I'm a Lab Rat - Are You?

"Your Typical Lab Rat"

I get the strangest ideas for my posts from many aspects of my life (Why these ideas materialize when my head hits the pillow, I'll never know)

 A lot of them are just from being a PWD, even more come from dealing with my 2 Type 1 kiddos, and some are from experiences in learning from patients, and others with diabtes.

I do think we can learn a lot about our diabetes just from ourselves. Allow me to elaborate.

Once we grasp the basics of diabetes, usually from our diabetes team, physicians, organizations, pump trainers, etc. it is then important to take it to the next level.  Once again, what am I getting at?

Self Experimentation (With your team's consent of course) I have often told people that I am a science experiment. It is a great conversation starter, or ender depending on who you are talking to.

In a nutshell:  Diabetes is Trial and Error. This is where it is important to view managing diabetes and blood glucose as a science experiment. Kind of makes it fun.

For example:  In an actual experiment you pose a question or hypothesis(theory)


-You do some back-ground reading or Internet search

"Cool Chart!"

-You decide how you want to answer or test your theory or question.
-You develop a method or plan.
-You act on the plan.
-You hopefully come up with some data that either supports your theory and answers your question or you go back to the drawing board.

Now, let me make this clear, as I know there is a reader out there who is a scientist, who is likely going to tell me about the Null-Hypothesis, and some funky statistical formula, but I am not talking rocket science, I am talking about posing a question, and seeking an answer using a method.

I admit, I was a poor diabetic scientist(in the early years), and an even poorer lab rat. I had questions and theories like; I hypothesis that more insulin is required in the morning. However, I failed to do any more. I did not test my theory, until later on.

I eventually met my chief scientific adviser also known as My Wife. Then I tested out some theories.

The theory above required a plan/method.  Basically, controlled variable(food), data collection (glucose readings) Analysis(examine readings for trends), then results. So after a week of testing, eating the same amount of CHO, the results were in and I needed 40% more insulin. Voila, science at work!

I think all folks who deal with diabetes and who are successful at it, need to evolve into scientists.  Basically PWD are a smart bunch of people.

So, kudos to all of us who are either a Lab Rat, scientist, or in my case both.

Trev