Good Blood Glucose Management: What's the Point? The Long Term...

Last time I wrote about the short term benefits of having good management of your blood glucose levels. It was intended to be a more light-hearted post as diabetes can be overwhelming and serious and I wanted to get my personality in there a little bit to try and soften the blow, so to speak.

However, it seems wrong to do it in this post. Because the long-term complications of diabetes can be very scary - some of them certainly put me in a somber mood.

The short-term benefits are easy to recognise and explain in real terms. The advantages of keeping those blood levels in check can be felt within a few hours in some cases.

Good Blood Glucose Management: What's the Point? The Short Term...

Taking care of diabetes is really just an ongoing clusterf*ck of small sacrifices, costs, mental efforts and time commitments. It means trying to control your body after it's royally stuffed you and managing a beast that is just waiting to ruin your day from a little to mammoth proportions.

It's hard work. And usually a complete thankless task.

I get it. Yes the doctors and specialists all say that you've got to stay on top of your blood glucose management in order to control your diabetes but sometimes you just can't be bothered.

No wonder. Who would voluntarily prick their finger a few times a day and then continue to inject themselves with a drug that if not administered correctly could kill you?

I know I've fallen into that category. Usually after a check up or a visit to my specialist I'm full of motivation to get my HbA1c to near God-like levels of awesomeness and have total control of my diabetes rather than it have control of me.

But then there are days where the world is against you and everything else is taking priority and stabbing yourself just doesn't come high up the list of things to do.

Guest Post: Katie & New York City

Katie and I have been chatting for a few months regarding a recent trip that she has coming up. Katie, still in college, was concerned of people's reactions when she inevitably had to be very open about her diabetes socially around her classmates - many of whom did not know that she was a diabetic.

Following her experience I invited her to write a post for this website as I believe the reaction she got will ease a lot of other young people's minds regarding opening up to their friends about having this condition. I'm truly very proud of Katie - she has shown great maturity handling this and I'm honoured for her to have written this for the blog!

Katie can be found on Twitter @KatieJeanTaylor if anyone out there would like to have a chat with her regarding something similar.

So Katie, without further ado...!

This Is What It Is Like.

Boy oh boy did I have one hell of a hypo today.

Review: Dario Smart Meter

Spoiler alert - the Dario Smart Meter is pretty awesome.

I was contacted by Dario a few weeks ago to trial out their latest blood glucose meter and I was pretty excited to try it - mostly because I've been using the same glucose meter for the past few years and I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to the latest tech stuff!

Beyond Type 1: Top 5 Books Post

Massively excited!

Source: www.beyondtype1.org

My First YouTube Video...!

What Happens When You Get Ill?

Hello to all and a Happy New Year!

Hope you all had an excellent break away and are fully refreshed for the start of 2016. I spent mine celebrating in Edinburgh underneath the castle with Biffy Clyro!

This Is It. You've Been Diagnosed - What Now?

The diagnosis.

Lying there in my hospital bed around 4 years ago with a very new piece of life changing information.

I was now a person with Type 1 diabetes and the emotions I was feeling ranged from numb, to being scared, to worrying about how it would effect the people in my own life.

It's a diagnosis that many of reading this would have had at some point in your life.

I remember that the first couple of hours and days were a complete blur. Plenty of information, lots of talking, a large amount of new fancy medical supplies and a simple how to guide of testing blood sugars, writing them down in a little book and being introduced to insulin. Being told that you'll have to do inject and prick yourself with various needles number of times a day. For every day. For the rest of your life. 

And I imagine if you're new to all this, you're feeling in a very lost place, very insecure and scared.

I certainly felt overwhelmed. 

But trust me on this. This will be the least you'll ever know about your diabetes, whether it be Type 1 or Type 2. 

Testing, testing. Always testing.

Nutrition Is Simple

So it's been about a month since I've produced a proper blog post - apologies - it's been manic what with work, being away with the girlfriend and trying to keep on top of things. But I've made a commitment to blog at least twice a week from now on. There's a lot I want to accomplish via this blog and there's a lot of work going on to try and make this as successful as it can be.

I'm working on a complete re-design of the website and various other social media outlets to try and increase awareness of what it's actually like living with diabetes!