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Fake Cures For Diabetes

KERRI walks to the center of the living room and sits down on the couch, across from SIAH, who is sitting in the corner, staring aimlessly at the wall.

KERRI

Oh Siah, I just received an email!  About a chocolate shake with glucose-reducing powers!  And how, if I purchase the family pack of chocolate powder mix, I’ll get a free personal blender and I will also be cured of my diabetes!

SIAH

(blinks)  Meow?

KERRI

I know!  Diabetes cures apparently are everywhere.  Even in my spice rack, because it seems that just a spoonful of cinnamon, added to every meal and smeared on my face like Noxema, will help me achieve good blood sugar control.  Man, if only I had known that these diabetes cures were there the whole time!

Read more »

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

Monitor Blood Glucose (And Look Cool) With A Nano-Tattoo

Millions of people with diabetes are forced to endure multiple finger pricks daily — an unpleasant practice that may impede compliance, and whose reliability is operator-dependent.

Now, Dr. Paul Barone and Dr. Michael Strano at the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering are developing a new approach to glucose monitoring.

Building on work they previously published in ACS Nano, the new technology employs a nanoparticle “tattoo” as a glucose sensor, which can then be continuously monitored by a device on the surface of the body. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

The Diabetic New Mommy

You know you’re a diabetic mommy when…

  • The bottle of glucose tabs is just as important as the bottle of breast milk in the diaper bag.
  • You have already started wondering how you’re going to explain juice as “medicine” to the kiddo.
  • When you wake up for 3am feedings and they double as a 3am blood sugar check.
  • You start cooing sweetly at your meter when it gives you a result of 100 mg/dl. (“Oooh, what a good meter you are! Yes you are!”)
  • Your baby ends up with a dot of blood on the back of her pajamas from your middle-of-the-night blood sugar check that didn’t stop bleeding right away.
  • When you talk about “the pump,” you need to clarify “the insulin one, not the boob one.”
  • Sometimes you have to draw numbers to see who gets to feed the baby. And by “draw” we mean blood samples.
  • Nothing makes you happier than a full baby with a clean diaper and a full pump with a full battery.
  • You need a diaper bag just for diabetes supplies.
  • Your bedside table has just as many burp clothes as used test strips gathered at its base.

And when the Dexcom starts to “BEEEEEEEP!” you wonder if it needs a diaper change.

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

Managing Your Blood Sugars: Pregnant With Type 1 Diabetes

Yesterday was World Diabetes Day.  While my best friend’s baby shower is this weekend and I’ll be busy preparing for and helping with that event, I know there are lots of events taking place to celebrate the big, blue circle (including the Big Blue Test … more on that later).

But today is just another day in diabetes management, and it happens to be another endocrinologist appointment for me and the ol’ BSparl.  BSparl is getting bigger, as evidenced here: Read more »

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

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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