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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

http://www.aotearoadiabetescollective.org.nz/, https://linktr.ee/aotearoadiabetescollective

Aotearoa Diabetes Collective, Hamilton (2025)

27/07/2025

The diabetes community is so amazing and we know that we can all learn so much for one another. We would love to hear your best tips for managing diabetes! Feel free to share more than one.

These can be tips for all types of diabetes, whether you have pre-diabetes, gestational diabetes, type3c, Monogenic diabetes, type 1, type 2 or another form! We would love to see you all share! We aim to create a space for the diabetes community that is inclusive for all people with diabetes, regardless of type or how it is managed!

Fun fact, if you search there are over 62 thousand posts! If you search there are only 1000+ posts! This is something we need to address and support a growing community of all people with diabetes feeling safe to share their experience and tips with one another!

25/07/2025

Did you know it’s normal for glucose levels to rise after meals and fluctuate throughout the day! You don’t need to chase a perfect flat line, because even a healthy pancreas can’t achieve that all the time!

This is a CGM tracing from Solita who doesn’t have diabetes - it shows how her blood glucose levels rose after an Up&Go.

We often see people on social media demonising what are actually normal glucose levels and healthy responses to eating kai. The thing that causes damage to blood vessels is a large percentage of high blood glucose levels sustained over a long period of time. If you have times when your glucose levels go above range, you aren’t a failure this is NORMAL, it’s about making sure that you spend the majority of time (ideally more than 70% of time) with your glucose levels in target range.

23/07/2025

Trulicity (Dulaglutide) is now available for new prescriptions again for people with type 2 diabetes who meet Pharmac special authority funding criteria.

This post explores what that might mean for you if you have type 2 diabetes, the differences between Trulicity and Victoza and what it means for funding of other diabetes medications like Jardiance or Jardiamet.

If you want to learn more about Trulicity check out Healthify or have a chat to your healthcare team.

21/07/2025

Appreciation post: Stacey Dunlop is one of our team members who works diligently behind the scenes helping to run the Advanced Diabetes Management Course. Stacey is now starting patently leave and we will miss her support hugely!

Stacey started her nursing career alongside Claire when they completed their NETP graduate year together. She has worked in the Waikato and Hauraki in many areas of nursing including as a primary care, ED, day-stay surgery and as a diabetes nurse specialist. She is an amazing colleague and friend, a hard-working māmā, a talented cook/baker and an active member of her community including her role as ‘Head Bitch’ for Good Bi***es - an amazing organisation that bakes goods weekly for community groups. She cares deeply about improving equitable access to specialist diabetes care and many people have had the privilege of working with Stacey as their nurse.

Thank you for all of your Mahi Stace! We wish you all the best on your parental leave and look forward to having baby snuggles!

Note this is a very old picture of Stacey and Solita, hence the wine!

13/07/2025

Diabetes dilemma: have you noticed that you have gained weight after starting an insulin pump, or moving to a new insulin pump system with automated insulin delivery?

You are not alone, but it is not a bad thing, in fact for many people it is actually a good sign that they are getting ENOUGH insulin.

Trigger warning ‼️ this post does discuss weight loss caused by not having enough insulin. Please proceed with caution if this has been an issue for you in the past.

We have created this post to explore this common experience and explain
- why some people may gain weight when they start using an insulin pump (and their glucose levels improve)
- how insulin helps your body to not only USE energy, but also STORE energy and water
- why your body may gain fat, why this is a good sign, and
- what to do if you are worried about gaining weight after starting an insulin pump / AID.

We haven’t talked about how the opposite can happen in people who have had quite good glucose control on insulin pen injections but have had to ‘eat up’ to their insulin doses.. Many people actually lose weight when they start an insulin pump / AID from not having excessive amounts of insulin and not having to eat more glucose than they want/need and find their total daily dose of insulin is lower on an insulin pump.

Please remember that diabetes and health is super individual, and your relationship with your body is also individual. Please reach out to your diabetes team, especially a dietitian and/or psychologist if you have any concerns!

10/07/2025

If you are interested in reading about some of the diabetes technology research we have been involved with, a new paper has just been published on the in the Diabetes Technology Society Journal. This study was a first in human feasibility study that looked at 32 people with type 1 diabetes and 10 people with type 2 diabetes using a fully closed loop automated insulin delivery system over 12 weeks! The participants did not need to bolus for carbohydrate!! The study demonstrated that a fully closed loop algorithm that adjusts its own parameters and does not require announcement of meals was feasable in a cohort of adults with type 1 AND type 2 diabetes! Exciting stuff!

You can read the full article here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/19322968251349528

Wilkinson, T., Donnelly, S., Lever, C., Williman, J., Meier, R., Boucsein, A., … de Bock, M. (2025, July 3). First in human feasibility study: Automated insulin delivery utilizing a self‑adapting algorithm in adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/19322968251349528

09/07/2025

When you make a lifestyle change for your health it doesn’t just impact you - it has the potential to impact your whole whānau.

Making small sustainable changes can turn into generational changes. We often talk about this in clinic, how a change from cooking with butter to canola or olive oil can become the new norm for a family. Changing to light blue milk, cooking with less salt, even adding more vegetables to your plate can all seem like a small change but if it becomes the new normal in your whānau that has lasting effects.

If you grow up in a household where it is normal for people to light blue milk and have plenty of vegetables this becomes your tamariki’s default. When they grow up they don’t need to make the effort to change these things, they are the normal default.

Next time you are thinking about making a lifestyle change, think about how that has the potential to impact your children/tamariki and mokopuna. This mindset shift can be really helpful as we often find it easier to do things for others than we do for ourselves.

Let us know below if there are any changes you have made for your health that have become a new normal for your whānau?

09/07/2025

Sustainable changes - using measuring cups to help with portioning. Having consistent amounts of food can help with getting more predictable glucose levels.

For those of you who carb count you will be very familiar with using measuring cups to count carbs, however they can also be a great tool to help with people who don’t need to carb count. They can be useful for other foods other than carbs too.

For instance having a half a cup of cereal with a quarter cup of yoghurt or a cup of rice with your dinner and a cup and a half of stirfry. You can also use measuring cups to ensure you are getting a decent amount of vegetables such as having half or a full cup of frozen vegetables.

It can also help with portioning if you are trying to reduce portion sizes with your meals. This can be particularly useful for people who are using GLP1 agonists or other medication for weight loss where having smaller portion sizes can help to minimise side effects from having slowed digestion.

06/07/2025

Have you seen posts about how much sugar is in a bottle of coke? How do they make you feel? Some people can feel quite guilty when they see these, and while education about the amount of sugar can be helpful for changing behaviour, it doesn’t explain WHY people crave coke when their glucose levels are high.

Diabetes is such a complex condition, it isn’t simply a case of eating or drinking too much sugar. We thought rather than just telling you how much sugar is in a bottle of coke, we would share some insights into WHY your body craves foods and drinks that are high in sugar when you have diabetes and high glucose levels!

Knowing the WHY can help relieve the guilt and put you in a better position to know how to support your body to actually crave less sugar in the first place.

Next time you’re craving a coke or a similar drink that is high in sugar (and possibly caffeine) don’t feel guilty, instead get curious about why! Have a think about whether your glucose levels are high already and if this is leading your body to crave sugar. Or are you tired, hungry, sad or stressed?

And if you need some extra support with managing high glucose levels feel free to reach out to us via our website, we offer appointments for all people with all forms of diabetes and prediabetes.

03/07/2025

Common signs of type 1 diabetes:

1. Tiredness or intense fatigueYour body cells are starved of energy so there is often intense fatigue!

2. Thirst - like unquenchable thirst!! You might start drinking litres more fluid every day!

3. Peeing a lot… like a lot a lot. In children sometimes they will start bed wetting or having accidents.

4. Weight loss!! Usually sudden and unintentional. This is because your body is starving and burning fat for energy (which also results in ketones).

5. Hunger!! Your body is starving which drives you to eat more high energy foods!

6. Infections!! These are often things like thrush, skin infections, urinary infections.

But do you know why people get these symptoms?

Type 1 diabetes usually comes on quite suddenly (but not always)… it is not a ‘disease of childhood’ - over half of people with type 1 are diagnosed as adults. Remember type 1 is an auto-immune condition where the immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas which produce insulin. There is a sudden lack of insulin so glucose is trapped in the blood stream! —> blood glucose levels get very high very fast!

Your body cells are starved of energy which makes you feel super TIRED! Water follows sugar, so you become dehydrated and get super thirsty!!! Your kidneys try to get rid of the extra glucose by p*eing it out (and water follows sugar) so you p*e like a race horse! Because your body is starved of energy it starts to burn fat as an alternative fuel… and you are also p*eing out lots of glucose so people tend to have rapid weight loss… But also feel very hungry! And lastly people often present with infections… bugs love sugar right! And high blood glucose levels lower your immune system! So high blood glucose levels and a low immune system means a prime environment for infections.

Knowing the signs of type 1 diabetes can prevent someone developing diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) when they are diagnosed!

Let us know did you have any or all of these symptoms when you or your whānau member was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? 👇

29/06/2025

Sustainable changes! If you are someone that takes insulin with your meals, giving your bolus 10-15 minutes before you eat can make a huge difference to your time in range and reducing the post meal glucose spike!

Why? Because our funded rapid acting insulins like Novorapid, Humalog and Apidra take about 10-15 minutes to start working and peaked around 1.5-2 hours after the bolus dose.

If you think about trying to mimic a pancreas, it is really hard to do this with the tools we have because endogenous insulin (insulin that is made by our pancreas) gets into the blood stream and works a lot quicker than injected insulin to match the absorption of carbohydrate.

Did you know that even when you are thinking about food, preparing food and start salivating your pancreas would usually produce tiny amounts of insulin (and digestive enzymes) to start priming your body cell receptors for the meal…

If you are organised enough to take your insulin 10-15 minutes before you eat it can really help ensure the insulin matches the glucose absorption from carbohydrate and minimise the post meal spike. This can be especially useful in the morning when we tend to be more resistant to insulin. Of course you don’t want to do this if you are unsure about when you are going to eat, or if you may get distracted and forget to start eating as this could lead to hypoglycaemia. But if you have a routine meal where you know how much carbohydrates you are going to eat and you know that you are definitely going to eat them in the next 10-15 minutes it can be really helpful. Even trying to pre-bolus for 1 meal a day can make big differences to improving your time in range.

Pre-bolusing isn’t just for people with type 1 diabetes - it can be useful for anyone that takes insulin with their meals. Let us know below do you pre-bolus for any of your meals?

29/06/2025

Finally!! Part 3 in our Type 3c diabetes series!

This post covers some of the many ways that different forms of type 3c (pancreatogenic) diabetes may be managed.

Insulin is often a key component along with pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy.

For people who have had a total pancreatectomy their diabetes is usually managed very similarly to type 1 diabetes with the addition of pancreatic enzymes with every meal.

For people who still have some pancreatic function - such as those with chronic pancreatitis or cystic fibrosis related diabetes or who have had a partial pancreatectomy, their diabetes can be managed in a variety of ways and may or may not include pancreatic enzyme replacement.

Remember to scroll back and recap the other posts in this series! And feel free to drop any questions below 👇

Aotearoa Diabetes Collective

27/07/2025

25/07/2025

23/07/2025

21/07/2025

13/07/2025

10/07/2025

09/07/2025

09/07/2025

06/07/2025

03/07/2025

29/06/2025

29/06/2025

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Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
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Thursday	9am - 5pm
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