mySugr Diabetes Logging App: Awesomesauce!

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How on earth could a diabetes logging app earn the term “awesomesauce”?  I mean, come on, we all know logging is lame.  Well, read on!  mySugr is easy to use, modern looking (seriously, no medical clunkiness here!), and extremely rewarding.  It’s fun to play, keeps my information stored and accessible in a bunch of useful ways…and it’s pretty too!

When you first create your account with the app, you get to name your “Diabetes Monster.”  This little guy sits on your home screen and chides you with silly faces and “na nanny booboos” until you earn 50 points in a day and then he gets a zipper placed over his mouth (literally) and you’ve “tamed the monster” for the day.  Here, mine is named “Yo Cyborg Yo” and I currently have 38 points, (which is tracked with a blue progress bar in the top portion of the screen).

mySugr home screen

mySugr logbook blank entry

Logging entries is quick and easy.  The time  and location are auto-set.  Most of the fields use your phone number keypad (as opposed to scroll wheels with limited options).  There are three screens of fun little icons for quickly adding information that you’d have to type into a notes field in other apps, like “alcohol” or “menstruation” (don’t worry, there is still a manual-type notes field for when you want it).

mySugr icons

One of my favorite features of this app is the ability to take pictures of what food I’m logging (right from the log entry), because it’s not about the number of carbs but the type of carbs, right?  They really hit the nail on the head here.  No more laborious, typed descriptions of what kind of food I’m eating…just snap-and-go!

There is a colored BG graph at the top of the logbook and as you scroll back through your entries, the graph moves too and shows the BG data occurring in the 24- hour period surrounding the logbook entries currently showing on your screen.  I love how dynamic this is!

mySugr-logbook      mySugr photo entry

You can also look up past entries by searching for any term you typed in (such as descriptions or notes), location name, or chose a picture from the photo library and then see the same 24-hour graph displayed for any search results entry you chose.  Great for checking to see what happened to your BG the last time you tried you a pint of stout from that new place down the street :)

mySugr challengesTo get the Pro version (which includes the keyword search, unlimited photos, and various personalization options), all you have to do is “play” the challenges.  Yes, there are enough challenges to let you win and keep Pro without paying for it…if you keep playing and completing them.  Two of the challenges involve logging a certain number of BG entries and two of them involve logging a certain amount of activity  (bonus: one of these earns community points towards JDRF donations!).  All challenges are available once a week.

Even though there isn’t a corresponding website where you can access your data and reports, your data is stored on a server and you can access it on multiple devices (iPhone and iPad) at the same time after entering your account info into the app.  This is key for me so if my iPhone gets lost/stolen I won’t lose all my past data forever.

In a perfect world, what would I add if I could?

  • I’d love if it had a way to enter information for an extended bolus.  When I eat something that I use a bolus extension for, I like to try to look back at similar entries and see if past extensions worked or need modification.  i.e. Did I extend 50% for 2 hours or 30% for 3?
  • I’d also like to be able to save “activity descriptions” I’ve entered in some kind of dropdown, so I didn’t have to type the same ones over and over.
  • And I’d like to be able to reorganize the order of the tag icons, so I could put the ones I use the most on the first screen and not have to flip through several screens to get to them.

A word on customer service:

I had a syncing error when the app was updated and lost enough data to make me loose a couple of challenges.  Sad face.  I contacted customer support (turned out to be Scott Johnson) and he promptly sent me a coupon code to redeem several days of Pro (plus some for my trouble).  When there was a glitch in the system to cache in those days on my account, I contacted him again.   It took quite a few trial solutions for them to figure out what was going wrong and fix it but they really stuck with it until a solution was reached….for one little piddly customer.  I was impressed.

mySugr Made with loveAs a final note, I really appreciate when I scroll down on the home screen and see a little “Made with love ♥” tag.  My husband, who is a designer, uses this saying a lot.  When we go out to eat he uses it to describe a plate of food that he thinks someone gave a lot of cooking time and attention to, as opposed to slapping it on the plate.  So, if mySugr were a plate of food I ordered in a restaurant, it would certainly earn the term Made with love!

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A Few Blogger Reviews:

Thinking of Getting a New Insulin Pump Soon? Check Out This Article On diaTribe Comparing the Top 6 Pumps.

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This diaTribe article by Gary Scheiner has a great little summary with lots of suggestions to help you pick the right pump for you but the comparison information it links out to on Integrated Diabetes Services gives you the full monty on each current pump.  Happy pumping!

Integrated Diabetes Services Insulin pump comparisons

 

Wearing My OmniPod On My Back: A Little Help Here?

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So lately I’ve been trying out OmniPod sites to experiment with my insulin absorption rates.  Wearing the pod on my back is great as far as insulin absorption and blood sugar are going, however, how the heck do you reach back there to change your pod?

If I was just using the OmniPod and the adhesive it came with, I’d probably be ok using a mirror to place new pods and remove old ones…but I use Skin Tac and (as many of you know) that stuff is messy!

When I place pods on my belly, the circle of Skin Tac I apply first is larger than the circle of the OmniPod adhesive, so I’m left with a sticky ring around the new OmniPod when I’m done that I have to go back and carefully clean off.

No way I can use an adhesive remover on my back and just wipe off the extra “ring” of Skin Tac without also getting some on the OmniPod.  If you can do this…more power to you!  But, I’m just not that flexible/coordinated anymore.  What’s a girl to do?  Well, actually I’ve been asking my husband to assist with hard-to-reach site placements.  He diligently sprays the old pod with De-Solv-it, removes all the old, yucky residue, places the new pod (where I actually want it instead of where I’d probably accidentally stick it if I was trying to place it back there myself), and wipes away the “ring” of leftover Skin Tac.  Yeah, I know…he’s a great catch!

What would I do without him? Anyone have any good tricks to share for hard-to-reach sites?

Will My Kids Develop Type 1 Diabetes Too? Is There Anything I Can Do About It?

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As a mother with T1 diabetes (and Grave’s disease) I can’t help but wonder “Is my child more likely to develop one of these conditions and if so, is there anything, no matter how small, that I can do about it?”

You’ve probably all heard the term “genetically predisposed to diabetes”.  What does it mean?  Basically it means that you were born with certain genetic markers (that’s just a small piece of your DNA) and research has shown that if you have these certain genetic markers you’re more likely to develop Type 1 diabetes than if you don’t.  We have no control over our DNA, so if we have them, we were born with them and that’s that.  The same goes for our children.  (Read a summary from Joslin Diabetes Center about what you’re child’s genetic risk may be based on relatives with T1).

Outside of the world of genetics though, there are lots of other factors that have been shown to increase (or decrease) your risk of developing T1 diabetes, including environmental factors (like certain things you eat or don’t eat), and your microbiome (that’s the “usually good” bacteria that live inside your body all the time….eww!).  Researchers are doing more and more studies on these other factors every day.  When factors are shown to increase your risk of developing T1 diabetes they’re called risk factors but when they’re shown to decrease your risk of developing T1, they’re called protective factors.  Ahh, as a parent I really like the sound of that…protective factors….

There isn’t anything I can do about my children’s genetic risk factors, or their microbiome (yet), but what about the environmental stuff?  Are there any protective factors, even if they’re small, that I can integrate into our daily lives?  In short, the answer is yes.

Will they actually help to protect my kids?  I’ll probably never know…but turns out most of these small changes, largely related to diet and our environments, are healthier choices for the whole family anyway, so why not try?

Some of the first protective factors we can control as parents are related to infant diet (but there are others that apply post-infancy).  Infant diet protective factors include:  longer duration of breastfeeding (at least 4-6 months), and waiting longer to introduce cow’s milk products (at least 8 days).

As a T1 diabetic these reasons were some of the most important ones for me when I chose to breastfeed my kids…and the main reason I really pushed myself to continue with it for at least a full year.

psst…I’ll be posting about other risk and protective factors periodically under the tag “Type 1 diabetes pathogenesis”.

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