Interesting Diabetes Related Things I Learned While I Wasn't Blogging

So last weekend, I went to a JDRF event at UCSD in the "Diabetes Research Department." We (my mom and I) went a tour of the labs and attended some seminars about the research they are doing and the dilemmas they are having with the research. There was also a question board of college students with diabetes; they talked about what tips they had about dealing with diabetes in their classes and in regular college life.

Things I Learned About the Research and the Disease Itself:
The problem with researching diabetes is that once a person is out of the honeymoon stage (where you pancreas is still making insulin, but the beta cells are still killing them; usually the first few months of diabetes), they can't do as much research because you pancreas isn't making insulin anymore. They can't figure out why they T1 (the part of your immune system that attacks the pancreas beta cells) are attacking the beta cells. Another challenge in the research is that the pancreas is in the middle of your body, so its harder to get samples to do research. Its not like skin cancer, where you can easily get samples because it has easy access. And the biggest reason that they aren't moving as quickly to find a cure is because insulin treats diabetes. Yes, it does have certain side effects in certain situations, but the cure they have right now (for mice) has so many side effects, that its not even worth distributing. Other things I learned about diabetes is that your immune system can kill a pancreas beta cell in 15 seconds. And that even if you get a Pancreas transplant, its not going to work because its a malfunction of the immune system, not the pancreas; it will still just keep killing the beta cells.

Things I Learned From the College Board:
The main thing I learned from this is to just live normal college life, just make sure that people know that your diabetic. If you need help, either because your passed out or because your having a simple low blood sugar, or high blood sugar, and if people don't know that, you could be in some serious trouble. That's why I always wear my medical ID bracelet, just in case someone finds me and they don't know that I'm diabetic. Other useful tips for college life that they gave me is what to expect when you drink and how you are most likely to react to it. (not that I'm ever going to drink;)  ). They told me that you blood sugar is going to go really high, then go really low.

So that's what i learned.

And that concludes today's really ranty diabetic rant!