you know, Wi Fi information on juicebox podcast, Facebook group, you know, things like that, where we have to even

Scott Benner 23:22
take caution with

Jon Fawcett 23:24
confidential information that might be on the sugar pixel that we need to see in order to assist them so we we still direct them over

Scott Benner 23:33
you have this little ritual where you go around on on Facebook. Let me ask you a sincere question that you please feel free to answer me honestly about, Do I have the best diabetes Facebook group? Yes. Is it the most active? Yes, yeah. Okay, so I don't look at the other ones,

Jon Fawcett 23:53
so you definitely from what, from what I see, because I I am probably on at least three or four dozen,

Scott Benner 24:03
oh, my god, horrible. Globally

Jon Fawcett 24:05
there, there's, we're in ones that are, you know, in a Facebook group for Norway where I can't even read any posts on it. I have to click through to translate. Okay, try and catch, you know, they'll still write sugarpixel in in English. So I'm talking worldwide. We're on these groups, but by and large, we see the absolute most posts from juicebox group. And I think a big reason for that just sort of as not the guy who runs it like you are, that I don't know if you get the same feeling as the guy who's overseeing it is your users seem to be very, very passionate, compared to some of the other groups like they're not only passionate about sharing what they learn, but about helping people and knowing. That this is a safe space to come to, where I know I'm going to get the help I need. These questions, where there's some groups, where it's just it gets out of hand pretty quickly with, you know, very unhelpful comments. I smacked

Scott Benner 25:14
somebody on the hand the other day digitally.

Jon Fawcett 25:18
Yeah, I saw that.

Scott Benner 25:21
Oh, I did it again since then. Actually, here, I'll tell you this, because it'll delight her when she hears it. Isabelle helps me run the Facebook group. And Isabelle is a lovely woman who lives in Canada, who has type one diabetes. She is maybe the kindest, like so good at, you know, seeing the things to point out to me. You know what I mean, like, check at this. Look at that. You're going to, you're going to want to see this. And she's so kind to everybody, but there's like, three people in the group, if I'm being honest, she really doesn't like and sometimes she'll be like, this one's at it again. And I'm like, okay, and I'll look and I'll be like, you just don't like them. And she's like, that's not why. And I read, and she's right, they're doing something they shouldn't be doing. But yesterday, one of those people kind of like, went off half cocked, and I stepped in, and then I sent a note, and I said, Hey, I got you a present. What's the present? I said, I told this person to, you know, you know, be a little kinder, or something like that. And she's like, Oh, I feel so good about that. And I was like, I know, but generally speaking, the group is fantastic, like, and I even think, like some of the agitatoring people, I think it's just what it is. But I do take your point about the veracity that people are helpful with and how knowledgeable they are too. And, I mean, I think they're knowledgeable from listening to the podcast, and then they come back in to help other people, which is beautiful. And then what you don't see is all the lurking, like they're, yeah, oh my god, 90. It might be 95% of people don't say a word, but they're there, and I can see the data that supports that. They're there and they're looking it's really interesting how it all works. You have a couple, like, a little list of things we could talk about here. This one seems like it'll be fun to dive into CGM outages. I'm assuming, when your sugar pixel works with Dexcom, does it also work with libre? Yes. So you

Jon Fawcett 27:20
can directly connect to your g6 or g7 account, and to be clear right here, because we get this question a lot, is sugar pixel downloads from the cloud servers in the same way that the follow up, like the Dexcom follow app or the libre linkup app work, so it doesn't directly connect by Bluetooth to the CGM or even to the phone running the CGM app. I can be in Ohio, and my daughter could be in New Jersey, and I would still have readings on the sugar pixel sitting here, as long as her phone has readings with the main CGM app. So with that said, Dexcom, G 67 libre three and the updated version of libre two. And this is just one of the things that drives me crazy. Is libre has released multiple versions of the libre two, and now they even have the two plus, which causes a little more confusion. So the original libre two, you had to manually scan the sensor with your phone to see the value on in the app on your phone, they updated that in numerous countries around the world. So like UK, now it's still called libre two, but it essentially runs like the libre three, where that connections in real, real time, without you having to manually scan the sensor. So right now, we work with both of those. I like to sort of tell people, if you don't have to manually scan the sensor to see the value in the libre app, sugar pixel works, okay, but some exciting news were in beta testing for sugar pixel functionality for the original libre version, version two that requires manual scans, so it'll run a little different, but I'm hoping within the next two months, we'll have that available where it will actually trigger alerts off of the libre to where those alerts send out to the libre app and the link up app, even if there's no BG value, it's like the sensor says, Hey, I know I'm low, send that Bluetooth ping to the phone to trigger an alert. So we're about to release that for beta testing right now, and then also in sync with night scout and glue Global Connect, which is sort of like glueru runs their own night Scout backend system that can run through their own app, and we can sync with that too. It's

Scott Benner 29:50
ponderous to me that the companies don't just do this themselves, by the way, like, I mean, I'm glad everybody else does, but you're like glueru, night scout. So this one that, like, just do it yourself. My God. Like, look how valuable it is. People would like talk about adding functionality that people would be thrilled about. I haven't talked a lot about this in the podcast yet, and I will at some point, but I'm involved with a company called Vision AI, and so I'm using the product right now, going to be talking more about it moving forward, but I'm hooked to Arden's account, right? So I just went into a prompt and said, Show me my last five boluses. And it said, bolus dose one may 13, gives the time and the date point six, units two time and date point one, units three time and date point two, units, like, just like that. I said, What's my current BG? Your current BG is 98 the trend is stable, like, stuff like that. I asked the question. It can answer like, what do you think my blood sugar's gonna be in 30 minutes? And it doesn't know. But it said, predicting future glucose levels accurately requires consideration various factors. Like, it gives you, like, you know, a great like, synopsis of your question, since your glucose trend is stable at 98 without additional influence factors like recent meals or exercise, it is likely that your glucose levels will remain relatively stable in the short term, and assuming no new variable, that's hook the Arden's night Scout, yeah, it's insane. If you ask it another medical question, it takes into account that you have diabetes. It's just like, where are we going, you know what I mean, like, because wherever we're going, John, I like it. I'm a fan of all this. I

Jon Fawcett 31:26
would like I see this long term picture off of AI stuff that I would like to see into the actual algorithms, yeah, because I think it can get there. I think we've got a long way to get there, because AI still not perfect, it's sure, based on data in but ultimately, if, if we could have a system, let's just, for example, use OmniPod five. Since my daughter's on that, I was thinking about this the other day so she had, she had a cold last week, and her insulin needs just work through the roof. Well, the one concern with OmniPod five is, do you change to the next pod and then she's having a lot of lows after she's passed her cold, because TDI was like, double AI could easily solve that. Literally, all you have to do is tell it you had a cold, and it can even look through and try to determine an appropriate adjustment of TDI. One of the things I did manually years ago with loop is I pulled in, like, a month's worth of data and made a calculation that would average out, not really average, but more the median of what her blood glucose was throughout the day and after meals and stuff like that, and then determine, based on her total daily insulin, How much to adjust carb ratios and basal spy. It's really not that difficult as a human to process just massive amounts of data like that, but for a machine, I don't think we're there yet with naturally think through all of these variables of sickness or stress or extra activity or anything like that.

Scott Benner 33:20
Arden's using Iaps, and we have the functionality on where it's, I don't know what they call it in the app, but it's like a dynamic insulin on board dynamic basal like, it makes adjustments to those like, and it's still, I hear what you're saying, because I still see the same thing, like coming out of her period, for example, or, you know, a time when she needs more insulin, like, you're almost like assured she's going to get a little too low once those that insulin need changes. But, man, it adapts very quickly. I

Jon Fawcett 33:50
actually just had a discussion with someone this morning about dynamic ISF. I'm torn on it. It's a

Scott Benner 33:58
it's, it's solving a

Jon Fawcett 34:01
different problem, in my opinion. So it's it while it works, and you can solve things with that. It can also introduce, introduce more risk, if you're not for someone that may not know exactly you know what the settings are doing. And it's it sort of comes back to, like our last episode, we, I think we talked a lot about fat and protein, and I know you have other episodes about that. Is so it's dynamic. ISF to me,

Scott Benner 34:31
there's not a lot of science

Jon Fawcett 34:35
that I've seen, and if you have some, I'd love to read it, or if you have had other people on talk about it, but there hasn't. I haven't seen a lot of science to me that has sort of shown that when blood glucose is high, there's more resistance, just period in and of itself, where everything I've seen sort of falls back on the the other things, the. The hormonal changes for monthly cycles, fat, protein, taking four to eight hours, those types of things, and it's always a tricky situation on you can solve that with a TEP basal. You can solve that with dynamic ISF. You solve that with dosing for whatever underlying causes. So I think there has to be something new out there on a way to solve that. I just don't I don't think we're there yet. I don't think dynamic ISF, is it? I don't think temp basals are it. I don't think having to manually go in and dose, because even then, it's just they're all guesses in many ways. Well, what

Scott Benner 35:46
do you see as the answer? AI to put something else in charge. Be like, Look, you figure it out. Because you know, even like, considering fat as an example is not something people do, you know, and even if you were to do it now, you're asking them to know the fat content of a cheeseburger and french fries and like, you know, I'm wondering if these other fixes are while maybe not at the root of the problem. Does it not maybe? Does it just not matter, because it's doing what it needs to do, well and

Jon Fawcett 36:24
to some degree. But I mentioned there's more risks, and ultimately it comes down to the greatest low blood sugar risk is from a bolus, no matter what. So if you're so dynamic, ISF is essentially just adding automated bolusing when you're high dosing, trying to dose and time fatter protein doses. That's adding a bolus. And there's just so many variables that the risk to me, that I see with all of those is that

Scott Benner 37:01
you misjudged the

Jon Fawcett 37:03
reason for the high. So if it, if it is fat and protein, you're going to work out dynamic ISF is going to work out, an extra dose is going to work out, if it's a timing issue, and I know that, you know, a lot of people post that chart, but I don't know if you made it or someone else, but I see it all the time on juicebox of sort of, how do you determine, is it timing or ratio, or what of the dose based on what the graph does after you eat? So if it was a timing issue, you could already have way too much on board, but you hit 250, or 300 because the bolus timing was off from the carb time, and

Scott Benner 37:48
it goes again, yeah, that dynamic

Jon Fawcett 37:50
ISF could cause a major low, or doing an extra fat protein dose too soon could cause an extra low. So that's sort of my concern from both of those so

Scott Benner 38:02
far, what I'm seeing with Arden while she's at college, because her her pre bolusing isn't great. At college, she'll spike to like 202 20 if she doesn't pre bolus, but it hits her pretty hard. It brings her back. It does not normally make her low. That's good. So yeah, the last few months, she's been completely all of her settings in Iaps have been the dynamic version of those settings, and I have not touched it at all. She's doing well, that's great. Yeah. Now I don't know that the stability, like the the rises, are the same. It's, they'll be once she's, you know, not up, you know, overnight, three days a week, trying to get work done. Yeah, right now. It's making her life manageable, and it's allowing her not to think about diabetes while she's so busy. And I'm taking that as a win in the moment, and I'm also counting on the people who are working on this to continue to work on it. You know, that kind of thing, actually, can we, John, can we just take a second here? Arden was up all night working on a project, and I'm in charge of waking her up so she can keep working. So hold on. One second for me, you're gonna hear, hey, it's 1145 you want to get up now, or you want me to call you back in a little bit. 10 minutes. Okay, bye, by the way. Could you hear? Yeah, the Hello was this and 10 minutes, by the way, I already called her 15 minutes later than she wanted me to. So she was up all she did an all nighter, Friday night. So on Friday she went to the lab at one a 1pm they worked there all day. Came home at 8pm ate something, went back at 930 and then left at 11:30am the next day. Then she slept, then she slept through the day, then she got up in the evening, worked all night, again, I think, went to bed at like three or four o'clock and. Got up at 11 or 12, worked all day yesterday, all night, last night, and went to sleep this morning. At time did she go to sleep 10:15am and asked me to wake her up at 1130 so she's been asleep now for an hour and a half after doing well, she's got one more thing that has to be in by five o'clock tonight, and then she's got to go to class all week. So is this the last week? No, this is the last two weeks. Somehow, John, I don't understand this, and maybe it answers a lot of my questions in my cold wind episodes, have you heard those? Don't remember? Oh, there are healthcare workers. Come on and tell you how shitty their jobs are and how bad everybody is at what they're doing. If you haven't heard it, it's really eye opening, and it'll scare the living out of you, while Arden's friends who are becoming teachers and nurses and all these, you know, other things are already home and like, you know, out at parties on Friday night and everything, my daughter, who's learning how to make clothing, is being treated like she actually works in a sweatshop at college. Basically, she went somewhere where the instructors are like, ex, you know, industry people, and they're basically like, tell them, like, look, this is this is it? If you can't do it here, you can't do it there, and I'm going to give you something to do, and I'm not really going to tell you how to do it and get it done and be right. And so that's the situation she's in. So she had to make a pattern from nothing. They gave her a piece of clothing that is already made and told her, deconstruct this, make a pattern for it, and then remake the thing she calls us. She goes, what the AM? I supposed I'm like, I don't know you wanted to do this. Not me. I was like, it was like, go figure it out. Right now, she finally met a really good friend that's in the same track as her, and ironically, that person is a type one from New Jersey. Oh, wow, yeah. So they were there. That's great, and then insane. So they become very fast friends, and they're helping each other and doing great and everything. Yeah, no kidding. Like I'm not lying to you. I very close with all these other girls who are in these other, you know, like tracks in different colleges all over the country. And we talk all the time, and they they say over and over again, it's insane, but Arden's college is way harder than ours is. So yeah, anyway, this is gonna kill her, for sure. She's

Jon Fawcett 42:36
like you said something really interesting that triggered something in my head that it's sort of all the dynamic studies that made it manageable so she doesn't have to think as much about diabetes, especially with how but you know how hard this program is for her right now, and I more and more see Facebook posts or questions where somebody is worried about, you know, hey, I had the same meal this morning that I had yesterday. And here's the two graphs, and they look different. What study should I change? And more and more, I think that the technology is getting there with, at least with loop, IPS, Android, APS, OmniPod, five and tandem. The technology is getting there to where you don't really need to worry about, well, why did it, why did it react different, unless you start seeing it, you know, for a week straight, obviously, because we're at the point with Lily where we almost never talk to her. Think about what she's dosing, how much she's dosing, what her blood glucose is, because the systems are so good at handling it with the algorithms. And even when you have a mistake, it's sort of just, you know, mistakes happen, either go small if you're high, or have some carbs if you're low, and then move on. And it's probably not going to be the same thing that happens tomorrow or the next. I

Scott Benner 44:14
think quality of life is becoming a focus, and as the as the technology expands and grows, and the companies have more time with it, and even the well as DIY people have more time with it, the focus is more and more on quality of life, like not just, can I keep my a 1c at 5.2 I mean, I'll go backwards, right? Arden's diagnosed. She's two years old. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm thrown into the same cement mixture that all of you are thrown into. I feel like I'm killing her. I might very well maybe her a 1c and the eights. I can't seem to affect it. I don't know what's going on. What happens next? Dexcom makes a CGM. All of a sudden, they have more context for what's happening. I'm like, Okay, I'm getting this. I bring her a 1c down a little bit. She gets a pump. I. Know, I'm using the pump just as an injection replacement. So it's not, I'm not getting any of the functionality out of it. Yet, all of a sudden I start learning about extending boluses. And, you know, temp basal increases and decreases. And you know, I'm bumping and nudging blood sugars. And all of a sudden I can bring a 1c down and down, down. It comes out of the eighths and the sevens, the sixes, the fives. And it takes a lot of effort in the beginning, especially a lot of effort now, as time moved on, I got better at it. It took less of my effort, but didn't let you sleep still all the time. You know, there was a lot of downside to it. OmniPod five comes along. And while they're even talking about it in the in the planning stages, the way they're talking about it is like, look, you know, it's not going to be loop, but people aren't going to need to understand all this to still live a nice life and have a good a 1c and some stability and all that stuff. And as they were saying that to me and to whoever they were saying it to, out loud, I was thinking, oh yeah, but my kids got like, a five, three, A, 1c A, five, five, a, 1c, A, five, seven, A, 1c, like, that's what I want, right until you sleep through the night the first time, yeah, and then you're like, hey, you know what? Maybe a six, one's okay. I was gonna die, and I didn't realize it, like, I was worried about her dying. I was the one that was dying. Like, you know? And now you're an adult, and you have type one, and your mom and your dad aren't helping you. You're burning your candle from six different ends. And, you know, and then you get into a situation like I said to Arden the other day. I'm like, Are you taking your vitamin D? And she goes, dude, after finals, talk to me about that. Like, I'm like, they're right next to your bedside. I put them in this little, like pill container, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, just to open one and take it out, put it out, put it in your mouth and swallow it. You're sitting next to it right now. Can you see it? Put it I can't like, she's got no bandwidth. If she was taking care of her diabetes, like MDI, on top of all this, I don't know if she'd be, like, hanging the way she is and doing as well. And so I say, let OmniPod work on that OmniPod five algorithm, like, you know, sure, though I'm assuming they're gonna keep working on it. I like that. The thing what I find in diabetes, John, is that the thing that first scares people is the thing they end up loving at some point. My example is Dexcom came out and all the old head moms were like, you're gonna make these kids crazy. My kid's 35 and she's fine. We didn't have a CGM, like, these. Oh, I can, by the way, I got one in my mind right now. Old Cal just going on and on about, I don't mean that in a gender way, by the way, just, she's just doing anyway. I'm gonna go back to old Cal. Old Cal just mooing and mooing about CGM, and it's gonna ruin these kids and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, OmniPod, you have never seen one. Your kid doesn't wear it. You've never had any experience with it. You sound like a lady going, get off my grass. You goddamn kids. Like, like, and I'm like, I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. But then that becomes pervasive throughout the space. Oh, I don't know. People are too focused on their data. It's gonna give people anxiety. You know, who gives people anxiety? People have anxiety. People who don't have anxiety are very calmed by the whole thing. So it's not for everybody, but that initial panic, it's change. People hate change. Like, do you remember when Facebook was massaging its way to what it is now. There was a revolution online. Every time Facebook changed their their the way Facebook looked right, because people don't want to change. I get that. I understand the whole human thing about that. But anyway, a couple of years later, that cow stopped mooing. You know what she said this CGM is fantastic. My daughter's never had better blood sugars. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Oh, good. I'm glad you figured it out two years later. For the last 24 months, you've been setting brush fires in people's minds on the internet, and all those people now believe that CGM data is a bad thing to have. And then OmniPod five comes out, and they say, Hey, look, we're not going to show you all the settings. We don't want you to think about this. We want you to just live your life. People like, I gotta see my settings. A year and a half later, I hear you go, I love OmniPod five. So I'm like, I think just wait. You know what I mean, like, and I can't wait to go. It's

Jon Fawcett 49:15
all of them, yeah. So it's, it's,

Scott Benner 49:19
we saw this

Jon Fawcett 49:21
when Lily started looping. So she started looping the week that loop added OmniPod arrows functionality, more than just their private just the private test group, and she actually that was her first bump. So she she got the OmniPod. One week later, I switched her to loop with OmniPod. I never even had time to learn extended bolus. Literally, I've never used it a single time, right? So you kind of look at that, though. And one of the things I hear from OmniPod five people, is, oh my gosh. How do you do extended bolus? How do you do extended bolus like we've never done that ever with her OmniPods now, in what, seven years, or whatever, six years, because she went right to loop. But with every system, see, then you had, you know, always saw the loop. People who were coming in from MDI, and, you know not, not necessarily understanding how loop handles things differently. It could be looped by APS, Android, APS, whatever is just, I tell a lot of people, there's no such thing in my mind as an empirical setting, basal, card ratio ISF, etc, nothing that's empirical, that works on every single system out there, because every single system out there handles those things in such a different way.

Speaker 1 50:48
But once you sort of, from

Jon Fawcett 50:52
our viewpoint of how it's happened in our family, is once you embrace how whatever system you switch to is different than what you used to be on, and start adjusting your management style to how to the strengths of that system. Yes, the quality, the quality of life, goes way up. And your point about the first time you sleep through the night. So we have, we have our alerts. I still have a sugar pixel in my room, even though Lily has one in her room. Mine is set at, I think, 50 and 300 like, I don't want woken up unless she hasn't handled it, and it's truly approaching an emergency level. But I've had people ask me like, you know, hey, I want my low alert on sugarpixel set to 120 but then I want to easily change it. If it goes off, I want to change it down to 100 and then change it down to 90. Like, if BG,

Scott Benner 51:51
like, that's just counterintuitive.

Jon Fawcett 51:55
It's counterintuitive. It's it's really degrading the quality of life. And so for us, we've started focusing more on quality of life. And I think her a 1c might have gone up a point one or point two, and that's fabulous, because everything else, the burden of management, has dropped, yeah, by 90%

Scott Benner 52:18
Yeah. I mean, I think Arden would have been sad if she had a five, three, a one scene, her father was dead. You know what I mean? So, because there were nights I laid in bed and I was like, oh my god, I'm going crazy. My head is shaking. I'm vibrating, you know, I need to sleep. The

Jon Fawcett 52:33
other thing that concerns me, and this was sort of back to me creating sugarpixel, I was concerned that, you know, Lily has to go to wake up to her alerts well. And then I started also thinking, okay, in two years now, she's also going to be managing this way more on her own, with way less involvement from her parents. And the one thing that started concerning me was, can an 18 year old shift from their parents handling everything and getting down to this 5.5 a 1c to then becoming an adult who's having to do that same stuff on their own, my fear was a swing of like 5.5 up to nine, a 1c just because a kid's going to get burned out. You and I, we sort of push through it over the years, and most parents do, but the fear is an 18 year old just going to get burned out in the first month of that, and then they're not going to those they're not going to bolus at all. They're just going to let the pump do whatever it does. And that's so I kind of felt that, you know, going from a 5.5 to a six or 6.5 that's way safer and healthier in the long term and not that much different in the short term than a swing up to sort of not managing your diabetes as a young adult and jumping up into the eights, nines, 10s, A, one CS, and

Scott Benner 54:01
you give her the opportunity to come to it on her own without it going wildly the other way. And so it's a thing she'll come to like, you know, I could probably put my a 1c back down under six if I tried it on her time, which will be important, you know? I mean, you can't force people to do things. Yeah, exactly. Those are the big picture ideas you have to keep in mind, when you're talking about stuff like this, like you're not going to be able to force people to just to do a good job. You can't. I mean, I don't know how many times I have to, like, have somebody on to make the point to people, mostly humans, just do stuff for other people, never for themselves. So like, you're doing that thing for your daughter. I'm doing that thing for my daughter. She's not going to do it for herself. She doesn't see the situation like that. She didn't watch her come out of my wife. She doesn't see herself the way I see her, like she's my most important like focus, her most important focus is learning how to put sleeves on a thing before the lady yells at her on Friday. Like, you know what I mean? Like she's not she's not prioritizing life the way I do. She doesn't have the same ability. To do that. She's not as far along in her career, in her life and her understanding, and she hasn't had enough experiences like if a six five, My God, what a great a 1c to have. You know, if a six five, a 1c is the price to pay, and I'm making quotes around that to get you through that part of your life. You know when, God bless that's fantastic. We never did go to CGM outage is when I brought it up, John, I'm going to run out of time for you, but it might seem like a left turn. I do just enjoy, maybe more talking to you about algorithms, stuff like that. I assume you see what happens? The Dexcom lost their but I don't know the technical term, but like, overnight, like people didn't have access to their stuff, unlike other people's phones, right? The share stuff.

Jon Fawcett 55:41
This one this time it was even on the main Dexcom app was getting logged out.

Scott Benner 55:47
That didn't happen to us, but, but okay, yeah, I did see it happen to some people, like people are getting kicked out of their app or something. Yeah.

Jon Fawcett 55:54
So, so they were getting kicked out of their app, having to being forced to re log in, being told they have to re log in, and then sometimes they weren't able to log in again. Lily was able to log in immediately, and everything was back up and running. But I know other people who, gosh, even this week, are still having issues with it with CGM outages. So the first thing is that we always tell people, because I have a lot of we've got 1000s and 1000s of sugarpixel users all over the world. So I hear, anytime there's any outage anywhere, basically, and

Scott Benner 56:32
they treat you like it's your problem. I bet,

Jon Fawcett 56:35
yeah, yeah, quite frequently that's okay, because I have enough experience to you know, even help them with it. Is the first thing everybody should do if they don't have readings in their follow up, or if they're Libra the libre link up app is check the main app. So check the Dexcom G 67 app, check the libre View app, because if you don't have readings there, you're not going to have readings on not only the follow app, but also every other app service device, whether it be sugarpixel or night scout or everything. So the first thing you always want to do is go see if the main app is running correctly, has readings, doesn't have any error messages, like the Dexcom will report a big red X on the server air error for the sharing page when they're having a lot of these outages. So that's the first step to always look at the main app. So as the main app is logged in and has readings, then you start looking at the follow up. And companies have status pages, so status.dexcom.com is you can easily check if they're having an outage. Now it does seem like they might update that page manually, so it's not like automated flip over when they detect outages. So it might not necessarily always be accurate, but it is a good place to check from a sugar pixel standpoint, is, obviously, we rely on those services.

Scott Benner 58:09
The one thing that we do that is different than like

Jon Fawcett 58:14
the Dexcom follow up, for instance, is sugar pixel handles, no data alerts locally on the device. So it doesn't matter why it has no data. It could be from a sensor warm up or sensor error, or a major Dexcom outage like they had last week, where the follow up is completely down, or even your home Wi Fi goes out, or your home internet is out, as long as sugar pixels has power. If it has no readings for any reason, it can trigger the no data alert. So one thing for our users specifically is you might not get readings, but you can still go to sleep knowing that if follow goes out in the middle of the night, you're still going to get an alert for no data if you have that set up

Scott Benner 59:07
nice and get your meter out like, like people used to do for years, check your check your blood sugar. Yeah, it's interesting. The girl that Arden met at school, she doesn't use any technology and yeah and, and Arden's like, you know, we, we were working, and she stopped and checked her blood sugar. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting.

Jon Fawcett 59:28
Well, and you know what's, what's really going to be fascinating in the next few years is so the rumors of Apple and Samsung both working on glucose monitoring, non invasive, just through the watch. If that gets to the point where it's actually reliable and accurate, rather than just a sort of a you're in range, you're high, you're low, not an actual Well, am I 70 versus 150 if those get to the level where. You can rely on them. What starts looking way and way more appealing is potentially some sort of hybrid combination system, where you might be doing a freza just for super simple meal times, or the weekly basal that's coming out, where it could potentially be like one injection a week of a weekly basal, and then that's it, that could potentially actually be a drastic quality of life improvement, because technology

Unknown Speaker 1:00:34
fails, sincerely,

Jon Fawcett 1:00:37
pods fail, pumps fail,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:38
your phones

Jon Fawcett 1:00:40
break and die. And so there could be the opposite swing from sort of add more AI and more technology to if we can get there with the insulins and the non evasive CGMS, where that could potentially be a much improved quality life all

Scott Benner 1:00:57
different pathways. How about there's I did an interview recently with the mother of a 15 year old girl who's had type one for three years. Was using 70 units of insulin a day, combined basal bolus. Mom has PCOS. Daughter started showing signs of PCOS. Mom got relief from PCOS, from wegovy. They put the daughter on the wegovy. And now that that I just talked to the mom again recently, when she was on the podcast, her kid was down to seven units of injected basal a day, no other insulin from 70, wow.

Jon Fawcett 1:01:30
And that's not, that's not the first story like that that I've heard, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:01:35
And now, by the way, they're thinking of moving it down to five units of basil a day, wow. So she's not bolusing for meals at the moment. Now, people hear that, they go, she doesn't have type one diabetes. She does. She does have type one diabetes, and, you know, and I'm, I'm sure, as time goes on, her insulin needs will increase. But that, it sounds to me like that kid was in the middle of Lada that looked worse for insulin needs because of PCOS, and now the GLP is helping with the PCOS symptoms and maybe bringing down her inflammation. I have a doctor coming on next week to really explain to me everything glps are doing for people. I have a family member. I won't say who they are. Again, PCOS Not, not somebody in my immediate family. She started wegovy On Saturday, and it was point two, five, not even what they would consider to be a therapeutic dose. Here is the text from her this morning, I lost five pounds in the first 36 hours. This is a miracle. I said, How did you do you know? Did change your appetite? Do you feel full? Etc. She said, I'd had a headache for the first bit, but I chugged a bunch of water and that went away. I've not thought about food once, and I had to consciously think about taking smaller portion sizes. So she so she, as she was getting herself for food, she she said, Oh, I here's how much I would normally take, but I'm not hungry like that. So she took less. So there's one way it helped her. I've eaten significantly less. I didn't think about breakfast until I got to work. I'm going to eat something now because you told me to, but I really I'm not hungry. I feel full faster, so that now you can say, well, she hasn't eaten as much. You don't lose five pounds in 36 hours by stopping eating.

Jon Fawcett 1:03:22
Yeah, so one pound is 3500 calories. Yeah, that, you know, there's no way to just, and

Scott Benner 1:03:30
I'm sure some of it's water weight. Like, don't get me wrong, I don't think she's like, reshaping herself, but look, look at how excited she is before that. She's a kid who works out all the time. She's an adult, works out all the time is eating it clean and just gaining weight. It has seemed frustrating to me. I think we're still, seems

Jon Fawcett 1:03:55
like we're at the early side of kind of what this whole classification of drugs can actually do for benefits for people, and

Scott Benner 1:04:03
it almost seems like back to your story about the other one who drastically

Jon Fawcett 1:04:09
reduced the insulin usage it. It almost seems like the press has caused some problems at a drastic disservice for the this class of drugs by basically just saying it's, you know, the from a public perspective in just a weight loss drug, but when you look at it from like, insulin resistance and things like that that may or may not be weight related, it seems like there's going To be a lot of benefits that I think people are going to start to see from it that aren't necessarily publicized very much today because of how the press has handled it, that you know just just because you have type one doesn't mean you can't have the same insulin resistance the type two. Have, yeah, and just because you have type two doesn't mean you can't have the same insulin dependency as type one can have. Now, I think from a truly clinical perspective, they've said you can't, you can't, essentially have type one and type two, but from an actual, real life perspective, just Google, they call it double diabetes, or things like that, where you have you have symptoms and signs of both. And I think a lot of those types of people, this class of drugs is going to really help, talking about insulin resistance, weight loss and even other things that, who knows what this drug's gonna be found to? Yeah, you know, other benefits right

Scott Benner 1:05:47
now we're having mostly an insurance designation problem because people talk about it the way it's covered by insurance. Yeah, you know, and that's one side of the issue, the other side of the issue. And I shared this with you before we started recording, I don't have any trouble saying it here. If you look hard at the people who are telling you, oh, my God, it's a crutch. You can do it on your own. Blah, blah, if you look real hard, there are people who are making a living selling that side of weight loss. Okay, so you can tell me that like, you know, I mean, I see people, I don't want to use people's names, but I see people online or on television shows and they're like, We don't know. There's a lot of side effects. It's killing people. Blah, blah. You know what kills people? Tylenol, way more than a GLP does. Okay? Now, I don't see that person on television going, you have a headache, don't take Tylenol. You're gonna die. It's a killer. That's true, by the way, Tylenol has killed more people this year than a GLP medication. Has people die taking medications all the time. It's not going to be right for everybody. If you're scared, don't do it like that's that okay. But I've lost 50 goddamn pounds this year, and I was not running around eating with both hands, with donuts around my fingers. Okay? My body doesn't, doesn't work right, and now it does. That's all I can tell you. I plateaued for a while. My doctor's like, here we'll just up your dose, up the dose. Two days later, I lost two pounds. I could literally feel it like somebody flipped the switch of me. I went to the higher dose. I got a little like, I've been on it for a long time now, like a year. So I went up to a higher dose, I got that weird nausea feeling. I was like, Oh, I can feel it like, I feel it in there. I don't know what it's doing, but it's doing something, and then bang right back. Like I was starting to have sugar cravings again. The sugar cravings went away. You want to argue about what's right way to do something? I'm 52 man. I was gonna die, like I was gonna have a heart attack, like, now I'm not going to I went to the doctor. My doctor says, My God, your your vitals are like your child. They're amazing. You look fantastic. You look 10 years younger. Your vitals are amazing. Good for you. If it's not working, I'll give you a little more. She said, I heard the real weight loss, like, heard she's seeing with her patients. I'm using zepbound now. The real weight loss doesn't even happen until the 10 to 12 milligram injections I was back on 7.5 so here's my point. If you're listening and you're like mad about it, you don't know what you're talking about. This whole like, I'm always scared of what's coming, and you don't know what this stuff's gonna do to you. They've been working on a GLP since in the 80s, I think by Eto was 2005 that's 20 years of data, but, but people are running around like it just came out five days ago, yelling, You don't know what this stuff's gonna do to you. They've been using it since 2005 they just they're turning the screws. They're making it work better. Now, you know, like, I don't know, like, in the end, you got to make a decision who you are in this life. Like, are you scared? Are you going to go for it?

Jon Fawcett 1:08:48
It's really no different than talking about omnipodify or bloom Joe or placebo versus basr. It's not everything is for everybody. We say that a lot. Of course, some people like my our OmniPod five and loom Jeff experience, which is what Lily's using. She's been using loom Gen for probably six months to a year now, absolutely fabulous. And I tell everybody that. But is it for everybody? No, might not work as well for other people, but burns

Scott Benner 1:09:24
Arden like a mother. She can't she can't get anywhere near it. Whatever the additive is it? It hurts her like literal pain.

Jon Fawcett 1:09:32
So, exactly, yeah, so, but there's no difference between talking about those versus how lugovi has helped you and 1000s and 1000s of other people, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:45
John, the difference is, I'm not a nudnick. I don't run around telling everybody loom Jeff hurts. It didn't work for Arden. Like you know, you have to ask yourself, I'm gonna have to let you go in a second. But you have to ask yourself, when someone comes online and says, I took. A look. I took a GLP, and now I have, like, you know, I have real problems, like digestive issues. It's I'm not even on it anymore, and I'm having problems. I'm having a real problem from it. That's horrible. Okay, I feel a ton of empathy for that person. You do not know where their body was when they started, and maybe a doctor should have said to them, hey, you've had a one season the nines your whole life. You might actually have gastroparesis. Maybe this isn't something we should try with you. Or let's wait till there's more data on this. But instead, you don't hear their whole story. You just hear, I took this and my foot fell off. Oh, my God, did you hear that? It makes your foot fall off? Like I'm hearing people's feet are falling off. That's literally how the Internet goes after that. I had to tell a woman online the other day. She goes, we're seeing catastrophic problems from this GLP medication, life threatening. And I was like, who's We? Are you a doctor? No, are you a research scientist? No, when you say we, who are you talking about? Well, I heard it on a project. Yeah, you heard it somewhere. Are you kidding me? That's who we. Is we? Is you heard it somewhere from WHO? What are their credentials? That's how the world works.

Jon Fawcett 1:11:16
But it's a reminds me of the all I probably see posts once a day about two things, actually, probably more like five times a day about two things recently. One is,

Scott Benner 1:11:29
Hey, first time flying. What do you guys do for

Jon Fawcett 1:11:34
for TSA, or whatever security in the country you're in, there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people walk through whatever scanner they're required to put all supplies through the X rays, and have never had a single issue. I'm

Unknown Speaker 1:11:50
one of them. And so are we.

Jon Fawcett 1:11:53
Yeah, you get one person had a pump failure after going through security, I don't have to, you know, hear stories like this

Scott Benner 1:12:03
noise or beams aren't good for it, yeah?

Jon Fawcett 1:12:08
But, I mean, there's nothing saying that actually caused the pump failure. There's, you know, correlation is a causation, yeah? But then that, meanwhile, there's probably hundreds or millions, hundreds of 1000s or millions of individuals who have gone through that never had a single one, so one in a million. And then the other one I hear is, and this is my new favorite, is the insulin temperatures. So all the recent studies that are out there, there's, if you Google Cochrane, insulin, temperature, you'll find it on Google. But there been like a dozen different studies, one of them, one of them, put it in, I think, like a clay pot at 100 almost 100 Fahrenheit, for two months, and it had zero loss of efficacy in the in the study, yet, you know one person you know had insulin fail, right? You know, because it was in the car for an hour. That may or may not have been the case, but all the clinical stuff shows there's no issues at all. There's a risk with everything in life, though, and right? You know, you're going to have the outlier, people who this just didn't work for you, or, yeah, I'm starting to get a pat down at security, whatever. John,

Scott Benner 1:13:30
isn't it fascinating. People generally are distrustful of each other until they say something bombastic, and then they believe them completely. That's the thing. That's the thing that's fantastic. Like, Listen, if you and I got together quietly, I'd say, give me a list of people you don't trust in your life. You would be writing for a half an hour. Oh my god, this guy don't know what he's talking about. I've seen this guy and this guy lost three jobs. A guy don't know how to like, Oh my God. This guy refinanced this house six times. Like, you know, you'd be like, I wouldn't listen to him about this, but you could do that all day long. But someone gets online and says, Hey, I went through an x ray machine, and my T slim exploded like I knew it laser beams like and then, and then the next thing you know, you had 20 people going I went through it one time, and my blood sugar went up. Yeah, that might be adrenaline, because you were really worried about it. No, no, no, no. It's the pump. The pump stopped working after the X ray like no one knows what they're talking about. John, go listen to the cold wind series. Go listen to doctors and nurses tell you things like, my favorite one is an ER nurse who told me I'd be safer having a seizure in your living room, Scott, than in the ER I work in. Okay, one of those people who can't save her life, and that er is online telling you about something else, and you're going see I knew it. No one knows what they're talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm having conversations. I'm explaining to you my experiences. You don't hear me say, do a thing. I know for sure. I don't know anything. I barely got out of high school. You shouldn't be listening to me. You don't know who John is. Is he's just an even tempered guy with a good speaking voice who understands things. He could be at home kicking a dog right now. He might have a dog under his desk right now, and he says, kicking it, kicking it. Hates dogs. You don't know who John is like, right? So you listen and you make good you make good decisions. But you can't just blindly, just take what everyone says you want to watch a conversation get out of hand online. Go ahead and say, Hey, I got type one diabetes after covid.

Jon Fawcett 1:15:29
I knew you were going to say that, Oh,

Speaker 2 1:15:31
my God in heaven, it won't stop. And like, right? And so, like, by the way, covid is a virus. Type one diabetes is frequently diagnosed after a virus.

Jon Fawcett 1:15:43
The funny ones with those that get me are the ones that are like, I was diagnosed with type one a week after getting covid or a week after a vaccine or whatever, when, yeah, they don't really know, but it can be months or years. Even there could have been, there could have been a trigger five years prior that. Yeah, was it? None of us know.

Scott Benner 1:16:12
Of course, it. You don't know how it happens and then, but they do. Oh, you don't know. Oh, I know exactly what happened. Sure you do. You know exactly what happened? Everything else in your life is a freaking disaster. You don't know which way is up this You're right about like, Finally, seriously, I love people. People are terrific. Don't get me wrong. I sound like I don't, but I really do. I love humanity. I think people are amazing. We are not nearly any of us as smart as we think we are, and we see a lot of shadows and ghosts and believe that they're the cause. And if it checks out in our brain, we move on. And that's fine, because for most of your things, day to day, you really don't need to know why things are happening. You know, like, it's not important. But this drill down stuff, by the way, I could jump into any one of those covid conversations and argue both sides of it. Absolutely I could, I could argue both sides of it and but that's all people are doing. Is they're arguing from their perspective, in their or the way they're colored, you know, whatever bro podcast they heard. They're like, Oh, yeah, that's it. It's giving everybody diabetes. Like, look at the numbers diabetes. You're going, Well, yeah, the whole population of the planet got a virus. Viruses can cause your type one diabetes, not cause it like it flipped a diabetes switch, but you have an autoimmune issue. Your body attacked the virus. It got a little funky, confused, got into those beta cells. Now you have type one diabetes, same way my daughter got Hand, Foot Mouth, which is Coxsackie virus, which is a large that there's data that shows that a large amount of people with type one diabetes had Coxsackie before, like so, yes, the whole planet got a virus, and now more people have type one diabetes. This is not surprising, unless you don't understand that that. And then if you do, if you don't understand that, then, Oh, my God, I knew it. And then, and then, it takes four seconds for somebody to go. It was probably the vaccine that got them. Like, here we go. Like, I don't know. I don't have a thought about the vaccine one way or the other. I took two, two. No, I got the I got the J and j1 the one that everybody's like, you got that trashy vaccine? Yeah, I got the vaccine that was built on data from the last 50 years, I got a vaccine that was built from like, the basis of what they vaccinate the whole world with. To me, that seemed like a better move. Also, my wife could see the safety data of it, and I wanted to go with that one. But the point is, is that, you know, if my foot falls off three years from now, someone's gonna be like that J and J vaccine got his foot. We don't know what's going on. Like, just shut up and live. I don't know, John, you've made me very upset. Of

Jon Fawcett 1:18:48
people, I have a feeling we're gonna get some angry people yelling at us when you post this.

Scott Benner 1:18:54
Oh, maybe you don't, maybe you care. We won't mention sugarpixel again. But

Jon Fawcett 1:19:01
you know how often I type something in Facebook just to get it out of my off my chest, and then I delete it without posting? Is 99% of my Facebook posts never make it public. I

Scott Benner 1:19:15
want to be clear. If my foot does fall off five years from now, and it is because of a vaccine, I also won't go, No, it isn't like I'm not defending anything one way or the other. I don't know. That's what I'm trying to say. I don't know. You don't know. I don't know. No one knows. Everyone's just trying to get by the same nudnik that you stand behind in the grocery store who can't figure out how to key in their code for something in the little thing, and start going, I'm so bad at this. That person works at a pharma company. Sometimes, like, right? Yeah, that person's a congressman. Sometimes it happened, and people were like, What should we do? And then our dumb asses came up with the best thing we could think of, and then it got bastardized all over the place through media and people making money. And then. Thing, you know, they're like, you know, you just need 17 boosters. I'm like, I feel like you're trying to make money. And you know what I said? I said, No, thank you. That's all. I don't need a conspiracy theory. Hey, hey, you want to hear conspiracy theory? John companies try to make money selling the stuff they have. Oh, no, do they?

Jon Fawcett 1:20:20
Where's the worst? Ones are the the worst, to me, are the conspiracies over the insulin companies preventing a cure from getting released. Yeah, because of that, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:20:33
I have to tell you something. I know people, most of them, can't do anything. They're not they're not out there making like, great plans to, like, Stop, like, trust me, if there's money to be made, someone's going to make it. There's and right away, people go, there's no money in a cure. Yes, there is,

Jon Fawcett 1:20:50
yeah, there is. And it's potentially, not really any difference than what they're making today, because I have to imagine it. Well, maybe the pump companies, but the the CGMS, you're probably gonna still need CGMS, at least for a long time, to make sure that you know everything's working, and stuff like, let me be

Scott Benner 1:21:10
clear what I mean, John is a company making insulin, trying to find a cure for diabetes. Maybe not, but somebody else is. There's not one magic company, like there's people all over the place. There's people getting out of college every day going, you know what? I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try to do this like they don't work for the company that makes the insulin. I like to when there's a shortage, one person calls their pharmacy and they say, hey, no vlogs back ordered. They're online, dear internet. There's no insulin in New Jersey. We're all gonna die. Oh, my God. I'm like, Listen, your pharmacy goes to a distributor who, at the moment, doesn't have Nova log. 17 other people in New Jersey. I'm like, I live in Westfield. There's plenty of it. I'm here in orange New Jersey, plenty of insulin, but insulin here, blah, blah, blah, blah, oh my. My guy says there's the shortage. Your guy, you mean the 22 year old that works at the counter at CVS. That's who you're listening to. It's fascinating. I love you all. You're fascinating people. I enjoy every one of you. And you know why it's okay to talk like this. John, I'm gonna give the secret. Nobody listening thinks that I'm talking about them, but I am talking about something. You're

Jon Fawcett 1:22:28
sitting here talking about me. I know that talking

Scott Benner 1:22:33
about everybody like, like, there's, there's, listen, let me be clear, if there's an insulin shortage, and it really is, you're all gonna die. Just let it go. Like, my daughter's going, we're all going. Anybody who needs insulin is going. So what are you worried about that for? Like, that's literally not a thing. You can't stockpile enough insulin to live forever. Like, this is the world that we live in. This is how things work. Could everything fall apart and there not be any more insulin? Sure, there could also be no more fresh water. There could also be no more food. I mean, I think we saw how quickly during covid, people were willing to listen to anything. They were told, like it would only take one charismatic guy to make you all kill each other in like seven days, if they wanted to. It's not the point. The point is that there are companies who sell insulin. They're going to keep selling insulin. If they tried to stop the government would step in and force them to make it. There are plenty of drugs that the government makes. Pharma companies make. The pharma company says, Look, we don't make enough money on this anymore. We literally can't afford to do it. And the government steps up and goes, here, here's some money. Keep making it, shut up. That's how that works. Okay? I know you don't know that, but that's how that works. And so there's never, not going to be companies making insulin. That's just true. If that happens, you can come find me and tell me I'm wrong and slap me once across the face with your non dominant hand. Okay? And so, but I could not, by the way, even hit you in the face with my left hand. I don't think I'd be able to do it. I'm so uncoordinated with it. But there it goes, and I get where it comes from. By the way, like you're newly diagnosed, you're looking at your little kid. You can't get insulin. The place I get insulin from says it's discon, you know, it's back ordered, you know, we can't, we can't get it. Those are the words they use. You get very upset. I don't know you're going to Facebook, call your doctor. Like, call your doctor up and go, Hey, I can't get insulin, by the way. If you're really out of it, go to the emergency room. Walk in and say, Hi, I'm out of insulin. I need help. Like, right? Like,

Jon Fawcett 1:24:34
most of the doctors should have samples that they could give you immediately,

Scott Benner 1:24:38
samples of everything. Those doctors are flush with samples, flush with samples, everything gonna be all right. What did that go? Who is that? Bob Marley, every little thing's gonna be all right. It'll be fine. You got sugar pixel. You're fine. John, tell me something did I turn you down when you tried to give me a sugar pixel, like offer code or something like. That. Yeah,

Jon Fawcett 1:25:00
you said, you said your accountant wouldn't let you do one more affiliate.

Scott Benner 1:25:06
I'm gonna do it for people. You send me a link, I'm gonna put it in this episode. I love your device. I and I know we got pretty far away from it. Yeah, it's really fantastic. It's got a great feel. It feels like it sits in this space between like professionally made and DIY, which has this just great feeling. It's not junky. It's not working by the seat of its pants. It's a perfected device that works really well. Looks handsome, but the DIY part of it is kind of like the community part of it, where you're like, Hey, I'm gonna put emoticons in here. That'll be fun. Like, you know what? I mean? Like, that's the thing a company wouldn't do.

Jon Fawcett 1:25:41
One of the display choices is the emojis with slang. So Lily actually came up with all the slang. So one, just one example, is urgent high one of them is a dumpster fire icon, and it just says,

Scott Benner 1:25:58
perfect. It's absolutely perfect. Sugarpixel.com

Unknown Speaker 1:26:02
custom, type one.com. Custom

Scott Benner 1:26:04
type one.com. Wait, wait. Custom type one.com/juice.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:08
Box. It'll be,

Jon Fawcett 1:26:11
I could, I could make that happen, all right.

Scott Benner 1:26:12
Well, then let's just say it like that. How much money am I going to make every time somebody buys one, John, I'm gonna start planning. I might buy a rocket ship. How about we go, yeah, we'll chat off air. Now. I'm gonna make at least $1 everybody, all right? And then, and then you can get online and go, Scott just got that John guy on because he's getting rich off his sugar pixel. And at the end of the year, I'll make 200 bucks, okay? And then I'll go to my account to do my taxes, and they'll be like, What are you doing? Stop it. These are more lines I write. When I write more lines, I charge you more, you idiot. Oh, my God. I just want people to know about it. It really is fantastic. Thank you. No, no, it's quite a thing and and you're doing it over time, and I brought that up earlier. There's a lot of stuff comes and goes. People have good ideas. Sometimes they have big ideas. They get into it, they realize what it really is, and it goes away. And I hate that, because then some people in the community come along and they love the app, or they love the thing, or whatever, and then it's gone again, and you don't know where to jump in, because, you know, Jesus, how many of these things have come and gone. But you're a steady guy, John, I like you a lot. And to be perfectly honest, I like you a lot because you're smart and thoughtful and steady. I like that about you.

Jon Fawcett 1:27:29
Thank you, and we're not planning on going anywhere. This is my full time job, just like juicebox is yours, and

Scott Benner 1:27:35
we already have three release

Jon Fawcett 1:27:41
feature sets for the next three releases already planned out that we're going to be working on. Wow. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:27:48
that's cool. Listen, I noticed when I said something nice about you, you didn't reciprocate. But that's okay. I'm not gonna that's fine. I have no problem with that at all. I I love No Stop. Don't do that. Don't do that. Buy sugar, even though John doesn't like me, go ahead and buy sugar. Pixel. It's fine, because our our recordings feel like just BS, ing with

Jon Fawcett 1:28:14
a friend hanging out at your house, you know, which I think is the the way more personal. Is what cuts through everything. Yeah?

Scott Benner 1:28:24
Well, can we be friends? John, do you want to be friends? What does that mean? I'm not coming to your house to play Atari or anything. Not

Jon Fawcett 1:28:29
on. Don't send me a Facebook friend request, but anything else, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:28:35
all right, man, I appreciate you doing this. Thank you. Hold on one

Unknown Speaker 1:28:42
second. This

Scott Benner 1:28:44
the conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, Boxer, call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon, find out more about gvoke hypopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box. 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, wrongwayrecording.com, the diabetes variable series from the juicebox podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables.


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#1328 I Don't Understand... Jenny Three

Scott Benner

Scott and Jenny don't understand vanilla diabetes content.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon MusicGoogle Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio PublicAmazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The juicebox podcast. Welcome

everybody. Jenny is back. We're going to do another I don't understand today. Today, the topic is about entities, diabetes, organizations, companies, etc, and why the information that they kind of give out about diabetes and social media is so basic. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one? Visit T 1d exchange.org/juicebox right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help when you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, AG, one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40@cozyearth.com%

Did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you are up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early, tap now talk to a doctor or visit screen for type one.com for more info, 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 contournext.com/juicebox, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Eversense the Eversense CGM is more convenient, requiring only one sensor every six months. It offers more flexibility with its easy on, easy off, smart transmitter, and allows you to take a break when needed. Eversense cgm.com/ cgm.com/juicebox,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:23
I feel like we haven't talked in a long time. We

Scott Benner 2:26
haven't. But why is that? Because Arden's I went on vacation, and then Arden had to go to college, and then I had to cancel with you a couple times.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
Yes,

Unknown Speaker 2:35
that's my fault. I apologize. No, I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:37
hope your vacation was lovely.

Scott Benner 2:39
It was actually that was our first family vacation together in six years, and it was warm, and we did some cool things. We went out on a boat and did some like snorkeling, like out the sea snorkeling, that was cool. What else did we do? We did a paddle board. Well, not paddle boat, like, clear bottom boat tour through through these, like, mangroves. It was very, very cool. Arden's blood sugar really played nicely. That was great. So we had a good time. We really did. Yeah, thank you. I'm sure I said to Kelly this morning, like, we can't wait that long to go on vacation again, again, yeah? Like, you just worked too hard. So, but yeah, thank you. Good. Well, I want to keep going with the I don't understand fabulous, okay, and I'm going to bring the I don't understand today. Oh, yay. So this is blended from a couple of things that happened to me over the last couple of weeks involving diabetes. Okay, I don't understand why

Unknown Speaker 3:40
entities share

Scott Benner 3:41
such vanilla information with people, whether it's in their social media where they're teaching. And I'm not just saying companies now, I'm not saying like, I'm not specifically saying a pump company or a CGM company in general, pharmacom, not just saying in general, the content that people get is often like, Hey, here's a recipe for a cake that you can take to your July 4, blah, blah, blah, and diabetes. And, you know, like, does diabetes do this? And like, it's the same stuff regurgitated over and over and over again. And I'm always stunned, because they have an audience, and they could help them, but instead, they just churn out the same crap over and over again. I don't know why people do that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:32
I think if we're talking in general statements again, not about a product in general, or, you know, in specific, or anything. I like the term vanilla. I really do. I

Scott Benner 4:44
usually say banal, but I think people don't know what that means sometimes, and then I throw off the conversation with

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:49
them. No, vanilla is perfect in this I think it's because people are so scared to be what I think should be truthful and in the truth. Statement offending somebody. Okay, we are so worried in today's society that something you say, or the way that you tell somebody, the real, right way to do it, is gonna make them, Oh, my goodness, like you're saying this against me. My good. Do you know many times a day I could be offended if I really chose to be, come on, let it roll. I just

Scott Benner 5:26
come on. And so there is that, I think, that people's concern about making their content, you know, okay, for everybody, yeah, so that no one could possibly get upset ever. Does keep it very surface then, because you end up saying things that you're just like, well, this can't possibly make anybody upset. But I think the joke's on them, because, yes, someone's still going to be upset. What's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:52
still going to be angry? I mean, it's kind of like the whole concept you mentioned recipe, right? You can put a recipe out, and you could even put into it in terms of just the diabetes angle, right? You could say, and in this, I choose to use this product, and I choose to use this and it, it seems to do this for my blood sugar, but I think it's beneficial to follow up and say, but you know what? That's my n of one. You go ahead and you give it a try. And if you can't use this, or you don't do this, go ahead and do something else. I'm just telling you what works for me, right? But just be honest about it. Yeah.

Scott Benner 6:28
So what brings this up for me is that, did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you're up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early. Tap now talk to a doctor or visit screened for type one.com for more info. In a professional setting, a person asked me, but the conversation started with like, what are you most proud of about the podcast? And it was a business question, not a like a helping people question, because my answer is always going to be that it helps people. It helps people. But yes, they meant business wise. And I said longevity. I said that, you know, open your Instagram up today, see who's talking diabetes. Wait a calendar year, go back and see if you can find them again, right? Like that's, you know, keeping, you know, current and keeping your popularity up. And they said, well, then how do you do you do that? And I said, Oh, that's easy. I said, I genuinely get up every day, and I think what would help people with diabetes? Like, what could I offer them? What could I pull into the conversation that would help them? And they were like, Oh, okay. And I said that that's where the rest of you go wrong. I'm like, You're always saying things that are just like, I don't know. Like, oh, you know, insulin is too expensive. Great. Well, we all know that that doesn't help anybody's blood sugar be stable. You know what I mean? Like, here's a recipe. Have you tried this? I don't. I'm not angry about it. I'm just confused about it. Like, they never seem to say anything. And then I realized, as I was talking to them, a lot of doctors do the same exact thing, right? Just surface, always surface, never deeper.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:08
Yeah, I was just gonna say exactly that it's, it's almost like they're afraid to dig down and look for what do people really want a discussion about? And sometimes, I think you may not know until you hear discussion about something that, gosh, I had some of those questions too, yeah, and I wouldn't have even thought to ask, or they were subconscious, something like nicking at your brain to gosh, you know, but you couldn't put words to it, but somebody else did right? And you need to dig into people's life when you have conversations in order to get the wealth that can help somebody else, and it's not going to help everybody. I pick and choose things I listen to all the time, yeah, what

Scott Benner 8:57
I realized is I was doing this thing recently where I asked somebody to kind of expound on their experience, and it was a professional thing, and they just didn't, or they couldn't, I wasn't sure what happened. Like they defaulted to some pre written conversation that I could tell while they were saying it they had said 1000 times in their life, right? Like they went back to their script, and I re asked the question. I was like, No, how does it make you feel? And they couldn't, like, I was stunned. I was like, you don't know how you feel about this. And they're so professionally focused on, like, say these things, use these words, don't say this part. A lawyer told me not to do this, like, right? And I was like, I know there's knowledge inside of you. You don't even know how to let it out, right? And then I changed up the focus a little bit, and I thought I could get them to a moat, and they still could. And then I started wondering, like, is it just, are some people just better communicators than others? Like, if I said, Jenny, you and I have done this together. I know, you know, for people who don't like, maybe don't have context for. This, Jenny and I spoke together in Austin at a live event like last year, and we did, we speak for five or six hours to a group.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:08
The long time it was several hours before lunch, and then it was a couple of hours. It was a couple of hours after lunch as well. So I'd say probably six hours

Scott Benner 10:18
the extent of our preparation was standing outside of the door of the auditorium five minutes before it started, and I said, Hey, do you think we should talk about what we're going to talk about? Then we kind of like, giggled a little and went inside, and I was like, okay, diabetes, go. I never once looked at you and thought, oh, Jenny's stuck. She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't have anything for this moment, and it made me wonder, like, do people not have the information, and that's why they're not sharing it? Are they gatekeeping the information? I feel like I've seen both. I feel like I've seen people who find themselves. Today's podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, boasting a six month sensor, the Eversense CGM offers you these key advantages, distinct on body vibe alerts when high or low, a consistent and exceptional accuracy over a six month period and you only need two sensors per year. No longer will you have to carry your CGM supplies with you. You won't have to be concerned about your adhesive not lasting, accidentally knocking off a sensor or wasting a sensor when you have to replace your transmitter. That's right. There's no more weekly or bi weekly hassles of sensor changes, not with the Eversense CGM. It's implantable and it's accurate. Eversense cgm.com/juice, cgm.com/juicebox, the Eversense CGM is the first and only long term CGM Eversense sits comfortably right under the skin in your upper arm, and it lasts way longer than any other CGM sensor. Never again will you have to worry about your sensor falling off before the end of its life. So if you want an incredibly accurate CGM that can't get knocked off and won't fall off, you're looking for the Eversense CGM. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, the contour, next gen blood glucose meter is the meter that we use here. Arden has one with her at all times I have one downstairs in the kitchen, just in case I want to check my blood sugar, and Arden has them at school. They're everywhere that she is, contour next.com/juice, box, test strips and the meters themselves may be less expensive for you in cash out of your pocket, than you're paying currently through your insurance for another meter. You can find out about that and much more at my link, contour next.com/juicebox contour makes a number of fantastic and accurate meters, and their second chance test strips are absolutely my favorite part. What does that mean? If you go to get some blood, and maybe you touch it, and, I don't know, stumble with your hand and, like, slip off and go back. It doesn't impact the quality or accuracy of the test. So you can hit the blood, not get enough, come back, get the rest, without impacting the accuracy of the test. That's right, you can touch the blood, come back and get the rest, and you're going to get an absolutely accurate test. I think that's important, because we all stumble and fumble at times. That's not a good reason to have to waste a test trip. And with a contour next gen, you won't have to contour next.com forward slash juicebox, you're going to get a great reading without having to be perfect in a position where you would expect they know what they're talking about, but when you start talking to them, realize they don't have a lot. And I also feel like I've been around people who know the answer, but they want to be the ones to have the answer, so they don't want you to have it. Have you ever seen that like gatekeeping the information? Yes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:56
absolutely. Like. But then who are they going to share it with? You can you can keep the information, but I mean to your beginning statement is, who's it going to help? Yeah, right. Well, that's not to help. Yeah, that's not their concern. But there are people who

Scott Benner 14:11
you would think that that was their concern.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:13
You would hope, yeah, right, aren't we in this too? I mean, my, my joy every day that I get to work with somebody is truly that I have given them as much as like at the end of my day, my brain feels done like because of all the little bits, the digging and the talking and the digging out the right information from what I know And what I can apply to that particular individual discussion and need, and it's different for every single person, right? But you have to be willing to say, why would I hold on to this information if it can help somebody else? Like, why wouldn't I share it? Yeah,

Scott Benner 14:55
I don't know that's for a psychologist to figure out for those people, but I've definitely seen. People gatekeeper information, like I'm the person of power. I want to stay like this, and I've always taken the the opposite approach. And you people have heard me say this on the podcast for years, like I actually believe that the hardest part about my job is that I have to find you, make you believe that I might know what I'm talking about, actually get the information to you, and then be willing to say goodbye at the end, right? Because you might not need this anymore, right? And, you know, in any other media situation, they get a listener, they want to hold on to them. My goal is for you to feel like, Man, I don't really need this podcast anymore. Like, you know, like, that big picture, that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping you feel comfortable enough to your life and be happy and live, right? Yeah, yep, if you want to keep listening like, God bless you. Thank you. But like, you know, I I just find it. I don't know it's frustrating for me, because as much as that person who started that conversation with me was like, Scott, you're so your thing is so popular, tell me how you did it, I sit there and I think I'm stunned that more people can't figure out a way to do it. They either don't want to share it all or and then this is another part of it. I think it's possible. I want to be completely clear, like, I couldn't make this podcast if it didn't generate an income for me, right? Sure? Like, it just, it's just too much time, and it's all my time. Yeah, so I understand that if people are like, look, I can make this content, but I'm gonna also have to run a coaching service, or I'm gonna have to do something, because they're not big enough to draw in advertisers, and they're not small enough for it to be a part time thing. So they have to find a way to make money so they can't give you all the information, because they need you to pay them to give you the information so they can keep doing the thing, sure. So that's possibly part of it as well.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:46
And I think sometimes there is also just the want to be truly involved in a community effort of of bringing people together in maybe a different way and and that's okay, right? And I think your goals aren't truly to be successful for, hey everybody, look at me and look at what I did, but to be successful for the give to the to the broader community of people with type one and type two diabetes, truly to be able to gain information that they're not getting from someplace else, right? And so I think all the communities certainly have a pull for certain people, yeah, and I think there's value in all of the different avenues of getting it for sure. And the effort that you know the other you know, bloggers or podcasters or whatever their effort is, their own effort, for whatever reason they have behind what they're doing? Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:43
I don't listen. You make the point that if you want to reach a lot of people, you have to reach people. Yes, there's like, a I don't know. You have to strike a balance between not being a clown to get eyes and at the same time be entertaining enough that it draws in a massive amount of people so that it can help a mass amount of people correct. And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:02
though keep supplying enough information that is building on what's already there, it's not just rehashing it is getting more and getting deeper and having further conversation. Because despite having one same diagnosis, let's say type one diabetes. Everybody's life with type one diabetes is very different. We all have different diagnosis stories. We all have different experience with healthcare practitioners, medications, other conditions in life that we live with, crappy situations we've lived through. You know, you

Scott Benner 18:39
also have to have a vision for what I hope I say this correctly, but somebody asked me one time like they kind of insinuated that my job was to tell people what they wanted to hear. And I said, I think my job is to tell people what they need to know and might not know that they need to know. Yes, yeah, absolutely. They say one of the jobs in the future might be as much as chat GPT. Will you know as AI will know things, asking it the right questions in the right way is going to be an art, right? And so I ask myself, what are these faceless people who I know are listening like, what is it that I'm seeing in the community that they don't understand? And I don't need to make them comfortable. I need to give them good information or lead them down a road that they might not think to look down and and you also have to stay ahead of the curve, like, just thinking back quickly over the years, I take it hard when I do things and people don't like agree with it, so I've taken it over. Well, back in the day, I was like, these CGMS are amazing. And I know that seems really obvious right now, but there was a whole faction of old heads before who wanted to say, like, my kid grew up without a CGM and they're fine. And I'm like, Yeah, it's fine. Good for them. I'm glad you know this data seems really important. And so for the first two years, while I'm out there going, like, these CGMS. Are awesome. People are like, he's a shill. He blah, blah. I'm like, and now it looks like common sense, right? Present day, same thing's happening with GLP meds. I'm like, I think there's something here. And people are like, one guy, one, I swear to god, somebody said to me, you're pushing the GLP agenda. I don't know what, like, Looney, like, I don't know what you think. You know? I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:23
think that if there weren't enough people who are experiencing the benefit of this particular medication, right, that you wouldn't have people coming and saying, Hey, I'd like to tell you my story with this, right? You'd have silence. You'd have, okay, well, it sounds great, but I don't know anything because I don't want to try it myself, you know. So, yeah, I don't think that there's necessarily an agenda, I mean.

Scott Benner 20:47
But this person was like, saying, like, you know, basically, like, you're Strapping, you know, pharma to your back and carrying them on this. They're trying to sell this GLP thing. And I was like, Listen, what I'm telling you is, I'm seeing people with diabetes using this, and a lot of good things are happening for some of them. I think we should look at it more. And again, it'll be one of those things that two years from now, it'll see like common sense, and no one will remember this part. But again,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:09
what you're talking about is already, it's already being studied. So you're, you're not ready, like I want to make research out of this and put together all of this information to put out there as a whole, you know, whatever. If it wasn't actually happening, then they would not be studying the use of it in people with type one. Now, right? It's

Scott Benner 21:31
not like I took an aspirin for a headache in my toe nail screw fashion. I was like, I think somebody should look into this connection between nail growth and aspirin like, you know, am I the only one saying this? Like, plenty of people are seeing what's happening, but it's when you're talking about it out on the bleeding edge of of this community connection. Like, there's a couple people talking GLP, and other than that, everybody else is like, Are you sure? Like, does it make you sick? Should you be doing it? What about muscle wasting? Like, it's a lot of fear mongering around it, or being so careful that they're not willing to look at some of the positive things that are happening and, or

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:06
even do their own research? Right? You can hear something about and, or you can hear somebody's 1n, of one, again, kind of story. If you really are concerned, then do your research. Look outside of this person's story. Look at what is actually in the research, what's being done, why they're considering the potential use of this, beyond just type two, and beyond the weight management, you

Scott Benner 22:33
got to pick through what you're what you're hearing like I listen, I'm pretty comfortable saying to you, I think if you pre bullish, your meals consistently, your a 1c, could come down a full point, right? Yeah. But I've had people come to me and say, Listen, I pre bolus, and I get low every time. So I'll say, Well, if your basal is right, if your settings are correct, if your insulin sensitivity is right, and that's happening to you, it sounds like you don't need to pre boss, yeah, you know, like, I'm not saying, like, do it anyway. I'm saying, This is what I've noticed. You go check into that for yourself. Is it valuable for you? Great. Is it like even with the glps, some people have stomach issues. They can't take it correct. It's not for you then. And yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:13
absolutely. I have no need or desire to personally use it. I don't need it. So I can talk about it. I can tell people about it. I can talk through in the avenue of their individual could it be useful? Why are you considering it? And if you are, are there other things in place already that we haven't adjusted, or they're not in place yet, that we haven't adjusted? We could go those there first and then revisit this conversation, right? I mean, just like you're pre bolus well, you're pre bolusing for grilled chicken, that's probably why you're going home.

Scott Benner 23:47
Yeah, we don't need that. And that's the point, right? That's the bigger point around all this. This is there's an example of where you need more information, and it can't just all be dumped onto you in one second. So I'll make the point there, that maybe that's why people don't give more specific advice, because they can't give enough of it to make sure they've covered the whole thing. Whereas, if you have this platform that I have, it can be spread out, people can take their time to absorb it and hopefully get enough of it to put together that puzzle for themselves. Yeah, I would agree. I get frustrated when somebody says, like, I'm a professional, I know this stuff. And then you listen to them, and they speak for 20 minutes, and when they're done, I think they didn't even say anything. They just talked and talked and talked, and there's nothing left here. If I ask you five minutes from now what that person said, you won't remember anything from it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:39
You know, how many conferences that I've gone to with the hopes of a topic being really, like, dug into, like, the nitty gritty of information that I want to pull more out of than the surface level, and I walk away thinking I could have read the PowerPoint presentation in five minutes.

Scott Benner 24:59
Yeah, I. Flew here for this. Flew here, and it feels like their presentation is made from a Google search that just returns the basic ideas of the of the thing, right? And when you go to dig down, they go, what? Yeah, we don't have time for that right now. Or

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:15
they're constrained by some other disclosure, like they they have an association with somebody and they can't, as you were saying, they're sort of contained into what they can say, and they do know more that they can't say more because somebody told them that they can't.

Scott Benner 25:32
So I use chatgpt all the time, so I asked it this question, and it says that for reasons of professionalism and ethical standards, this might be one reason why a healthcare professional wouldn't give more, but also fear of misinformation and liability. It goes on risk of reputation and damage. Like, if I tell you something and you get it wrong, even if I'm right, and then you go off and you say, Oh, my doctor said this, and he doesn't know what he's talking about. And then you're screwed in the community, like, that's understandable. There can be institutional guidelines that they have to follow. But they also talked about a conservative culture in medicine. Traditionally, medicine is a conservative hierarchy with a strong emphasis on adhering to established norms and protocols. That's something too it's like, you know, as treatments move forward, you're still talking about whatever you heard in medical school and whatever, whatever the writings say. And I actually heard a doctor talking about this recently, like there's all these advancements, but the papers don't reflect them, like the paper and the papers reflect them, right? So the research reflects it, the papers reflect it, but it never gets moved back into the teaching at the medical school. The Medical School's teaching off of papers from decades ago. Sometimes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:46
yeah, absolutely. And the unfortunate thing about teachings in medical school now, of course, we have so much that's being taught that's relative to medicine use and I'm trying to be careful. I'm trying to be vanilla.

Scott Benner 27:08
Well, you don't want to insult anybody, and it's not my, it's not my desire to insult anybody. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:13
I don't want to insult but truly and completely, the majority of information that is taught and given and where they where they get their information that then gets fed into the patient, and what the patient is going to be provided with in terms of a medication. It comes from research that's been conducted by the companies that want their product to be the one that's put out there. I hate that, because I think medication is an important piece of of navigating health conditions in some circumstances. But if that's all you're using as your basis, and you're not going to the first step, the first line, which is more preventative, there are so many lifestyle things that could be being taught to incoming doctors in medical school to be able to say, this is the first step to teach the patients you work with, you want to care for people. You want to do no harm, teach them to live a healthy life. If that isn't working and they've put that in, then move into this researched potential use that could benefit their efforts that are already in place, right as

Scott Benner 28:28
you're talking, I thought, Is there just a way to, like, tax everybody, 50 cents per person, put all the money in a pile and then use that money to pay researchers and lawyers to be on the side of the people, not the side, not side of the government, not the side of a company, but but the people like, right? Just people, because that's what, that's what you need, is you need someone out there doing this research for you, yes, and then throw it all out into the world and let it shake out where. And then

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:55
it would be honest, right? It would be not vanilla. It would be this. These are the ground rule facts. This is what you should know and move forward.

Scott Benner 29:06
Yeah, no, I just, I'm saying that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:08
live long and be prosperous. Yeah,

Scott Benner 29:11
get out though. Well, you made a point a second ago, right? Like, if you, if you can by eating well and exercising and living a life that your body needs, live healthy, then great. And if you have processes in your body that aren't working well enough that that's not enough for it, then let's see if there's a pharmaceutical or something else that can help you with it, right? So, I mean, it makes a ton of sense to me to start at that basic but as soon as you do that, you're going to get argued with by 17 different people are going to tell you the way to eat is everything you open your mouth with becomes some sort of a fight. I'm answering my own question, by the way, why companies don't get involved in specific? Yes, yeah, there's no way to win if you said hey, even if you said eat, well, someone go. Well, what does that mean? And then now we're arguing. About that for 10 years, and then that pisses away, and people finally stop arguing about that. And then you move on to the the next step, and then it starts all over again. There's five different opinions, five different financial perspectives, and everybody wants their thing to be the thing

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:16
right? And I think what you know, what it honestly brings in that you're kind of skirting around is that we need discussions to happen. We should not shy away from discussion. We should not shy away from bringing up hard points, like uncomfortable discussion points. We should be happy to be able to talk about something that is not vanilla. Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:42
right. Let's have a deeper conversation and disagree. That's fine. Be nice, like, that's even like, I listen, I cultivate what I think is maybe the kindest Facebook group around diabetes that I've ever seen, but it's based on you're all adults. I'm not going to tell you what to say, just however you eat, however you feel, love, I don't even care. Like, go ahead and have your conversations, but then be nice. And it's interesting. I had this thing happen the other day. I can talk about this, probably right. So there was a post, there's a, I don't want to out anybody, there's a post that comes up and somebody says, this is one of the most controversial posts in diabetes. What would you bolus for this? Like, you know what I mean? And it's a photo, yeah, yeah. And eventually,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:23
in a million different places, not just Yes, people post all the time. Look at the bowl of ice cream and all the toppings, and it looks like, like a kitchen sink full of stuff. Like, well, that's a wide guess.

Scott Benner 31:35
A lot I'm guessing, but so, but somebody will come in and say, hey, well, you know, I see this in there, and that you're going to get an impact quickly from this. There might be some fat in there. You get a lot of thoughtful answers, but there's always one person that can't stop themselves from saying, I just wouldn't eat it. Well, no one asked you. That guy didn't ask you the question. Question wasn't, Hey, would you eat this? And so something like that happened where a person came in and said, like, yeah, you know, I just, I think that if you ate a different quality of food, and blah, blah, blah, and then someone got insulted by that. And I'm like, okay, that's legitimate. I have a one of my rules in my Facebook group is, don't tell people how to eat. And so this person gets very angry that this person told another person how to eat. Now we've got three people involved, and the person who gets angry about it then fires back at that person, very rude. And I removed the rude comment, and I said, please be kind like you know, I next time somebody does something like that, report that comment. I will take care of it. Because I would have taken that comment out and said, Please don't tell somebody how to eat. So all I would have done, right? Well, you know, that person left the group in anger because they didn't want to be told what to do. And I was like, you just got mad because that person was cruel. You were three times crueler to them in return. And now you're mad at me. I was like, and then I'm dumb enough to get on here and ask you this question when the obvious answer is, you can't win.

Unknown Speaker 33:04
No, you can't win. There you go.

Scott Benner 33:07
So Jenny, I think we're getting back to what you started with. If people want to know why they're not getting straightforward information from companies and entities, it's because they're scared to talk to you all,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:17
yeah, yeah, pretty much they're they're scared, and companies, especially, they're scared to be sued if they get back to you with an answer that's 100% the nitty gritty truth of what they're doing. I mean, it is the reason that today I am so not in love with all of the pharmaceutical commercials. I mean, I grew up with Band Aid and I think an aspirin. They are aspirin and band aids. Those were the commercials for medical care on TV right today. It's not this and not that, whatever it is, but they have to put in some of those sort of things that could be symptoms after because, you know what? They don't want to get ground out for not stating, well, you could have headaches with this medication because one person had it. In a study of 300,000

Scott Benner 34:06
people, yeah, if your eyes start bleeding and fall out your asshole, please, yeah. What did that happen to one person? But, yeah, so you have to disclaimer everything, which I'm not against, but, like, no, it's just very by the way, now I have the I am stuck on Band Aid brand because Band Aid stuck on me. That's got stuck in my head, and now I feel very old. But here's the problem, okay, so if, whether it's a diabetes website who's captured an audience and is feeding you information, it ends up being just this banal, vanilla information, or it's a company who's not willing to say, you know, maybe you should look at this if my our product's not working for you, what it ends up leading to is, people with diabetes are misered, right? They have a difficulty managing their blood sugars. They get increased anxiety. They're frustrated, they misinterpret things. They. Make self management errors and then misinterpret why those errors happened. Then it's just a tumble, right? You just you lose empowerment, you feel disengaged, and before you know it, you've got a nine, A, 1c, and you think, Oh, this is the best I can do. And so isn't it interesting, if that is that loop, which is people won't speak up and say what works because they're afraid of all the things that we discussed. In the end, it doesn't hurt those people. It hurts, it hurts the audience and those, those people have diabetes. It's the one thing like I know I've, I've told this story on the podcast before, but I wrote a blog for a long time, and it was popular. It was really, really popular. And one day I just realized I'm just saying what everybody else is saying. This is silly, like I'm gonna start sharing directly what's helping Arten, right? And when I did that, the blog got massively more popular. But I'm also, at that point, a blogger. I can say, hey, there's a disclaimer page on here that says, don't listen to me, anything you read here is for entertainment purposes, like that thing, right? A company, a company, can't come out and say, hey, you know this information is for entertainment purposes, but I would change your basal if I was you, like, like, that's not gonna work, right? But, but when I saw that help people, and then when I moved it to a different medium, where it's easier to reach people, and it's easier for people to, like, absorb the information. The amount of people I saw help with it exploded. And then that's what frustrates me. I'm like, I don't reach everybody, and some people don't like me, which is totally cool, yeah, but if you don't like me, but you still don't know how to pre bolus, I want someone else to be telling you how to do it, if it's not me, right? And that just doesn't happen. And then I get super frustrated about it, because I want people to be well, whether they get the information here or somewhere else. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:47
I think the other piece, in terms of companies, especially diabetes companies, that is frustrating from the the coding of what you get told when you call in with a complaint is that they're choosing to use your product to benefit their life in a really significant way. Right? So if each individual person uses a product and has some minor things that are easy to overcome, but some people have more specific, really considerable issues, but you're still feeding them the same response. That's what also makes people really, really frustrated, right? You know, if you're going to replace something, replace it because you've said you're going to replace it, if you're not going to replace it, then you don't replace it for anybody, no matter what. But you can't, like cherry pick, so to speak, who gets something who doesn't get something? What you say to somebody, and I think that is where, on that end of calling into customer service, you get a little bit more. Get the tip of the iceberg. You get the person who's reading off of the form that says, This is how to answer this type of question that comes in. But in diabetes, especially with products, again, we need more than that, because this is impacting our life. If

Scott Benner 38:09
you're the one giving out that information, you have to understand that whatever is said is going to be received by the person on the other end of the phone, or the other end of your Tiktok, or wherever it is. As all of the information, they're not going to wonder if there's more. They're going to think if there was more to it, you would have said it. And so when you give incomplete answers, the person hearing them believes it's a complete answer, correct? That's why it works so poorly with management ideas, because if you can't give it all, then you're not going to be able to succeed. And even with like, the you know, like you said, with with how to use a device. And I listen, I understand device manufacturers are prohibited by the FDA. They're not allowed to tell you how to use them. That's not allowed, but they find ways to to get good information out into the world. And it can be done. Do? I did it with OmniPod for OmniPod five, we put together a three part series that very completely explains how to use OmniPod five, right? It's awesome, and they should be lauded for the amount of effort and time that a ton of people behind the scenes put into making sure that that content was valuable, right? You don't see that from a lot of places. And I'm not like, I'm not blaming like, another pump company or something. I've even learned to believe it. It's not just because they don't want to. They might not have the staff for it. The staff might not have the expertise for it. There's a lot of reasons why stuff like that doesn't happen, right? But mostly I think it's the stuff we've covered here.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:29
I think in what you just said, too, is that I think people get frustrated because they can see that the company isn't being openly honest about what they can tell you or what they know, right? You know, what? If you don't know how to answer a question or you can't answer it because you're bound by legal, kind of, you know, constraints, then tell me that. Tell me that so that I don't remain frustrated with the problem that I'm having. And I've called six times and I get six. Different answers, but the real answer is that you just can't tell me, because you really don't know yet. Miss Smith,

Scott Benner 40:05
I'm sorry, but the FDA precludes us from answering that question. The problem is that the next thing they're going to say is you should ask your doctor, and then apparently, if you're unlucky, you're going to get to your doctor and they're going to go, but I don't know, call the company. Call the company. You see people do that all the time. They bounce them back and forth, because nobody wants in the end. Listen, there are plenty of great people, okay? And this is not a blanket statement, but when you run into those people who aren't great in the end, what you're going to run into with people who are covering their own ass. And that's that like so and you do not know if that's who you're talking to or not, that's always my problem is, like, I don't know. Am I talking to an ass cover, or am I talking to somebody who doesn't know? Or Is there really no answer, you know, right? That's all right. You know, nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advised medical or otherwise

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:54
there No, yes, I have no affiliation for that. I

Scott Benner 40:57
don't know those people. But then you share your stories, and hopefully people can cherry pick and take things out that'll help them or resonate with their experience. They go, Oh, I never thought of it that way. I just helped somebody. The other day, a person emailed me and said, my kids on OmniPod five, they're in college. He's starting to take his health much more seriously. That's awesome. I was so excited, exercising more, eating better, but he's getting low a lot. And I was like, Oh, God, I know the right answer here. The answer is that that algorithm is working, is just over giving insulin based on his needs prior, and it's not shifting quickly enough in this case. So my thought was, you know, so I what I thought was, like, reset it, you know what I mean? Like, figure out what your total daily insulin is and start over. But I can't just email a stranger back and say, Hey, here's medical advice, right? So I have so I go. If this was happening to me, I would wonder if blah, blah, blah, and then I might look into making sure my settings are clear, and then maybe the algorithm could benefit from being, you know, reset with those new numbers. And as I was writing it, I felt ridiculous, because I'm still saying the same damn thing. You know what I mean, but like you are, but you're

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:18
putting in a disclosure so that it can't come back to you. You're saying, if it were me, this is what I would do. I mean, I'm asked things all the time from a personal as well as a clinical perspective, and sometimes I give clinical perspective based on a professional stance, right? But my personal perspective is because of personal experience. And I can say, You know what, but that isn't what I do, because it doesn't work for you.

Scott Benner 42:47
In the end, I'm looking at my inbox and I'm thinking, Can I really ignore this and let this poor kid who's trying to pull his together? Am I gonna let him give up and live a life of poor health? Because I don't have the balls to answer this question, yeah, so, so I answered them, and I guess that's where my frustration comes from with everybody else. Like, just, like, what if we all just did the right thing? Like, going back to why I mentioned that the podcast is popular. The podcast is popular because it helps people, and then they tell other people I was helped here. Like, imagine if we were all doing that, how much more quickly people would be, you know, brought forward with their outcomes. That's just, I don't know it gets anyway. I understand why you guys don't do what I said an hour ago, but I get frustrated by it, and I'm so sick of seeing your freaking recipes for that cake that I can bring to my July 4 that won't make my blood sugar spike. It's just Jenny, by the way, the secret is using whipped cream for the icing. Oh,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:45
whipped cream for the icing. Lovely. So, because it's not real frosting,

Scott Benner 43:48
it doesn't have all that sugar in it and everything. And if I ran a website for type one diabetes, I would probably end up having to do what they're doing. But it still frustrates the hell out of me that that's how they do it. And, you know, I just wish people would just be more forthcoming if they know they should say, and if they don't know, they should stop pretending they know. That's pretty much what I think anyway,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:12
stop. Don't put the Fourth of July recipe out anymore. Yeah. I mean,

Scott Benner 44:15
just stop. It's so upsetting.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:20
I clearly have not visited whatever you're looking I'm

Scott Benner 44:22
so afraid that the website that does it's going to be like, Hey, he's directly talking about us, but I think they could figure it out too. And I feel badly. But it's so weird that that we live in a world where a person can have a medical question and be better off going to the juicebox podcast, Facebook group and asking a bunch of faceless strangers and come up with a better answer than if they went to their doctor, the company they bought the thing from, or it just, I don't know, I find it weird, like I'm almost here arguing against myself, like I don't think this is how it should work.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:54
I think with technology today, if it wasn't you, I think somebody else would have. Likely figured something similar out. Yeah, right. I mean, in whatever way. But I think because you were so quick to the move from just being a blogger into putting that voice specific connection, I think especially in the past several years where we've gone through a lot of poor social interaction, like True Seeing somebody. I think podcasts really have bloomed because it was the closest to socializing that you could get. And with you talking to so many different people all over the world, it was a great way to feel like you were almost having a conversation. No,

Scott Benner 45:43
I agree, but at the same time, it's only working because I'm being so authentic and honest while I'm doing it, because there's other people doing this, and they they run banal all the time as well. Listen, it went all the way back to when I was blogging. What I noticed that was that made me it was confusing is that people would get popular by being a blogger, which is to say that they're speaking to people very genuinely, right? And then when their popularity rose, the first thing they do was make over their website. Then all of a sudden it looked like a pharma website, like they put some money into it, they shined it up. And then they thought, then they took themselves too seriously, and then they stopped saying what they thought, and then they somehow turned into the thing that they were railing against the year before. And I was like, Oh, that was weird. I was I was like, you just stopped doing all the things that made you popular, like, because they wanted to look, I don't know, more

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:37
professional maybe, or more like a more like a knowledgeable resource, trust

Scott Benner 46:44
me, they did the wrong thing. Jenny, my website looks like a five year old. Made it juicebox podcast.com, go check it out. But it works, and all the information's there. And I don't care if it doesn't look fancy, you know, and by the way, that website gets, it's really great traffic, so I'm sure it does, I don't know Anyway, all right, I appreciate you talking to me about this. Thank

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:07
you absolutely.

Scott Benner 47:12
Thank you. A huge thanks to the contour next gen blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juicebox your kids mean everything to you, and you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it, because if even just one person in your family has type one, your child is up to 15 times more likely to get it, but just one blood test can help you spot it early, so don't wait. Talk to your doctor about screening tap now or visit screenfortypeone.com to get more info and screen it like you mean. It a huge thank you to Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. Are you tired of having to change your sensor every seven to 14 days with the Eversense CGM? You just replace it once every six months via a simple in office visit, learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox. 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 bold beginnings 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 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, wrongwayrecording.com I know that Facebook has a bad reputation, but please give the private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast, a healthy once over juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. The group now has 47,000 members in it. It gets 150 new members a day. It is completely free, and at the very least, you can watch other people talk about diabetes. And everybody is welcome, type one, type two, gestational loved ones. Everyone is welcome. Go up into the featured tab of the private Facebook group and. And there you'll see lists upon lists of all of the management series that are available to you for free in the juicebox podcast, becoming a member of that group, I really think it will help you. It will at least give you community. You'll be able to kind of lurk around, see what people are talking about, pick up some tips and tricks. Maybe you can ask a question or offer some help. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. You.


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