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The Different Kinds Of High Blood Sugar

High blood sugars come in three different tiers for me:  No Big Deal (NBD), Tricky Little Sucker (TLS), and What The Eff (WTE).

No Big Deal (NBD) highs are the ones I see when I first hear the Dexcom BEEEEEEEP!ing.  They are the 180 – 240 mg/dL highs, where I’m cruising out of range, but not so far outside that it takes hours to correct.  The NBD highs are usually mild in their symptoms (kind of thirsty, sort of tired, maybe wouldn’t have noticed if the Dex hadn’t hollered) are thankfully short in their duration, so long as I’m on the ball about keeping tabs on my blood sugars.

Tricky Little Sucker (TLS) highs are obnoxious pieces of garbage that hang on for hours.  These highs are the ones where you hit anything over 200 mg/dL and just ride there for hours.  HOURS.  Like you can undecorate the Christmas tree and pack up all the holiday nonsense back into the attic and STILL find yourself rolling outside the threshold.  They’re the ones that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Why Are iPods Cooler Than Glucose Monitors?

dbmine-design-challenge-2009-small-iconThat’s the $10,000 question. My friend and fellow health blogger, Amy Tenderich is hosting a design contest to encourage “coolness” to flow the way of diabetes-related technology. Now that’s a good cause! Here’s the 411 from Amy:

About 21 million Americans live with diabetes, yet the devices we rely on generally don’t hold a candle to the sleek design of consumer electronics (think iPod)… So patients are going “grassroots” to improve the design of tools for treating diabetes:

On Monday morning, we’ll be announcing opening of the 2009 DiabetesMine Design Challenge, a San Francisco blog-based competition calling for innovative design concepts (devices or web applications) that will improve life with diabetes.

This year, the contest is sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), with a Grand Prize of $10,000.  It’s also supported by global innovation firm IDEO and by Medgadget.com, the Internet journal of emerging medical technologies.

The competition is open to ANYONE with a good idea: patients, parents, startup companies, design & medical students, developers, engineers, etc.

The contest is hosted at www.diabetesmine.com/designcontest

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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