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Edited Date/Time
1/27/2012 6:28pm
Hey, I don't know much about diabetes, especially the type that Cutler has, but is it possible that his illness, and the constant drops and increases in blood sugar, actually affect his decision-making?
Anyone know how that works?
Anyone know how that works?
Prior to the diagnosis he was on the high's and lows of which you mention.
I mean, if he has to get shots during a game, that means he's low, right? Then probably high after the shot.
Know what I mean?
Untreated, a person with type 1 will run with high blood sugar. An injection of insulin (type 1, the pancreas no longer produces it's own) will bring the blood sugar down.
Insulin is injected usually prior to a meal to counter the carbohydrate (sugar) intake of the meal. The more often you eat, the more often you shoot up.
Alot more complicated than that, but in a nutshell...
The Shop
It's unlikely that insulin would be given during a game in reaction to anything. It is possible that he could go low and require ingestion of carbohydrate during a game.
Having high blood sugar for a brief time during the day will not affect cognition. Low blood sugar is symptomatic before it would affect cognition. Proper treatment would prevent it affecting the brain.
He cannot blame diabetes for losing games.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-thegameface051608&prov=yhoo&ty…
If he is having to take shots during the game he has it pretty bad.
Amazing.
This is similar to the "if enough people believe it, it must be true" fallacy.
WOW ... you went there! ! ? ?
Jay just needs a little help controlling his blood sugar you, on the other hand, could use some help with your jealousy.
I'm a Broncos fan. To think I'd be jealous of his numbers compared to Kyle Orton's?
HA!
I'm seriously wondering. He makes really bad calls a lot, and he has this condition, so I'm wondering if they're related. If they're not, okay. But maybe they are.
With an adult, it's a little easier to decide prior to the meal what you will consume, and give the shot ahead of time, to give the insulin a little head start.
My 17 year old has juvenile diabetes (type 1). There can be alot of variation from individual to individual. His is very well controlled, but he chooses to eat frequent smaller meals, and that means more injections, (about 7 per day) but he's fine with that.
Being he injects frequently, he would be a good candidate for the pump, but he doesn't want to use one.
Pit Row
Glad to hear you son is doing well with his diabetes.
A couple of years ago he tried, what was then, an experimental "wristwatch" type of blood glucose meter, that read directly through the skin (you didn't have to poke your finger). In the end, he was way too active for it to work accurately or consistently (it didn't like sweat, or having contact with the skin broken even briefly).
Like many people, we hope and believe a cure will come soon. There have been successful transplantation of islet cells into the pancreas to restore function. More reason to support stem-cell research.
I wonder if adding athletics to the mix would make things go haywire.
http://biglenny.gets-it.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2781
I was just browsing over there and saw a thread that is a bit near and dear to my heart. The thread about Cutler and diabetes that Cox started, and actually made some sense in. If possible, could you post this little spiel of mine over there?
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The Cutler and diabetes issue has been something I've been wondering about myself for quite a while. There are a lot of misconceptions about Type 1 diabetes, but the most dangerous ones are that it is ever easily controlled. Especially for an athlete.
Some of the remarks I've seen seem to come from those who aren't as immersed in it daily as others of us are. I have a daughter who is an athlete (good not great) who was diagnosed not too long before Cutler, February of 2008. She was just coming off of a fairly successful freshman year of high school basketball (and volleyball before that) where she was able to work her way up to the varsity squad before the season was out and for the playoffs. She was playing hard, practicing hard, and earning decent grades (3.8 average) in the freshman honors program. But on days she didn't have school or practice, all she wanted to do was sleep, drink water, and pee! She went from about 5' 8" and 125 pounds to under 105. Their basketball playoffs ended on a Tuesday night, and Saturday we took her to the doctor because she just couldn't get up on her own from bed. It took about 5 minutes for them to go through the systems and check her blood sugar. She hadn't eaten anything, but her fasting glucose level was something like 385, which was pretty cut and dry diabetic. The doctor told us that there were two hospital choices for us to take her to for her "diabetes indoctrination", either in Seattle or Spokane. I asked the doctor if he would make us the appt. for later that week and their reply was that the emergency room at whatever hospital we chose and that we were taking her NOW. That woke me up pretty good.
Looking back, like every other Type 1 parent we've talked to, the signs had been there for some time, perhaps a little over a year that there were at least some symptoms. She'd have mood swings that we attributed to her going through puberty, etc., complaining a bit about blurry vision during times of the day, lack of concentration, lack of motivation, not wanting to go with friends, the weight loss, etc.
The first 6 months to a year for a Type 1 is VERY difficult. They go through what is called the "Honeymoon Period", where the pancreas starts seeing the synthetic insulin in the body and tries to kick in it's own natural insulin. It goes in spurts and is completely unpredictable. You can follow the exact same testing, eating, and injection regimen two days in a row and get vastly different results because of the body kicking out insulin at what seems like random times. You wake them up a lot at night to test because you aren't sure that they will wake with a hypoglycemic episode. You are adjusting the basal insulin (lantus for us) so that you have baseline "coverage" during the day and into the night. You are trying to find the compensation rate for meals, exercise, etc. and the target is always seeming like it is changing daily. It's very, very difficult.
My daughter played some basketball for the first time about two months after she was diagnosed, in a spring league/training camp scenario. Things didn't go well at first. We were told by her doctors that the exercise would drop her glucose levels, but that's for the recreational type player or the "walker" it seemed. When she exercised, her glucose would go through the roof early on, then crash hard after. We talked with a few other folks who competed and they said that was common for a competitive athlete, the adrenalin actually told the liver to release glucose, which resulted in a lot of hyperglycemic conditions early on. Contrary to what I have read in the thread, hyperglycemia DOES affect one's abilities to focus. A lot!
This year basketball was a bit tougher for her. She played JV again because they wanted to turn her into a point guard, and she played about 35 minutes a game (out of 40) for most of the season. She was very diligent about trying to get her glucose down without having a low before the game started, then snacked on trail mix peanut butter sandwiches during timeouts and halftime. She had to eat right after the game to avoid the inevitable crash. She finally got up to her "normal" weight of 125 this past February, which is still pretty thin. Her real issues came from a coach or two who didn't seem to understand the seriousness of the condition, or the ways she needed to treat it. One coach, and old fat guy on workers comp for a bad back, told her that she shouldn't need insulin because "my buddy has diabetes and he can control it with diet and exercise". He got upset with her once for coming out of the game and testing her blood sugar, that she was "using it as a crutch" to get a break. This was midway through the second quarter, she'd played that whole time, and her glucose level was over 350. She waited til the end of the season to tell me most of this and that coach and I had a pretty intense conversation after I found out. We'd supplied all the coaches with a small packet describing the issues she would have, but this jackass hadn't bothered to take the 5 minutes it would have taken to inform himself of just what the problems were.
This was probably the toughest time for control for her that she's had since she was diagnosed. Her levels were erratic as can be, and everything suffered because of it. She went from a GPA of 3.8 to having a semester GPA last spring of about 2.5. That's a pretty big drop. She said she just couldn't understand what her instructors were saying a lot of days. Strange stuff.
This past summer, she went to a pump and the difference has been night and day. It takes a LOT of tests to fine tune, and even then a lot of tests are required in case of a pump malfunction, but the control is a thousand times better. She's taking a full load of classes at the local community college in the Running Start program, and is currently getting an A in both Chemistry and English, along with PE of course. She's "clear" most of the time now, as opposed to when she wasn't on the pump.
She's probably done with basketball, it's not really worth the health risk unless the coaches are totally on board with her issues and I don't know if it is even fair to them to expect them to take it into consideration. As much as I love watching her play, I'd rather have her healthy and happy doing anything she likes.
The tough part for her, and what will also be very difficult for an athlete like Jay Cutler, is that their contest are so long. It's not too difficult to have a good glucose reading at the beginning of a game. That's doable for a "veteran" diabetic. It's maintaining for a couple of hours under changing conditions that's the hard part.
A great example, to me, is Adam Morrison the basketball player from Gonzaga. He was a star in college, but he had a routine that he could stick to very well. He knew he was going to play almost all the game, and it helped him plan his regimen. Now he sits a lot and plays sporadically, and the more he sits and plays sporadically the worse he will be. His game was built on a nice shooting stroke, but that stroke was good when he was able to control his glucose. Now he doesn't know when, or if, he will play so it's harder for him to stay in the "zone" and that would definitely affect his abilty to shoot accurately. Just an elevation into the mid 200s could have enough of an impact to make him miss a much higher percentage of his shots at that level.
The Seattle Mariners have two Type 1 diabetics on their roster, the most prominent is probably Brandon Morrow. He's talked openly about how difficult it has been for him to get his blood sugar to a point before the game that he could maintain it during the game. He moved to the bullpen because of that. In the bullpen he only has an inning or two that he has to worry about. When he was starting, he'd go too low before a game often trying to account for the "bump" he would get from the adrenalin of the game and pitching. A hypoglycemic condition can take hours to truly recover from, strength-wise. A normal person might feel "fine" after treating with glucose, but a world class athlete at 95% is a different story. Heck we could tell a difference with a high school athlete!
So the short answer is yes, everything in Jay Cutler's life is affected by his diabetes, and his judgement, attention, focus, etc. are no different.
I truly think the guy is a remarkable athlete, but I think diabetes will limit his overall success in the NFL. I am glad he is trying everything he can to "overcome" the effects of the condition, and he might be talented enough that he's able to have some great success, but I don't doubt for a minute that he could be much more successful without it. If anything, the fact he can play as well as he can with Type 1 is astounding.
JFS's experience with the condition himself are just about exactly the opposite to what my daughter, and Brandon Morrow, seem to experience. Perhaps it is the difference between planning for a several hour long sporting event and just working out?
Oh, and another reason this topic is so near and dear to my heart is my wife (my daughter's step mother) is also Type 1. We live and breath it at the house!
That's really what I was figuring. As someone with ADHD, I know how my brain changes depending on a variety of issues, so I figured there was something to his diabetes thing and his poor choices once it hit me.
That really sucks for Cutler, but it's good that the Broncos traded him if it's going to be this tough.
Thanks for posting for Aplman.
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