Yesterday I went to my son’s Football Jamboree and basically stayed out in the sun and rain for about 8 hours. I was having a terrible time trying to stay solid in my sugar levels. High Low ping pong was the rule of the day. I would go very low, have to eat something(usually with unknown carb counts that had to be estimated)and then go through the roof, take more insulin…stay high a while, and then crash and burn again..only to start over and do it again( 3 series of this if I recall correctly).

It is I guess, just the rules of the game.  I just keep trying to plow ahead and stay solid in my numbers, but some days…nothing I do seems to work right.

Oh well, I just keep going….

Wishing you “well”................Peace, Bob

The new year is approaching and for many that means a whole slew of goal setting and resolutions.

I had the great pleasure to be able to physically join Charlie Cherry and the gang in the studio for an episode of the DiabetesPowerShow a few weeks ago and now that has just been released.

The topic of the show was goal setting and diabetic resolutions for this upcoming year. It was also great as we had Manny from TuDiabetes.com join us on the phone and we all went over the various tools out there, especially online, which we can utilize to make those goals a reality.

It is a great episode with of course lots of motivation and enthusiasm so definitely check it out.

You can download it directly here: http://www.diabetespowershow.com/

I know my main goal has been to get my A1c into the 5-6.0 range. Though I am quite happy over the last 6 months I’ve got it down over 3%!! Almost there What are your diabetes goals for 2008? Share them over at TuDiabetes.com

A cool little project has popped up called Diabetes365. Originally started by Beth of insearchofbalance.wordpress.com, other diabetes bloggers like Bernard of www.bernardfarrell.com have joined in too.

What is Diabetes365? In Bernards words:

“Diabetes365 is an idea that I got from Beth of insearchofbalance. She started her Diabetes365 photo project a few days ago and I couldn’t think of a better way to inform people of what it’s like to live with diabetes 365 days a year.

The idea behind this Diabetes365 project is that I’ll take one picture every day of the year. I’ll post it to the flickr Diabetes365 pool and blog about it briefly.

Would you like to take part in Diabetes365? You can join the flickr pool provided that you post a picture there each day (or wait a few days and post several pictures, one per day). Each picture must be tagged with diabetes365 and titled with the date taken and which day of your year of photos it is. If you’d like to blog your photos, feel free to do that also.”

Are you part of flickr and want to find out more? Go to the Diabetes365 Project Flickr Group or check out his first post.

Apparently so, according to this new study:
http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=17125

“While it is believed the development of type-1 diabetes has some hereditary influences, research also suggests environmental factors—including diet—play a role. Researchers from The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes in Aurora, Colo. report a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids may be associated with a decreased risk of pancreatic islet autoimmunity, a condition associated with the development of type-1 diabetes.”

Surprised? Hardly…

“A new study released Thursday suggests sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of diabetes. The study from researchers at Rutgers University, shows sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contain high levels of compounds that previous research suggests may play a role in the development of diabetes. Especially when consumed in large amounts.”

Make sure to digg the story:
http://digg.com/health/Study_Links_Diabetes_and_High_Fructose_Corn_Syrup_Found_in_Soda

It is not often that diabetes gets so much attention in Digg.

To discuss, visit TuDiabetes.com: http://tudiabetes.com/forum/topic/show?id=583967%3ATopic%3A34478

The New York Times has posted a very interesting 4-page article I think is worth takin a look at. It goes into the dangers of neglecting the other important factors for surviving diabetes, such as cholesterol.

They showcase a story of a man who was only concerned with his glucose levels and pretty much neglected everything else but ended up paying the price with a stroke. There is also a video up.

“Nearly 73,000 Americans die from diabetes annually, more than from any disease except heart disease, cancer, stroke and pulmonary disease.

Yet, largely because of a misunderstanding of the proper treatment, most patients are not doing even close to what they should to protect themselves. In fact, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 7 percent are getting all the treatments they need.”

Take a look: Looking Past Blood Sugar to Survive with Diabetes

Twitter Integration

We’re happy to announce Twitter.com integration with SugarStats! Now you can quickly add sugar and med entries via Twitter direct message to our ss1 Twitter account.

The great thing about this is now you also have the ability to choose from the monstrous array of 3rd party twitter apps on top of Web, IM, SMS for inputting entries into SugarStats.

Now you can just send a Twitter message like this:

Then an entry of 108 goes directly into your SugarStats account at the date and time of the message; Comment optional.

If you want to share your sugar info with your Twitter circle you can enable the option within SugarStats to have new entries posted to your Twitter account. This is just the beginning and we’ll be improving it as time goes on, including adding events/tags.

For all the details and instructions check out our Twitter input help page

What is Twitter?

Twitter.com is the wildly popular micro-blogging service which allows people to answer one question very easily: “What are you doing?” in less then 140 characters. It is a great way to keep in contact with friends, family and also find out what other people are up to via Web, IM, SMS and Desktop applications.

For more info on Twitter go to Twitter.com and Twitter.com/faq

We’ll be rolling out a few small features soon. Here are a few notables:

• Added calendar based date selection in the sidebar
• Today and Yesterday links will always take you there based on your timezone
• Messaging has been slightly tweaked for quicker reading and replying
• Added carb averages per meal per day for premium users
• More intuitive date labeling for multi-day statistics
• dozens of other small bug fixes

Twitter.com and SugarStats.com Integration!

Another cool thing is Twitter integration, now you can input sugar and med entries directly from Twitter via the twitter website, SMS, IM, within Firefox and all the other great 3rd party Twitter utilities. Find the full details on our Twitter help page.

Email Input Format Modification

An important thing to mention is we’ve standardized the input format quite a bit so now inputting via Twitter and Email takes exactly the same format. Before you had a separate med email you had to specifically send mail to, now you just have one but you have to slightly modify the format of the entry.

Learn more on our email Input help page