As a past user of their meters (it came with the Minimed pump) this is no surprise to me, it was a most frustrating meter to use. What I wonder is what this means to current Minimed pump users that are using that particular meter.
I'm hoping that Minimed goes with a OneTouch-based solution, these are reliable and the strips are covered by most health insurance carriers.
Are you using one of the BD meters from Minimed? If so, please let me know if you've heard from Minimed about their replacement plans.
Mmmm, mmm. It's that time of year when the days turn crisp and clear and my thoughts turn to apples.
The town where I live owns an orchard and we are truly blessed that when it's in full season I can get a huge variety of apples.
A few weeks ago, I bought a half-peck of Gravenstein apples and made a number of apple pies that were enjoyed by family and friends. For an old variety these make great pies, but unfortunately they're not available for long.
Yesterday I bought some Empire and while I was there I bought a single Honeygold which was taken home for sampling. What a luscious variety that is - the children were eating it almost as fast as I was slicing it up.
This evening I stopped by on the way home, picked up another half-peck of Honeygold and slipped the cash into the money box on the bench. It's such a blessing to live in a small town.
The Northern Spy variety should be out in a few weeks, which is another excellent pie variety.
If all of this seems like a secret code to you, get out of the supermarket and find a local orchard that provides you with some of these fall marvels.
Better yet, bring some children with you and pick a peck or two with juicy fresh excuses for baking and eating.
I just read this press release about a protein called calcineurin and its effect on insulin-producing cells.
According to the article, when this protein is suppressed insulin producing cells do not multiply as much and insulin production is reduced, leading to diabetes in the mice that were used for experiments. The Stanford research team then found that by activating NFAT (nuclear factor of activated T cells) in the beta cells, the cells then behaved normally multiplying and producing the usual amounts of insulin.
I did some searching around and found this research article from 2001 that appears (as best I can understand it) to say much the same thing. It seems this research may best help those with Type 2 diabetes.
It's interesting that this shows yet another way in which insulin production can be knocked out and recovered from. What amazing things our bodies are.
We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.
I don't know why, but this seems like a perfect analogy for the part of my life with diabetes where I beat myself up for not doing a better job on my control, my diet, or something else that's related to my diabetes.
I overeat when I shouldn't - that goes into my bag.
I don't count the carbs correctly and my BGs go high - that goes into my bag.
I get a low, overeat when correcting it, and have to bolus later to recover (from the low) - into my bag.
I don't make time to exercise like I should - my bag.
At some stage I look behind me and I'm dragging behind me a bag that's 3 city blocks long. No wonder I'm so tired!
In the end we're all just people with busy lives to lead, that are much more complicated because of our diabetes. So let's all give ourselves permission to make mistakes sometimes (often) and live as best we can with those.
Whatever you do, don't put your mistakes into the bag, put it back on your shoulder (feels heavy, doesn't it), and start pulling it along again.
Tabblo looks like a great idea. Make it really easy for people to upload pictures and create a story around them. Then make money by giving folks to ability to order copies of the pictures. I hope that Ned and his associates do very well with the business.
Over the years I've used about 4 different meters from various companies (OneTouch, FreeStyle, Ames, BD), and one thing I've noticed is that the data format that these meters use to return their data is not described so folks can take advantage of it. And where you can glean the format, it's not uniform across meters.
Now think about this. All readings have a Date/Time and a value (mmol/L or mg/dL). Then some meters also return additional information (before/after meal designations, health information, etc.).
So why not define a standard format for this data and then try to persuade the manufacturers to conform to this format? Once the format is agreed upon it will get much easier to develop standard charting and tracking software and transfer readings from package to package.
Now I've done some Google searches for things like microformat diabetes and so far I don't see anyone else working on this problem.
So gentle reader, your homework assignment is this. Please let me know if you're aware of anyone who is tackling this, or if you're interested in working on developing and publicizing such a standard.
So I'm finally back home after my 20-mile ride and hanging out with other riders from the Bike The Miles event today.
What a glorious day. We started from the Charlestown Navy Yard, about a long stone's throw from Old Ironsides. So my family was able to tour there while I spent a little under 2 hours doing the riding itself.
Both Boston and Cambridge we bathed in the fall sunshine, and it was perfect weather for a ride. I'll post some of the pictures I took later, hopefully including the (I think) F-117 that passed up on our way back to Charlestown.
Afterwards I got a chance to say thanks to Dr. Faustman for the astonishing work that she's doing. As well as chat briefly with the organizers and various other riders and their families.
It's not too late to help support the cause. Visit my bike ride page to support the research work.
OK, it's not really the 146th tip that I've posted, but it is one of many that I hope to post in my future as a blogger.
I recently bought the 4th edition of the excellent Pumping Insulin book, and I've been reading it. It's a great book, and the few pages on Symlin are much more informative than all the literature I've read.
So I was surprised when I read Text Box 5.7 on page 53, which says:
BOB Will Not Work After An Injection
Even when wearing a pump, injections may still be needed. When a blood sugar is unexpectedly high due to an infusion site problem or when only enough insulin remains in your reservoir to cover the basal rates, an injection can be used for a correction or a carb bolus.
However, when an injection is used in these situations, your pump will not know it and cannot determine the true BOB (Bolus on Board). After an injection this insulin remains active for about 5 hours. The BOB from an injection can be tracked the old-fashioned way by estimating that 20% to 25% of this injected dose will be used each hour.
However, in the situation where you have enough insulin in the reservoir but you think there are site problems, you can have your cake and eat it too (metaphorically speaking).
What I do is to detach the infusion set and, before putting a new reservoir into the pump, bolused the amount of insulin that I inject using a syringe. Then I replace the reservoir, infusion set, etc. So the pump still thinks that it gave me the bolus that I injected manually, and it continues to track my bolus on board.
I hope this helps you if you've had site problems and then had to deal with tracking the manual bolus while also doing the whole infusion set replacement dance.
The Diabetes Technology Blog is focused on using technology to live life to the full with diabetes. I review new diabetes technology including: blood glucose monitors; continuous glucose monitors; blood sugar meters; diabetes software and living with diabetes.
About Me
Name: Bernard Farrell
Location: Massachusetts, United States
I was born in Ireland and now live in the US.
I have had Type 1 diabetes for over 36 years. I struggle with my blood sugar, the same as most people with diabetes.
I wear a Cozmo 1800 insulin pump and a Dexcom SEVEN Plus CGM to track my blood glucose levels.
I'm blessed by God, and every day brings the possibility of a cure.
