Jamie Felton, MD; Heba Ismail, MD; and Jason Spaeth, PhD, all study and live with Type 1 diabetes. As experts on the topic, they’ve sat down to answer some of the internet’s most searched questions about Type 1 diabetes:
Video transcript:
JF: Sorry.
[ragtime piano music]
JF: Hi, I’m Jamie Felton.
JS: I’m Jason Spaeth.
HI: And I’m Heba Ismail.
JF: And we are here today to address the internet’s most searched questions about Type 1 diabetes.
JS: So you may be wondering what makes us experts. Well, all three of us up here are researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
HI: And all three of us happen to have Type 1 diabetes.
JF: Altogether, we probably have more than, uh, decades of experience managing diabetes and researching. So…
[crickets]
JS: Let’s see what some of the internet’s most glaring questions are about Type 1 diabetes. So what does Type 1 diabetes mean? Pretty simply put Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition where your body essentially has destroyed the only cells in your body that produce insulin, the hormone that’s required to lower your blood glucose levels.
JF: That’s a good answer. Alright. Can Type 1 diabetes be controlled with diet? That’s a great question. Um, the answer is no. You need insulin. You need insulin to take care of the carbohydrates that you eat. Um, but even if you ate zero carbohydrates, you would still need insulin if you have Type 1 diabetes.
HI: Is Type 1 diabetes preventable? Well, not yet, but we can delay the start of it or the onset of it.
JF: Can Type 1 diabetes affect the ability to exercise? I also love this question. It doesn’t affect your ability at all to exercise. There are lots of professional athletes. Uh, Nick Jonas has Type 1 diabetes and he does a lot of work dancing in his concerts. Um, yeah, yeah.
JF: Sorry, sorry, sorry. I got distracted thinking about Nick Jonas.
JF: Alright, so we’ve looked at, uh, the internet’s most asked questions about Type 1 diabetes.
JS: If you have any more questions, please visit our website and follow IU School of Medicine on social media.
HI: And tweet us!
Find answers to common questions about Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes on the Diabetes FAQ page.
The investigators featured in this video conduct their research at the Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases and the Pediatric Diabetes research group at the Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research. They each hold appointments in the Department of Pediatrics at IU School of Medicine.
Jamie Felton, MD, is an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics and a pediatric endocrinologist at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. Her research is focused on understanding the immune pathogenesis of Type 1 diabetes in order to develop effective therapeutic interventions.
Heba Ismail, MD, is an assistant professor of pediatrics and clinician whose research interest focuses on Type 1 diabetes and clinical management. Her work includes contributions to the TrialNet Prevention study that successfully delayed Type 1 diabetes in adults and children for up to two years.
Jason Spaeth, PhD, is a assistant professor of pediatrics. His research is centered on diabetes pathogenesis, with a special emphasis on the cellular mechanisms that are critical for pancreas formation and islet beta cell function.
