Living with Diabetes: Recent Episodes
Claire Levy
Listen to healthcare professionals, people living with all types of diabetes and specialist support networks to help you, your family and carers to understand good diabetes self manage skills.
In this edition of our podcast, Living with Diabetes, DRWF’s Claire Levy looks at the growing development and implementation of technology in managing diabetes, from continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to hybrid closed loop systems. We hear from Shay Speakman-Brown at Dexcom about the developments they’ve been involved with, and Professor Partha Kar gives us his take on tech and diabetes treatment in general; plus our educational events coordinator Lee Calladine previews the return of DRWF's new big annual national event: United Through Diabetes, back by popular demand on 21st September this year.
In this edition, we continue our series of interviews looking at interesting research projects funded by DRWF. Dr Mark Russell tells DRWF’s Claire Levy about research which studies a molecule that controls levels of specific genes and how this influences energy generation and insulin production in Beta cells.
In this edition, we continue our series of interviews looking at interesting research projects funded by DRWF. Dr Li Kang tells DRWF’s Claire Levy about research which looks at how the outside structure of cells change when they stop responding normally to insulin. This, in turn, alters how insulin works and informs the development of new drugs to help people living with diabetes.
In this edition, we continue our series of interviews looking at interesting research projects funded by DRWF. Dr Tara Lee tells DRWF’s Claire Levy about research which explores how a mother's glucose levels, and insulin therapy, relate to a baby’s growth patterns and birthweight. It also examined which diabetes technologies help pregnant women to achieve their glucose targets during hospital admissions and after birth.
In this edition, we continue our series of interviews looking at interesting research projects funded by DRWF. Catherine Arden tells DRWF’s Claire Levy about research which studies the recycling mechanisms in beta cells during acute and chronic changes in glucose levels.
This special edition reports from our United Through Diabetes 2023 event - our biggest ever Wellness Day, celebrating 25 years of DRWF. Hear from our speakers, experts, researchers, attending our Wellness Event - United Through Diabetes.
Claire Levy talks with Dr Shivani Misra who’s been working with DRWF for over ten years, and has now joined the board of trustees. Her research has been investigating various aspects of genetic forms of diabetes in minority ethnic groups, and subsequently the identification of MODY - maturity onset diabetes of the young - in multi-ethnic populations.
In this edition, we’re looking at the impact of DRWF’s research funding in stimulating vital early development of new treatments and therapies. We’ve been talking to researchers who have gone on to win major funding under the Grand Challenge, a project funded by a £50 million donation from the Steve Morgan Foundation aimed at improving the lives of people with Type 1 diabetes.
Today we’re looking at the use of continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGMs) for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Claire Levy talks with Jake Leach, the chief operating officer of CGM developer and manufacturer Dexcom, from their US headquarters in San Diego, California.
This is the first in a short series of interviews about research projects funded by DRWF. In this edition we talk with Dr Stephanie Hanna to discuss her work which identifies the white blood cells that can damage the pancreas in a project aimed at improving the treatment of Type 1 diabetes.
In this edition we hear from Dr. Ana Tiganescu, a university research fellow at Leeds University, about an interesting research project looking at skin healing in diabetes. Although this project isn’t funded by DRWF it does have some interesting findings.
In this edition we talk to Lee Calladine, our Educational Event Coordinator at DRWF, about our upcoming United Through Diabetes event as part of our 25th anniversary celebrations.
An insight into how the support you have given us is changing lives. Hear how our work at the DRWF Islet cell laboratories in Oxford, is making a real difference to real people this World Diabetes Day.
In this Podcast we’re paying tribute to the late Lynwood Newman, a long-term volunteer and supporter of the charity DRWF going back to 2006. Sadly, he passed away early in 2021 after a short battle with cancer.
Welcome to the latest podcast in our series: Living with Diabetes, brought to you by Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation:
In this edition we’re looking at the development of Metformin, which has become the preferred first-line oral blood glucose-lowering agent to manage type 2 diabetes. It was created nearly 65 years ago, but it took many decades of research to get it more widely accepted as a major component of diabetes management. To discover more, I’ve been talking to Professor Cliff Bailey, Director of Biomedical Sciences Research at Aston University. He’s regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on Type 2 and contributed to the development of metformin over many years.
In this edition we’re talking with Simon Marwood, Associate Professor of Physiology at Liverpool Hope University, who is the subject head for Sport and Exercise, Science and Sports Rehabilitation, in the School of Health Sciences
Simon Marwood is involved in research which examines the impact of exercise on cardio-vascular disease. I started our conversation by asking him why people living with Type 1 diabetes can benefit from regular exercise.
If you’d like to contact Simon Marwood with your experiences his email at Liverpool Hope University is: marwoos@hope.ac.uk
Professor Partha Kar is National Specialty Advisor, Diabetes with NHS England and co-lead of Diabetes Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) with NHS Improvement.
He was awarded an OBE for services to people with diabetes in the New Year’s Honours list.
A Consultant in Diabetes & Endocrinology at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust since 2008. He has been the Clinical Director of Diabetes from 2009-2015, being part of a multiple national award-winning department Health Service Journal and British Medical Journal Awards due to its services and care provided.
He is the pioneer of the Sanofi Quality in Care award Super Six Diabetes Model which aims to deliver diabetes care differently and is recognised as one of the good examples of integrated care.
Partha is an avid user of Twitter to engage with patients and to campaign he has been recognised as a “Social media Pioneer” by Health Service Journal in 2014.
He also writes a monthly blog for the British Medical Journal and has a personal blog (“Sugar and Spice: Wish all things were nice”) and a podcast (“Sweet Talking”)
In this edition we focus on eye health. Eye health is a big subject area for people living with diabetes.
So, in this special edition, we have an extended discussion with leading Ophthalmologist Adam Mapani.
He’s a Nurse Consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital, Medical Retina Department, in London
and an Honorary Clinical Teaching Fellow at the UCL Department of Clinical Ophthalmology.
In this edition….
We continue the theme of footcare, from our last podcast, with new recommendations just published in the latest paper by iDEAL – the independent group of healthcare professionals and people living with diabetes.
We’ll hear proposals to significantly reduce amputations through improved, rapid, diagnosis and referral to multidisciplinary footcare teams:
IDEAL provides Insights for Diabetes, Excellence, Access and Learning. The organisation was established to review current practice across the NHS. It aims to improve care pathways for people living with diabetes.
...an occasional podcast series, aimed at professionals, where we discuss the results of research projects, training needs, the challenges of Continuing Professional Development, and insights from patients and healthcare professionals.
This edition looks at standardised HCP education within diabetes care.
Welcome to Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation’s Podcast Pro –
...an occasional podcast series, aimed at professionals, where we discuss the results of research projects, training needs, the challenges of Continuing Professional Development, and insights from patients and healthcare professionals.
In this edition we’re looking at the latest report from the iDEAL advisory group on footcare for people living with diabetes and its recommendations for encouraging self-referral and early intervention from multidisciplinary teams to reduce the number of amputations in the UK, potentially by up to 50%.
The report highlights that up to a half of amputations resulting from diabetes-related complications could be avoided through early intervention. It’s currently estimated that the NHS spends around a billion pounds a year on these treatments. Current data sees a big variation across the country in the level of amputations which has been described as a postcode lottery for patients.
The main recommendations centred around educating people living with diabetes, and healthcare professionals, to self-refer with rapid access to multi-disciplinary footcare teams, as recommended by NICE – 17% of teams have not yet embraced a multidisciplinary approach; plus good footcare regimes to prevent ulcers occurring and to avoid foot injury risks.
To raise awareness a new mnemonic has been devised: ACT NOW
This latest PodCast focusses on the importance of good footcare. The statistics are quite shocking with a major amputation in the UK occurring every hour! We hear from Andrew who is living with type 1 diabetes and has experienced the loss of a number of toes in recent years. We talk to podiatrist Graham Bowen about the simple steps campaign to maintaining good foot health to avoid the complication that can arise including amputation.
In this edition….
We’re talking cycling, fitness and fundraising, plus an update on COVID-19.
Cameron Muir talks about living with diabetes and the challenge he’s taking on later this summer. Scotsman Cameron Muir works in the financial sector in London and is planning to cycle all the way back to his family home in Edinburgh at the end of August. He lives with Type 1 Diabetes and told me about his diagnosis almost 20 years ago when he was just ten years old.
We hear about the work of The John Pounds Centre in Portsmouth. Like many charitably run community and fitness facilities it has struggled through the pandemic and is planning a staged reopening. We hear about the support they provide to people living with diabetes.
There’s been a lot of attention on why the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities appear to have been so badly affected by COVID-19. We hear the latest insights on this from Professor Kamlesh Khunti who is Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine at the University of Leicester, UK. He is also Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre.
Plus, we hear from former Commonwealth Games Road race cyclist Roddy Riddle and how he’s managing his Type 1 diabetes. Roddy represented his country in the road race cycling event at the Commonwealth Games in 1994, coming a very credible 9th. Fourteen years later at the age of 40, after his international cycling career, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. He’s actually been running a cycle shop up in Inverness for over 30 years and has seen a surge in Cycling in recent months. A sport that is being encouraged in the UK to help people improve and maintain their fitness, so I asked Roddy about his recollections of being diagnosed in 2008 and he chats about the incredible challenges he has taken on in recent years, the Marathon de Sables and the 6633 Ultra,The Toughest, Coldest and Windiest Extreme Ultra Marathon!
In this edition….
We’re talking to three people living with diabetes who are sharing their experiences to help others.
Professor Pete Alexander is a stress relief expert, based near Seattle on the US west coast, and he’s been telling me about the techniques he’s developed which are summarised in a new book:
Megan Pointing from Southampton in the UK has trained two of her three pet spaniels to be diabetes alert dogs:
Plus we hear from Matthew Philips in Manchester who has a long family history of Living with Type 2 diabetes.
Professor Pete Alexander has been diagnosed with stress induced diabetes and has subsequently developed a range of techniques to help him cope better. Having studied the condition, he now practices as a stress relief expert. He has published a new book called Lighten Your Day – Fast, Easy and Effective Stress Relief. We started by discussing his own diagnosis:
Megan Pointing is a young woman expecting her first child. She’s living with Type 1 diabetes and as a firm dog lover and professional dog walker, she wanted to see if it was possible to train her dogs to recognise the scent of problematic blood glucose levels so they could alert her in advance of developing symptoms. She told me more about her dogs, how she trained them and her own diabetes.
When there’s a long family history of diabetes there’s a high probability of also developing the condition. Matthew Philips, who is now 45, was diagnosed with Type 2 when he was 19. He told me he’s married with two children and two dogs, but although he works in property management, he’s spending an increasing amount of time promoting diabetes awareness and recently recorded his own podcast to share his experiences. I started by asking him about his family history.
In this edition….
We’re looking at the role of exercise in maintaining good health and management of diabetes. Dr Rob Andrews talks to us about the challenges and benefits of exercise for people living with Type 1 and Type 2.
Marathon Runner Frank Rogers relates his experience which forms the basis for his new book – Running with Diabetes.
We talk to Alison Northern, an implementation manager at the Leicester Diabetes Centre, to discover more about the MY DESMOND online education course for people living with Type 2
Life under lockdown when you’re living with diabetes. We talk to DRWF’s Lee Calladine about his Type 1 management.
Plus the latest analysis of the way COVID-19 is affecting people with diabetes. Dr Partha Kar explains.
And it’s a challenging time for charities. How is DRWF coping? I spoke with our fundraising manager Tim Green to find out.
In this extended edition we review the trends of the last decade and look ahead to the prospects for diabetes in the 2020s – The trend continues relentlessly upwards on the one hand while research holds great promise on the other. But the challenge of staying well until a cure is found continues, as we’ll hear from DRWF’s UK Chief Executive Sarah Tutton.
A new App called Our Path is becoming available through the NHS in some parts of the country
– Robbie Puddick is a registered nutritionist and the NHS lead for Our Path. He told me about its development and how it can help those living with diabetes. Especially Type 2.
As Sarah Tutton mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, research is another major component of DRWF’s work across a whole range of investigations and developments. I asked DRWFs Research Manager Eleanor Kennedy for her perspective on our work in this area.
There are many fascinating research projects. To get an insight into what our support means to researchers I’ve been talking to Chloe Rackham, a DRWF Research Fellow at King’s College London. She’s been looking into the various factors which affect the success of Islet transplantation, particularly in terms of the survivability of the cells which can be low, requiring 2 or 3 transplant sessions to be effective. She’s just published a paper looking at one of those mechanisms where stem cells have improved the robustness of islet cells by transferring mitrochondria into the islets.
The current Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic is understandably causing concern for people living with diabetes, as it’s been identified as a high risk group.
To help you understand more, and the potential implications. I talk to Prof Thozhukat Sathyapalan (Sathya), the Chair in Academic Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Hull York Medical School at the University of Hull and Honorary Consultant Endocrinologist at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust,
Some of these points were emphasised in a message from Dr Partha Kar, Consultant in Diabetes & Endocrinology at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and a National Specialty Advisor on Diabetes with NHS England.
To keep up to date with the latest news and information, or to discover how you can continue support DRWF at this challenging time please visit the web site at DRWF.org.uk
In this edition….A ‘Staying Well’ special:
We’re looking at the role of exercise and an active lifestyle in helping to manage diabetes…Including the benefits of interval walking training for better control of Type 2 with Dr Richard Metcalf
And we’ve been speaking to Patrick Mertes in the United States about the Diabetes Family Connection challenge, to climb 50 peaks in 50 days, to help build confidence and optimism within people living with diabetes
We hear from Dr Eleanor Kennedy on DRWF’s current portfolio of research projects
And we’re also speaking to Dr Shivani Misra with insights from her DRWF funded research programme: ’My Diabetes’
In this edition we’ll continue our conversation with volunteer Lynwood Newman and hear how his diabetes was affected by his treatment for cancer.
Lynwood is also a mentor for people living with diabetes and DRWF’s Lee Calladine, who is Type 1, explains how valuable this can be from a personal perspective……
Dr Parijat De joins us for our staying well feature on hypos and hypers, plus the serious challenges of ketoacidosis
We take a further look at retinopathy, continuing the focus on eyes with Hannah Beharrell and Jane Clayson from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Diabetic Eye Screening Programme
We’ll also have insights from the latest DRWF funded ’My Diabetes’ research by Dr Shivani Misra
Hello and welcome to the second podcast in our series: Living with Diabetes, brought to you by Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation.
In this edition we lift the mask on 'Captain Insulin' and champion DRWF volunteer… Lynwood Newman….
DRWF’s Lee Calladine explains how vital such volunteers are…..
Dr Partha Kar talks to us on breaking down the barriers between care in hospital and out in the community….
Eyes are in focus in this month’s Staying Well feature with Hannah Beharral and Jane Clayson from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Diabetic Eye Screening Programme….
…and Terry Smith, a Community Development and Support Manager at the charity OpenSight, who has personally experienced sight loss.
Plus we hear what happened when British TV presenter Dom Littlewood, who has type 1, took on a leg of a tough global yacht race – setting sail into a stormy Atlantic Ocean…
Coming up in this edition we hear from DRWF CEO Sarah Tutton – introducing the charity and the work we do
Volunteer Lionel Curtis on working with DRWF
Diabatologist Dr Myank Pattel on our recent Diabetes Wellness Day South
And Feet are in focus in this month’s Staying Well feature with Podiatrist Graham Bowen
A regular podcast from Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation (DRWF), a UK wide Diabetes Charity. I am Claire Levy (yes that's me in the photo parachuting to raise funds for the DRWF!) I look forward to you joining me for these informative programmes when I talk to healthcare professionals, people living with all types of diabetes and specialist support services, including researchers.
DRWF is a registered charity (No. 1070607) and company limited by guarantee (3496304) set up in 1998 to raise awareness of all types of diabetes and associated complications; provide information and support to promote good self-management and to enhance quality of life.
Whilst funding vital diabetes research to establish the causes, prevention and treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes; develop improved management and treatment options; and ultimately find a cure, we aim to ensure that people have access to the right information and support to develop a proactive self-care approach to successful self-management, to ensure that they are "staying well until a cure is found..."