Aaron: How do they even do it?

12 July 2010
4 Comments

At the risk of sounding like a TV game show host or a question card from Trivial Pursuit – how do they make insulin?

It’s a question that I found myself asking the other day when I was reading the label of my Novorapid vial which says;

“The active substance in Novorapid is insulin aspart produced by biotechnology. Novorapid contains the following other substances: Glycerol, Phenol, Metacresol, Zinc Chloride, Disodium phosphate dihydrate, Sodium Hydroxide, Hydrochloric acid and Water for injections”.

It’s quite amazing when I think about it but I have absolutely no idea how insulin is made these days! I’m imagining labs filled with all sorts of technology and I did manage the find the image you can see…

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By Aaron on 12 July 2010 at 11.23 am
Posted in Science & Research, Technology & Equipment
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Aaron: Dud insulin.

9 July 2010
12 Comments

A couple of months ago, a good friend of mine was going through a horrible spate of bad highs that were proving to be completely random and over a period of about 2 weeks, were causing her serious problems. It seemed that no matter what she did, it just didn’t stop them from coming time and time again.

After a number of lines of investigation the only possibility that was left as an option was that the insulin she was using at the time was a dud batch. It’s not something that has happened to me but I have wondered a couple of times just how the pharmaceutical companies manage to ensure that the insulin they distribute is the…

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By Aaron on 9 July 2010 at 10.05 am
Posted in Hypos & Hypers, Technology & Equipment
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Aaron: CGMS, here I come.

9 June 2010
12 Comments

I was at the outpatients clinic recently to see my diabetes nurse for our 6 monthly catch up and it couldn’t possibly have been better timing I have to say.

At the time I’d had a couple of rough weeks due to a lot of stress from various things that had been going on (which lead to this post) so it was good timing to be meeting with the diabetes nurse to be able talk over the hiccups and what might be going on to cause them. Lots and lots of highs had been causing me no end of problems and I needed to talk through some strategies to get things back on track.

One of the…

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By Aaron on 9 June 2010 at 9.30 am
Posted in CGMS, General, Medical Services, Monitoring, Technology & Equipment, Travel
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T1 kids get a video game just for them!

25 May 2010
2 Comments

Sophie sent me a link a couple of weeks ago about this and it sounds great! Basically, Bayer have got together with Nintendo to create a video game just for kids with type 1.

As you can see from the image in this post, the name of the game is “Knock ‘em Dead”. As far as I can tell, the game itself isn’t based on a diabetes narrative (I think this is a good thing), but kids get extra points to play the game via doing blood tests.

Essentially, the Didget meter (shown in the image, plugged into the Nintendo console) is based on the regular BG tester from Bayer called a CONTOUR. It takes the same test strips and…

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By Nic on 25 May 2010 at 9.58 am
Posted in Community, Kids & Teens, Monitoring, Technology & Equipment
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Aaron: Cool, but very creepy.

20 May 2010
6 Comments

Hi everyone!

It’s been a while since I did a post what will all the great content that Nic has been working hard to get you you, the faithful, over the last couple of weeks. Honestly, I often marvel at how Nic manages to juggle it all!

I was talking to a website developer the other day about good resources and communities on the web for the development community and he mentioned this guy called Scott Hanselman who also happens to be a T1 and often talks about diabetes related issues as well as running a type of online fund-raising movement. In and of itself, that is nice but not earth shattering (I’m sure he’s a good guy) but…

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By Aaron on 20 May 2010 at 9.03 am
Posted in General, Technology & Equipment
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