<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Navigating your diabetes clinic can be so confusing. This is a guide to the who’s who in your diabetes healthcare team which is extremely useful because it can save so much time and frustration during your appointments, when you direct your questions to the appropriate person.&nbsp;</p>

Mid October, I went to the DiabetesSisters Weekend for Women conference Alexandria, Virginia. See disclaimer at the end. One of the outstanding presentations I attended was by Thriveabetes 2016 speaker, Gary Scheiner ’s presentation on “Making use of the Glycaemic Index”. This should not be a surprise to anyone has read Gary’s book “ Think Like a Pancreas ”. I will be honest here; when I heard the words “Glycaemic Index” I pretended I didn’t. And the reason is that several y

Back in October, I had a steroid injection in my hip. And yes, it drove my glucose levels bananas! For those of you who may not be aware of it, steroids are one of the medications that truly mess up glucose numbers for lots and lots of people.  The ultimate craziness only lasted two to three days but the residual crazy lingered a couple of weeks. Here’s a little of the backstory behind why I got a steroid injection. I have been complaining about my right hip for some time and

I'm beginning to feel like I am becoming blind to information if it's not being blasted at me on social media. If it's not a flashy click bait image. And I think it's making my brain die slowly. Last week, my husband told me, (and I heard him tell me!!!, not the nod and yes response), that our broccoli in the garden was ready for picking and we shouldn't buy any for a number of weeks. Shortly after being told this, like an hour, I was doing the shopping and saw that broccoli

Last May, I was asked by the organisers of the Future Health Summit to give a presentation on how I became an empowered person with diabetes. Some friends asked if I could blog about it. The reason for my topic choice was because the theme of the conference was Empowering the Patient, Information, Choice & Accountability and I decided to focus on Empowering the Patient element for my presentation. I feel like I am one, that diabetes does not have power over me, I have a lot o

Chances are that if you found my website you already know a little something about diabetes. But, you might be like me and always want to learn more. And there's ALWAYS is more to learn about diabetes. In this page/post I will attempt to give you my interpretation of diabetes. But I will also refer to medical people who can get more technical. I will also talk about the symptoms of diabetes, the risk factors and different types of diabetes. Diabetes is not easy to explain and

I had so much to write about from the Future Health Summit  on Friday 27th May last that I had to divide it into two post. Disclaimer: The organisers of this conference reimbursed me for my travel expenses to attend as a patient speaker. But all opinions are my own. Here is my review of the  Diabetes Summit Event  which was chaired by Dr. Ronan Canavan, co-chaired by Anna Clarke from Diabetes Ireland with our panel being chaired by Dr. Eva Orsmond. This was the event that I s

Are you as tired as I am of hearing about sugar and all its evils? The Great Sugar Confusion was originally posted on the 9th October 2013 . I have taken a different spin on it this time. Everyday, it seems like there’s another “sugar scare” story! -  March Call for voluntarily ban on sale of energy drinks; too much sugar - February  High-sugar diet is as 'damaging to your brain as extreme stress or ABUSE - January   Sugar Crash - November 2015  Be Sugar Smart Campaign And y

A combination of my personal blog about living with type 1 diabetes in Ireland and sharing information I collect along the way. I feel that living with type 1 diabetes is sometimes like being on a trampoline, except you can never get off. It doesn't take long for us to get tired of all that bouncing. It's not any fun. Here, we can bounce together, keep each other steady, and cheer each other on when we get tired and want to get off the trampoline.

Some of you may have come across the Hashtag #IWishPeopleKnewThatDiabetes..... over the last year, which is the brainchild of Diabetesaliciouness blogger, Kelly Kunik. I met the superwoman herself last July at the MasterLab Diabetes Advocates conference . On that first morning, as I took a deep breath and joined a table of strangers. I know, I'm a very grown-up woman but I still have to force strongly encourage myself to do these things because I know I'll regret it if

The complications of diabetes are real and people are living with them. People are also living in fear of them. Myself included. I am actively trying to overcome this fear because if I do end up with complications I don't want to feel like it is the end of my life. Or that I failed to manage my diabetes well enough. And I certainly don't want to be made to feel that it's my fault. I don't believe just because I am doing everything in my power to manage my diabetes that I wi

I thought I knew a lot about food and in particular carbohydrates and sugar. However, I attended a diabetes support group recently that sent my head spinning in confusion.  You see, I always thought that the word "carbohydrate" referred to the group of foods that have the most influence on blood sugars and that "sugary" foods would be part of that group. So when a gentleman remarked that white bread was full of sugar my head slowly exploded. Inside my head I was asking so man

Media attention is a good way to create more awareness about diabetes in the general public. So when I learned that RTE 1 was airing a programme dedicated to the disease I thought “great!” I quickly changed my mind when I read the programme synopsis in advance of viewing it. We were going to hear the stories of 3 people, one of whom had passed away since filming from diabetes complications, the second was visually impaired and had limb amputations and the third was only a c

I recently had a conversation with my consultant endocrinologist’s secretary that left me so annoyed, I had to wait until I calmed down to write about it. On Thursday, 27 May 2010, I received a phone call from my endocrinologist’s office. It went something very close to this; Secretary; “Gráinne, I’m calling with your fasting bloods results.” Me: “my what? The bloods weren’t fasting- do you mean my HbA1c?” Secretary: Your Hb mm… yes. The result is 7.0 mmols and the Dr. says

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, it was 1993 and I was a 20 years old student; living the typical student life. That all changed with diabetes. For a very long time I only knew what I absolutely needed to know about diabetes to survive. I fought it but not in a good way. My attitude was that diabetes was not going to get in my way! My friends and family would ask about it and how I was getting on, I replied “fine”. I had no idea of how I was doing, health wise, my medical