I receive a lot of emails with questions about diabetes, mostly on pump models or how to motivate teenagers to test their glucose more often.  I do my best to point people to the most valuable resources around. But late last week last I got an email I felt helpless to reply to: “I’m 28 years  Read More →

Back to School seems to be coming earlier every year — although for me, psychologically, it will always be the Tuesday after Labor Day.  Speaking of the psychological aspects of school life, I asked my D-correspondent extraordinaire Allison Blass to share her thoughts about being a kid with diabetes in the classroom: who do you  Read More →

My seven-year-old wanted to know: since we have so few official days here in America where all the people get off work, why is this one in particular called “Labor Day”? “Well… it’s for all the people who work really hard every day. It’s to celebrate them and their hard work,” I fumbled to explain. “Oh, like  Read More →

To cap off this week of copious diabetes creativity, I am presenting a few favorites from the “Most-Creative” category in the 2010 DiabetesMine Design Challenge as promised. Again, using the Wired/Tired method, I’m also sharing some key comments from our judging team (below each entry today). Hopefully these ideas will not only motivate you to envision  Read More →

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “herbal supplements”? Quack medicine? Snake oil? One of those cheesy natural-method pitch emails we all get? When I first heard about NaturEra from some colleagues who are highly respected diabetes educators, I have to admit, I was very skeptical. But the company was allowed to  Read More →

According to Innovation.org, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has a new report out on diabetes, which states: “A record 235 new medicines to treat diabetes, one of the fastest-growing diseases in America, are being developed by America’s pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies.” Wow. Do we really need that many new medicines? What about  Read More →

I personally wasn’t able to attend the annual meeting of the American Association of Diabetes Educators this summer.  But I’ve been there a few times. It’s quite the experience for a patient to witness thousands of experts in life-with-diabetes running around between lectures, demos, and expo booths. What are they all buzzing about? Today, a  Read More →

This recent testimonial in the Boston Globe, about a writer with type 1 diabetes who chose to keep his illness secret from girlfriend for quite some time, has stuck in my head. I can’t seem to stop thinking about the why’s and how’s of concealing your diabetes from people close to you. What a lot  Read More →

Speaking of World Diabetes Day, coming up November 14, I discovered this cool series of YouTube videos that the International Diabetes Federation has been pumping out to catch people’s attention. They’re short and evocative, all supporting the slogan “Understand Diabetes, Get Involved.” For example, this bit on “how many people have diabetes worldwide?” Do you  Read More →

Put your hands up! Who likes to dance? Good, you’re in. Even if all you’ve done till now is watch those popular dance shows on TV, you’re still in. Because Dance Out Diabetes is a new 501c non-profit organization designed to help prevent and manage diabetes through local dance events.  Starting out in San Francisco, and soon to  Read More →

I could call today’s guest post a “straggler” from my Summer Reading series, but that might downplay its impact. Good things take time, as noted today by Samantha Katz, who along with a fellow graduate student at Northwestern University, won the the $10K Grand Prize in the 2009 DiabetesMine Design Challenge. She was subsequently hired  Read More →

I could call today’s guest post a “straggler” from my Summer Reading series, but that might downplay its impact. Good things take time, as noted today by Samantha Katz, who along with a fellow graduate student at Northwestern University, won the the $10K Grand Prize in the 2009 DiabetesMine Design Challenge. She was subsequently hired  Read More →

My Spring post on the new injectable type 2 diabetes drug Victoza is in the running for one of the most-commented-ever blog posts here at the ‘Mine.  Over 100 people now taking the medication have chimed in. Victoza, for the unfamiliar, is a new once-daily form of the new-generation GLP-1 drugs that stimulate pancreas cells to  Read More →

Anyone else feel like keeping up with reading around the diabetes / health communities online is becoming overwhelming? Yup. And that’s a good thing, because it validates that what we’re all doing here is meaningful. Don’t believe me? Just ask CNN’s big-shot medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, who just published a book called The Empowered Patient  Read More →

From the “Weird and Wonderful” File: Another booth I happened upon last month while visiting the Children with Diabetes conference in Orlando definitely stopped me in my tracks: dental stem cells for diabetes?! Could someone be seriously running a business on this concept when the science is far from mature? Turns out the Store-A-Tooth™ booth was run  Read More →