Category: Living With Diabetes

No one will argue with the statement that having Type 1 diabetes sucks.  If you do a perfect job testing your sugars, adjusting your insulin and following a diet and exercise plan you will be spending a great deal of time, energy and money.   Until recently the Canada Revenue Agency was sympathetic & offered […]

Expectations of longevity change when people are diagnosed with diabetes. This concern is driven by misleading historical statistics suggesting Type 2 diabetes may reduce life expectancy by 5 to 10 years, and Type 1 diabetes by 20 years. The truth is that individuals with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes under good glucose, blood-pressure, and […]

At BCDiabetes we are aware that the challenges for individuals living with diabetes are many – that it’s not as simple as eating less, exercising more, testing your blood and taking medication.  Recent research at BCDiabetes has shown that at the time of referral to a diabetes specialist patients exhibit a high level of distress […]

Today marks the 95th anniversary of the first use of the word insulin by its Canadian discovers Dr. Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best.  Four months earlier they had saved the life of 14 year old Leonard Thompson by injecting him with a pancreatic extract (containing insulin) taken from a dog.  A year later Banting […]

  Yesterday, (2017-02-23) a study of diabetic mice was published in the journal “Cell” showing that a special “fasting mimicking diet” (FMD) for 4 days every month caused regeneration of pancreatic insulin-secreting beta cells.  As such, in mice at least, this diet has the potential to reverse both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. No […]

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) or “sensors” have been around for more than a decade.  With the arrival in Canada last week of the Dexcom G5 everything has changed: the G5 is more accurate than its predecessor the G4 allowing for ever more reliable low and high sugar alarms, it sends results straight to your smartphone […]

Sensors (or continuous glucose monitors) are devices that measure the sugar/glucose in body water (known medically as “interstitial fluid”). A small teflon needle is inserted into the skin and is usually changed every 7-14 days. The needle is connected to a sensor which either automatically sends/pushes the Interstitial fluid glucose level via bluetooth to a […]

First: purchase two accessories from Amazon.ca GrifGrips (package of 20 for CAD$20) Skin Tac (either wipes or the liquid, 50 wipes for CAD$14.84) Technique Place the sensor like you usually would, but put in on the back of the arm (as you would for a Freestyle Libre) – much better numbers. Then soak the white […]

The search for a pill formulation of insulin has been long-standing.  Yesterday Novo Nordisk, the world’s biggest insulin manufacturer abandoned its efforts to make an oral form of insulin.  The obstacle was not technological it was price pressure. The pharmaceutical industry has figured out how to protect insulin from digestive juices in the stomach – […]

Yesterday the US Food and Drug Administration approved two new medications – both are shots & each is a combination of two different classes of medication in one shot: a basal long-acting insulin and a GLP-1 receptor agonist. The Novo Nordisk product combines Tresiba, an insulin not yet available in Canada and Victoza while the Sanofi product […]