There’s a play, from a few years back, with words and music by Jason Robert Brown, called The Last Five Years. This post isn’t anything like that, but when I was listening to music from this show a few days ago, I did, indeed, reflect on the last five years in diabetes.
Have you thought about how much has changed in diabetes in the past five years?
You need to go no farther than your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter feed to find examples of the latest drug, device, app, or DIY AP (Acronyms!) that someone is using. And that’s just fantastic, whether you use any or all of these things.
The Lions Club meeting I attended and spoke at last week had to do with food, and its role in helping People With Diabetes get and stay healthy. One of the things I told this group is that our food choices are important. But I also think of using a toolbox approach to managing life with this condition.
Knowing what specific groups of food do to your blood sugar, and making informed choices based on what you know, is just one tool in the box. Now, let’s take a look at some of the other tools added to our toolbox in just the last five years:
What about the new classes of drugs available today? They may be expensive, but there’s no question that medications like Victoza, Farxiga, and Afrezza have been beneficial to managing blood sugar, and helpful in just giving us more options to choose from.
I’ve been one of the loud lamenters of the fact that PWDs are down to just three insulin pump choices in the USA now. But what is available seems to be an improvement over previous versions of insulin pumps. Just ask anyone using the t:slim x2, the latest Omnipod, or the Medtronic 670g.
While insulin pump choice is shrinking in my country, continuous glucose monitor options are expanding. Abbot’s Freestyle Libre has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and we’re all anxious to find out if it works as well as we’ve heard it does. Which brings me to…
DIY artificial pancreas adopters! This is what the hashtag #WeAreNotWaiting is all about. There are Facebook groups, in-person user group meetings, and people flashing their rigs on Instagram and Twitter. Did you see this coming five years ago? Where will it be five years from now?
There are tons of diabetes apps out there. And more are coming online every day. Some do bolus calculations, some display your CGM reading on your phone (thanks Dexcom), and some allow you to download all of your devices in one place, then allow your medical professionals access to the uploaded data. I’m sure someone was thinking about this five years ago, but it wasn’t me.
Our lives with diabetes, much like diabetes itself, is ever-changing. It’s interesting to look back on the Last Five Years and see the myriad of changes that have occurred. It’s exciting to think about what The Next Five Years will bring.
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