Stakeholders challenged to take action at first Green Diabetes Summit was reported by Michael Monostra for Healio.com/endocrinology, 19 November 2021.
A group of diabetes researchers, providers, government officials and representatives from device manufacturers and patient organizations are aiming to make the diabetes device industry more environmentally sustainable.
The advent of continuous glucose monitors and other advanced devices has allowed for improvements in diabetes self-management. However, these devices also use raw materials and produce medical waste, according to David C. Klonoff, MD, medical director of the Diabetes Research Institute at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in San Mateo, California.
To further discussions on sustainability with diabetes devices, a group of stakeholders met at the Green Diabetes Summit on July 21 to discuss some of the biggest issues surrounding diabetes technology and waste, discuss the formation of a coalition to address sustainability, and draft a Green Declaration with 12 goals for patients, health care professionals, government agencies and manufacturers. A summary of the summit and the declaration were published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology.
“We want to raise consciousness that will lead to new attitudes and new behaviors toward sustainability and waste management,” said David C. Klonoff, MD.
Read more: Stakeholders challenged to take action at first Green Diabetes Summit
Decision Fatigue? It’s a real thing and this is an interesting twist on a major issue that impacts so many of us living with T1D. What doctors wish patients knew about decision fatigue was written by Sara Berg for AMA-Assn.org, 19 November 2021.
Making decisions day in and day out—whether they are as easy picking a route home from work or as difficult as navigating a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic—can be exhausting and cause people to feel overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. This is known as decision fatigue, which is a state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions. You have probably experienced decision fatigue during the pandemic because it has added new layers of complexity to the daily choices we are confronted with.
The AMA’s What Doctors Wish Patients Knew™ series provides physicians with a platform to share what they want patients to understand about today’s health care headlines. AMA member Lisa MacLean, MD, is a psychiatrist and chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health System, an AMA Health System Program member. Decision fatigue is “the idea that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more decisions over the course of a day becomes worse. The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become,” said McLean.
“Every day, just in our personal lives, we are making a ton of decisions. And a lot of these decisions you are not consciously making,” she said. For example, “you open the refrigerator door and sometimes the only thing that’s in there is bagels and that’s a pretty easy decision. “But if there’s a lot of different things in terms of … what do I eat, what do I wear, what do I do with my day especially on a day off, that can create stress,” Dr. MacLean added, noting that “by the time the average person goes to bed, they’ve made over 35,000 decisions and all of those decisions take time and energy, and certainly can deplete us.”
SO … if the average person has made over 35,000 decisions in a day, what’s the statististic for the person with T1D??? Feel free to discuss this with your endocrinologist, if you feel overwhelmed at times. They may better understand this when it is so similar to the fatigue they feel as physicians.
Read more: What doctors wish patients knew about decision fatigue
I am all in on the green diabetes movement. I have been saying for years it is high time we have products and services that are far more environmentally concious.