Parenting with Diabetes

I've neglected my writing lately, but it's with good reason. A few months ago, my wife gave birth to our beautiful baby girl and our world was turned on its head. I'm sure many new parents can testify that the first months are incredibly challenging as Mom, Dad and Baby try to work out the new norms of everyday life.

Parenting is a challenge. Unfortunately, in addition to the diapers, doctors, vaccines and insomnia, I am also trying to manage diabetes. In the first weeks, I had reached out to other Type I Diabetics (T1D) on the JDRF LinkedIn group and Juvenation site after I found myself staggering through the days of being a new parent. I asked them what kinds of tips and tricks parents with diabetes use to get through it all?

A calmer moment with our little girl.

I collected up those comments and thought of a couple of my mine to share on my blog. The tips seem like common sense. In fact, I think most of these tips would be useful for any new parent.

Dealing with the Adrenaline Rush

Type I Diabetics have a very familiar list of suggestions from doctors. The list usually includes exercising regularly, eating a well-balanced diet, monitoring daily blood sugars, taking medication as indicated, and trying to reduce stress.

There are many variations, but regular exercise is one of the items always on the list. ALWAYS.
Despite the eye rolling from patients tired of repetitive doctor nagging it’s very true that exercise is a great way for diabetics to reduce insulin resistance, improve blood circulation and immune response, and make the disease easier to manage overall. So you could imagine the irritation from diabetics that experience unexpected high blood sugar levels when they do finally go out and exercise. By all rationale reasoning, exercise should help lower blood sugar and increase sensitivity to insulin, but there are many times when the blood sugar level goes up.
Why does this happen?...

Keeping on tops of the news

I know I haven't kept on top of my posts. Its because I recently started the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship in Washington DC and I have been incredibly busy learning how the National Academies work. For those of you that aren't familiar... well... its complicated.

Maybe that's not a fair statement. I don't actually feel that the National Academies is very complicated in the big picture, but climbing into the beast and working with the nuts and bolts was a bit daunting the first couple weeks. The big picture (in my own words) is that the National Academies is a for-hire organization of truth-seekers. You call the National Academies when you want a non-partisan, scientifically-based study and you want recommendations for solutions to a question or a problem.

Here's an example - 

Let us say the US Dept of Energy wants to start using more Nuclear Power. Great. More people, more power, no problem. Let's start building... WRONG!