World Diabetes Day 2023 - the road travelled

Hey there! How have you been. It's been a while eh? Sorry about that! Life, the universe, and everything. You know how it goes.

So this isn't the blog post I've been meaning to write about TBR hacks for the tSlim running Control IQ. It's not even the one about seeing if I can get funding for sensors, which I seem to be being promised, but which hasn't quite happened yet.

If those are of any interest, do let me know and I will try to get around to them. Honest!

No. Instead this is a little unexpected ponder I had earlier, when realising that it was WDD once again, as I saw lots of other more capable awareness-raising diabetes types sharing stuff on their social feeds. It came unbidden. And rather surprised me - so here it is...

"Wow. Diabetes has really changed since we started the blog!"

There. That's it. Groundbreakingly insightful as always.

But much as diabetes is still Very Annoying (TM), a bit of a drag, occasionally utterly terrifying, frequently exhausting, but on the whole relatively manageable most of the time... there have been some pretty big changes in the decade or more that I've been rambling semi-coherently on here.

Back then, Twitter (for diabetes types) was a sort of a cosy coffee shop. A place to connect with a few like-minded folk who were also, coincidentally pancreatically challenged (thanks ShootUp), and chat about something and nothing. Now it's not even Twitter any more!

Once 'low carb' to help managing T2 was viewed as some sort of crazy, lunatic idea and positively discouraged by pretty much all healthcare professionals. Now it's seen as a fairly mainstream management approach that works really well for some people, and is often mentioned by practice nurses from the very beginning. This was once unthinkable on the forums I was frequenting when I first started comparing notes with other people with diabetes. There are now whole NHS GP practices championing the approach, and even established NHS programmes to help people who want to give it a go.

When we started writing this blog, as far as the scientific and medical world was concerned T2 diabetes was an inevitably progressive condition (hardly a phrase that encourages self management!). You got it, and then it gradually got worse and worse, and needed more and more meds, until you expired either from it or from something related to it. Now thanks to the DIRECT trial, there is high quality evidence that many with T2 can get their diabetes in remission (keeping HbA1c below 48mmol/mol with no medication) though significant weight loss. And many folks who choose a low carb approach can achieve the same remission criteria too. And this that remission can be maintained for many years.

There are a bunch of fancy new insulins and meds available now too. Including some that could potentially prove complete transformative for people who struggle with overweight and obesity.

Way back in 2010, CGM was almost unheard of outside of the US. I was even invited to a thing where the company developing a product wanted to know whether or not many people in the UK had even heard of the idea. At the time the chance of getting a CGM funded in the UK was vanishingly small. But a torrent of advocacy effort, an expectation defying Prof, and a flurry of new technologies and options later, and now over 90% of people with T1 in the UK have access to funded full time CGM.

They are now embarking on the same transformation for Hybrid Closed Loops (where an insulin pump and CGM talk to each other and are able to make some gentle adjustments to help us out).

The pace of change is extraordinary. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Plus in the background really quite staggering progress is being made with stem cell research and other avenues, edging ever closer to a possible cure.

I'm really hoping that some progress can be made around reducing diabetes stigma. And especially in increasing access to appropriate monitoring technology for those people with T2 who would value it and benefit from it. Possibly even a little sub-division of the T2 umbrella, so that more appropriate options can be offered to the different sub-types, rather than a blanket 'No' to so many people.

So cheers to old Fred Banting. And Charlie Best, and all the others. There really has never been a better time to have diabetes.

And maybe, just maybe, someday soon, nobody will.

Hybrid Closed Loop Insulin Pumps (Artificial Pancreas) - The Basics

Hello!

It's been a while eh?!

Sorry about that. Truth be told, it's all got rather busy for me, and actually since my last post in my early months on the Tandem tSlim x2, my diabetes has mercifully faded into the background a little, and while still very annoying, hasn't really given me all that much to write about.

But this week has seen the release of something really quite exciting, that I hadn't even realised was happening. It seems those smart cookies at NICE have been munching the clinical trial data and developing a Technology Appraisal for Hybrid Closed Loop insulin pumps (which is the latest bit of tech to be enthusiastically called 'the artificial pancreas', none of which so far are much like having an actual artificial pancreas, but I digress...).

NICE TA10845 is now out for consultation so that stakeholders can review it and make suggestions or ask some pointy questions before publication. It's the same process that the 2015 NICE Guidelines for Adults with T1 which I worked on went through. But what's potentially exciting about a Technology Appraisal, is that while NICE Guidelines are just that - an indication of what the evidence shows to be the better approaches - TAs potentially have more clout, and if the clinician decides that the TA recommends a treatment option for a particular person the funding has to be provided. If the draft is published in its current form it has the potential to open the door to the previously hen's teeth elusive pump-and-CGM combination to around 25% of people living with type 1 diabetes in the UK.

Of course some of these people may have little knowledge of this combination of technologies which has been around for a while, but access to which (certainly with funded CGM) has been notoriously difficult to obtain. And there's quite a bit to get your head around, because it's a combination of several different bits of diabetes kit all working together, but not completely automatically. For all the claims of 'artificial pancreas', there are still quite a few things that you need to do to as the wearer.

From my own experience, having some of my diabetes kit actively helping me out, and looking out for me has been a huge help and a massive leap forward. A hybrid closed loop can't do everything, but it really helps me smooth off the edges of my blood glucose guesswork. It gives me much more confidence, and my results have never been better. I'd find it very difficult to go back, even if (as seems likely from the draft criteria) I still need to self-fund my CGM sensors.

A year or two ago Diabetes UK were putting together an introduction to Hybrid Closed Loops, for which I recorded a bit of video. However in the end it was far too waffly for Diabetes UK to use, so they interviewed me for a few comments instead. But this recent announcement has seemed like the perfect opportunity to inflict it on the world. Sorry about that.

So here is a basic overview of what a Hybrid Closed Loop insulin pump is, how it works, and what it's actually like to live with.

Watch this a little larger on my YouTube channel.