I very often get brilliant ideas at the oddest times, my latest idea came to me while I was falling to sleep the other night. I'm a nerd and I'm no longer ashamed to admit this, I love numbers and I love science. As I was dozing off the other night I was watching Nova on our local PBS station. The episode was entitled Nova Science NOW Foldit and EteRNA, the video below is from the show and will be a big part of what I will be talking about as the blog goes on. (I apologize in advance for making you watch a 12 minute film to understand the rest of the blog.)
After that great video you might be wondering where I'm going with this blog. My dream is to develop a diabetes game like Foldit. The game would be a virtual battle against diabetes, you would be given a character that has diabetes. You would then be able to choose the sex, age and physical activity level of your character. You are then thrown in to a daily log book where you can input what your day will consist of. For example, wake up at 6am, breakfast at 7, work 8-4, (this is where your physical activity level would come in to play.) lunch at 12, tennis at 5, dinner at 630, sleep at 10. The game would then simulate your day, when you get to a meal you would input what you ate and how much insulin you would take to cover the food. As your day is going on on the screen you would see your blood sugar on a 5hr graph (as pictured at the beginning of the blog). At anytime you could input food that your eating or any insulin that you'd like to take.
Here is the tricky part, people absolutely hate diabetes. Many people that live with the disease don't like it at all, so why would anyone be interested in this "game". Like any game you would be given points, in this game your points would be your blood sugar average otherwise known as your A1C. Each day in the game could be completed in as little as three minutes.
How would this game help people that live with diabetes? Being so active I routinely have low blood sugars, my calorie intake in the summer is as much as 4,000 calories a day, with almost a quarter of those calories coming from juice or soda to fix or prevent a low blood sugar. I would pay a large sum of money if I could have this technology available. I would love to be able to plug in that I'm going for a three hour bike ride and switching around my temp basal rates to see where my blood sugar would be. I would also love to use the program to see how a bowl of pasta would affect my blood sugar, I could put in how much pasta I'm eating and then see when my blood sugar would rise. I could then tweak my insulin dosage and see what that would do to my blood sugar. Obviously this "game" would be a lot more appealing to those that have diabetes. Someone one without diabetes however may be able to find alternate ways to deal with certain foods and how the insulin is delivered, for example covering a slice of pizza with a square wave bolus.
Now the disappointing news, this "game" is right now a dream and only in my mind and now on the blog. My hope is to try and present this blog to people a lot smarter than I in hopes that they could find the proper equations to make the blood sugar projections possible. Like everything in my life I will give it a shot and see what happens, my hope is to have an update on this "game" in six months. I encourage everyone to share this blog in hopes that it will find someone who can help make my dream a reality.
Here is the tricky part, people absolutely hate diabetes. Many people that live with the disease don't like it at all, so why would anyone be interested in this "game". Like any game you would be given points, in this game your points would be your blood sugar average otherwise known as your A1C. Each day in the game could be completed in as little as three minutes.
How would this game help people that live with diabetes? Being so active I routinely have low blood sugars, my calorie intake in the summer is as much as 4,000 calories a day, with almost a quarter of those calories coming from juice or soda to fix or prevent a low blood sugar. I would pay a large sum of money if I could have this technology available. I would love to be able to plug in that I'm going for a three hour bike ride and switching around my temp basal rates to see where my blood sugar would be. I would also love to use the program to see how a bowl of pasta would affect my blood sugar, I could put in how much pasta I'm eating and then see when my blood sugar would rise. I could then tweak my insulin dosage and see what that would do to my blood sugar. Obviously this "game" would be a lot more appealing to those that have diabetes. Someone one without diabetes however may be able to find alternate ways to deal with certain foods and how the insulin is delivered, for example covering a slice of pizza with a square wave bolus.
Now the disappointing news, this "game" is right now a dream and only in my mind and now on the blog. My hope is to try and present this blog to people a lot smarter than I in hopes that they could find the proper equations to make the blood sugar projections possible. Like everything in my life I will give it a shot and see what happens, my hope is to have an update on this "game" in six months. I encourage everyone to share this blog in hopes that it will find someone who can help make my dream a reality.
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