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Category: Diabetes Awareness

dear diabetes awareness month

I Write This Post Every November 1

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Here I am, writing the same post I write every year on November 1. No, it’s not wishing myself a happy birthday.

Unfortunately, it is writing about how much I used to love National Diabetes Awareness Month and how much I hate it now.

Why do I hate it?

Because PR people and marketers have ruined it.

Yes, I am a professional marketer by trade. I own a digital marketing company, so I totally understand people doing what their clients ask them to do.

But, damn, be better at your job.

Year after year I write about all the PR pitches that I get and how bad they are. They tell me how I’m going to die early because of these 100 reasons and then ask me if I’d like to interview an expert about it.

I live with type 1 diabetes.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Of.

My.

Life.

I am a freaking expert!

I love all of the awareness campaigns that are brought up during the month of November, but we really do need to capitalize on this opportunity to reach people OUTSIDE of the diabetes community.

I’ve seen some pretty aggressive marketing and campaigns from Beyond Type 1 with Dexcom and Panera and Real Good Foods, so I hope these help spread awareness outside of the current diabetes community.

Here’s to hopefully a great National Diabetes Awareness Month.

Open Up Your Bag_ A Diabetes Picture Book Review and Giveaway -featured image

Open Up Your Bag: A Diabetes Picture Book Review and Giveaway

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

There is a new diabetes book making its way around the world and I feel proud to call this person a friend. I’ve known Mike on the interwebs for probably close to 10 years at this point. I’ve only met him a hand full of times in person, but every time that I have, he has been one of the nicest, sincere people that I’ve met.

Mike just so happens to be an incredible doodler. And if doodler isn’t a word, then it is now because that’s what Mike does.

I’ve seen his doodles be used by an entire company as their avatars.

Mike has created the book Open Up Your Diabetes Bag: a diabetes picture book.

This book is filled with Mike’s doodles to help kids learn and understand their diabetes management a little better. You can also head to Mike’s website, DiabetesDoodles.com and download activities so your children can color his doodles!open up your bag diabetes book doodles

The book contains concepts of opening your meter bag, testing your blood sugar, taking your insulin and more. This book is intended for kids and that’s just what I used it for.

I read this book with my daughter multiple times and there’s a page in the book where one of the doodles is taking a shot with an insulin pen and my daughter laughed and said, “daddy that silly penguin is taking a shot like you.”

That comment right there made the minimal investment worth it.

The book is super small so I can’t give too much of a review other than that I back this book up and I highly recommend it for not only a child with diabetes but any parent who has diabetes and wants to explain diabetes management to their child.

via GIPHY

FREE GIVEAWAY ALERT

I’ve asked Mike if I could do a giveaway here and he said absolutely. So, guess what, that’s exactly what we are going to do!

You can enter this giveaway with multiple different actions. The more you do, the more entries you get.

Please see below for the details. The winner will be announced next Tuesday, August 14.

 

Open Up Your Bag: A Diabetes Picture Book

better sleep for diabetes

My Diabetes is Tired and Needs Better Sleep

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about sleep lately. I know that I have always been a horrible sleeper and that I’ve never gotten the right amount of sleep.

Now, I am fine with sleeping 5-6 hours a night. More than 8 and I don’t even want to get out of bed. Less than 5, then I’m a bit groggy by the afternoon.

I work a lot of hours, so 5-6 hours of sleep a night is my sweet spot, but I need to make sure that when I am laying in bed for those 5-6 hours, that I’m actually sleeping those 5-6 hours.

So, before I write all about the different studies that I have read, I am going to just link to an article from Tuck about Diabetes and Sleep Disorders.

I have always had a problem with my blood sugar spiking as soon as I wake up. It’s always been called the Dawn Phenomenom, but at this point, it’s just annoying. I’ve resorted to just taking a random shot of insulin every morning, anyway from 5-10 units without even eating, just because I know it’s going to spike.

My thought, based on what some of these studies say, is that these spikes may not be as bad if I had a better night’s sleep.

That leads me to the other action that I took to get a better night’s sleep. And that is upgrading my mattress situation.

I’ve heard great things about memory foam mattresses and the ones that come rolled up into a box, so I figured I’d give one of them a try. After a lot of research, I decided to go with NECTAR. They have a 365 Night Sleep Trial !

365 Days!

That’s an entire year. How could I not try this?

My mattress should be delivered shortly, but I won’t be using it until the middle of April, so I will let you all know my thoughts on NECTAR when I have a chance to use it.

If you want to check them out, just head on over to their website – NECTAR Sleep: The Most Comfortable Mattress

This post may contain affiliate links – Disclosure.

Why I Will Advocate My Way, Not Yours

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

In the diabetes community there is a lot of uproar over how you are supposed to advocate, what you are supposed to advocate for and who you are supposed to do it with. Now, I might be mistaken, but don’t I have the right to advocate my own way, about what I want to and with who I want to? I will always advocate my way, because it’s what works for me. I can’t advocate a way someone else wants me to or about someone else’s passion because then I don’t have any passion behind that advocating.

Advocating for something requires passion. Without passion, your advocacy efforts will die out very quickly.

Also, I strongly believe that in order to find a common ground or to get something from someone you must work with them. Attacking people, or companies, is not going to work. It just won’t.

You may not agree with me, and that is fine, it’s an opinion. Opinions aren’t facts, so they can both potentially be right.

So, if that requires me to work with an organization or company to find a solution, then guess what? I’m going to do that.

And guess what else? If you don’t like it, I don’t really care.

You advocate your way.

I will advocate my way.

Build the Tallest Building

They say that there’s two ways to have the biggest building in town.

1. You can just work hard and outwork everyone to build the biggest building in town.

2. You can knock down the current biggest building in town.

Now, I will choose option 1 every single time. I will never try to advance myself or my advocacy efforts by tearing down someone else’s efforts. And to add to that, I can’t stand people who choose option number 2. Put in the work, do more, and support others who are in the fight together (whether you think they are or not).

There are just a lot of negative people out there. Twitter has made it much easier for these people to be even more negative. Wake up complaining, complain all day, go to bed complaining, yet do nothing.

Those are the people who choose number 2 above.

Start working towards accomplishing number 1.

And that’s that.

Bottom line is this. We all have different passions. We may share the same end goal, but approach it differently.

There are people who advocate for the same end goal as me, and I may not agree with how they go about it, but I will still support it, because I know that there are some aspects of their advocacy that are actually helping push the ball forward. I also feel that there are things done that roll the ball back 10 feet for every 1 foot they gain, but that’s how they decide to do it.

Instead of spending time (wasting time) arguing with others how they are advocating, use that same time to push your advocacy effortsforward.

Insert something about bees and honey and vinegar here. I would never want to attract bees, so it makes no sense to me, but you know what I’m saying.

Went 62 to 398 in a Few Hours – New VLOG

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Today’s vlog is up, so please check it out. It’s the first day of Diabetes Awareness Month, my birthday, and a day where my blood sugar went up over 300 within a couple of hours.

Enjoy.

Subscribe to The Life of a Diabetic

Spreading Diabetes Awareness with Vlog, Podcast, and Gifts

Chris Stocker

Today marks the start of another year or Diabetes Awareness Month. The last few years I have not done much during the month of November, because there is so much publicity around this month, that I used it as a break and let others do their thing. Well, I’ve decided to get back into this year.

And go all in.

Vlogging Every Day

First, I will be vlogging every single day in the month of November to bring as much awareness as possible to this disease and what it’s actually like living with it on a daily basis. So, if you are not subscribed yet, please go and subscribe over on YouTube.

 

Podcasting 5 Days a Week

That’s right, along with the vlogging, I will be launching a podcast starting today. This podcast will be 5 minutes, for 5 days a week. Mon-Fri and will launch at approximately 6 PM each weekday. Topics will be based around diabetes but also a focus on my life with diabetes which includes being a father, husband and entrepreneur.

 

because Diabetes

My wife started an Etsy shop earlier this year making custom wine glasses, coffee mugs, whiskey glasses, tumblers, etc. So I thought it would be a great idea to make something for the diabetes community. That’s where these “because Diabetes” glasses come in. Sometimes you just need a glass of wine, whiskey or coffee, simply because Diabetes.

50% of all profits from these glasses will be donated to 1 of 3 diabetes advocacy and insulin causes.

Subscribe to The Life of a Diabetic

Learning from Other Health Communities

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Deciding to start this blog almost 10 years ago has totally changed my life. It has provided me so many opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t start it. One example is the ability to meet and talk with people who live with other chronic conditions.

For so many years, I was only surrounded with others who were living with diabetes. Well, after I started blogging, not before, because that’s one of the primary reasons why I started to write in the first place. So, when I thought about chronic diseases, I really just thought about diabetes and how the diabetes world works.

It wasn’t until I started meeting people with other diseases that I was really  able to open up my mind and start thinking about my own disease in a different manner. It allowed me to be open minded about new disease management techniques and questions to ask my doctors. It also made me realize that as someone with type 1 diabetes, I might actually be at risk for some of these other diseases that I see others writing and talking about.

I would start to learn more about certain diseases and conditions because if I was at risk for them, I want to know to warning signs of them. Sort of like I wish I knew the symptoms of diabetes that I was living with for 2 months before I was sent to the ER.

There is a lot to learn from other communities and I think there are a lot of people in the diabetes community that have reached out to other communities to try and figure those things out. For example, the AIDS community has been able to do so much by speaking up and sticking together. Healthcare in general is such a hot topic right now and people from all disease communities have come together to fight together and that’s just awesome to see.

It’s great to see events like the HealtheVoices conference that is happening this month. People from all different kinds of conditions, diseases, backgrounds, nationalities, etc. are meeting together. These type of platforms are where some of the best ideas and collaborations come from. That’s just my opinion for what it’s worth.

I will not be attending HealtheVoices but I will definitely be following along with the hashtag #HealtheVoices17 from April 21-23.I will not be attending HealtheVoices but I will be following along with the hashtag #HealtheVoices17 from April 21-23. Click To Tweet

Have you had experiences with speaking to people from other health communities and if so, what were you able to learn from them that helped in your diabetes management or advocacy efforts?

How My Wife and I Managed Pregnancy and the First Two Years

Chris Stocker

One of the most frequently asked questions that I receive is about how my wife and I managed her pregnancy and the first two years of our daughter’s life. Meaning, what kind of research did we do, what kind of precautions did we take, what can you do to help prevent your child from developing diabetes since the father has type 1. Trust me, I did a lot of research. And I asked a lot of people when we found out that she was pregnant.

Unfortunately, my answer is…. we’ve done a lot of research and we did what we feel is best for us, but ultimately, there is nothing you can do.

Here is what we did though in case you need a starting point.

The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young

The first thing that my endo told me to do is read up on the TEDDY study. And boy did I do that. I read as much from this study and follow up studies as possible. So, I recommend this being a great starting point – https://teddy.epi.usf.edu/

There is a lot of information there, but to sum it up, the TEDDY study believes that children who are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes have some sort of genes that are triggered by something, but what that something is, they are not sure of at this point. If we can find out what the trigger or triggers are, than that can go a long way to try and prevent diabetes. Is it something that is triggered before birth based on mom’s diet or could it be the air we breathe…. I don’t know.

We Chose to Breastfeed

This is a choice that we made very early on. We decided on breastfeeding because we felt it was the most natural thing to do.

WE DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST THOSE WHO DO NOT BREASTFEED SO SAVE YOUR COMMENTS!

This was just our own personal decision. My thought process is… we’re humans, why don’t we drink human milk. So, that was an easy decision for us. No matter what, this final decision was going to come down to my wife’s decision because she was the one breastfeeding, not me.

I do believe that there was a press release within the last few months stating that there was no direct correlation between breastfeeding and the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. My endo, who I ask her advice on everything, gave me the advice that breastfeeding for the first 12 months is the best option, for anybody.

Little to No Cow’s Milk

So my wife was able to breastfeed until our daughter was a year old. She was eating food at that time, but there was still some breastfeeding going on as well. We decided to not give our daughter cow’s milk. The reason was based on research we did and studies that had shown that the casein molecule is too large for the baby’s gut which then became a trigger to start the autoimmune process. Like I said, this decision was made based off of our research and discussions between my wife and I.

We also didn’t completely cut out cow’s milk, we just didn’t allow her to drink it. So, we gave her cheese sticks and yogurt that was made with cow’s milk. So, we didn’t fully cut it out, but as much as we could.

That is pretty much it. We obviously monitor what she eats and don’t fill her up with fast food all the time.

I hope that helps answer any questions that you have. Like I mentioned above, unfortunately, there is not much research out there that provides you a guideline on what to do during pregnancy and after birth.

If you have any other questions, please comment below, it’s a great way for the community to see your questions as well.

Uncontrolled Diabetes – Honestly I Don’t Care

Chris Stocker

Last night during the weekly #DCDE Twitter Chat (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.) there was a mention of how HCP’s use the diagnosis code of “Uncontrolled Diabetes” and I tweeted that I don’t really care about that and don’t care what you call it.

I understand that language matters and I totally get it. I, personally, am not really effected that much by the language and wording used in the diabetes world. Myths, yes. But specific words and language, I don’t let it bother me, because at the end of the day, it’s just a word or a phrase. It’s sort of like the old saying from elementary school – “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt.”

There’s a few reasons why I don’t care about the phrase “Uncontrolled Diabetes”.

First, it’s just a phrase, it’s not that big of a deal. “When I go to get blood work and the receptionist sees ‘uncontrolled diabetes’ they think I’m not working hard to control my diabetes and it undermines all of my hard work.’ Well, guess what? I don’t give a fuck what the receptionist thinks. Nor do I give a fuck about what anybody else thinks when they see “uncontrolled diabetes” I know the work and effort I’m putting in, so I don’t care what others think. I know who I am and that’s all that matters.

Second, what would you rather it say? A Diagnosis code that says “Trying very hard, but still needs some work” or “they really do put in a lot of effort, but they just need a bit more tweaking to keep their BG’s in range for a longer period of time.” I’m just curious as to what the better phrase would be.

Third, and let’s be real here. It’s not controlled. I have no problem being a realist and not trying to fluff myself up. My diabetes isn’t under control. I do what I can to manage it and I can be doing a lot better. More exercise, better eating habits, more weight loss, etc. But when you take a look at some of my CGM graphs and you see roller coaster after roller coaster, guess what, that’s not controlled. So, unless your blood sugars are staying perfectly between the top and bottom line limits that you and your HC team put together, to me, that means it’s not in control.

Here’s an example using a different subject.

If you are driving a car and you are in control of the car, then that means you are staying in your lane and not crossing over the lines into someone else’s lane. If you are driving the car and keep crossing over the lines and are almost hitting other cars because you’re in and out of your own lane, you are an out of control driver…. or an uncontrolled driver. Does that mean you’re a horrible driver? No. Maybe you’re just learning or you’re distracted or maybe it was dark and you didn’t really see the lines that well. All things that you could improve on. But, until you do, you’re still an uncontrolled driver.

I don’t want to undermine anybody’s thoughts and feelings on this topic. If you are outraged by the phrase, then that’s fine, this is just simply my view of it. I am just not a person to be effected by words or phrases that are just used to describe something. I know who I am. I have so much self-awareness of what I am and what I’m not, that it doesn’t matter to me that an outsider sees a diagnosis code and makes a judgement on me.