Theresa May's type 1 diabetes go-to was Jelly Babies

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Northerner

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Type 1
Theresa May would tell staff: "Go and get me the Jelly Babies," to counteract the effects of type 1 diabetes, during her time at No 10.
Lady May, diagnosed in 2013, also told the Today programme the adrenaline of Prime Minister's Questions would make her blood-sugar levels spike.

Type 1 diabetes means the body produces too little of the hormone insulin, which controls blood glucose.

Lady May says she copes pretty well now but "there are good days and bad days".

The condition should not stop people from doing anything - even from becoming prime minster, as she was between 2016 and 2019, Lady May said.

And she pointed to Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, who was diagnosed with type 1 as a child, like most people with the condition.

www.bbc.co.uk

Theresa May's type 1 diabetes go-to was Jelly Babies

The former prime minister tells BBC News sweets helped her out in some sticky situations in meetings.
www.bbc.co.uk

A good interview on R4 this morning between May and Justin Webb, whose son has Type 1. Hadn't realised the new Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins is also Type 1, diagnosed as a child
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May was discussing a report about the very dangerous combination of Type 1 and disordered eating - interview is at 7:40 (i.e. 1 hour 40 mins into the show)

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - Today, 23/01/2024

News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
Great interview, helped by the fact that Justin Webb is the parent o a T1. So both interviewer and interviewee had real life experience, knew what they were talking about, and could have a constructive conversation about the issues.

What a change from the half prepared politician with a message to shout about and an interviewer bored with the nonsense they have to deal with.
 
A colleague of mine who is T1 showed me an article this morning about people who are on insulin stopping it so they can lose weight, sometimes with tragic consequences. (I caught the end of something on breakfast TV this morning about T1 diabetes and eating disorders, as well.)
 
Information here about diabulimia:

Diabulimia and diabetes

Type 1 diabetes with disordered eating (T1DE), also known as diabulimia, is a serious eating disorder that people with type 1 diabetes can develop. What is diabulimia? Type 1 diabetes with disordered eating (T1DE) or diabulimia is an eating disorder that only affects people with type 1 diabetes...
www.diabetes.org.uk www.diabetes.org.uk

.
 
What I find disappointing here is that there is terrific publicity for a problem .... that a Parliamentary Committee co-chaired by Theresa May and Sir George Howarth have released a paper under the acronym of TIDE today (Type 1 Diabetes and Disordered Eating)... yet no one has said what this esteemed Committee has recommended ...... nor has anyone from the media asked a Government representative if the recommendations (which we don't know the details because they aren't reported) are going to be accepted and if so when will they be implemented? So it all feels pretty toothless all round.

I heard the Chief Executive of JDRF, Kate Addington, tell Breakfast TV that there are 8 pilot schemes running in England looking at Diabetes and Eating Disorders. These are not new and not thanks to the Government nor the NHS, as far as I could tell; just an excellent initiative from JDRF.

I have just listened to the radio 4 interview that is mentioned at the start of this thread - and that didn't answer my angst about the politics and toothless journalism; there was an answer from Theresa May about what might be ideal in an ideal world - but it was classic "duck and weave words". I still don't know what is specifically being recomended, but some explanation about a lack of a holistic approach was given by Theresa May. Nor have I found any better detail on other TV channels. My fear is that in 48 hrs the report will have sunk without trace and all will be forgotten or lost or both.

Most sadly, in truth, I'm not at all surprised. Any more than I'm not surprised that the Grenfell disaster enquiry rumbles on with no one responsible identified and named, no-one been taken to Court and no one had their handsome pension dragged off them from their convenient retirement.
 
Heartbreaking to read of Megan's struggles & tragic end, really feel for her parents Lesley & Neal, sadly a nightmare for them that never ends.

More should be done to raise awareness of eating disorders in the young, no fan of Theresa May but good on her for talking about this serious condition that can shatter lives.
 
Rob Oldfield said:
There's a video of May raising the issue in parliament here. Have to say I was astonished to hear we're talking about over a quarter of type 1s.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1750137393049403466
Click to expand...
Well thank you for highlighting this action in Parliament and I'm ready to eat humble pie if TIDE does get implementation in practice - reasonably swiftly. Like you I find the suggestion of 25% of T1s being affected astounding. Perhaps my perception is biased, misled by hearing extremely little from young people with T1. On that basis we are very fortunate that there aren't more deaths arising from this problem.
 
nonethewiser said:
Heartbreaking to read of Megan's struggles & tragic end, really feel for her parents Lesley & Neal, sadly a nightmare for them that never ends.

More should be done to raise awareness of eating disorders in the young, no fan of Theresa May but good on her for talking about this serious condition that can shatter lives.
Click to expand...

I was made aware of this decades back in the early 1980s. Though there was no name for it at the time?
In fact so little was known, it was assumed it was (quote at the time when I was asked to never “do this.”)
The term used then (roughly.) was “naughty diabetics, wasting away. Because they wouldn’t take insulin?”
These youngsters at the time. (Teens about my own age?) had been spotted on a ward by my mum working in the department. She came home and expressed her concern.

I’m no fan of May, either.
But i’m glad there is better recognition & strive for understanding of it 40 years later.
 
Proud to be erratic said:
Well thank you for highlighting this action in Parliament and I'm ready to eat humble pie if TIDE does get implementation in practice - reasonably swiftly. Like you I find the suggestion of 25% of T1s being affected astounding. Perhaps my perception is biased, misled by hearing extremely little from young people with T1. On that basis we are very fortunate that there aren't more deaths arising from this problem.
Click to expand...
I've just read the paper, and I have some concerns. The statement in question "Disordered eating behaviours are reported in up to 40% of females and up to 15% of males with type 1 diabetes." references the following paper:

Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating in Type 1 Diabetes: Prevalence, Screening, and Treatment Options - PMC

This review is focused on the prevalence of eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors in individuals with type 1 diabetes. Recent research indicates higher prevalence rates of eating disorders among people with type 1 diabetes, as compared to ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

In this paper they differentiate between "anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, any eating disorder, and disordered eating". Disordered eating appears to include simply dieting to lose weight, and this is problematic I think:

"The broader term “disordered eating” encompasses symptoms that are not yet at a level of severity or frequency to be quantified as the diagnosable eating disorders [5], and it includes such behaviors as dieting for weight loss, binge eating, or calorie purging through self-induced vomiting, laxative or diuretic use, and/or excessive exercise [5]."

The other stuff is bad for sure, but lumping in dieting is surely only going to skew the figures.

Reference [5] above links to this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2551638/

In which they say "DEB was defined as the presence of any of the following in the past month, as reported in the cEDE interview: dieting (identified by item 3 on the cEDE, which was modified with an additional question to ensure that the individual had decreased dietary intake with the goal of losing weight rather than for diabetes management); objective binge-eating; self-induced vomiting for weight control; the use of diuretics, laxatives, or insulin omission for weight control; or intense, excessive exercise for weight control (defined as >30 min/day, predominantly for weight control, and not for fitness or leisure) (15)."

My highlight in bold above. DEB is "disturbed eating behavior" and cEDE is "Children's Eating Disorder Examination" (quenstionnaire)

I must admit I've not read much further, the first paper is a meta-study too, so each of the studies it draws from needs to be read and understood.

I may be wrong, but it does appear that the large percentages they are talking about includes those who are dieting to lose weight; I would need to look at the questionnaire but without doing so I also do wonder a little bit about how the questionnaire asks the question of whether someone is exercising (excessively, more than 30min/day, I'm in trouble!) and asks them to attribute it to weight loss vs fitness vs leisure - what if it's weight loss and fitness, which do they chose, etc., etc.

None of this is to say there aren't bad things happening with eating disorders for both diabetics and non-diabetics (which are reported in the various papers), and very much so the specific thing we think about re type 1 diabetics which is not taking insulin so that food is not absorbed (so that it can be eaten without weight gain, and in fact with weigh loss due to ketoacidosis), I just think the rather large percentages are perhaps not telling the right story.
 
Satan’s little helper said:
I was made aware of this decades back in the early 1980s. Though there was no name for it at the time?
In fact so little was known, it was assumed it was (quote at the time when I was asked to never “do this.”)
The term used then (roughly.) was “naughty diabetics, wasting away. Because they wouldn’t take insulin?”
These youngsters at the time. (Teens about my own age?) had been spotted on a ward by my mum working in the department. She came home and expressed her concern.

I’m no fan of May, either.
But i’m glad there is better recognition & strive for understanding of it 40 years later.
Click to expand...

Never heard that said before but labelling people naughty diabetics is patronising & unhelpful.
 
nonethewiser said:
Never heard that said before but labelling people naughty diabetics is patronising & unhelpful.
Click to expand...
I agree. It was also a different un-enlightened era. Mental health was miss-understood. (It was all missunderstood.) HCPs & also my mother was with the best intention kicking me into touch regarding longevity, at the time.
I was given a book given me on diagnosis as a kid? (Crudely graphic “novel.”) There was a “right & wrong” way they (the characters.) managed the diabetes. It evoked guilt & also a “pat on the head” how it was handled.
 
They say:
“it appears to affect as many as 144,000 of the 400,000 people in the UK with type 1 diabetes”
and they say (several times):
“their risk of mortality is 30 times that of age-matched controls”.

Supposively that is according to Guidance on Recognising and Managing Medical Emergencies in Eating Disorders; Royal College of Psychiatrists, May 2022, p4 (PDF) but I can’t find this spectacular “information” anywhere,
because the links seem to be wrong.

How can 144.000 people have a mortality that is 30 times that of 256.000 people, shouldn’t they be dead by now?
 
Inka said:
It says age-matched controls @Bubbleblower Just people of the same age from the general population?
Click to expand...
Indeed.

Mortality is the number of deaths within a particular society and within a particular period of time, in this case among type 1 diabetics within 5 years.

Imagine mortality among those controls was 3.33% in the past 5 years.
Then mortality among the remaining 144.000 type 1’s was how high?


All this report does is spreading lies for political and financial purposes, which is not in our interest.
 
I mean the control group wasn’t other people with Type 1, it was other (non-diabetic) people of the same age. So, someone who has both Type 1 and an Eating Disorder is at greatly increased risk of dying whereas people with ‘just’ Type 1 are at slightly increased risk compared with the control group of people of the same without those conditions.
 
A mortality of 3.33% in 5 years among people of average age of course isn’t even possible, because that would mean they get to be 150 years old on average. So no matter how you turn it around, the statement “their risk of mortality is 30 times that of age-matched controls” is complete nonsense!
And this is their main argument to get (more) funds, because "The issue of T1DE is simply too expensive to ignore".

Also, 40% of all male and 20% of all female T1 diabetics (they changed that from 15% just this week) now suddenly have a psychiatric desease and HCP’s are trained and instructed to identify them.
 
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