DIABETES D.I.Y.

How patients built a simple phone app that does a better job than your pancreas

- Jonathan Garfinkel 

I WAS 12 WHEN my immune system suddenly wiped out the insulin-producing beta cells in my pancreas. The first symptoms arrived when I was in Paris, on a family vacation. I started urinating like crazy, drinking litres of water each day to compensate. My memory of the Champs Élysées is not the beauty of the architecture but the number of public bathrooms I had to duck into along the way.

It was 1986, a different era in diabetes care, and the doctors I eventually saw told me I could still eat whatever I wanted, so long as I injected enough insulin to compensate. I was told that diabetes is manageable, that you can live a good life with it—both mostly correct though not always straightforward. Yet my diagnosis still changed how I saw myself. I contained a flaw, my body now a series of problems that constantly had to be solved.

Diabetes is a tricky disease, both to live with and to understand. It all comes down to the pancreas: in normal circumstances, the organ produces insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose. Diabetics either can’t produce enough insulin (which causes the more manageable Type 2 diabetes) or any at all (Type 1). Because of this, our bodies can’t handle the sugar we consume. When blood-glucose levels drop too low or surge too high, it can lead to serious health complications.