Over the past few decades, type-1 athletes have fought the conventional view in medicine that moderate, predictable lifestyles are necessary for people on insulin. As world-class cyclists, swimmers, and mountaineers continue to make headlines for overcoming the challenges of a life with diabetes, doctors are beginning to change their perspectives. Yet research on the effects of exercise on diabetes management has been, so far, limited.
The disconnect between health care, research, medical technology and the individual has left many questions to be answered. In a way, it has been up to the athletes themselves to discover and advocate the importance of exercise for people with diabetes.
Their findings have been uniform—managing diabetes is nothing more than solving a multi-variable equation. And that, thanks to advances in scientific technology, the critical variables are already known to us (carbohydrate consumption, insulin dosages, blood-glucose readings, energy exertion).
But given that variables in their “diabetic equation” are far less likely to be fixed, why have athletes been more successful with their blood-sugar control? This is precisely the question on which doctors have been hung up for so long.
With the help of a world-class medical support team, prominent academic consultants, and cutting-edge biotechnology, Triabetes athletes will prove that physical activity does in fact lead to improved glucose control. More importantly, Triabetes will use its conclusion to explore a new question: “Okay, so what makes the type-1 athlete such a successful diabetes manager?” Is it strictly physiological, or can success of the type-1 athlete be attributed to his or her manner of thinking—the way in which he or she approaches diabetes as a necessary condition of life.
Assuming the latter to be true, it would be possible to teach type-1 non-athletes how to approach their condition from a new angle. With a simple lesson in algebra, they would be equipped to solve their very own “diabetic equation.” At first this might seem overly technical, but given time, any struggling person with diabetes would learn to think algebraically. Eventually, managing diabetes would become intuitive—just as it is for type-1 athletes.
During the Triabetes team’s intensive training period, athlete data will be processed for use in a comprehensive clinical research study. Simultaneously, the athletes and research team will be working alongside computer programmers to develop an online diabetes management utility, which will help them analyze their data more critically. Eventually this application will be available to general public so that people who hope to improve their diabetes management won’t need to become an Ironman—they’ll just have to think like one.
In this way, Triabetes is doing much more than producing a motivational documentary. It is exploring the science of inspiration.
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