Diabetes Causes, Treatments and How Technology Helped One Woman Get Her Life Back (podcast)
Continuous glucose monitors, insulin patches are making it easier to manage diabetes

Continuous glucose monitors, insulin patches are making it easier to manage diabetes
Approximately 30 million Americans are living with diabetes. Blood sugar monitoring is unfortunately a part of life for people with diabetes, but new technology is making it easier.
In the past, blood sugar testing involved a painful pinprick up to nine times a day, followed by a dose of insulin or another medication based on those numbers. Basically, the patient’s life revolved around their blood sugar levels. But new devices make it more convenient and less painful.
In this episode of San Diego Health, host Susan Taylor and guests Athena Philis-Tsimikas, MD, an endocrinologist and corporate vice president of the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, and Tyeisha Smith, a mother of five who has been dealing with type 1 diabetes for almost two decades, discuss what led up to Smith’s diagnosis, how she got educated about her condition and the clinical trial that transformed her life.
Cutting-edge technology, like the continuous glucose monitoring system Smith uses, checks a patient’s blood sugar level every few minutes, then transmits that data to the user’s cell phone as well as to the cloud so the doctor can check it remotely, even when the patient is not in the doctor’s office.
There are also now disposable insulin pumps, insulin pens that communicate with the user’s phone and an inhaled insulin device for people afraid of needles.
Before Smith enrolled in the study at the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, she felt hopeless and worried she wouldn’t live long enough to see her children graduate. But since her glucose monitoring device was implanted, she has regained control of her life and now looks forward to watching her grandchildren grow up.