Diabetics Doing Natural Remedies with Emily Swancutt

[00:00:01] Rob Howe: Welcome to the Diabetics Doing Things podcast, where we explore the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics around the world. I'm your host, Rob Howe, 11-year type 1 diabetic and Diabetics Doing Things founder. Diabetics Doing Things is looking for sponsors. For more information, visit our website at DiabeticsDoingThings.com forward slash sponsorships. This week's guest is Emily Swancutt, who shares with us her pizza temptations, natural holistic treatments, and dreams of a cure. All right, we are live, episode three of Diabetics Doing Things podcast, and we have our guest from Portland, I guess Eugene, Oregon, Emily Swancutt. Welcome to the show. Hello.

[00:00:47] Emily Swancutt: It's great to be here.

[00:00:49] Rob Howe: So let's just jump right into it. So we've known each other for like three or four years through our friend Alexis Girl Novak Yoga on Instagram. who now has like 10,000 followers. Big shout out to Alexis on her 10K. She's a huge supporter of this as well, so I definitely want to give her the big shout out.

[00:01:13] Emily Swancutt: All right, so I'm Emily Swancutt. I was diagnosed when I was 18 years old. I'm 27 now, so I've been a diabetic for quite a while now. It feels like forever. I was diagnosed on Valentine's Day As a matter of fact Which was very It was a nice thing Because now I can always remember I'm terrible at remembering dates But that's a holiday kind of

[00:01:38] Rob Howe: I'm kind of the same way It always sneaks up on me But New Year's Day I was diagnosed So it's always easy to remember No way

[00:01:47] Emily Swancutt: I'm not on the pump like you are And most cool kids are I'm doing the insulin shots with the syringes and pin needles. I have looked into the pumps a couple times, but when I have conversations with my doctor, it's kind of like, don't fix it if it's not broken, because I do have good A1Cs, and I manage pretty well with the shots.

[00:02:14] Rob Howe: And you're mostly vegan, right? Or is that something I just made up?

[00:02:20] Emily Swancutt: Yes, yeah. So Alexis actually was the one who she had this challenge. I think it was like three or four months ago where you, you know, just kind of make some life changes. And so one of them was vegan. And before that, I was a vegetarian. But yeah, so I still do occasionally cheat and eat cheese. Pizza is like the devil. And I can't help myself sometimes. But yeah, ever since I've been on the vegan diet, though, the amount of insulin I take doesn't exceed four units in a day. And then I still take the same amount of Lantus, which is 15 units every night.

[00:03:04] Rob Howe: And that just kind of keeps you level throughout the day.

[00:03:08] Emily Swancutt: Mm-hmm, yeah.

[00:03:10] Rob Howe: So you're 18 and you got diagnosed. That's a little bit older than, like, I even am a little bit older. I was 16. So when you were 18, you got diagnosed. So really, like, lived your whole young adult life without diabetes. And then, like, tell us a little bit about, like, what it was like, you know, Valentine's Day. I'm sure, like, you're getting hit up with lots of candy and chocolate. So, you know, what was that like, senior year of high school, getting diagnosed?

[00:03:37] Emily Swancutt: Yeah, I didn't even – I was sick for quite a while. I just didn't – I've never been one to, like, complain. And so I had these symptoms, you know. I was peeing all the time and I was losing a lot of weight. I would go into these like sleeping comas and I have great parents. Like it's not like they weren't paying attention, but I would just, you know, be like, I'm sick. I'm going to stay home today. It's like, okay. But, um, but yeah, so for like, gosh, I want to say it was like a total of like six months of these like up and downs, like feeling fine again and then getting sick. And, um, and yes, it was actually kind of a relief. I mean, obviously when you don't know what diabetes is, you hear, oh, you have diabetes. Like, what the fuck does that mean? Like, oh, okay, cool. Is that cancer? Because I had no idea what diabetes was until I was diagnosed with it. Right.

[00:04:25] Rob Howe: So did you, did you, you didn't have anybody that you knew in your life maybe that had diabetes or friends or.

[00:04:31] Emily Swancutt: I didn't know my family has it either. So it was kind of just a really random, random thing. But yeah, so the needle thing was hard to adjust to. I hate shots, and who doesn't? But you just kind of have to get used to it. I was definitely an idiot about my diabetes until I was 22. That's when I really started taking care of myself. Fortunately, I did get diagnosed later in life because it's a hard pill to swallow sometimes when you want to do what you want to do and you have to be responsible.

[00:05:12] Rob Howe: And I think that's a challenge for a lot of people, right? Like, you know, you have all your friends, especially when you're in college. Everybody wants to go party. Everybody wants to do this and that and, like, eat whatever they want. And you're young, so you can kind of, like, do it. And, like, it's sort of a trap. I mean, myself included at times. Like, you get, like, you're like, oh, I want to go party and drink and, like, sugary mixers and, like, alcohol and stuff. It's like you wake up the next morning and you got a high blood sugar and you feel like crap and you're dehydrated. And it's just all those things that come along with it.

[00:05:41] Emily Swancutt: But here's the thing. There's Bombay sodas with lime. That's a drink that I find to be a little more friendly on the pancreas. And then also red wine is another one that I drink. But I don't have that with food, so I just take my shot for my food and not really the wine.

[00:06:00] Rob Howe: Yeah, and I think like you said, when you're trying to treat for drinks, like you know you got to be careful with how much insulin you get and i mean really you just got to test right and just be diligent about that um what did you how was your like when you got diagnosed like when you were in the hospital and like they were teaching you how to do everything like um

[00:06:24] Emily Swancutt: how was that experience today were they encouraging did you overwhelming i mean it went from you know living a normal life to like you have you have a disease where you have to give yourself a shot like four times a day and so that was really hard to get used to and especially back then I had needles that were like this like as long as it seems like half of my pinky or if I'm remembering correctly they were like super long needles and so that was just it was just really hard to adjust

[00:06:54] Rob Howe: to and you're super responsive to your super like your body accepts insulin relatively easily huh

[00:07:01] Emily Swancutt: And I think part of it is that I do take that the Lantus at 15 units. I think that that really helps keep me, and almost my act is like an incidence in a way, just because if I don't eat meals, I will get pretty low. And the meals that I do eat, I mean, I'm a vegan, so I'm a 95% vegan, but what do you eat? You eat lettuce, beans. I mean, there's not a lot of carbohydrates in vegan meals. I mean, there can be, but I tend to just eat salads and yum bowls. Do you guys know what yum bowls are yet?

[00:07:41] Rob Howe: No, holler at us with some yum bowls, some of that Oregon granola action.

[00:07:46] Emily Swancutt: Okay, they've actually expanded. They're not in Texas yet, apparently, but one day. So what it is is it's a almost organic, completely cafe kind of situation. The place is called Cafe Yum. It started in Eugene, and they're expanding like crazy. But they have this thing called Yum Sauce, and it's like vegan. It's gluten-free. I mean, if you're allergic to whatever, like you can eat this sauce. And it's fucking bomb. And then so these bowls are like rice. Can I cuss in this podcast?

[00:08:18] Rob Howe: Be you. This is all about you. So just let it rain.

[00:08:22] Emily Swancutt: I'm so sorry. It's freaking bomb. You should just like beep every time I say a cuss word. Where was I? So yeah, they're really great. I mean, there's beans, rice, avocados, cilantro, and then the yum sauce. And I eat those a lot. I eat yum sauce for my salad dressing. I eat like two avocados a day. Yeah. And then cinnamon. I have a like sit in on some hazelnut toast. That's supposed to help with the metabolism of sugar. So I'm really into that. I kind of, I'm like a hippie, except I'm not. I shower and stuff, but I really try to find alternative ways to deal with keeping my blood sugars normal. I'm not a fan of the whole pharmaceutical industry, so I try to stay away from it as much as possible, but being a diabetic, as you know, you can't really avoid it,

[00:09:16] Rob Howe: but at this point anyways. I remember years ago, we talked about you took cinnamon pills. you took like a vitamin basically what other vitamin what vitamins do you take for your diabetes

[00:09:32] Emily Swancutt: so I actually I stopped taking the cinnamon pills because the source I didn't I was asked where does the cinnamon come from in those pills and I was like I don't know so I buy I go to natural grocers and they have like a cinnamon it's like they say it's organic and healthy so it's like a powder that I use as opposed to the pills but um yeah so I cinnamon um apple cider vinegar with some warm water and some lemon that's another thing that's supposed to help with the metabolism of sugar and fats and then you know avocados are also supposed to be really good um I also I put bee pollen in my smoothies in the morning and that's supposed to help with the metabolism of sugar um I take this protein vitamin called chlorella and it's like an algae nice it's a green pill and so i take those too

[00:10:28] Rob Howe: so you're all up on any sort of uh natural herbal medicine that you know any advantage that you can

[00:10:35] Emily Swancutt: get yeah that's awesome i would also encourage i mean i cannot smoke cannabis anymore i mean my employer's drug test me and so it's just not something that I can do but I would encourage people if it if you know if you're if you have diabetes and it's something that's allowed legally in your state and you know by your employer is not going to drug test you I mean I would really encourage experimenting with you know checking your blood sugar and this you know smoking some pot and seeing what happens because I I don't know I haven't you know done enough experimenting with it and especially now but i know there is some correlation between marijuana and and your

[00:11:18] Rob Howe: blood sugar levels and i think there's something like we can post along with this um with the blog of this podcast is like there's a cnn study it's about resting blood sugars and like the impact of marijuana on uh resting blood sugars and or fasting blood sugars excuse me and they were like 20% lower for people who smoked marijuana or something before their meals?

[00:11:42] Emily Swancutt: Yeah. I totally believe it. I mean, I used to I would like eat a meal and then smoke pot and then eat a meal. But I mean, I wouldn't even take insulin sometimes because my blood sugars would just I would go really low if I took a shot in addition to smoking pot. I mean, there's something about it.

[00:12:05] Rob Howe: Yeah, that's interesting. I think as it becomes more on the forefront and more states start to look at it, I think there's going to be some research, and I'm sure that there will be some sort of medical component. In Texas, that may never happen just because they don't play that around here. They don't play with that dope smoking around here just because it's just super old school.

[00:12:32] Emily Swancutt: You will be the last state that will smoke pot.

[00:12:36] Rob Howe: for sure yeah absolutely but yeah very interesting i think like something that definitely to keep an eye on in the next couple years uh it brings up like a bigger point too i think like when i got diagnosed they were like yeah like we're fully confident that in 20 years um we're gonna have like a cure and it's gonna be like all good and like you know we've got so much research um i guess like did you get that same message i think like everyone that's been on so far they

[00:13:02] Emily Swancutt: talked about um you're gonna have a synthetic pancreas by the time you're in adulthood well guess what i'm old now and i still have the same well almost the same meter that i used when i first

[00:13:15] Rob Howe: got diagnosed so yeah i think about like um technology specifically like now i know they have like continuous glucose monitors and those are all well and good and like iphone apps that like you know kids who are younger as parents can monitor their sugars throughout the day super beneficial but then like you look at the the development in like phone technology so like when i was diagnosed i had this like flip phone and it was like the latest and greatest thing and now i have this super awesome iphone and then my but my like you said my meters are relatively the same my pump is relatively the same hasn't changed in eight years um yeah it's really interesting to think about um you know when you're talking about technology yeah especially i mean

[00:13:57] Emily Swancutt: diabetes unfortunately is becoming more and more common especially type 1 I mean back when I got diagnosed I was told that like one in like was do you know the statistics it was like I felt like I was a rare rare being but you know when you when you actually really go out there and like talk to people a lot of people have type 1 diabetes and a lot of it was um a later onset too and you can't help but wonder why is this happening it's interesting like since i started doing this

[00:14:29] Rob Howe: like so many people have reached out to me on instagram and like uh instagram specifically but also like via email uh and like everybody i mean there's so many different stories like this one lady told me i'm gonna have her on the show that she got diabetes when she was type 1 when she was 42 like a special late onset version yeah and um yeah i mean it i think the statistics are like 40,000 people per year are getting type 1 diabetes. There's 1.2 million just in the United States living with type 1 diabetes. Type 2 is just running rampant out there. One in every three people is going to have it in 10 years or something. Type 1, we don't know the origin. We don't know why for most people. It's something that really affects everyone.

[00:15:18] Emily Swancutt: I think it's a safe assumption to say that it has something to do with the American diet. I mean I know they don't correlate it to anything that you did or didn't eat. But at the same time, what else could it be?

[00:15:32] Rob Howe: Well, just generations. But it's interesting too. You think about it. It's like generations of eating heavily processed food, not just in America but across the world. That's been the interesting thing too. We had a guy from Ireland on. We have a lady that's going to come on who's from Australia. So it's sort of independent of geographical location. Um, but yeah, like the diet and, and also like technology, like people used to die a lot. I think, you know, a hundred years ago, um, they would get to the point where they didn't really know what was going on. They get sick and they die before they knew what the treatment was or if there was no treatment. Yeah, that's true. So, you know, now that there are, you know, 1.2 million people living with it, I think that's going to increase just because it's easier now to live with it than it used to be, um, back a couple of generations ago. So now we've got people like us who are diabetics, and we're going to be out there having kids who are predisposed genetically to have diabetes, and so they're going to have it. And so it's just going to be this entire subset of the population that is predisposed to diabetes.

[00:16:38] Emily Swancutt: Yeah.

[00:16:42] Rob Howe: So you had mentioned you hate having low blood sugars. Do you have any crazy low blood sugar stories?

[00:16:49] Emily Swancutt: um you know i i've only had one incident really it was back when i lived in corvallis during you know my college days i i was like i just woke up in the shower and the water was like cold i don't i don't really know what happened i was pretty confused but but yeah that happened but other than that no i haven't i just really avoid it it doesn't i haven't really had any crazy things happen i just it's really hard to come back from feeling okay after a low blood sugar and so that i just really i try to stay stay away from it obviously just like high blood sugar but

[00:17:25] Rob Howe: yeah what about what about like um when you get like higher blood sugars or you know you're not right you're not feeling right what is uh what are your key like indicators

[00:17:36] Emily Swancutt: um i get really tired um yeah i just i just basically i just feel tired and i feel like shit i feel slow because i'm i don't know if you've noticed but i'm pretty high energy um and so i can i can tell pretty easily when i'm not feeling okay and yeah so yeah i mean very similar

[00:17:57] Rob Howe: for me i always like yawn or like my stomach will hurt or i'll feel like really just dragging and tired and i feel cranky i get cranky too i'm usually i'm a pretty positive and happy person and when my blood sugar is like over 220, I'm just like, I'll snap and I'm like real Debbie Downer. I'm not as fun to be around. Yeah. Yeah, it's just silly. It's interesting to see everybody's different reactions. Some people have said that they like taste metal in their mouth.

[00:18:28] Emily Swancutt: Oh, that's interesting.

[00:18:29] Rob Howe: Yeah, that was a new one for me as well.

[00:18:32] Emily Swancutt: Yeah, I definitely haven't tasted metal and I don't get like blurred vision or anything like super obvious. it's more like oh yeah i'm being tired or i'm being a bitch i should probably check my blood

[00:18:43] Rob Howe: sugar and then sure enough yeah and it's like oh well that makes sense uh because i know i'm not

[00:18:50] Emily Swancutt: this person but it's also a nice like not that i use it as an excuse ever but it's a really great way to be like i'm so sorry it was my blood sugar forgive me shifting gears just a little bit um

[00:19:05] Rob Howe: like you obviously you've had diabetes your whole like adult life um what's it you know in terms of like overcoming um you know obstacles with it is that have you what do you how do you feel like it makes you different or unique or like anything that you've had to overcome in terms of like

[00:19:24] Emily Swancutt: managing it you know it i it's you know in my adult life i really think of this as a blessing in disguise i people should eat healthy anyways and so i it's really it's a motivator to eat healthy or die in a way like literally so i that's it's it's really it is what it is and you know just making the best of it i try to exercise as much as possible just yoga exercise not like real exercise but you know hey yoga is real exercise because of my diabetes to try to

[00:19:59] Rob Howe: yeah i think like um when i got diagnosed i had this awesome team but they were like yeah so like you can manage this and like be totally normal or like you could not and have a ton of problems and die and i was like well i choose door number one um yeah it's not too not too shabby

[00:20:16] Emily Swancutt: and it's like not even like big dance it's like a slow miserable death where one toe at a time is removed from your body and then you die. It's like, no thank you.

[00:20:27] Rob Howe: Yeah, and you lose your eyesight and then your skin turns gross. Yeah, it's just not something that I'm trying to be a part of.

[00:20:37] Emily Swancutt: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the scariest thing. I mean, because some of your blood veins are smaller than the hairs on your head. It's very scary to think about one high or one low. So, I mean, you're not going to know it until it's, like, really bad. Like, you're not going to, your feet aren't just going to one day, well, I mean, they will or they could potentially one day just, you know, turn purple or whatever. But you just have to really be mindful that every time you have high blood sugar, you're, like, you know, it's like glass shards in your blood veins. You have to really take it seriously. Even though you might not necessarily be dying at that moment, you're dying long term right

[00:21:25] Rob Howe: and that's like the importance you know when you talk about peaks and valleys of like high and low like it's gotta keep it in the middle gotta just let that listen to your body and like really resist like resisting temptation of like eating stuff is hard sometimes like I get tempted by like you said pizza man

[00:21:41] Emily Swancutt: oh yeah

[00:21:43] Rob Howe: and just like you know everybody's out kind of eating whatever they want and are you know going from diet to diet and it's like yo I'm on this like great diet it's called if i don't eat right i'm dead yeah yep you had mentioned earlier that you didn't know a lot about diabetes when you had been diagnosed um what are things people have said to you since you've been diagnosed maybe like uh stereotypes or just assumptions that people make

[00:22:11] Emily Swancutt: oh my my favorite one because i'm not i'm not a overweight person and so my favorite one is but you're not fat because everyone thinks that you have to be fat to be diabetic and that's that's my favorite one and then oh but you're so healthy or you know or does your does your whole family have diabetes and it's just it's kind of just like yeah and and I and I don't I don't you know hate on people for being uneducated about it I mean why if just like I had no idea what diabetes was when I didn't when it didn't apply to me like why why do I care it doesn't affect me but um But yeah, so there's a lot of misconception out there, which is probably going away because everyone and their mother has diabetes now.

[00:22:55] Rob Howe: Yeah, it's just like it's mass forced awareness, right? So, you know, and that's the thing too is like everybody knows somebody with diabetes now, which is part of the reason that we're able to get in touch with so many people with this, with diabetics doing things, just because everybody knows somebody. So you can just tag them in a status on Facebook or like tag them on Instagram and they can instantly get plugged into this like community that we've got going on. So part of what we do here obviously is trying to create awareness and like encouragement for people who may be struggling or, you know, just getting diagnosed, like looking for people for encouragement. so if you could say if you're going to say like one thing to anybody who is either just getting diagnosed or struggling like what would you want them to know like from your experience

[00:23:47] Emily Swancutt: you know what what i would like to say to that would be um there's two ways to look at everything you can choose to kind of you know take the negative approach oh my god this sucks I hate this I'm not going to listen to what the doctor says I'm going to continue with what I'm doing and be reckless and not care and that is your choice or you can kind of look at this as you know a way to improve yourself and you know it's no one wants to have diabetes but if you do happen to get this disease just run with it you know be if anyone ever has any questions they can you know email me or if you want to like put my email on there or something that's totally fine um but you know just eat healthy take care of yourself you can have fun too it's not like it's not like diabetes or a bunch of boring ass fat people because we're not we're cool we do things we have jobs we pay taxes you know um we're funny we do improv some of us do but um yeah just just live your life and and and see it as a way to to be healthy or die

[00:25:12] Rob Howe: when you think about like sometimes i haven't thought about this in a while which is why I'm focusing on it now what if you got cured like how just think about it because I mean our lives wouldn't change that much but it would be so cool to just not have to you could just relax that's really all I would do different I would just chill

[00:25:37] Emily Swancutt: yeah and you know really that would be awesome but if not it's okay I would one of the things that sounds so exciting but who knows if I I don't know if I like use this as an excuse or not but I would love to you know travel the world or Alexis has that retreat in Bali and I mean there's just all these fun things that that you have to with diabetes it's like okay I would have to bring like this much insulin like what if what if I went like on a backpacking trip or like I read that book wild and I was like oh my god cool hiking all by yourself in the wilderness but then there's like all those reality checks like okay so i could bring my i have to bring my insulin if i if i ended up you know running out of food i could probably walk like live for like a day or i don't know so there's like a lot of things that you need your your insulin shit for and food and i don't know so if i would definitely like but again you can travel with diabetes so I'm probably just being a baby. Like, oh, I can't go see the world because of my diabetes.

[00:26:44] Rob Howe: But who knows? You know I love to travel.

[00:26:47] Emily Swancutt: I know you do, and you do travel. And guess what? You're diabetic.

[00:26:52] Rob Howe: Well, but I have to clue you in. Because the first time I went out of the country for an extended period with diabetes, it was when I was playing with the Globetrotter, or playing against the Globetrotters with the Generals. and like we were going on this like three and a half week trip to like the Middle East and like all over like Northern Africa. And so, uh, and they didn't even know I was a diabetic. Like I had to lie because like they, I didn't want them to like not, well, like I didn't lie, but I had to say that I didn't tell them anything was wrong. So I was, it was just like a white lie. Cause you know, exactly. Exactly is what I didn't say. So I was living a lie, living a double life. But, um, I just believed that there was like a case out there that I could like take all my supplies in and like roll up and put in my backpack. And so even if I needed a carry on bag or if I was like, you know, all I had to grab in a fire was like my backpack that I could have it and all my stuff would be in it. And I found one at Target for like four bucks and I take it everywhere whenever I go out of town even for like short trips yeah because it's just like this little like binder thing that has like these little clear zip pockets and like I just carry my vials of insulin and my like pump sites and I think I carried like when I went to Afghanistan I carried like five weeks worth of supplies I only used like half of them but it was cool I was like okay well I could pack up because I think about the zombie apocalypse all the time in turn like what I would do yeah right yeah i have to have a pharmacy i gotta be have a strategy to knock over some pharmacies that's for sure i'm robbing walgreens i'm hitting i'm hitting all the walgreens in the statewide

[00:28:35] Emily Swancutt: here since we have this type 1 diabetic podcast if there's a zombie apocalypse apocalypse we are all going to come together as a diabetic community and we can all use the insulin together we can all

[00:28:50] Rob Howe: survive as long as we stick together.

[00:28:53] Emily Swancutt: Like you said, raid a pharmacy or two or all of them.

[00:28:57] Rob Howe: Yeah, just go pharmacy to pharmacy. Just form a band of diabetic bandits.

[00:29:03] Emily Swancutt: I like it.

[00:29:04] Rob Howe: It's great. Thanks for listening to Diabetics Doing Things. Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly emails and behind the scenes content. If you or someone you know has an amazing story to share, send an email to rob at diabeticsdoingthings.com Diabetics Doing Things is also available on iTunes Subscribe to us in the Podcasts app to have weekly episodes automatically downloaded to your phone