Think Like a Pancreas: A Practical Guide to Managing Diabetes with Insulin--Completely Revised and Updated (Marlowe Diabetes Library)

Gary Scheiner's first edition of this book was excellent, it's hard to believe that he could improve on it so much. Full disclosure: I've used Gary's services at Integrated Diabetes Services and benefited greatly from his help. My diabetes technology blog is mentioned in the book. I have had type 1 diabetes for 40 years, this book informed and motivated me. Think Like a Pancreas starts with Gary's diabetes diagnosis story - this guy really gets diabetes because he's had Type 1 since 1985. He has used many different types of diabetes insulin pumps, blood glucose meters, and continuous glucose meters (CGM). The second chapter (What's the Dang Diddly Point?) focuses on the reasons why blood glucose (BG) control is important. Instead of telling you just about 'complications', Gary explains that improved control will give you energy, reduce your appetite, keep you healthier, and give you the ability to lift cars with one hand. OK, I'm just kidding about the last one. But this chapter is motivating and empowering, you'll WANT to work at improving you BGs after reading this one. As he says at the start of the chapter "Taking care of diabetes is really just an ongoing series of small sacrifices, costs, mental efforts, and time commitments." We're never going to achieve perfection, but we can constantly improve diabetes control. The remaining chapters talk about: the different types of diabetes; the keys to controlling these, including even lancet choices; basal (background) and bolus(meals, BG corrections) insulins; the many factors that can affect your BG levels (and how even the best controlled are out of range 25% of the time); places to get support and help, including a huge number of excellent websites; and companies that provide various diabetes-related products. The appendices are: logsheets; carb factors for various foods; glycemic indices for foods; and a useful table of carb amounts to cover exercise. Phew, a lot of information. But Gary writes extremely well and this is book is easy to read, though you'll end up highlighting and marking many parts of it. I strongly recommend this essential book for people with diabetes, parents of children with diabetes, and medical folks who are treating diabetic patients. Over the years I've purchased many copies (1st edition and this one) to give to folks who are struggling because of diabetes. It's just excellent.

An exceptional book! I've been a Type 1 diabetic for 21 yrs and my control was going seriously downhill (maybe that should read uphill) due to simply not knowing I did not know so much I needed to know. I thought treatment involved a nurse and a different doctor every year, endless finger pricking and injecting and I had given up trying to find anyone who truly understood. This meant a race to do as much as possible as quickly as possible as I knew I would not be around for long of course. It was a debilitatingly sad place to be in. I'd warily circled the book for three months. Thank heavens I did. What a side splittingly funny, straight talking, refreshing easy to understand, educational and life changing read. My kindle edition now has a paperback twin which is slowly becoming dog eared. Thanks to the clarity and easy to understand explanations my control, outlook and attitude is radically different in one month. I have also not laughed so much in ages and feel empowered. If you think you've been through it all and heard it all and cannot face one more well meaning stock standard piece of advice or support give this book a try. It may well save your life - it has mine. I can now see a long well managed life ahead with lots of ongoing education and fun. Thank you Mr Scheiner.

If only this book had existed decades ago when I was diagnosed type one. If only I’d learned all it had to tell me about my body and how it’s grappling with this stuff called insulin, both a giver of life and a bringer of death. If only I’d known what I do now, I might have spared myself decades of mismanagement and complications. This book is beautiful and very informative, and the info it contains is life changing. It is simply written but not dumbed down, and it lays out very important info about how insulin works and how to best manage using it. After reading it and employing the tools it discusses, I’ve gotten a MUCH better understanding of my disease - it’s an education I sadly never got from any doctor. I can’t thank the author enough for writing such an engaging and important book. EVERY DIABETIC AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS SHOULD READ IT. In fact, I think they should give every newly diagnosed T1D a copy as they leave the hospital - or maybe even before! It really should be required reading, and I’ve told my endo that now on numerous occasions - lol.

I know this book is controversial in some circles but I actually liked it and found some useful information in it. Or, more like reinforcement of useful information. The 'new' things--- or thing--- that the book gave me was a quick way to figure daily insulin requirements. Everything else (and that as well, had I looked further) is available online somewhere. So you don't really need the book, except for the convenience of having everything gathered in one place. There's plenty about how the pancreas works, about how diabetes works, etc. etc. That's all good basic diabetes education and it rises well above the absurd grade school level of pamphlets given out by endocrinologists, who seem to want to maintain a certain mystique about the disease. If you start out knowing only a little this book will bring you a long way forward, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, if you're already knowledgeable, you won't find a lot here except, as I said above, having the convenience of everything in one place. Still, I fail to understand the severe critics of this book. The information is indeed practical and accurate, there is no hype or promise of magic cures --- just straightforward "how to use insulin" advice. Four stars. One star off for redundancy with information found easily elsewhere.

This book is not for those who are looking for a quick-and-easy fix to their insulin regimen, but it is a wealth of knowledge with fantastic resources all in one place. I've been Type I for 22 years, on a pump for 11, and thought I knew all the ins and outs of diabetes management already, but picked up the book in the hopes that it would help me bring my sugars into a range acceptable for conception. Although a lot of it I did already know, there was a fair bit that I didn't - or that had changed in recent years. With the help of this book, I dropped my AIC nearly a whole percentage point in just 3 months! I especially appreciated the tables and formulas (both within the body of the text and in the appendices); for example, I didn't realize that there were actual formulas for how many carbs to eat for certain types of exercise, and the tables to that effect have been a Godsend. The glycemic index table is one of the most extensive I've seen, and since I have the kindle version of this book, I can carry around this resource with me everywhere on my smartphone. If you're already an expert, you can still learn something from this book, and if you're a novice but looking for all that hidden info - here it is. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to take further control, and is willing to go the extra mile to manage their diabetes successfully.

I purchased this book a couple of months ago, and I've found the information within to be very helpful to me. My youngest son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in May, and since then we've been trying to learn all we can about his disease and how best to manage it. It was very encouraging to both my son and myself to read this book knowing that the author himself is a diabetic and has lived a long, active, and healthy life despite his diabetes. The information in this book is very detailed and comprehensive. It answered many of the questions I had (and many that I'd never even considered!), and I'm thankful to have it on hand as a resource as we continue to learn about diabetes and how to manage my son's care. I think that one of the biggest praises for the book, however, came from our diabetes team; during a recent appointment with our diabetes educator, I pulled out my copy of "Think Like a Pancreas" and she said, "Oh, I LOVE that book!" High praise, indeed! =)

This book should be given to every single new parent that has to deal with this disease. This is the Bible of Diabetes and needs to be read by everyone. Parents need to be forced to read it and not allowed to leave the hospital until they do so and also school nurses, teachers, grandparents and other family members ... every single person that your child depends on should read this. I highly highly recommend this. Another book that you might want to look at AFTER you've read this one is Sugar Surfing. You need to understand how this disease works before getting into that one and this one walks you through everything. You'll also want to order a notebook and a package of highlighters and post-it notes because you'll need them. We talk to soooo many people who are so uneducated about their child's life-threatening disease that it just blows my mind. This is your child we're talking about and this isn't a cold they've come down with, this is serious business.

I was fortunate to see Gary Scheiner speak at a Type 1 Summit just after my son was diagnosed. My head was swimming with new information, and I ordered the book as soon as I got home. Since then, I have referred to Think Like a Pancreas almost every day. My son is six with all that entails: extremely active lifestyle, exposure to disease and temptation at school on a daily basis, "couch potato" weekends, and all sorts of unexpected challenges. This book gave excellent, funny, in-depth explanations of how the body works and the effects of insulin. It's become my security blanket. My father has lived with T1D for 60 years and he is now reading Think Like a Pancreas. He has firsthand (and finger) experience with the technology of yore - also detailed in TLAP - and is now looking into CGM and other advances. This book has been a revelation for my family, and I can't recommend it enough.

Having just read Ginger Vieira's wonderful Your Diabetes Science Experiment, I was at first perturbed at beginning what I thought to be a too technical book by Gary Steiner. I am delighted to have been proven wrong with this non-patronising, hugely empowering guide which compliments Ginger's book exceptionally well. This book has become one of my bibles on managing my Type 1 diabetes. I have recommended it to my Endo who willingly listens to my thoughts and hail it here for any interested in intelligent and entertaining writing on this subject.

Leider ist das Buch nur auf Englisch verfügbar. Im Deutschen habe ich jedoch noch kein so gutes Buch über Diabetesmanagement gefunden. Was macht das Buch einzigartig: 1. Es ist von einem Arzt mit Diabetes geschrieben. Die Erfahrung ist im ganzen Buch spürbar. Das Buch ist mehr aus der Perspektive eines Betroffenen geschrieben als aus der dozierenden Perspektive eines Arztes. 2. Scheiner zerlegt den Einfluss auf den Blutzucker in jeden einzelnen Faktor, wie z. B. Krankheit, Sport, Nahrungszusammensetzung etc. Ich habe noch keine so systematische Analyse des Themas gefunden. Darum verwende ich das Buch auch gerne immer wieder als Nachschlagewerk.

O livro traz muitas informações técnicas sobre os diversos (e pouco divulgados) parâmetros que influenciam o controle de glicemia no sangue e possíveis ações que o diabético pode tomar para normalizá-lo. É leitura obrigatória para quem precisa dar uma mãozinha ao próprio organismo quando o pâncreas não mais o faz.

After being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, I soon realised I had to play a very active role in managing my blood sugar level . If my blood sugar level were to drop too low, even temporarily, I might behave erratically or pass out. If my blood sugar level were to be persistently high, I could face serious health problems such as blindness, heart attack or kidney failure. In order to succeed in controlling my blood sugar level I had to balance my insulin doses against factors such as food and exercise, and to do that I needed appropriate knowledge. For a time, trying to get the required depth of knowledge was frustrating. There was not enough information in the free leaflets, the tabloid-style websites or the general-purpose books on diabetes aimed primarily at Type 2 diabetics. Then thankfully I found this book. The author of this book has medical training and has had Type 1 diabetes for many years, and so he knows what he is talking about from both the professional viewpoint and the patient viewpoint. He has attempted to write a very readable book about a very serious subject, and generally he has succeeded. There are just a few places where the text seems a bit too flippant, and in contrast Chapter 7 is quite mathematical, but that chapter can be skipped and returned to at a later date. This book is American, but in most places it gives the normal British units for blood sugar concentration in brackets after the normal American units. There are just a few places where this American book may not be fully appropriate for British readers, such as references to foods or sweets that are not generally available in Britain, and analogies to baseball. I believe that this book has given me all the knowledge I need to manage my Type 1 Diabetes, and I am no longer looking for other sources of information.

Consigliatissimo a tutte le persone con diabete o che hanno a che fare con persone con questa malattia! Copre davvero tutti gli aspetti e tutti i vari tipi di diabete, spiegando nei minimi particolari come funziona il corpo e come reagisce alle varie problematiche che possono insorgere, dalle ipoglicemie alla chetosi. L'unica pecca è che essendo del 2012 non è aggiornato sull'argomento microinfusori (per quanto però vi sia una sezione interamente dedicata al "fine tuning" della basale, che secondo me da sola varrebbe già il prezzo richiesto per il libro intero), sensori CGM/FGM (c'è però un'altra pubblicazione dedicata, dello stesso autore, risalente al 2015), e insuline (la più recente di cui si parla è Lantus, niente Tresiba né Fiasp etc). Concludo dicendo che l'inglese utilizzato è molto semplice!