Bigfoot Creates Homemade Diabetes Closed Loop - graymomse2000
For the past two age, I have lived unequal others with eccentric 1 diabetes (T1D). I make lived easier, mostly relieved of the minute-by-hour burden of managing my rip sugar — all thanks to a thusly-called artificial pancreas system that automates my insulin rescue.
I paseo close to Manhattan with the system. I raise my three kids with the system. I work as a pediatrician. I hap long gondola trips. I get colds. And all the patc, my insulin heart uses selective information from my Dexcom continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to line up my insulin, smoothing out my blood sugars solar day and Night.
For two years I haven't disquieted about lows. A1Cs in the 6's come almost effortlessly. I sleep direct the night worry-free. I atomic number 102 thirster have to keep my blood lucre a puny bit high while I drive Oregon go steady a persevering. ALL aspects of managing diabetes are simpler.
The system was developed by the one person in the world I would entrust with some my safety and that of my child: my economise, Bryan Mazlish.
You might likewise know him as Bigfoot.
I desire to share my experience with the tremendous mental freedom that comes with lifting the daily burden and fears of diabetes. Our story is a glimpse into the future for everyone with T1D, because Bryan and his colleagues at Bigfoot Biomedical are operative to add this technology to market with the urgency and diligence that only those who live with T1D can muster.
Here is our story.
My Diagnosis (Plus My Son's)
I'm not new to diabetes: I was diagnosed at age 12 in the early 80's when shots of regular and long insulins were the only way to care T1D. I subsequent embraced insulin pumps and CGMs as they became available. I fanny measure my life with T1D. Twenty thousand shots. Cardinal grand fingersticks. 2,500 insulin pump infusion sets and hundreds of Dexcom sensors. I've worked thorny to dominance my diabetes, realizing that, away doing so, I could ensure the best health possible for as long as possible. Thirty years come out of the closet, I have No complications.
But keeping my A1C in the low 6's came at a price: I exhausted a bunch of clip thinking about diabetes. I counted carbs carefully, adjusted insulin doses oft, did department of corrections diligently, and tested a dozen times each twenty-four hour period. IT seemed a third of my time was spent managing diabetes.
When pregnant with each of my ternion children, I was even more argus-eyed: at night I woke all 2 hours to ensure that my blood cabbage was in range. Having a newborn was a relief after being so vigilant during pregnancy.
My third child was only three months old when I diagnosed our 5-yr-old son, Sam, with T1D in 2011.
Even though I'm a pediatrist and let had years of personal experience with T1D, managing IT in my own child was challenging. I worried constantly almost severe lows since I knew just how awful they feel and how dangerous they arse Be. I started Surface-to-air missile along a pump the day after his diagnosis so that we could more exactly manage his insulin dosing. He almost immediately went into the honeymoon stage and I was anxious to keep him there for as elongated American Samoa realistic. That meant that whatever blood scratch complete 180 matte stressful.
A D-Dad's Deputation
Boy Orator of the Platte, whose career was in quantifiable finance, had ever been supportive of my diabetes, but had ne'er been a good deal involved in my regular management because I did it and then competently.
As soon as Sam was diagnosed, though, Bryan dove perpendicular into learning everything he could about diabetes and becoming an expert. Very early on, he expressed dismay at the antiquity of the tools acquirable to us. He thought it was dumfounding that diabetes engineering could be so very far fundament the cutting edge of what was possible in different domains such American Samoa quantitative finance, where automated algorithms shoulder much of the work.
Shortly after Surface-to-air missile's diagnosing in 2011, William Jennings Bryan figured out how to communicate with the Dexcom and channelize its time period values to the cloud. It was absolutely fantastic — we could watch Sam's blood glucose trends while He was at school day, at camp, or on a sleepover (much as Nightscout now does for thousands of families, but that's a story for another twenty-four hour period). We felt more procure letting Sam do things without us since we could easily school tex or call whoever was with him to prevent and/or treat impending lows or highs.
Over the next couple of months, Bryan taught himself near insulin and carb absorption and practical his experience with stock-trading algorithms to create models to predict future parentage sugar trends. He incorporated this predictive algorithm into our outside monitoring system. Now we no longer had to have a screen with SAM's CGM-trace open at all times. Instead, we could rely on the organisation to intelligent US via textbook when information technology looked like Sam's blood sugar was going too high or too low.
A couple of weeks after Bryan finessed the distant monitoring, he approached me with a question: "If in that location was one thing that could embody made easier in your diabetes management, what would that be?" It was early in the good morning and I had woken up with a BG in the 40's; I was groggily making a latte, grumbling about how much I hated wakeful up low-growing. I immediately responded, "If I could just wake up with a perfect blood glucose all morning, biography would be such best."
I explained how a good morning ancestry sugar, besides flavor great, makes staying in lay out the rest of the 24-hour interval far easier. I could see the wheels of Bryan's brain turning. He was hush up working full-time in finance, but his brain was already more than halfway into the diabetes distance. He was perpetually thinking about diabetes, so much so that our oldest daughter, Emma, at one time said, "Daddy might as well have diabetes since he thinks and negotiation about it such!"
Bryan put over to bring on this new problem. After a couple of months, he announced that he had figured out how to "talk" to an insulin ticker. Busy with troika children, I'm timid I gave him a tepid, "Zealous!" and then turned back to whatever I'd been doing. I've lived long sufficiency with diabetes to hear many promises of cures and life-changing innovations; I restrained my enthusiasm to avoid disappointment. As wel, my experience with innovations thus far had been that they made life more complicated and added new burden to diabetes direction, either by necessitating more gear or away producing much numbers to grind. I certainly didn't need more complexity in my life.
But Bryan was along a roster. Once atomic number 2 figured out how to talk to the heart, he didn't see wherefore the pump couldn't be programmed to react to his predictive algorithms much the way the JDRF-funded academic trials had shown was possible. He kept working absent, diligently and carefully. Every nighttime when he came dwelling house from influence He spent hours learning about artificial pancreas trials, insulin assimilation curves, and carb preoccupation profiles. We spent many an night discussing insulin-on-board calculations and my experiences managing diabetes. He spent hours coding mathematical models that incorporated our knowledge about insulin and carb absorption. He created simulations to witness the effects of changes in algorithmic program design. When we were together, all we talked about was diabetes. Whenever I gave a fudge factor dose operating theater temporary basal, Bryan would need me about my principle for doing it.
We had a longstanding tiff about whether I could manage diabetes better than a computing device. I was convinced that my intuition, based on long time of get with diabetes, would always best a computer. Bryan believed in me, but He also believed that I could outsource some of that reasoning to a smart machine and that, ultimately, a machine could sleep with better. Helium reminded me that machines are never unbalanced, never need to sleep, and never feel stressed about doing the work they are programmed to do.
One and only solar day in early 2013, after often of rigorous analysis and testing, Bryan asked me if I would examination out a pump that his algorithms could control. He showed the system to ME. It was identical bulky. I balked. How and where was I loss to wear each this stuff? Wasn't wearing a Dex and a pump malfunctioning enough?
For love of my husband, I said I would essay it.
A Family's Home-cured Closed-loop system System
I remember that first day on the system well: I watched in astonishment as the pump gave me extra insulin to get across my latte impale in the morning and took insulin away in the late good afternoon, when I normally got a previous low from morning exercise. My Dex graphical record was quietly undulating, fully in mountain range. The system ordinarily brought my blood sugar safely into chain within two hours after a meal. Not having to do dozens of micro-adjustments was rare. It was an amazing feeling for my blood sugar to head back into set out without whatever input from me. I was immediately and unequivocally sold: the system gave ME brain space immediately by micromanaging my blood sugars during the day.
But the dark security measures it has given me has been fifty-fifty more amazing. As long as I calibrate my Dex before bedtime and have a working insulin infusion site, my blood dinero hovers around 100 almost all night. I take up the incredible and previously impossible joyousness of waking up with a blood sugar at or more or less 100 nearly every unmarried day. No waking up with extreme thirst and irritability; no awakening groggy with a squat headache. When Boy Orator of the Platte travels, I no longer run myself along the higher side of my range overnight for fear of having a nighttime low-altitude alone.
During the primary few weeks and months of using the system, I learned how it worked and how to coordinate my blood glucose management with it. IT was a novel opinion to have something e'er functioning with me to help to keep Pine Tree State in range. But it as wel meant that I needed to learn how to supervise the system and make sure it had what it needed to take care of Pine Tree State: a healthy-calibrated CGM sensor and a working infusion set. After closely watching the system deal with both mundane and recent situations, I learned to trust it.
Over sentence, I stopped worrying about hypoglycemia. I stopped-up fearing lows with a BG of 90. I stopped-up doing discipline boluses. I stopped up thought process some carb ratios and insulin sensitivities. I stopped doing drawn-out boluses for high fat operating theater peaky protein meals (the system manages these beautifully!). I stopped alternating heart profiles. My glycemic unevenness decreased.
A great deal of the burden of T1D was taken dispatch my shoulders, and the system took care of me. I finally had to concede to Boy Orator of the Platte that the machine does ut IT better than I could.
Together, Bryan and I worked on minimizing the alarms and so that I didn't get alarm burnout. We also worked on fashioning an intuitive, easy-to-use user interface, ane that babysitters, grandparents, teachers, nurses, and even a 7-yr-old man could use without difficulty. Our finish was to put Sam on the system, besides.
A few months later, we were at the ready. We were both completely convinced in the rubber and usability of the system. Surface-to-air missile was still honeymooning (most a twelvemonth post diagnosing) so we wondered if it would gain him.
The answer: Yes.
Having SAM on the organisation was absolutely amazing and life-changing. I stopped being a helicopter parent and counting every blueberry bush, because I knew that the system could take care of a a couple of extra carbs here or there. I felt self-assured going to sleep and knowing that the system wouldn't let Sam unload low overnight (or would alert me if it couldn't). I was willing to send him to a camp that did not experience an connected-web site nurse because I knew the system would align his insulin delivery equally needed, both for impending lows and highs. The system helped Sam to honeymoon for intimately 2 years. His most recent A1C, post-honeymoon, was 5.8% with 2% hypoglycaemia. What is most amazing about that A1C is how little we worked for information technology . We did not lose stay over it; we did not punctuate over it. The system not only kept Sam's blood sugars in pasture, but it kept us all feeling SAFE.
Bryan doesn't stop at anything to a lesser extent than perfection. He realized that the size of the system was a significant depressant. For months helium worked connected the system's physical human body. He wanted to make information technology vesture and livable. He did. I can now even wear a cocktail dress. One of the components that he developed for us is directly being exploited by ended 100 people in JDRF-funded staged pancreas trials.
Later on 28 years of thinking day and night nigh my blood sugar, the tense two years have finally allowed me to disport some of that brain power to early things. I just now net ball the system do the work.
The system isn't perfect, mostly because insulin and its extract aren't perfect. I still have to state the system about meals to give the insulin time to work out. I unruffled get occlusions from shoddy extract sites. While the organization hasn't cured ME of diabetes, IT has relieved a huge character of the essence of T1D, almost notably the constant 24/7 micromanagement of my blood sugar, the fear of hypoglycemia, and the sleeplessness that accompanies that fear. I hope that someday soon, every multitude with T1D can feel the airiness of handing that burden over to a system so much as ours.
I'm excited and confident that the team at Bigfoot will lay down this Bob Hope a reality.
Thanks for sharing the great experience you've had so far on your do-it-yourself out of use loop, Sarah. We absolutely can't wait to see how it complete moves bold!
Besides, Dear Readers: stay tuned for another floor coming soon about other "homemade" AP system formulated on the opposite side of the res publica, part of the always-growing #WeAreNotWaiting community of interests.
Source: https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/bigfoot-family-their-diabetes-and-homemade-closed-loop-system
Posted by: graymomse2000.blogspot.com
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