To be angry with Justine Roberts

[T1mum3]

For saying on Jamie Oliver's facebook live chat that we should tell children in primary schools that they will lose a limb due to diabetes if they don't eat right? I'm angry because amongst primary school age children in the UK 5355 have Type 1 diabetes, and 7 have Type 2. Type 1 is autoimmune so not related to lifestyle.

All those kids will be fighting day and night, taking around 6 injections a day or wearing an insulin pump (putting a cannula in every two days), pricking their fingers 10 times a day and counting every single morsel of carbohydrate that passes their lips to try and keep themselves well enough to go to school and take exercise. They don't need to know about amputations yet.

99 per cent of children with diabetes have Type 1. They are made more vulnerable to bullying everyday because of the obsession with childhood obesity.

Anyone who hasn't got the message about healthy diets and kids yet obviously needs some kind of intervention. Type 2 diabetes is a huge and growing issue. But making diabetes and amputations into a boogy man to scare small children is disgusting.

Me too MrsCampbell. Is that really you Justine? This isn't your normal posting style.

It seems to be a growing trend at the moment, with the moderators of the site playing down and dismissing disability related illness.

Thank you RObins, I worry so much about the psychological effects of having to focus so much on food due to carb counting as part of managing diabetes.

I'm glad you eventually got the help to address the issues it caused you.

Cancer research UK has an info graphic now sayings 4 out of 10 cancers can be prevented, then listing all the normal advice for a healthy lifestyle, as well as 'helpful' reminders to avoid radiation and minimise infection, and to breastfeed if possible...

Yes we all know not to smoke and to wear sunscreen and to eat healthily, but does that mean that those of us who develop cancer are to blame for our own illness and for the imminent downfall of the NHS?? No. No more than those of us who develop type 1 or 2 diabetes.

Of course there is a minority who could maybe have done something to prevent it, but my word, how dare anyone tar all with that brush?!

I say this as someone who is T1DM and caring for a family member with cancer.

I don't think either of us chose or could have prevented this, and I resent the comment in the 'I'm sorry but .......' Then listing diabetes amputation stats and moving straight to the bankruptcy of the NHS.

That's why the 'apology' was not good enough.

All this demonising of lifestyle makes me itchy - my mum is a chain smoker and she'll eventually get lung cancer as her dad did, I expect, she's had a hard life, does anybody deserve to be demonised for making bad choices when they are paying the price ultimately?

Diabetes - types 1 and 2 - is a progressive disease. Tight control is very difficult to achieve and while it can stave off complications for the longest time, it doesn't always avoid them entirely. Some people get complications soon after diagnosis while trying their hardest to control it. Others are less controlled but stay healthier much longer.

Part of the reason we're seeing an upsurge in amputations and other complications in Type 1s is that we are now starting to LIVE long enough to get these conditions, as opposed to dying fairly young of overnight hypos because home blood testing wasn't around until the late 80s (yes, low blood sugar is as dangerous as high, no, hypos don't always have an obvious cause so are difficult to avoid sometimes, and what with 6 insulin doses, blood testing and the other calculations we have to make in a day, we don't always dose right) and we're doing better at avoiding kidney failure at a fairly young age thanks to better screening for it meaning problems can be diagnosed and treated treated at an early stage.

Similar for T2 - it is very dangerous because it comes on very slowly and the damage to the body is being done long before the person begins to feel unwell. T1 at least has a very rapid onset and you certainly know about it quickly.

It's a bastard of a disease to live with but the utter ignorance that gets spewed about it is the hardest part IME.

I think it has become so much part of the zeitgeist to demonise people with diabetes that perhaps Justine doesn't understand that it's as discriminatory to demonise diabetes as it is any other medical condition or disability, hence the conditional and, in my view, glib apology.

"for T2 - it is very dangerous because it comes on very slowly and the damage to the body is being done long before the person begins to feel unwell."

This.

People are less likely to get tested for T2D if they know they'll face stigma rather than support, and if it's perceived as a condition that fat, stupid people have brought on themselves.

On a positive note, this thread has been much more informative than anything Jamie Smuggins Oliver has had to say on the subject.

I would also be really interested to hear Diabetes UK's take on his scare tactics.

Yes poor show with the half baked apology. My son has type 1 and unless you have lived with this miserable condition you have absolutely no right to lump the two together and scare monger. Food is just one part of controlling diabetes. Hormones especially puberty make his blood sugars look like a rollercoaster. Add in exercise, adrenaline, stress, heat, cold, all the things that affect blood sugar levels and you may have some idea on how hard it is to keep sugars in range. I haven't had a full night sleep since he was diagnosed 2 years ago. By all means use your platform to educate but please educate yourself first before causing distress. And then have the grace to apologise properly!

I don't have time to write much right now, but I just wanted to say that I agree with every word you have said op.
I have a son in his late teens who was diagnosed with type 1 at just a year old. It's hugely affected his life (and mine to be honest) The condition is incredibly all consuming and difficult to live with and totally misunderstood by so many people.

I really don't think people have a clue what it's like if they don't live with it day in day out. There is a phrase another mumsnetter mentioned to me about being a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes that rings so true. "Diabetes never sleeps, and nor do the parents." I really wish people could understand just how serious Type 1 diabetes is. Sadly this is never going to happen whilst the word diabetes is being thrown around as a blanket term and used to demonise a certain demographic of people.

I also have to agree about the non apology. Frankly if the terminology for this was being discussed prior to going on air and you then went ahead and allowed blanket terms to be used in the live discussion then this makes it even worse in my eyes.

It does all sound a bit blamey. Distinguishing between the two types just makes it sound more so.

Yes let's give them different names so we know who has "good" diabetes and who has "bad" diabetes and shame them appropriately.

I have worsening prediabetes and will probably end up with "type 2" even though my bmi is closer to underweight than overweight. Just like my mother and her mother and probably even further back.

Having followed District Nurses around on their shifts looking after diabetic people who are needing them to do their insulin for them because they can't leave the house or see any more due to amputations or blindness, this is EXACTLY what I came home and said to my kids!! Diabetes and dementia are draining the NHS and the statistics for this increasing are horrifying. I think we need scare tactics for obesity, the same as we had for smoking. It does massive damage to people.

People are less likely to get tested for T2D if they know they'll face stigma rather than support, and if it's perceived as a condition that fat, stupid people have brought on themselves.

Also true for gestational diabetes. I've known people whose GDM wasn't diagnosed until the baby started measuring too big/had too much fluid/had IUGR because they'd refused the GTT test as they weren't overweight and didn't understand there are multiple risk factors.

*off

*steppinstone+, how do you suppose you scare people into not having diabetes or dementia, considering those illnesses are more likely to be not self-inflicted?

I'm also cross about Justine's comments on the live chat because the question she was asked was really valid. What should we do about teenagers' nutrition once they are more in control over what they buy to eat?

Instead of the answer about scaring little children about limbs "dropping off", there was a debate to be had about how to reach the teen group, research into what drives their purchasing, how to find the right role models for them to make healthy eating cool. What role does public provision of sports facilities play for this age group.

There's also a huge debate to be had about how to fund diabetes care to minimise the risk of complications (which are the bulk of the budget at the moment). Provision of loan continuous glucose monitors annually to PWD so they can see how food affect them and what's effective, better research into LCHF diets for different age groups? Better education, adequate access to test strips for people T2D. Making sure that all people with diabetes get their check ups.

Again, boogy man, foot stealing, sugar driven scare stories for kids don't help with any of this stuff.

Manumission/AppleMagic - I agree and I was really proud of my 9 year old son who has T1D when he was told he didn't look like he had Type 2, and he said "not everyone with Type 2 is obese you know."

On the other hand, people with Type 1 can get very frustrated because 100 per cent of people with T1D have zero per cent chance of preventing their condition or controlling it through diet, whereas some people with T2D can.

YANBU OP fucking hell!

• No distinguishing between two very different conditions

• No acknowledgement that being overweight is a risk factor not The Cause of type 2 (DH is another very slim type 2 with an equally slim type 2 mother)

• Apparently no clue how damaging this type of scare tactic can be in any sort of lifestyle-related health issue. Seriously, what is a child supposed to do with this information? They don't do the shopping or cook for themselves. All it can do is make them anxious about their relatives' health and about their own diet - which is often perfectly fine but not in line with the BS 'healthy eating' message that is peddled in schools (don't get me started on the NHS dietary recommendations for type 2 diabetics )

• peddling the myth that patients are responsible for the crisis in the NHS when the truth is it's been starved of cash for ages and is now being sold off in chunks.

A few people have mentioned parallels with anti-smoking campaigns. These pretty much stopped working quite a few years ago. The smoking rate plateaued for ages, no matter how many nasty pictures they showed smokers (even likening them to rotting meat in one delightful advert) and has only really started dipping again with the advent of vaping. Turns out the reasons a lot of people have great difficulty stopping smoking are really quite complex. This has become apparent over the years as smoking rates have become concentrated in people who live in poverty and those who have MH issues. All those shaming messages do is make them feel even more shit so they reach for the fags.

Poor show Justine, and a poor apology.

These illnesses really need renaming to avoid this confusion

Cardiac arrests and heart attacks are different conditions with different names but people mix them up all the time -we need more education.

Yes let's give them different names so we know who has "good" diabetes and who has "bad" diabetes and shame them appropriately.

Like the good AIDS and bad AIDS

@BitOutOfPractice

It was an apology. But it was a pretty flippant one.

Will you be putting something on the JO site to make things clearer Justine.

I'm really happy to, yes. And the apology was genuine. Not meant to be at all flippant.