The Unreasonable Math of Type 1 Diabetes
I&#x27;m a type 1 diabetic, and this was a helpful post at showing non diabetics why it is so. hard. Non diabetics typically think the difficult thing must be the shots and the finger pricks, right?<p>Not really. The majority of diabetics get used to those things quickly (of course there are some  of course that deal with a major major needle phobia that can make it even harder). The hard part is that it never ends. Almost every moment of every day, your brain has a background process running that&#x27;s evaluating every decision in context of your diabetes. There are no breaks. Your prefrontal cortex now has to take the place of a previously complex and automatic bodily process. It&#x27;s the last thing you think about when you go to bed and it&#x27;s the first thing you think about when you wake up. It&#x27;s what you think about when you want to go on a walk, are about to enter a meeting, go into an interview, get on a plane, take a shower.<p>It&#x27;s usually little things: &quot;okay, where am I at now? which direction is it going? when did I last eat? do I have snacks ready? do I have enough insulin for the day? what if I start to go low during this meeting? should I pop some carbs and run high for this interview, so I don&#x27;t risk a hypo partway through? why am I going low right now when I took the same dose I took yesterday for the same meal? why am I now skyrocketing for no discernible reason, I didn&#x27;t even eat anything? shoot, I&#x27;m starting to hypo out of nowhere in the middle of this great conversation, which I now have to interrupt to eat a snack and recover for 15 minutes. I fell asleep with a perfect BG, but now I&#x27;m awake at 2AM half delirious because my BG fell all the way down to 50, and I&#x27;m in the kitchen shoving cookies down my throat because hypoglycemia activates a survival instinct to EAT EVERYTHING that&#x27;s extremely hard to control, and I know that I&#x27;m gonna shoot all the way up to 250 shortly, which I&#x27;ll have to treat with insulin, and I&#x27;m basically not going to get any sleep tonight&quot;.<p>And then the math often doesn&#x27;t make any sense. There are so many factors that effect it. One day the same number of carbs + insulin may make you go high, and the next low, because of other environmental factors. (See the &quot;42 factors that effect blood glucose&quot; chart in the post.) You&#x27;re constantly having to adjust.<p>I&#x27;m literally crying while writing this post, because it&#x27;s so exhausting and it never ends.