I had a crazy notion to write a post about a futuristic BG meter that was actually accurate to within 5% of a lab reading 100% of the time. Or maybe a CGM that was actually affordable for anyone that wanted one. I even considered writing about a pump that was constructed with such inexplicable ingenuity that it *didn't* have to bleep and warble about a temporary basal rate Every. Single. Hour. Which might be useful for anyone that ever needed to set a TBR to run overnight and values their sleep. But no. Let's at least keep this within the bounds of the possible.
I'm not even going to write about the cure. That's only a mere ten years away after all (well it always has been, ever since I was diagnosed in 1991, so I don't see why we should start changing that now).
What I would like to see (and I suspect some white-coated boffin in a gleaming laboratory is already working on this very thing) is an intelligent insulin. I can remember having conversations with people when I was first diagnosed who would say things like, 'Ooooh, I could never inject myself!'.
Like that was the hard part.
Let's face it after the first three or four hundred - the injections are a doddle. All the other stuff. The adjustment. The guessing games. The carb counting. The unexpected 'helping hand' given by the liver. The moving goalposts. The messy, confusing, illogical variability of it all. That's what I want rid of. Heck, I don't even mind carrying on with a fingerstick BG test every so often just to make sure things are toddling along OK.
So in my dream-world of the future, I just need to inject a whack of IntelligentInsulinTM pending every day (it could be every few days, but I don't want to push it).
Once absorbed the IntelligentInsulin just sloshes around in my bloodstream bound-up and inert. Ready and waiting. I chance upon a sweet and sickly cupcake. As soon as I start eating it, and my BG begins to rise the IntelligentInsulin senses the change in my levels and immediately begins to work (none of this '4 hour profile' nonsense). Once the carbs are dealt with, IntelligentInsulin stops and waits again. Very tiny amounts of it working every so often to counter glucose released from my liver keeping my levels rock steady. If my BG falls below 4.5 (81), IntelligentInsulin stops working entirely and allows my liver a little room to top things up into a safe zone. When I eat a massive fat-laden uber-carb pizza-with-extra-dough-balls-and-garlic-bread IntelligentInsulin effortlessly matches the stop-start absorption of the food. Even when I have an entire cream-filled Pavlova meringue for dessert. Which is a neat trick since I have a horrendous cold at the time. And have not been to the gym for 2 weeks.
All I have to do to manage my diabetes is keep my level of circulating IntelligentInsulin topped up with an occasional injection, and take an occasional BG test to check things are OK. And that is all.
Welcome to the future ladies and gentlemen.
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