A question about diabetes - Democratic Underground

Stinky The Clown

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Mon May-30-11 08:24 AM
Original message

A question about diabetes

Yesterday, in the Indy 500, there was a driver who is a diabetic. They did a story wherein the noted that, during the race, his blood glucose was being constantly monitored. In the event of a problem, a pit crewman had a small supply of epipens with which to inject him with insulin as needed.

Okay, fine. That all makes sense. Here's where they lost me.

They wanted his numbers to be between 280 and 320.

That seems awfully high to me. Most people want to keep their number under 140.

Why would they want him at 300?

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Tesha

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Mon May-30-11 08:30 AM
Response to Original message

1. The number you want for "long term maintenance" may be different than...

...the number you want to ensure that nothing bad happens
in the next several hours (where "bad" might mean "the
driver passing out, losing control of the car, and
killing everyone on the track near-by him").

Tesha

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uppityperson

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Mon May-30-11 08:31 AM
Response to Original message

2. That seems high to me, maybe just for during the race?

Edited on Mon May-30-11 08:32 AM by uppityperson

edited to add, to make sure it doesn't drop and have low blood sugar issue while driving a fast killing machine?

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Maine_Nurse

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Mon May-30-11 08:43 AM
Response to Reply #2

3. I'd guess that...

the driver probably has a pretty good doc that not only understands the "normal" person with diabetes, but also diabetes in stressful situations which also involve very high sweat losses. Such stresses can deplete glucose pretty quickly, which is a bad thing at 200mph. Many people with diabetes can physiologically tolerate high blood glucose with few, if any, negative effects, but dropping low could cause a situation which might kill the driver and others.

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Stinky The Clown

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Mon May-30-11 09:00 AM
Response to Reply #3

4. That makes sense.

It just seemed so odd for them to say on teevee what numbers they wanted and then to hear them so high.

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