Traveling Through Airport Security With Diabetes Devices (with Or Without #OpenAPS)

Traveling through airport security with diabetes devices (with or without #OpenAPS)

tl;dr: Put your #OpenAPS or other artificial pancreas rigs through the x-ray machine; it’s a small computer and a battery.
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I travel quite a bit these days, so it’s pretty routine for me to pack up my diabetes gear and backup supplies and whisk away to the airport and the next adventure. In fact, in 2016 I think I went through airport security 44+ times, in several countries. I have never had any issues with my #OpenAPS (DIY hybrid closed loop artificial pancreas) rigs – even when I carry multiples. Here are some tips on what gear should be put where, who should be told what during the security process, and how to further simplify (as much as is possible with diabetes!) the airport security experience when traveling with diabetes.
6 little pancreases went to the airport & had no problems in security, as usual. #OpenAPS #emergencybackuppancreases pic.twitter.com/eFfYru2Ivt
— Dana #hcsm #OpenAPS (@danamlewis) February 14, 2017
A list of diabetes gear you’re probably packing for your trip:
BG meter
Test strips
Lancet(s)
Pump sites
Reservoirs
CGM sensors
CGM receiver
Tape for sites/sensors
Syringes as back up
Anti-nausea meds
Depending on the length of your trip, backup pump/transmitter/meter/receiver/etc.
Snacks
Extra batteries to power your phone for uploading BGs
(Uploader phone if you’re still using an uploader to Nightscout)
Artificial pancreas rig (i.e. #OpenAPS rig, whether that’s a Raspberry Pi or Explorer Board setup, or a Rileylink)
Insulin
Extra insulin
Juice for lows
Out of that list? Here are the only things I would pull out of your bag.
Insulin/ex Continue reading

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How hibernating animals are helping doctors treat diabetes and Alzheimer's

People go to sleep, their bodies cool down, and their skin turns blue, as electronic monitors show the heart rate and respiration plummeting almost to nothing. That’s the kind of dramatic image of human hibernation we see in science fiction. Usually, the premise is that characters must spend long time periods travelling through outer space without dying of old age, or writers and futurists have imagined such a capability applied to patients with terminal diseases, so they can be revived when cures have been developed centuries later.
Real-life research into human hibernation, often called suspended animation, may eventually transform those sci-fi images into science fact, but in the near-term, hibernation is poised to transform medicine.
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The latter scenario amounts to short-term, but real-life, suspended animation. While therapeutic hypothermia is standard in hospitals, scientists are trying to steal tricks from hibernating animals, such as ground squirrels.
“Thermoregulatory re Continue reading

County-Level "Diabetes Belt" Carves a Swath through U.S. South

More than 18 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes, which costs an estimated $174 billion annually. Typically, local public health agencies carry out the initiatives to manage and prevent this chronic disease, but because prevalence figures are generally given on national and state levels, local workers cannot gain the traction—and funding—to rein in rates in their areas.
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Many of the counties with the highest rates of diagnosed diabetes—higher than 11.2 percent of the population compared with the national average of 8.5 percent—are concentrated in 15 states and form an area the study's authors have labeled the "diabetes belt" (after the so-called "stroke belt" that described U.S. Southeast in the 1960s).
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The pattern of disease distribution is not a simple slice—nor does it follow the stroke belt. The diabetes belt touch Continue reading

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Pre-conception
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If there are any other conditions like a heart, kidney or liver problem due to diabetes that Continue reading

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Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body has a problem producing enough insulin or doesn’t react to it properly. When that happens, levels of blood sugar increase, which has knock on effects for organs including the kidneys.
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"The Western diet contains more and more processed junk food and fat, and there is a well-established link between excessive consumption of this type of food and recent increases in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes,” said Dr Havovi Chichger, Continue reading