In another post people were talking about how much time they use treating their "D". I found that interesting and started to figure out how much time I spend treating my "D" a week.
It takes me approximately 3 minutes four times a day to test an record my blood sugars ---- 12 minutes times 7 = 84 minutes
3 injections a day takes about 2 minutes x 7 (6x 7) = 42 minutes
Exercising 90 minutes 5 times a day (this is from my house to pool) 450 minutes
Meal prep, I am not including because I would have to do it for my family anyway,.
So that is 576 minutes or which is 9.6 hours out of 168 hours in a week, leaves me 158.4 hours to live a healthier life.
I'm not sure I understand your Diabetes required Exercise ? [Exercising 90 minutes 5 times a day (this is from my house to pool) 450 minutes] I don't think I could justify Exercise as part of the time taken out of my daily routine for Diabetes management...
Well, i would take a bit another approach to this than you. of course, there is the time you obviously spend caring for your D, but what about the not so obvious? the seconds every meal i spend calculating the carbs? the minutes i spend thinking about BG patterns? the minute before bed, when i contemplate whether to eat more or if i will stay flat during the night? the lows that wake me up in the middle of the night and take eternities to be nursed back up? and the bad mood the next morning when you havent slept well and feel all hungover anyway? the time talking to your insurance/ doctor? the time asking myself why me? (happens rarely tg) the time packing my purse that is twice as big as that of a non-D just because i carry around half a pharmacy?
i dont know how much time that would be, but i guess a bit more.
not wanting to make a grouchy post, just sharing what i think and that it takes so much more to manage D than just finger pricks, shots, exercise and healthy eating...
I agree. Lots of people exercise. I wouldn't include this in diabetes-specific time. Of course, it often takes time to prepare (diabetes-wise) for exercise, so I would include time spent testing and adjusting food/insulin prior to, during, and after the exercise - but not the exercise itself.
In Canada there is a tax credit that people with diabetes who use insulin are eligible for if they spend 14 hours a week or more on tasks related to taking insulin, including testing blood sugar, administering insulin, adjusting insulin pumps, and keeping a logbook. The 14 hours can't include exercising, meal preparation, counting carbohydrates (which I disagree with, because you can't accurately deliver insulin without counting carbohydrates precisely), medical appointments, picking up prescriptions, or recovering from highs and lows. I know a fair number of people who have successfully documented spending this much time on diabetes and receive the tax credit, so I think it's probably pretty common to spend a couple hours a day on tasks related directly to diabetes.
Wow, that is a lot of exercise!! I am a total slacker there. I only exercise that much a few times/ year, if I'm running big races or going for long rides and I generally only do 1x/ day, although I'm not controlling BG with it.
Testing is about 15-20 seconds maybe 10-12 times/ day although I don't write anything down. I use CGM charts for adjusting anything. Although that has some inaccuracy, if CGM is off, the data is screwed.
I'm the chef here and agree that meals don't count.
It takes me about 20 seconds each time I test between 8 and 10 times a day. Probably 1 minute to calculate carbs and then inject 3 times a day.
10 seconds twice a day to inject Levemir.
Five minutes every two weeks or so to change my Dexcom sensor.
What is impossible for me to calculate is how much time I spend just thinking or worrying about my BG, trying to estimate how many carbs to eat to fuel my workout, trying to figure out how much my BG might keep going up from those carbs after a workout and whether I should inject some Apidra, wondering if I'll go low overnight and what that might mean for adjusting my basal, wondering whether I'll ever get insurance coverage for my Dexcom, trying to figure out if I should change endos, which is what my insurance will require for me to even attempt to get Dexcom coverage, etc., I spend minutes actually treating my D and hours upon hours of mental time on it.
But as you say, it all does allow me to live a healthier life than if I simply igored it!
One minute to calculate carbs and inject? Are you actually calculating, or just estimating? Or eating something you've had a million times before so know the insulin dose without calculating? It definitely takes me more than a minute to calculate (weigh/measure and look up nutritional info) my food and then do the math to figure out how much insulin I need!
I've never tried to quantify the time I spend treating my diabetes, but it's significant. In addition to what others have listed, I feel my time spent reading about diabetes here on TuD and elsewhere as important to my overall diabetes care.
I'm a firm believer that knowledge is power and I've learned more from other people with diabetes online that I ever did in a doctor's office. In fact some of the things I've learned online rate right near the top of my list of most valuable diabetes tools, low-carb, high-fat eating, for example. I spend a few hours each day reading/interacting online. This includes time spent reading and reviewing medical literature about diabetes.
I also spend an hour or two each week uploading my pump, CGM, and meter data to Diasend, a web-based site that integrates all the data and helps me derive meaningful and actionable conclusions.
I agree that non-Ds also exercise, but sometimes I go out for strategic blood glucose lowering walks at some very odd hours, like midnight. If I was not diabetic, some of my walking would probably not happen at those times.
I spend time daily training my hypoglycemia alert dog. I would count that time, although I consider it a joy.
I agree with your conclusion that you think the time is worth it. My treatment of my diabetes has markedly improved my health and my sense of well-being. Feeling well on most days as well as emotionally healthy makes my life worth living.
I eat the same things a lot of the time. I've been very mindful of what I eat almost all my life and have always been aware of nutritional information, so adding carb calculations really hasn't been too much of a problem for me. I have a great deal of information re carbs and calories floating around in my head! If it's something I haven't eaten before and/or need to weigh, it will add time, but honestly, I feel like it's negligible in the overall scheme of things.
Let's see... a few minutes a day on testing, probably no more than a minute total punching data into my pump to dose, and some other stuff that really doesn't add up to much.
Then 5 hours a day on TuD pretty much blows out everything else :-) :-) :-)
Yea, everyone "should" but I didnt't start exercising until I was diagnosed, and there are times when it was -50 degrees or between -30 and -50 and I wouldn't go...so exercise IS DEFINITELY a part of MY diabetic routine
You are right, and I didn't figure that time in. Thanks for reminding me. I am thinking my menu planning and figuring has become so obvious and automatic to me since there are only two of us, that I don't think about it. It takes me about an hour each week to figure meals and carbs etc. But then I've been doing it for over 40 years to loose weight and it's not that different,.
