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The Diabetic New Mommy

May 29th, 2010 by KerriSparling in Better Health Network, Humor, True Stories
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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.*

Could Sugar Pills Improve Smoking Cessation Rates?

January 28th, 2010 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Research
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Professor Robert West, at University College London, has an interesting theory which suggests that glucose tablets can help smokers to quit. It is well known that when smokers quit smoking they put on weight, and that nicotine appears to act like a mild anorectic drug…it dulls the appetite. It has also been noted that smokers often crave high carbohydrate foods when they quit smoking. So it seems as though smoking dulls the hunger for carbohydrates. The glucose theory (or at least one version of it) suggests that when an addicted smoker quits smoking they experience a strong hunger/craving sensation, sometimes located in their stomach. When trying to interpret that sensation they think, “what am I craving? I just gave up cigarettes, it must be that.” Read more »

This post, Could Sugar Pills Improve Smoking Cessation Rates?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..