New format podcast! Special guest Noor Al Ramahi on Diabetes and IVF, Palestine and more

[00:00:01] Rob Howe: What up, what up? What up, what up? Welcome back to Diabetics Doing Things. Welcome back. We've been not AWOL, not absent, but we've been busy. Not even a hiatus, but we've just been around. Yo, and I will be the first to admit that I experienced a heavy dose of burnout towards, man, the end of May. and I was able to I was fortunately able to go on some vacation and celebrate my mom's 60th birthday shout out mom I was able to celebrate my wife's 30th birthday shout out Erica like big moments like back back to back and some good friends got married and now I'm kind of excited to be back in the rhythm back doing the work and yeah we've got some cool summer stuff coming up we've got some good pod interviews we got some cool partnerships to announce we got some scholarships we're donating for the first time man we're we're doing uh we're doing things no really and i think this is you getting out after the pandemic it's probably nice to just like actually be able to celebrate those events be there in person really uh just i don't know it feels like that veil is coming off a little bit that that lift from that bad season i kind of want to forget 2020 ever happened sort of but man and like real trauma and you know real uh you know, from a, I don't know, it's been hard. Also, we got to be careful because the pandemic's not over everywhere else, you know, and that's, I think, another thing that's just wild about the world is like, you know, in America, we're kind of like way moved past it. You know, I went to a movie theater for the first time the other day, which was honestly so good. I love the movies. It was good to be back in the theater. But, you know, it's important to just keep in mind that not only did like 600,000 people in America die but elsewhere in the world like they're still really dealing with heavy lockdowns in places because they don't have enough vaccines or not enough people have been vaccinated anyway so don't forget don't forget those things absolutely yeah we've got yeah you got to be safe for sure and you know I keep a mask on me because you know I don't want to look at you if you ugly you know okay but here's the thing I really okay while you're saying that I love the mask. I'm sorry, guys. I'm never going back to not wearing a mask. I love wearing my mask, putting on my hood. Don't talk to me. I'm not accessible. I'm busy. Like I'm running an errand. I don't know. The fact that no man looked at me an entire year and said, will you give me a smile like that? Beautiful. Anyway. It's nice. You know, it was interesting. I was talking to Erica about one of our friends who has a child who is two between two and three years old right now. And And so they have never lived in a world where people didn't wear masks. And so they don't like people. The child doesn't like people that don't wear masks only because they are used to seeing the mask. So it's just a foreign concept, which I thought was really interesting. And I think it's probably affecting a lot more people than we realize at this point. So, but yeah, the masks are good. You know, flying on planes, you still got to wear them. It's good to wear them in big public situations because, you know, people are gross. And we realize that big time that people don't wash their hands. People are sneezing and stuff and coughing. So protect yourself, protect your family, protect your neck, you know, get out there. And, you know, at the same time, it's nice to be outside with friends. We got meetups starting to come back. I'm seeing some diabetes meetups. They're starting to get planned. We're going to have in-person events. Children with diabetes this summer is going to be in-person. Friends for Life conference is going to be back in person. So I know there's a lot of kids and parents of kids with diabetes who are really excited about that. So, hey, we're moving onward and upward here. I've been really busy because the agency recreation has hired a ton of new people. We've got 22 staff members full-time at this point. So that's really exciting. And you know, for me, I've never run a company with that many people in it. That's my own. And so I'm learning every day as well, just all the sort of new challenges and new responsibilities. And that is just what I'm dealing with. So lots of, lots of stuff. I'm proud of you. You hired so many people. I know that there's even some small diabetes connections there too. So that's really cool. That's dope. I'm proud of you. Yeah, we have two T1D employees besides me now, which we've never had before. So that's pretty exciting. So it's nice to just like see. The diabetes commune. Yeah, we're talking about insurance and stuff. And like, hey, here's the plans that I'm on. And here's, you know, both of the ladies that work with us wear their robot parts and wear their CGMs. And so it's just nice to have somebody. and I also told them we have like a secret closet with a bunch of candy in it here because one of our clients sent us a bunch of stuff and I was like look if you ever have a little blood sugar this closet in here has got all the hookups like whatever you need candy wise that's that's the welcome to Rob's stash here's where he keeps it it's like a vault in there it's like all this crazy stuff like those Easter like the Reese's Easter eggs man those those are so good um I think that um in the corporate world with a lot of people i know for myself that with covid in america kind of coming to a close things are amping up for us at work a lot of us are being sent back to offices and it's become kind of a stressful and convoluted type of environment here in the good whole usa working place but i mean i'm i hope all of you guys are doing okay i say that because i know i've been struggling myself it's been really tough to keep up um we're gonna make it guys like Like just, you know, just hold on. It's part of this growing change. It's this growing pain of going through a pandemic. And what do we do after? And how do we deal with all the consequences of that pandemic while still keeping ourselves safe? And I think that super interesting to see how Rob and his company are kind of taking things and how mine and my workplace is doing things. And it's just watching all of these company cultures really change in real time. It's super interesting. And yeah, we're on a hybrid schedule right now. We just increased it again. We're now 50-50. So we spent half the week in the office and half the week out. which has worked pretty well so far. And I think for me, I like, I didn't realize, like I kind of like, I'm very compartmentalized in my life and I've worked on that a lot in the last year and a half, but coming to work, you know, I leave the house, I get in the car, 10 minutes later, I'm at the office. And then, you know, I leave work 10 minutes later, I'm back at the house and I don't, it makes it easier for me to like keep those separate because they had really, I think that was one of the sources of my burnout. I was just really chronically stressed out from working all the time. So now getting to experience that a little bit on the other side has been positive. So if you haven't figured it out and you're out there, I'm with you and I haven't figured it out yet either, but we're getting there. So we're doing this podcast a little bit differently than we have in the past. We want to keep things fresher and more up to date on a ongoing basis. So what you're about to hear is an interview that we did with Noor Al-Ramahi a few weeks ago. It's really good. And Noor explain some really complex topics about Palestine, which I think for people who aren't as versed in that, I think we'll get a lot out of, as well as talking about diabetes, moving from UAE as a child, United Arab Emirates, here to the United States and the differences between that. So a really, really impactful interview. And I was just kind of mastering the recording and adjusting the levels before we got on this call. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So that's coming up next. uh we also have a slot for advertisers because we have advertisers on the pod again so type zero is going to be type zero health is back with their sponsorship and they are the official fitness partner of diabetics doing things so uh a t1d owned company we had john jensen on the podcast the founder and he and i just got to know each other over the years uh we've been in touch for you know two two and a half years or so and man i use the product and as you guys know i'm trying to stay in shape, trying to get in that Hollywood leading man, like movie star shape. And I'm close. I'm not quite there yet. Probably not eating good enough, but I've started that as well. So really, really excited to have type zero on there. And I'll be supplementing the podcast ads as well with some content on my Instagram. So keep it locked there. Really some cool giveaways coming up. We've got goodwill and sponsorships and scholarships. so keep an eye out for that as well we're going to be continuing to talk about what we're doing other than cool things and good vibes and fun times obviously there's a lot of people in this country and also internationally who need our help and we're going to keep them in mind and make sure that we're not you know only catering to one style of people so with that I kind of it's really about all all it is I you know all I've got for this sort of intro AeroTrey you got anything um I just wanted to say that I'm really excited for you guys to hear in your episode she's such a close friend of mine we talk all the time and she's the person who got me to open up about my uh pregnancy loss and who really helped me open up about talking about diabetes so I find her so I just respect her so much and I so value her sharing so much on this episode we definitely want to put a trigger warning here this is kind of where I think we should drop it before you guys listening further. If you have some kind of some triggers with mental illness or pregnancy loss, eating disorders, medication and mental illness, or even IBS, maybe this episode is not for you. It is full of a lot of information, but I think it would be very impactful for you to listen and to learn from it. But if it's triggering, I completely understand. Yeah. And we have a formal trigger warning right before the episode. So if you're going to want to get through that, I've got all that stuff ready for you. But yeah, otherwise, we'll talk to you guys next time we record. We're going to try to do these at least twice a month. So you're going to be hearing our live voices in between some of these other interviews that are just pre-recorded. So right now, let's hear a message from Type Zero, our sponsor, and then enjoy this episode with Noor Al-Ramahi. What's up, guys? I got a very important announcement for you today. Not only is this episode sponsored by Type Zero Health, but Type Zero is now our official fitness partner of diabetics doing things. And that's exciting for me, because if you can hear, I'm actually mixing up some type zero NO booster in my shaker cup right now, because I'm about to go work out like I normally do late in the day. And what I want to tell you first about type zero is that for people with diabetes, you can get the boost and the pump you need to crush your workout without having to worry about spiking your blood sugar because because type zeros and NO booster is clean. It's caffeine free. It uses natural ingredients, no artificial flavors or colors, and it doesn't spike your blood sugar, but it gets you the pump you need. It also doesn't have caffeine. So I can have it later in the day. Like I am right now, it's about five 30. I've just gotten through my work day and I'm about to go hit the gym. I use it when I play basketball, when I go on a run, when I hit the weight room, which I've been doing a lot lately. And I've been using it to help me shift into workout mode while I'm at home. I get that shaker cup going, mix it up. I'm using the cherry limeade flavor right now. You got to check it out. TypeZeroHealth.com for more information. If you use TypeZeroHealth.com, use code RobHow. That's my name, RobHow. No spaces at checkout and you can get 20% off. TypeZero is a T1D owned business and you know how I love T1D owned businesses. Check out episode 132 for my interview with the founder of TypeZero, John Jensen. You can hear his story there. Also, check out type zero's clean nitric oxide supplement. I've been taking it for a few weeks now, and it has really powered my recovery. Again, no caffeine, just beetroot, pine bark, arginine, and citrulline, which are natural ingredients. It helps me recover, which is a big part of how I implement my training these days. I've got to be able to recover. I take on a lot of mental, non-physical strain. And then with my workout schedule, it's hard for me to recover and bounce back. And this has really helped me. I even left a review on Amazon with a photo of my whoop strap where it shows month over month how my recovery increased after I introduced the clean nitric oxide supplement. So check that out. Again, typezerohealth.com, the official fitness partner of Diabetics Doing Things, and use code ROBHOW for 20% off at checkout. All right, back to the episode. What's happening, pod heads, fans of the pod? Boy, do we have something for you today.

[00:12:10] Eritrea: We're back, we're back. CareTray and Rob, back at it again.

[00:12:14] Rob Howe: Back at it.

[00:12:15] Eritrea: we have a very special guest today my good good sweet friend uh Noor Al-Ramahi i love her so much we've been friends for a good amount of time and she is an amazing human being she is uh truly an

[00:12:28] Rob Howe: activist uh a voice for marginalized folks not just uh of her own people but also uh for people here in america and it was really a great conversation with her and i you know i think that one thing we need to do before we get into the conversation is there are some trigger warnings. This is some serious, heavy content coming through. There's mentions of diabulimia. There's mentions of post-traumatic stress disorder. There's mentions of postpartum depression. There's mentions of depression and mental health. We also talk about the Israeli and Palestine conflict, and we go really in depth about that for about an hour, the second hour of this interview. So if any of those things cause trigger problems for you, maybe this isn't the episode for you to listen to. However, I would say it's a very balanced and a very deep and well thought out discussion from someone who has a great deal of knowledge and a great deal of time spent. Not only is it close to her heart personally, but also professionally. And I would encourage you to listen to it. Also, she makes references to quite a few authors and books and publications. We will link those in the show notes so that you have a place to go look for those if you want more information. So besides all that, this is a great interview about diabetes, also about being a diabetes mom, a T1D mom, and our good friend of the pod, Kenny Rodenheiser, who has not been on the podcast yet, but is my good buddy from Children with Diabetes, and he's an amazing CDC. Yes, he gets a big shout out early on. So definitely, I want to hear your feedback on this video or on this podcast. I want to really continue to dig into highlighting the struggles of people with diabetes everywhere, but those are also so closely tied into humanitarian crises. A few years ago, we had Elizabeth Pfister from T1 International on the pod talking about what people in Syria were going through at the time, trying to get insulin. It's a very similar situation right now in Palestine. So it's really, really important for us to continue to shine a light on these marginalized groups because there are people like us with diabetes among them everywhere. So please enjoy this interview. And remember, if you have any issues or any problems, hearing content that we mentioned earlier, please do yourself a favor and proceed with caution. Viewer discretion is advised. Otherwise, enjoy the interview. Is that new? I've never heard that before, but hey, welcome back to another episode of Diabetics Doing Things. We're telling the amazing stories of people with diabetes from all over the world. Our very special guest today, Noor Al-Ramahi. Welcome to the show, Noor.

[00:15:06] Noor Al-Ramahi: Thank you. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me. So excited to share what I have for

[00:15:13] Rob Howe: you guys. And we've got a lot. And I think, uh, you know, for those who follow us on Instagram, you took over the pot or took over on doing things day a few weeks ago. And I was just watching your recap the other day. And I just remember like, wow, like Nora like covers almost every spectrum of like the diabetics doing things guests, like diabetes advocacy organization, work with organizations, pregnancy, coming to America, being diagnosed somewhere else, coming to America and having to learn to deal with that as well. So really excited to dig into your story and talk

[00:15:50] Noor Al-Ramahi: about how we ended up here today. Thanks. Yeah, it hasn't always been a smooth sailing. There's definitely been a lot of ups and downs, but it got me to where I am right now. And not to sound very cocky or anything, but I'm pretty proud of the person that I've come to be. I'm definitely not perfect, very far from it, but this is me. What a powerful place to operate from, right? Yeah. And in full disclosure, that might be my antidepressants talking as well, but

[00:16:19] Rob Howe: yeah. Give me those SSRIs, baby. Give me that serotonin straight to the brain. So why don't we start with diagnosis? Because you were not diagnosed here in the United States. I But talk about day one with diabetes and what that was like and what you remember. And, you know, let's let's bring that back to the present day.

[00:16:40] Noor Al-Ramahi: Sounds good. So funny story. My mom doesn't remember my diagnosis date. Nobody in my family knows. For my birthday last year, I asked my mom to dig up my old medical records to find out when I was diagnosed, but the hospital I was diagnosed in shut down. So anyways, we don't know the exact same day, but I was probably around seven years old. And I was always a heavy kid and I started losing a lot of weight and I started wetting my bed. And I was very potty trained at that point, you know, and my uncle, my dad's uncle is a doctor. So my dad was like talking to him and he's like, we don't know what's going on. Like she's been wetting her bed a lot. And he clearly kind of figured, put one on one together, but he wanted to be sure. So I was like, just bring her over to my clinic first thing tomorrow and we'll get her tested. And we found out then and there that I had type 1 diabetes. And I still remember my dad being in the office with his uncle. He was breaking the news to him and I was sitting outside the door. I don't, I don't remember feeling very distraught over the whole situation, even though I didn't really know what was going on. But when I look back at it now, there is that feeling that still sits with me that something is not right, you know. But the way my my mom handled it was just so powerful. She's such a strong woman. She she was very sympathetic and acknowledged that it was going to be hard. And it's like a lot has has to change, especially when back when I was diagnosed. You know, as you know, we had a strict schedule and we had to the log book and the NPH and R and all that stuff. So it wasn't as flexible as life is right now. So she was but at the same time, she was very, very strong in the fact that you're going to I'm going to be OK. Now we're going to be OK. You're going to be OK. We've got this. And that that put me at ease till now. it's something that I carry with me where it's like, okay, today has been a shitty diabetes day, you know, I'm going to sit and I'm going to cry over it for five minutes. I'm going to have a little pity party, but you know, I'm going to pick up, pick myself up because this is the hand that I was dealt. And I need to, I need to live life because that I'm the only one who's able to do that. You know, nobody's going to live life for me. I make it what it is. So that's pretty much like where I started in terms of like my diagnosis and at the time we really didn't have an endocrine pediatric endocrinologist in Abu Dhabi so I was seen by a pediatrician just a general pediatrician but he was actually pretty I loved his approach and but it's like diabetes was just a whole different beast back then you know just I still remember like even summer vacations, my mom would have to wake me up early to take my shot on time. And like, I would have breakfast in bed, half asleep, then go back to sleep, you know?

[00:19:46] Rob Howe: Yeah. It's so funny to remember, like when you had to eat lunch, you know, like that was like just an essential part of your day. And even, you know, early on, I never took R and MPH. I was, my parents had insurance and I was prescribed Lantus and Humalog, I think, maybe Novolog right away. And so that was my experience. But then going back a few years ago, I did 30 days on R and NPH just to spread awareness about what the truth about Walmart insulin was. And God, it was terrible. It was just every day. I was making these vlogs and every day my bags under my eyes grew. I was turning gray. It was terrible. So yeah. One thing though, I wanted to go back and ask you, you talked about your mom having this very firm foundation of like, we're going to be

[00:20:33] Noor Al-Ramahi: okay. Is that just her? Is that just her spirit? Where did that come from? Yeah. She's also endured a lot of hardship growing up. And she has a family history of health issues as well. She lost her mom when she was really young to breast cancer. So from a very young age, she also learned how to be her own advocate and, um, this power through life and, you know, find the silver lining and everything. And, uh, she's also, uh, has a very strong belief system. So she falls back a lot on that. Um, so yeah, it's, she's, she's just a spectacular woman. Like it's one of these things where I've always known how amazing she was, but it wasn't until I became a mom and I realized everything she's done for me, like even like for our family and specifically for me, like, and I will straight up be the first one to admit that I was that child. I was the troubled child. And that's like, regardless of my diabetes, and even with my diabetes, I know like I've worked in, in healthcare, so we don't use non-compliant anymore, but I was I was I was that child you know I I put them through hell and back um so I'm very appreciative of um everything they've done for me and I know like they in in Abu Dhabi we didn't have all the resources that were available in the U.S. at the time even even though in the U.S. it's it wasn't what it like we didn't have the technology we have now um but still like every year my parents would fly me to Joslin to do like a full medical checkup and I'm like they'd pay out of pocket and it's like okay what's the latest insulin what and I remember the first time I got like the micro the the micro syringes I was super excited about those um so so yeah that was pretty much like my childhood with diabetes like although we had I had a couple of uh people that I knew in school that had type 1 diabetes, it was actually a pretty taboo topic to talk about in our culture. It was kind of like your damaged goods. And a lot of people just didn't want to talk about it. It was just something that they wanted to avoid. And let's dig into that a little

[00:23:01] Rob Howe: bit because we've had other guests from UAE and the Middle East and from India and places outside of the U S who have said very similar things where, you know, that we, I think even in the United States, we sort of take for granted how in the culture diabetes is as a conversation starter and how, you know, I think as peep, as a people, we're weirdly to say like more accepting of differences than other cultures in some cases, not all cases, but in some cases. So talk a little bit about the stigma with diabetes, uh, you know, around the conversations that you had with those other people with diabetes, you know, before you came to the U S.

[00:23:39] Noor Al-Ramahi: yeah so in terms of conversation that I had with people um back home was non-existent pretty much um even even though a lot of them um were my classmates or like people that I interacted with very frequently um it wasn't something that came up you know and um and my like towards the end of my time in Abu Dhabi. Well, I am from the UAE. I'm a UAE citizen. So it's always, it's always home to me, but we moved to the States almost 11 years ago, but towards the last couple of years is kind of when I started changing the way I perceive diabetes and the way I perceived myself. And that happened kind of when I started being part of the diabetes community, anything. You know, I realized there's nothing wrong with me. There's no shame in, in having diabetes and having diabetes. And I met all these amazing people and it's like, you can be anything or anybody you want to be and still be quote unquote normal, you know? So, but at the beginning it was, it was just very hard because first of all, like when people do find out you have diabetes, It's always like very pitiful, you know, it's like, oh, I'm sorry. Hope you get well soon. And I'm like, that's not how it works. But OK, thank you. And then you automatically, even though even though not always they say it out loud, but it is said they say with their face, they say it with their face. And especially as a as a female, you know, you can see all these thoughts going in their head. It's like, oh, my God, poor poor her. She's not going to be able to get married. She's not going to have kids. Like, who's going to want to marry her and take on that burden? You know, it's like you see all that on their faces. And luckily, I haven't had people say it straight to me a lot. I've had a couple of encounters that I can count on my hands. But yeah, it is something that does get to you. And my dad, although I love him to death and he's like my favorite person on earth, but he does care about culture and how people perceive him and his family. So as a way, he viewed it as a way of protecting me from society. He chose to hide, like hide my diabetes or help me hide it to protect me from the way people perceive me. I don't know if that's making sense.

[00:26:23] Rob Howe: Yeah, I think so.

[00:26:24] Noor Al-Ramahi: Yeah. So he just didn't want me, like he saw me for who I am and he didn't want people to not be able to see that because all they're seeing is my diabetes.

[00:26:34] Rob Howe: I think that's a dad thing. I think it's, uh, whether it's diabetes or something different, I remember, and I'll, I know Airtree told me not to talk forever on this pod because we have a lot to cover, but, um, one of the first times, uh, the first summer I had diabetes, I went on a cruise with my family. And, uh, part of the cruise was like a snorkeling excursion that my dad and I were going to do. And we signed up for it. And on the form of course is, do you have the following medical condition? It's like heart problems, diabetes. And so, of course I was like, well, I'm going to be honest about this. And I checked the diabetes box and they, they were, we're waiting to get on the boat or whatever. And they're like, Hey, we looked over your paperwork. We can't let you do this, even though we think you'll be fine. Like our insurance won't cover it if something goes wrong. And that was the first time I had ever been told that I couldn't do something, um, because of my diabetes. And it was very different than what the doctors told me at diagnosis was I could do whatever I wanted. And, uh, I remember my dad kind of like, we, we, we took the feedback and we left and we found that we're going to do something else. And he put my arm, his arm around me. He's like, Hey, maybe next time we don't tell them. And maybe next time we just keep it between us and we work it out. And, and I think in that way, there are scenarios where it can help you to keep your diabetes under wraps a little bit. And I know that's very, uh, as my pump goes off, that's very contradictory to what we say on the pod quite a bit, but I think sometimes you got to

[00:27:55] Eritrea: protect yourself yeah like i sorry go ahead no no no go ahead i just wanted to say that to nor's point i think that in the culture it's it might be a dad thing but it is an also arab culture thing to be modest and keep things to yourself like i remember growing up if we would go out to eat and i was gonna take my insulin my baba would be like i let's go to the bathroom do this private yeah keep to keep to yourself because i think that to nor's point information is power in the Arab community. And so people can always use things against you. And what will people say? So it is a foreign protection. So both of you guys are right. But I also think it's very cultural because there is that immediate judgment of diabetes. Something Nora was saying earlier, like when you meet people and they're like, oh, you have diabetes and they feel so bad immediately. There's also the opposite. I've had people, Arab women walk up to me and be like, oh you have diabetes so young don't worry my cousin has diabetes she had three kids totally fine and it's like I wasn't worried but now I am so it's like it's like a cultural thing you know

[00:28:58] Rob Howe: I think it's a lot of to do with women as well people feel very and I think women do this to other women too they feel very comfortable giving unsolicited feedback and advice about things and I think I skate on that dudes just don't do that to each other we don't have that type relationship we just can't think we're too stupid we don't think that far ahead you guys don't care no anyway yeah so um shifting the culture right and and shifting from where we're being growing

[00:29:29] Noor Al-Ramahi: up in uae and when you moved here to the u.s like before we actually before like we shift to moving to the u.s i just want to say something which i feel is like very worth mentioning is that pressure from culture and society. And it wasn't only diabetes also played into like the body image and weight aspect of it. So I started, and like Andrea said, it like my dad was like, Oh, like, why don't you take your shots in the bathroom or like, you know, like not in plain sight. And I got to a point where, you know what, I'm like, I'm such a social butterfly and I can't, I have major FOMO, so I can't leave the table and miss out on conversation. So I started skipping my my shots you know I just didn't want to deal with it and part of it was also being a teenager I didn't want to be different and then it's also I didn't want to leave this space and um and that's kind of when I started realizing that I was losing weight and I just kept doing it and it developed into an eating disorder um which I struggled really badly with for um 10 plus years It was like, I was, I had a cardiac arrest once I was in a coma for six days in and out of the hospital. It strained my relationship with my parents. Life was just, it was miserable. You know, it's like every night I would go to sleep, not knowing if I was going to wake up next day. It was that bad, but the way that it, the, the eating disorder, which is a mental health issue, it just takes control over your brain. It's like you lose control. You know, a lot of people are like, well, you knew you were hurting yourself. Why did you stop doing it? I'm like, it's not as easy as that, you know? And even though I've been in recovery for almost 11 years now, it's not always a linear journey, you know? There are still days where I wake up with like really crappy body image days and I have to talk myself out of those days, you know? I never think about going back to my old ways because I know that I deserve better and my kids deserve better. But it still messes with your head. So it wasn't until I found the diabetes community and it was through the Children with Diabetes Friends for Life conference. And the first time I went, I was actually still living in the UAE. My doctor had suggested to my parents that I attend it. And I literally did not want to go. Like I, I locked myself in the room and like my mom was like, well, the only way you're getting your cell phone back is if you attend the session. And I was a teenager. I know. And I was a teenager away from my friends. Like that phone was the only thing connecting me to my, my comfort zone. So I attended and that's literally when things change. And it was actually like the moment. I still remember the exact same moment. But I'm sure I think, Rob, you know him, Kenny Rodenheiser.

[00:32:33] Rob Howe: I do.

[00:32:34] Noor Al-Ramahi: So we were on a Disney bus going to one of the parks and he was checking his blood sugar on his forearm. I don't know if you remember like the freestyle. There was like an option to do on your forearm. So I was like, why are you doing it on your forearm? And he was like, this is an extra safety precaution. you know, if I ever have eyesight issues that my fingertips are not calloused and I can read braille. And like, yeah, I see you're enjoying that. Like, it was just like a mind blown moment because again, this is probably not very PC, but Kenny to me was like the poster child of what a diabetes patient should look like, you know, and here he is worried about diabetes complication. And at that point, like my A1C was floating 13 plus and not a care in the world. So I'm like, okay, you know what? Maybe I should take things more seriously. And that was literally like the turning point. And then again, having that community, it wasn't just like, oh, he said that I needed to do that. But it was also happened to be that I was in a space, like a safe space for people with diabetes, you know, where I felt like I can come out and talk about what? like my struggles of kind of being a closet of diabetes, if you may, you know, in my culture and owning it and being like, you know what, yes, I do have diabetes, but look at what I have done with my life with diabetes. And that's when kind of I wanted to reclaim my narrative, you know, and share my story the way that I live it, not the way people perceive my life with diabetes to be. And that's kind of what I've been doing with my life since, you know, it's like, yes, diabetes always there in the background. And I do take very good care of my diabetes, but it's not the only thing in my life.

[00:34:34] Rob Howe: um so and i knew this was going to be a good interview diabetes are so multifaceted i think

[00:34:40] Eritrea: it's always so fascinating when young women talk about going through things like diabulimia because there is and we were talking about this in our positive on glucose group the other day like lean noor and i and a bunch of the girls there's almost no way to make it unscathed without having a weird relationship with food and your body when you're growing like with when you grow grew up like this. It's really interesting. And I think that for all of us, there is that moment, the one that we're talking about with Kenny, where she like the light bulb turned on and it was like, I have to change the way I'm doing things to move forward. Um, so it's always so inspiring, inspiring when I get to hear how, what somebody else's moment was for them. I do want to say too, like how

[00:35:17] Rob Howe: impactful it is to just have a friend with diabetes or like be able to be in a space where you can ask somebody about why they're testing their blood sugar on their arm. Uh, I'll tell you my Kenny Rodenheiser story, uh, the first time I met him, uh, we were in Chicago, uh, at a, at an event for Xeris, Xeris pharmaceutical for, uh, for glucagon. And we were like walking from one restaurant to another. Uh, and I don't know, we had been like, it was one of those, um, kind of like happy hour things. There was like finger food. And so you never know exactly how many carbs the bowl is for. And, you know, one of those, you know, back, back to your mind being blown, like, Oh, you know, I guess I'll just do my best here. And so I had clearly like, Oh, given myself too much insulin, didn't need enough carbs and we were walking. And so I was absorbing insulin and I was like, ah, man, I'm like, I ran out of my low snacks. Like I only had like a small amount with me. And I was like, Hey, does anybody have any low snacks? And it was like 12 people with diabetes with me. And Kenny was like, I do. And he like grabbed some gummies and I was like, wow, everybody should have, like, that was the first moment I met him. And yeah, Kenny is, like you said seemingly the poster child for living with diabetes as a like compliant patient and also he's

[00:36:25] Noor Al-Ramahi: a great cdc yes he is yeah shout out kenny we love you the pod of the pod i've never met him i would love to i guess um oh my god life is not complete without meeting kenny okay i'm putting it on my

[00:36:40] Eritrea: list how old were you when that happened or around like what age were you when you think you had that

[00:36:46] Noor Al-Ramahi: moment was it teenage though i yeah it definitely a teenager i think i i would say like 15 i think

[00:36:55] Eritrea: 15 and then six years later that's when you got married when you were like 21 and then you moved

[00:37:01] Rob Howe: to the u.s yes got it okay so let uh before we move on i i think you know eritra you touched on diabulimia and it needs to be talked about because people with diabetes of all kinds have complicated relationships with food. I think that they're, like you said, Nora, they're very intertwined with body image, with fat phobia, with diet culture, with the way that we speak to ourselves and our bodies and what culture values in terms of the way that we look. I'll plug my friend, Rosie, who I know through Dallas Comedy House is a influencer, a plus size influencer. And she has been calling out all these times in the early 2000s where she's got gone viral on tiktok a

[00:37:42] Eritrea: couple times of like i saw it that jessica simpson bill has been burned into my mind do you know what i'm talking about nor the the jessica simpson at a cookout leopard print belt

[00:37:53] Rob Howe: she wasn't even fat never mind but all the tabloids were going on about how large she was and how fat how she had gotten fat and uh we were like rosie was talking about and and for me for some reason like that, like time in the tabloids is like, I don't know if there was no Twitter or something. So we were like tabloids were all that we kept up with. And so, you know, that in the culture, she was saying, because she has a, as a large woman was, uh, shaming Jessica Simpson for being fast. She was like, Oh, I, I looked at her and I was like, she looks disgusting. And because that's how I felt about, uh, about that culture. Like I had just been brainwashed that I wasn't good enough and the way that I looked wasn't right. And so it's, you know, we're going to talk about media later on as well, but it shapes so much of, of how we view the world and how we view ourselves,

[00:38:42] Noor Al-Ramahi: how we view ourselves, man. Yeah. Even on a subconscious level, there's this really great documentary. It's called Killing Us Softly. I think they're like different versions, like different parts. I think it was killing us slowly for the one that I saw the latest version. and it talks about the subliminal messages in the media. And even though you're like, oh, I don't care about that stuff. It really does change how your brain is wired, you know? And like being exposed to that from mainstream media and advertisement and all that stuff. And then add onto that like a double whammy, how it's ingrained in like in the Arab culture even more than it is. Like, I feel like in the Western media, it is more sexualization of the woman's body in terms of weight, whether she's skinny or not. But a lot of it I feel in the Arab world is also your worth and also like your ability to be loved. Like you have no idea the amount of times, like when I graduated college, like people would come up to me and be like, oh, you have such a pretty face. Like you need to lose weight so you can find a husband. I'm like, how is that related to me finding a husband? You know, it's like, am I not lovable the way I am? You know, I'm still going to be the same person. And like comments like that, they, they, they stick with you, you know, and it messes with your head, whether you like to let them or not. So it's taken a lot of, a lot of therapy, a lot of years to kind of get over it. And still, there are times where I find myself, like the first thing, it's like, oh, yeah, she's pretty, but she could, like, if she loses a few pounds, she'd be prettier. And I have to hold myself back and be like, no, maybe she's happy this way. Maybe she's healthier this way. You know, it's like, I've been through that, where at my skinniest, people were literally congratulating me being like, oh, we're so proud what have you, you know, you've taken care of your health. You've reclaimed your health, you blah, blah, blah. Like I go on. And that, that even makes it worse. Like it digs a deeper

[00:40:53] Rob Howe: hole for myself. That's such a, that's such a like slippery slope because you're all the things that you're doing to yourself. Sometimes in like, in the case of diabulimia externally, people think that you're doing good. They think that they value you more or, or whatever the case but they don't see what's contributing to the changes.

[00:41:11] Noor Al-Ramahi: Exactly. It's like they, they, they respect your discipline and all that. Like this is like my number one rule, like with my kids right now with, with, with people. And I think everybody that knows me knows this, that I will not let anybody comment on their body, whether it's negatively positive. Your body is not a conversation for you to have, you know, as like even their pediatrician. Yes. If you have any health concerns, you can talk to me, but not in the presence of my kids. That is not something I want on their radar, you know? But yeah, going back to our topic. No, no, no.

[00:41:46] Eritrea: I love this. I love this. This is such an important thing. I actually, Rob knows, so I started a fitness journey last year. And I feel like this thinking of your body being valuable outside of weight loss is so important. So like I set my goal to be something random, like be able to jump over a fence, which I know sounds really crazy, but that's still my goal. and I'm going to be able to do it because the point is like your body is amazing because it is doing amazing things for you every day like and I think this kind of kind of maybe even comes back to our culture nor because like it's like in the Quran like even blinking your eye like God thought about that for you like you know what I mean so it's like for me or to try to start thinking like the body is an amazing thing regardless of its size it is not worth of value it's not money like it's just a miracle and we just have to be grateful for it because otherwise we're sitting here putting ourselves at I do not deserve love I do not deserve a career I do not deserve success because I am xyz and that's just toxic poison you know so yeah like I like what you said about how

[00:42:47] Noor Al-Ramahi: it is in our religion but also like I I've had the same religion and been exposed to the same religion my whole life but still you know it took me a lot of therapy and work to get to the point where I am now and realizing that, you know what, my body has shown up for me every single day of my life, even on the worst days where I thought I wasn't going to make it, even when I was in a coma, even, you know, all these things, my body showed up for me and kept me alive and gave me the opportunity to be where I am today. And every day of my life right now, I spend it giving back to my body, even if it's small things like, like you said, like I'm, I won't call myself an athlete because I think that's a very loaded. Hey, if you have a body, you're an athlete. I was going to say, you're an athlete, Nora. No, I was going to say, because that's a loaded statement. I just don't like what the modern day definition for it is. And I don't do it for weight loss. It's just, I love the way it makes me feel, mentally and physically strong and capable of carrying myself and just honoring my body that's given me everything. Even with a not fully functioning pancreas, it's still doing a pretty badass job.

[00:44:03] Rob Howe: There's this weird entrepreneur guy that came in and guest spoke in one of my college classes. He owned a bunch of businesses in Colorado Springs or something. He had a book. The book was called The Box You've Got. The whole premise was basically everybody has a box. There's different stuff in everybody's box. can you make the most out of what what of the box you got and you know i think there's a viral tweet or you know a sort of meme going around about people are talking about their quarantine 15 or their quarantine 20 and not loving themselves as much after the quarantine it's like well your body showed up for you every day helped you survive a global pandemic where so many people passed away and so many people got terribly sick and the first thing that you can do is instead of celebrate that is to judge it for adapting a little bit to the new normal. Um, you know, yesterday, yesterday, this is, I mean, I'm going to talk about this probably for way too long, but I went and did a basketball tryout yesterday for the, and I hadn't played basketball in like 15 months. And frankly, it was just for my mental health. I just needed to go out and play against some real humans. And I needed that for myself and I had not prepared. Uh, I have been working out. I've been working out a lot and I feel really good. And you know what? I showed up and my body responded. It was there and I got through and I wasn't even like, I was like, man, you can't really tell the difference between what I'm doing and what these other guys, maybe they've been prepared better for me, but, or than I have, but, and sure I could have been way better prepared. I could have absolutely been way more ready, but you know, it was cool to be like, you know what? My body showed up for me today. All this prep that I've been doing and hard, boring work that, you know, I'd leave, get done with a workout. I'd be like, why am I doing this. I don't even know. And just to be able to, I don't know, go out there and use my body and move around and ask it to do stuff and it respond was, was really fun. So yeah, I don't, you know, I don't care if you're a, we've had some pretty amazing athletes on this pod. We've had some normal folks. And I think that if you have a body, you're an athlete, and if you, you can celebrate what your body does for you, even just if it's, you know, keeping you alive through the night with steady blood sugars, man, what a, what a celebration that should be.

[00:46:21] Noor Al-Ramahi: I agree.

[00:46:24] Rob Howe: So I want to shift over because I know we, uh, your, I want to, I want to hear your perspective on, on motherhood with diabetes. And we've talked about it a lot on this podcast previously and air tray and I have talked about it a little bit as well, but, um, it's certainly one of the first questions that outsiders ask women with diabetes all the time is they, there is stigma and there is misinformation associated with being a T1D sugar mama. shout out to the t1d sugar mamas accounts uh they are they are awesome awesome folks over there brandy and her team so talk a little bit about your your pregnancy journey if you're if you're

[00:46:59] Noor Al-Ramahi: comfortable sharing that with us yeah sure um so i think i was lucky in the sense that my sister-in-law also has type 1 diabetes so in terms of like dealing with my in-laws and that i didn't have to, and she had, she had a, she had a daughter at the time when I came into the family. So I didn't have any, I don't know what's the right word. Um, you got to skip that conversation, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like I didn't have to deal with that. So she kind of already paved the way for me. Um, but I also have PCOS. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was, um, 15 years old. I guess, I don't know. It's weird. I don't know if it's like a woman's intuition or it's us as people with diabetes, we're just so in tune with our body that we know our body so well. I like from the get go, I had a very strong feeling that I won't be able to get pregnant in the traditional way. And that's something that I had disclosed to my husband, even though like there was no any medical proof for them. And he was like, okay, you know what? It is what it is. There's no point making it a big deal right now. That's not going to change the way I feel about you. And it's not going to change things. Like when we get to that point, we'll jump that bridge when we have to get to it. Like, okay. So we got married and we were married for a year and a bit before we kind of decided that we want to start trying for a baby. And at that point, because I did have that, that feeling that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant, even though I don't want, I didn't want a baby like immediately. I don't know, that might not have, doesn't sound like the smartest thing because it could have happened next day, but I don't know. I just had a really strong gut feeling. And so we're like, you know what, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, whatever. It didn't. So we were trying for another year, just naturally trying and that didn't work. And then we went to a fertility clinic and it was very interesting because when we first started, they're like, oh, like, yeah, you have PCOS and it's kind of not, they're like, it's not that bad. You know, it's like you have a moderate case of PCOS. It should be fine. We'll just increase your metformin dose and it should work itself out. Great. Went home, increased my metformin dose, couple of months, nothing happened. Went back again. They're like, oh, that's so weird. Your body's not responding. Let's do, um, uh, let's do, uh, Clomid like the oral, um, hormones and to see how your body responds. Like, okay. Went on Clomid. My body wasn't responding either the way that they thought that it was it was going to respond and oh my god those pills made me psychotic like no joke like now I reflect back and I asked my husband's like how did you not leave me he's like if we did one more round we probably wouldn't have been here right now like it was it was bad I remember once like I just went to the bathroom and he had used the bathroom and didn't change the toilet paper roll. Yeah, it was a big mistake, but not the end of the world. I went out and I started yelling and screaming at him. I threw a picture frame at him and then got really worked up. So went to the garage. I don't know why. We had a three bedroom house at that time, but I chose to go cry in the garage. So you know when you're like really upset and worked out, you get hot. So I started like getting really hot. And then I went inside and continued yelling and screaming at him and calling him like a stingy word because he didn't put AC in the garage. Like, no, no, there was like no common sense. Like it was just insane. So yeah, we did, we did four rounds of Clomid, two of them with IUI and still my body wasn't responding. So at that point they're like, okay, let's do IVF because they're like, well, we can keep going. You have up to six, six tries, but my Allah was your husband said no no no he's a full-size we're finished yeah we're ready for IVF and um and keep in mind that in order for you to start trying to get pregnant you need to have really tight control so my A1C like my health care provider for me again this is something you need to discuss with your health provider for me they wanted my A1C um so when I first started they said they wanted it below 6.5 which is fine but then when things took longer it kind of I started getting like burned out really early and it wasn't even you know the pregnancy part yet so my doctor was like you know what it's okay if you kind of chill out a bit so but I was still very focused on doing that that I actually like kept dropping my a1c like I was at 6.6.0 6.6 when I started IVF and the IVF clinic, that's something that, like, we didn't check with them before if they had an A1C requirement. And apparently they did, but we didn't find out until after we had signed the papers and paid the money. And their requirement was 5.8. And mine was six at that time. And I still remember the nurse calling me and she was like, well, you have uncontrolled diabetes and we cannot proceed. This is a high risk for the baby. And like, keep in mind, I was already dealing with all the like infertility struggles and someone telling me that my like a1c of six

[00:52:38] Rob Howe: wasn't good like i just had it you got lucky she got lucky you weren't on clomid at that point or

[00:52:42] Noor Al-Ramahi: else you got lucky you were on the phone i just started bawling but anyways they refused to start the cycle like to do the ivf on that cycle so we waited and even though like my my endocrinologist was like that's ludicrous you know it's like i cleared you for ivf everything so next time they did the blood test, it was 5.9. And they're like, okay, you know what, we can proceed on a couple of conditions, you need to see a perinatologist to talk to you about all the risks given your uncontrolled diabetes. So I had to sit in an appointment for a whole hour, someone telling me all the possible things that could go wrong in my pregnancy, which is like super traumatic. I had to get a clearance letter from my endocrinologist and a high-risk OB. And I had to see a cardiac specialist and a dentist and eye specialist. So anyways, I did all that. And the doctors were like, you know, given the way that your body has been responding to the hormones and meds, we don't think that there's a very good chance of you getting pregnant. If we put one egg, one embryo, you know, it's like, I think it's better to do two embryos. And even with the two embryos, you know, there's like a very low chance that you're even going to get pregnant. Like I, at the time they quoted me like 3% chance of me getting pregnant. And I explicitly told them, I do not want twins. You know, I was like, I do not want twins. So anyways, fast forward, We did IVF, put two embryos in and my blood test came positive. Great news. My pregnancy, the HCG levels, my pregnancy hormone levels were tripling every day. They're supposed to double. And I'm like, what does that mean? The nurse is like, well, we're not quite sure yet. Like we can't, we can't tell for sure without an ultrasound, but it's usually an indication of a twin pregnancy. Again, didn't think anything of it. I'm like, you know, I was lucky enough to get pregnant with one, like no way I can be carrying twins. So we went for the ultrasound and I had no morning sickness at the time. Blood sugars were like perfectly in range. And then he was like, yep, there's two. I'm like, two what? He's like, two embryos. I'm like, what do you mean? Again, like I'm a science geek, so I know what this means, but my brain just wasn't processing it. He's like, there's twins. I got so nauseous. I'm like I was saying I was like I think morning sickness is kicking in and I turn around and I see him like bent over the trash can and he was like dry heaving and the trainer wants to throw up and I'm like what is going on and he just wouldn't say anything like the whole ride home like we finished the appointment we got home like can you say anything we just swear yell say anything it's like how the hell am I gonna pay for college I'm like really that's your concern I have diabetes and I'm carrying twins and that's your concern. But it was, it was actually, um, um, I'm hesitant to say this, but pretty smooth pregnancy, all things considered. Um, it now in retrospect, I think it's easier for me to say that, but in the, in like going through it, um, I had very, very extremely tight control. Like even the doctors were, um, increase, like decreasing my doses because they were so worried that my blood sugar levels were like, really like I'm walking a fine line. Um, and I developed preeclampsia towards, uh, the end of it. So they had to induce me, um, earlier for twins. It was fine. It was 37 weeks. Um, and I was able to deliver vaginal birth. I opted to, um, to just stay on my pump for the beginning of labor, but then I asked to be switched to an IV drip because I'm not sure if you know this, but I, the IV insulin is in and out of your system within three minutes. It's processed and it's out of your body in three minutes. And I had like extreme, extreme insulin resistance towards the end. Like I was one to one plus four. And I was just giving, you know, a couple of units here, a couple of units there, just, you know, just like water. So I wanted to know that if my blood sugar was to go high, um, during labor, I would have a quick fix with that, but I also had to set ground rules. Um, and luckily at that point, I really learned how to advocate for myself. And I told them, I'm like, if, um, if my blood sugar goes above a hundred and you do not correct it, I, I am going to give myself insulin. And I kept my infusion site on, it was disconnected, but I had my infusion set on ready to bolus myself. If they refuse to, um, adjust, luckily I didn't have to do them. Um, and yeah, the, the boys were the boys. So I have a twin boys. They were born with actually really good blood sugar levels. So no complications there. One had a, um, a slight breathing problem, but had nothing to do with diabetes. Um, and they're not like, it feels like pregnancy and diabetes, like the least of my concerns with them running all over

[00:57:54] Rob Howe: the place. Yeah. Now they just drive you crazy, right? Yeah. But it's, it's, it's awesome. It's

[00:58:02] Noor Al-Ramahi: actually been amazing how diabetes in so many ways has, um, has really prepared me for motherhood or parenthood, um, in terms of, in terms of like preparations and just even, even in terms of, uh, being their advocate, you know, I, I know like a lot of parents, it takes them a while to, to figure out what, what or how to show up for, for their kids. You know, a lot of people say, oh, it's instinctual, but I really don't think it is, you know, in a lot of ways. And also there's like a lot of pediatricians appointments and you're like, and we've already navigated that healthcare space. So we know how to deal with doctors. We know how to deal with insurance, all that stuff um even like the small things where you know we have our bag to carry all our diabetes stuff you know it's like what's one more and it's actually it was more convenient I had the baby bag I'd throw everything in there um and it just you know it's like always prepared for the kind of prepared for the worst case scenario I think really kind of shifted into um also like my parenting styles, you know, it's like, okay, I have two kids, but let's pack six snacks just in case. Um, so it's re it really did. Um, it really did help me. And also, I don't know if it's just me personally, or a lot of people, the diabetes world also feel that where I am not squeamish. And like, when it comes to like, sorry, this might be like team, but like puke, I don't agree. stop no no i don't agree stop i'm the most screamish human on the planet i literally

[00:59:42] Eritrea: shut up rob i literally like if something like is gross on tv i'll gag like i'll gag and i'll almost throw up or like if something something smells or if a person smells oh my god stuck

[00:59:54] Noor Al-Ramahi: foot a lot if somebody smells bad can't do it okay so it must be just me but yeah like i one of my kids like busted his head head open i'm like okay blood no big deal you know let's cover it up apply pressure and deal with it later my head is like freaking out later i'm like i'm like medical stuff doesn't freak me out so i don't know maybe it's not a diabetes thing but yeah um so it did help me in terms of that and then when the kids were about uh two years old i did have a miscarriage it wasn't a planned pregnancy um and that's when they kind of and it was funny because I didn't want to be pregnant. I like after I really had a very complicated recovery from and postpartum, like I really suffered really, really extremely bad postpartum depression. And it was something that actually, I don't think I ever, we dropped the postpartum part, but the depression kind of stuck with me. And I've had episodes of depression before, but it kind of came and went with the circumstances. And I do have a very strong family history of mental health issues. So the depression kind of never went away. And but when like, I didn't want, I didn't want to have kids because I was just struggling with my issues and then struggling with being a mom, you know, I, I couldn't enjoy the process because of everything that I was going through. And it also like all that they drill it into your head that you need to have perfect blood sugar, perfect blood sugar. And I've been trying to achieve perfect blood sugar for like three, three or four years. It was hard to let go of that once I was done, you know, and trying to juggle my, my depression and having twins and just life in general while keeping perfect blood sugar was just miserable. So I was, I just didn't want more kids. So when I found out I was pregnant, I'll just have it really quickly. You know, I found out I was pregnant. I went to the doctor to do a blood test to, to check. They, they did a couple, so they did, I did a home pregnancy test and then I went to the clinic and they did another like home in clinic pregnancy test to showed up positive and one showed up negative. And he was like, well that's confusing so let's do a blood test I'm like okay so when we did I did a blood test and um I believe that was a Friday so the results were um yeah the clinic was closed so yeah it was a Friday the clinic was closed on a Saturday or no it was a Saturday the clinic was closed on a Sunday yeah sorry um and that Sunday um I had the miscarriage at home and part of me was relieved because I didn't want that pregnancy. So I was just like, it's fine. No big deal. I wasn't even excited about it, whatever. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later where I realized I was so angry at my body. I was just so frustrated and so angry and so upset. It's like, I've tried for years to get pregnant and you couldn't, my body just wouldn't get pregnant. And then when I didn't want to get pregnant. I accidentally get pregnant. And then you, I can't, I couldn't keep the baby, you know, it's like, I was just so angry. It's like, why can't you do anything right? You know, it's like, you're so broken in so many ways, you know? And it was, it was just kind of, and I do realize that it was a lot of my depression talking at that point. And I was, that felt kind of like rock bottom to me. I just felt like everything, it's just like my whole life started flashing in front of me. It's like, okay, it's like the diabetes, eating disorder, or coma, fertility treatments, like everything. It's like, why can't you do anything right? I was just so angry at my body. So I had to process those emotions. And it took me a while before I saw medical help for my depression to process all this. And I remember like my first appointment when I just unpacked everything and you guys are just getting a diabetes part of it. You're not getting, you know, just the other life. And she just looked at me. She's like, wow, how are you still here? You know, she was like, I don't think you realize how much trauma you've endured in your life. And I'm like, well, now that I said it this way and you're paraphrasing, I'm like, yeah, but still, I feel like, I feel like I don't have the right to complain because I do acknowledge my privileges you know I I do acknowledge my whether it's my light-skinned privilege whether it's my having a financially stable family you know all these things access to health care not living in a war-torn country you know I do acknowledge and I feel like I have no right to complain about these things so that's another thing that I'm dealing with currently and working on in therapy is kind of real acknowledging my privileges and also realizing that other people's struggles, which I perceive as more worthy, don't undermine mine. So

[01:05:16] Rob Howe: retweet. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Hopefully we don't have the same therapist because they would have a lot to deal with between the two of us. Yeah. I love three of us really too. Right. So, um, Um, I also, okay. So I want to shift you, you brought up, um, you know, being thankful, being grateful for, you know, not living in a war torn country, acknowledging your privilege, um, and also giving yourself space for living a tough existence and having a hard time. I think that's for me, uh, I have a hard time admitting that too. Like why, why should I have it? Why should I have depression? It doesn't add up, you know? Um, and at the same time, you don't want to skip over the people who are really suffering, uh, and the places in the world where there are injustices and terrible things happening to people who, you know, or, or look like you, or you have, uh, you know, have something in common with and have shared an experience with. So I know you are from UAE, but you're Palestinian. And I'd like for you to kind of walk us through not just what's been going on over the past three and a half weeks or so, but also just historically what that's like for a Palestinian person to exist in today's world and talk about the injustices that are going on back home.

[01:06:44] Noor Al-Ramahi: Yeah. Um, first of all, I'm going to like start off by saying, um, speaking up for Palestinian rights does not, um, does not mean that you're antisemitic or standing against, um, the Jewish population. They are not opposing, uh, beliefs, um, or missions. They actually go hand in hand. Um, nobody's free until all of us are free. uh so in saying that so my personal story is um my my grandfather well I'm gonna start with my grandfather because that's that's as far as um information as I have but my every generation before that has lived on the land of Palestine and um my great grandfather um was uh was pretty well off and we live he was the leader of the tribe in our village um back then and he had a lot of land and um property and all that stuff uh when so at the time the palestine was under the british mandate it was colonized by the british army um and when after uh world war one um the Jewish population needed a space, a safe space to call their home that protects them from the outside world after the horrendous things that happened to them during the Holocaust. So the British people were like, hey, here's the land, you can have it, you know. And in doing so, they They claim that this land is for them and there was no people on it, which from personal experience, we know is not true. You know, it's like my whole family lived there. And there are a lot of also documents, historical documents that prove that there were people on the land. so anyways uh the only way that they were going to get this um that this only jewish state is to erase the people that were there and that's when the ethnic cleansing started in 1948 in 1948 um our village uh which is called in zera now there's a huge israeli settlement on top of it was seized and they were forcibly displaced. My dad's family, so my grandfather and my great grandfather moved to Jerusalem at the time. And in Jerusalem, they were made refugees in Jerusalem. We actually have the UNRWA refugee card. I have a photo of it. My dad sent it to me a couple of grandfather because of his wealth and his connections my grandfather was able to get a job in Qatar to provide a life and like money for his family so they don't live in they so they don't have to live in refugee camps and then he came back he got married to my grandmother and and then the night and had kids they had five kids at the time and then in 1967 war happened and my grandmother my grandfather was still working um outside Palestine and my grandmother had to uh leave Palestine um with her five kids with literally uh rockets and bombs dropping on them and um oh I posted I thought I posted on the takeover no it was on my personal page the story um my grandmother like till now oh did I mention it about the leggings I know but you can tell us please tell us so my like a couple of years ago I've noticed like my grandmother's always wearing well they're not technically leggings they're like pants underwear but I don't think they have them in the western long johns yeah pretty much um she always wears them no matter what she's wearing no matter what she's wearing so I asked her once I'm like why do you always wear these you know it's like it's clearly not for decency because you're wearing a long dress you know and it's not transparent and she was like like you can see in this glassy look in her eyes like sadness and she was like well when we had to flip like sleep out uh jerusalem with the um during the war there were uh we didn't have time to to get prepared so we just left with the kids like in the middle of the night and at some point she's like there are missiles and rockets and all that shooting going on so they had to like crawl on the ground and on rubble or you know rubble and uh bushes and all that stuff and her knees were just like all scrap like cut up and scraped and everything so till now she feels like her subconscious brain is telling her that she needs to be prepared for everything you know it's like and i'm like but trauma it is trauma it's trauma and and that's the sad thing like there was this um there's this uh palestinian psychologist who said we actually don't have post-traumatic stress disorder because we don't have the post we're like the post never left we're still living that drama that trauma and it's become generational trauma we've never had the the space or the time to even process that trauma even the people who had left like I've never been to Palestine I like up until last year I did not have the right to return you know I had no rights of being there even though I'm Palestinian you know it's like my whole family is Palestinian so anyways um so that's how they lift they left which is Jerusalem and they settled uh they moved to a couple of places before they ended up settling in the UAE and my grandfather got the UAE passport because he was a lawyer and he helped establish the country. So they gave him the passport and they made him the ambassador of the UAE in Jordan. So that's why they ended up in Jordan. So for me as a Palestinian, like as an with Palestinian origins, it's very hard because, and I never struggled with this topic growing up in the UAE because over there, everybody was on the same page in terms of what's happening. It's like, I didn't have to explain it to anybody. I didn't have to defend myself or justify my existence to anybody. And it wasn't until I came here where I really struggled with that. And I think that's actually also was one of the main forces behind my depression is I was tired of fighting. And it was, it's very interesting because when, during like the Black Lives Matter movement, when you would hear Black people saying, we are tired, or you'd hear them telling us, don't, you know, as I don't tell us how we're supposed to feel or how we're supposed to express our frustration or our anger it it resonated with me you know but at the same time I wasn't allowed to say that because I knew if I said anything I would be labeled anti-semitic and I knew that the way that the media portrayed the whole oppression and apartheid and ethnic cleansing was very whitewashed you know and the whole western world even well not the whole like in their defense there are some people who have been um privy to this uh to the reality from the beginning but still like the majority um viewed us as the problem you know and it's like i am i am the victim here for like lack of better words you know it's like we are being oppressed we are being subjected to police brutality, you know, to the militarization of the police, to stealing our land, stealing our house. And this is like not even going into details of what happened during the war of 1948. You know, there are historians, Israeli historians who have wrote books on this topic about like, there's a whole book called Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. And it goes into details about everything, the horrendous stuff. And it's interesting because the Palestinian people, the older generation did not, don't talk about this. There's like so much trauma. And I think part of it is also, um, they view it as shame or failure to have protected their land in a way. And they also, they're super proud that they don't want to play victim. They don't want to be victimized. You know, it's like, yes, throughout this all, we're still resilient. We're still fighting. We're still going through it. Um, we don't want your pity party kind of thing.

[01:15:45] Rob Howe: well and i think too like you said being tired and like you know reaching a certain point where you just avoid those types of things just because you don't have the energy anymore to continue to

[01:15:55] Noor Al-Ramahi: try to fight for that yeah there you have that on one hand and then you also have on the other hand where you know that speaking up you're gonna pay a price for that you know um being like we've already seen like yes there's been a huge shift in the narrative where we've seen a lot of people speak up for Palestinians, but we've also seen how they tried to hijack the whole narrative and make it seem that this is anti-Semitic. It's gaslighting. It's literally 83 years.

[01:16:29] Eritrea: So when you guys were like, we're tired, when you say tired as a Black person, as an Arab person, we're tired of being told that nothing's happening. 83 years of gaslighting, homie. Like, because I mean, the whole conflict or not even conflict, war, ethnic cleansing has been happening now for 80 something years. And it's like also this thought process of this has been happening forever and it's always going to happen. And it's like rooted in the in religious history when really it actually has nothing to do with religion at all. And it's all about land, space, people. And that's it.

[01:17:03] Noor Al-Ramahi: But you know what, even at this point, it is, it's just about basic human rights, you know, it's like, literally, like, people are just asking for their basic human rights, you know, it's like, but we don't even have that we don't have, whether we're talking about where we're whether we're talking about Palestinian on the land of Palestine, or Palestinians outside the land of Palestine, we don't have basic rights. Like even in the US, people talk about freedom of speech, freedom to protest. We don't even have that right. The BDS movement is literally like a protest. This is your right to protest, to spend your money where you wish to be. And it's already like by the in the U.S. It is labeled a terrorist organization.

[01:17:45] Eritrea: It's banned in the U.S. We can't. So I was thinking about doing this. I was like, I should put stickers on the food that says like they support Israel. And so I started Googling it and was like, oh, no, if I do this, I'm going to jail. It's super illegal here. I had no idea. Crazy illegal. Like go to the penitentiary forever.

[01:18:00] Noor Al-Ramahi: The anger and the frustration is really about like the double standards and like the impunity when it comes to this matter. Like there was God, I forgot his name, blanking out his name. So he's actually a Holocaust survivor and he was like a mental health specialist. I believe he's a psychologist. And he he said he's like, you can clearly see the double standards. He's like, why is it when in Hong Kong, the protesters throwing rocks at the police in the media and the Western media, that's portrayed as heroism. But when children, children are throwing rocks at like one of the strongest militaries in the world on tanks, you know, they're viewed as terrorists. Like, why is there that double standards? And you know what? I don't like, yeah, I think, I think I just got really into the conversation and I can talk about this like for hours and hours because it is a 73 year long occupation. It's complicated and goes way beyond that. But I think to just kind of keep things relevant at this point, I think a lot of, what a lot of people don't realize or don't want to realize is this is not, and this is not a both side situation because it's not an equal fight. It is one side who's the oppressor and the other side just resisting the oppression. We are just fighting for our basic human rights. And in doing so, a lot of people, innocent people have suffered and a diabetes community has suffered a lot. And right now we have like two different situations where you have Gaza, which is basically the world's largest open air prison you know it's like yes it's controlled by um palestinians but

[01:19:50] Rob Howe: just for those listeners that's the west bank yes gaza yeah yeah the strip yeah it's um

[01:19:59] Noor Al-Ramahi: it's even though it's palestinian territory it's it's still controlled by israel there there's been uh i think it's 15 years now 15 year blockade where blockade like land air and sea nothing is allowed to go in nothing is allowed to go out without permits and permits are almost impossible to get um i was listening um to an audio book today it's called Except for Palestine by Marc Lamont Hill i love him and he was he was talking about a story of this lady who is from Gaza she got married to to a guy in Jerusalem and they moved there and she applied for a permit like a couple of times over the span of like three months to go visit her family she kept getting denied and then they she they gave her permission and then when she went to Gaza it took her she was applying for two years and they kept denying her her her permit to leave to go back home. And then they issued her husband a permit and not her. And now they've like, they've been separated for four years. They're not allowing her permission to leave now. Um, okay. So this, this specific scenario is not related to diabetes, but let's for a second, just for a second, um, say that this lady did have diabetes. Okay. As diabetics, we prepare and we over-prepare. We go on a trip, we double our insulin. You're going for a trip that's supposedly a month or two, and you end there for six years with no end in sight, how are you supposed to prepare for that in a diabetes sense, in a place where there's a blockade, where there's very extremely minimal access to healthcare? We know friends in Gaza who are in med school, So they're very into the healthcare scene. They told us because I had extra pumps and I was like, I'm willing to help. Like if there's a way for us to find, like if there's, if we can find a way for us to get this to you, I would gladly get this to you. And I collected a lot of supplies. So they had enough supplies to easily last me here. First of all, there was no way to get it to them. Secondly, he told us, he's like, we have in all of Gaza, the population is 2 million people. in a very tiny overpopulated can like a strip of land there are 2 million people um only three only three people in all of Gaza have insulin and pumps none of them are on their insulin pumps because they have no access to supplies that's how bad the situation is here and I know sometimes I get frustrated that you know what I don't know Dexcom took more than four days to to send me my my sensor or my my uh a pump site failed or whatever but there's like a car line at walgreens you know it's like how exactly and then you say that okay what about the check let's let's move out of that okay let's go to um occupied jerusalem um the checkpoints we they're claiming that it's not an apartheid well what do you say when there are checkpoints only for palestinians and roads it's only for Jewish Israeli people to roam as they please without being stopped. What if I want to go? And a lot of these points were built intentionally to inconvenience people. You know, it's like their checkpoints and there is the apartheid wall. There's like a whole wall. That's like more than double the size of the Berlin wall. That is just like, they just decide, okay, let's put it here. A lot of families have been separated from each other. Like imagine you and your brother. I don't know if you have a brother, but decide to have a house in front of each other, you know, to raise your kids together. And then in comes a wall. And now it takes you like five plus hours with the checkpoints and everything to just get to your brother's house. But anyways, think that you're trying to get to a pharmacy. How, how are you, how are you going to get to a pharmacy with the checkpoints? A lot of like, even like from a, from a medical, uh, you know, so many people have died at these checkpoints.

[01:24:11] Eritrea: Oh, yeah. So there's like this whole problem with freedom of movement, like it's an entire. And I want to say a specific case that was like very important to like everything that's happening right now. But rest in peace to Omar Yagashi, a baby who was supposed to have a surgery on Israeli land, and that was denied going onto Israeli land because they were Palestinian. So this was a baby, like an infant who had scheduled a surgery to survive. This family got held up at a bunch of different checkpoints on June 18th. And their child literally died in their arms. This is what's happening. This is what's happening. When people are like, we need to see both sides. What is the other side to that? Make me understand. make me understand why an infant needs to be lost to a cause that like this

[01:25:05] Noor Al-Ramahi: and like even like um like in terms of diabetes um so UNRWA, which is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for palestinian refugees and a lot of the residents in ghazza are actually refugees that were displaced from um what we now know as Israel. So they, as of 2018, they said that they have 1050 T1Ds registered with them. Keep in mind that that's not always accurate, because first of all, that's only the refugee population. You also have the Gaza population that is not listed under Anurah. And they only have, they don't have any public diabetes specialist physicians. So they have the private clinics for these physicians, but you're talking about a city that has 55% unemployment rate. So the poverty in the city is through the roof. People and Israel controls their water, they control their electricity, they control everything. So these people have absolutely no resources in terms of just everyday day living, um, living needs. So how do you expect them to have access to diabetes care? We know that diabetes care is very expensive. Now UNRWA provides for the refugees, insulin syringes, and just like medical checkups, um, because of, uh, aid cuts from the U S um, they had to, uh, they don't have the budget that they used to. So they stopped providing, strips. Imagine managing your diabetes without strips. So that's, that's like another, it's just like one crisis after the other, after the other. And even like in West Bank, as an East Jerusalem, 15.3% of the population has diabetes, whereas the whole world has 6%. And they think that 4.4 out of the 15.3% have type 1. But based on resources on the ground, doctors, physicians, all that, they actually think that it's higher. It could be between 18% and 21%. And it's just the small things as well. So these are the big things. But the small things is the person with diabetic that we take for granted. It's like, imagine living in a house that has an average of three to four hours of electricity every day. What's going to happen to your insulin? You know, like we freak out when we go to the beach for an hour or two. Imagine like living with no power. It's just like all these things. And like, even when the bombing was happening and I kept thinking, I'm like, everything is closed. Like literally everything is closed. there is the there's like a food crisis happening because again Israel controls what they think is enough food coming in or what what is enough and what types of food are going in and going out and I'm like okay what happens if we are I'm stuck in my house hiding from these bombs and my blood sugar goes low and I don't have access to gummy bears which Israel might think that you know what Gaza doesn't need gummy bears. It's not an essential. Like things like that. It's gone beyond a political stance. And I know when I took the takeover, when I did the takeover, a lot of people very upset that a diabetes page was talking about politics. But at this point, it's not about politics. It's about human rights. And you know what? Politics has become a health care issue you know it's like even today I was um the human rights organization had a live on Instagram and they were talking about the environmental um the environment environmental uh what's the word um factors that affect health and specifically like maternal health and I kept thinking again I went kept going back to the situation of Gaza and the situation in Palestine, you know what, even the whole country, let's include Israel in the situation too, these bombs that keep dropping, the toxic gas, the phosphorite gas, all that, this, we don't know the extent of damage that this does in relationship to our diabetes. And And we have friends in Gaza who said like it wrecks havoc on their blood sugars. Well, yeah. Just that.

[01:29:54] Rob Howe: I think early on, we were hearing stories about people couldn't sleep because the bombs were going off at night all night by design, like as a war tactic to drive you insane. And we know what lack of sleep does to our blood sugar. We know what dehydration does to our blood sugar. We know what stress does to our blood sugar. So, you know, multiply that times, you know, the worst stress that any of us here in the U.S. have ever had to endure by a million. And of course you have those types of outcomes.

[01:30:26] Noor Al-Ramahi: Yeah. And it was like, I'm not in, I'm not in Palestine. The U.S. Safety is not a concern in that sense. And my blood sugars were still through the roof because of this stress and the anger and the frustration. and it we go back to talking about I felt guilty that I or I felt like I didn't have the right to complain about that because what do I have to complain about you know bombs are not dropping on my head you know it's like and then at the same time I was just so exhausted because I knew I had to take care of my mental health and I had to take care of my physical health as well but I couldn't I couldn't walk away because I felt like that was my responsibility to be the voice for the voiceless or and speak to the injustices happening and by the way I just want to say that it's Ertree you know me so this is not that oh she's passionate about Palestine because she's Palestinian I'm an intersectional activist I believe in speaking up for everybody oppressed you know whether it was during the blm movement lbgq um a community uh the asian population um syrians muslims anybody that needs a voice i was there you know i i've always been there the immigrants um but right now the palestinian people need us and you know for the longest time uh i i wasn't able to speak up because i was i i don't know i knew that i would be gaslighted and because i felt like it's just gonna be me against the world you know at this

[01:32:14] Rob Howe: point at that point um let me ask you this because and it might just be because of my friendship and you know business relationship with eritrea that i'm more exposed to Palestinian people, but I also have a close friend and business partner associate that his family is Palestinian. And, you know, so I'm more, because I have diversified those friendships, I'm more exposed to these things. And so I do have a personal connection to it, at least just one person removed. And at the same time, people are upset that I am talking about it. And on the other hand i've never i don't think that i've seen as much support globally it's very similar to black lives matter where there was like that specific day where there were a million millions of protesters globally protesting the the murder of black people by police in the united states and i'm seeing a little like not not as large but a a similar start uh to you know that movement. And I was talking to Eritrea about it earlier. How much of that is just because the democratization of access on phones and being able to show what's really happening? Because what's really clear to me as like a marketing guy and communications guy is the gaslighting that Eritrea mentioned earlier is that there's a really pro-Israel, anti-Palestine narrative that's fed to the US media. And for me in particular, like a white guy growing up in, you know, evangelical South Dallas, Texas. I remember, and I was, I've told Eritrea this before. I remember an announcement going out at my school when Yasser Arafat died, uh, in like celebration of an enemy, you know, you know, that type of narrative. And that's how people who grew up where I grew up, that entire relationship is framed. So it is a deep seated misinformation battle.

[01:34:15] Noor Al-Ramahi: over yeah so yeah there's definitely been a shift in the narrative and I feel like I think also the Black Lives Matter movement that we've experienced in the past couple of years two three years in a way prepped people for how to deal with this but you still have a lot of people, like you said, that have already been brainwashed and are scared. They're scared to speak up for Palestinian rights, thinking that that's anti-Semitic and that's going to harm the Jewish population. And this is where they're trying, like the Israeli government, Israeli propaganda is trying to shift the focus and shift the narrative into making it seem that anti-zionism and anti-semitism are um interwined uh we've seen a lot of people who are either jewish israelis or just jewish um from different countries speak up for the palestinian people against what's happening um from on behalf like what's happening um from the israeli government And it was actually interesting because I've like I've had this I've struggled with this situation for the past like 11 years, if not longer. and uh two weeks ago we were at a protest and there were these two women carrying um signs one said um one said something along it basically said something along the lines of another jew in support of a free palestine and the other one said um not in my name um so i walked up to them And I was like, thank you. Like, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And, um, and then one of them asked if she could hug me. We're both fully vaccinated. We have masks. I did ask you who's vaccinated. Um, and I, I said, yes. And we hugged and out of nowhere, I just started bawling. Like I just, I had all this bottled up emotions that I just let it go. And she like, she clearly saw me like crying and upset and she just kept like whispering she's like I am so sorry I am so sorry you're going through this like and I told her I'm like you know what and I'm sorry you guys had to go through what you went through too it was not okay then and it's not okay now you know

[01:37:00] Rob Howe: and that's what that's what gets me though isn't it exactly the same it is it is and this is why so there's this amazing well and and before I want to clarify that before before I let you continue. The beginnings of Nazi Germany and the stories that we hear about the Holocaust and World War II, it starts with the state claiming property and moving the people into ghettos. And to me, I think that's what's most shocking about what's happening over the past 75 years and learning about the true history of it, because we did not cover this in my world history class in ninth grade in high school, but is how similar they are and how quickly they turned heel and did the same thing to another people group that happened to Jews. And the murder of 6 million Jews, it was not that long ago, and it was awful and horrific. But two wrongs don't make a right.

[01:37:56] Noor Al-Ramahi: Exactly. That's what I've been saying. Two wrongs do not make a right. That's just what I keep saying. And it's really frustrating when the whole both sides or the Hamas excuse gets thrown in. Like, just to put it out there, I do not agree with what Hamas does. But at the same time, you need to understand that, first of all, this ethnic cleansing has started in 1947. OK, the war happened in 1948, but it started in 1947. 7th. Hamas wasn't established until 1987. So, and then what happened in these latest events, like, I don't know what to call them, but it's like, just keeps everything, just like everything explodes. And then that calms down for a while. And then, so in the, in the past couple of weeks, it, it had not like every yesterday, we were with a friend who was completely oblivious to what was happening. And she was like, wait, but didn't Hamas throw rockets? I'm like, yeah, that's where you came in the middle of the conversation. You know, there was land that's being stolen for years and years and Israeli settlers walking around with weapons backed by the military when we don't even have access to things like water, health care, freedom to move, just walk in the streets. You know, we can't live in our own homes without it being stolen by illegal Israeli settlers, you know, and it's like, and I'm not, I'm not personally using the word illegal. That's internet by international law and condemned by United Nations and human rights watch. And, and what do you expect when people are being oppressed, you know?

[01:39:43] Rob Howe: Well, I think that's where, you know, I think Hamas is weaponized by the media and certainly there, you know, because it's easy to point at like a group and say, these people are bad. And but then you like you said, they weren't established in 1987. And I can't claim to be an expert on Hamas. But what it strikes to me is that in when you there's all those old memes that I feel like a lot of the guys I went to high school used to share when they were trying to like show that they were manly. It'd be like, if you're caged up, you turn into a lion, you know, and you turn, you know, I don't know. Like, and I feel like that that like environment, when you're sequestered and your rights are taken away and you have to become a person that, you know, by any means necessary to get your freedom and represent your people, that you do things that a person who, like us in the US, we've never had to take up arms in defense of our home. and, you know, or have to do things in the name of that. And I think that it's, that's why war is so complex. But at the same time, Hamas is not an army and are not funded by a government. So again, like when we talk about why we're having these conversations, whether it's Black Lives Matter, talking about police brutality, whether it's Uyghur Muslims in China being, you know, taken away from their homes and put in concentration camps, whether it's Palestinians being forcibly removed from their homes and put into an open air prison and denied basic human rights. All of those are, like you said earlier, intersectionality, part of the same issue, which is racism, it's human rights, it's treating people differently because of who they are and where they're from. And we talked about this before we started recording, I feel like, and it's kind of taken a lot for me to unpack this, like as a, as a white guy in America, colonialism and sort of the spirit of conquering was celebrated, uh, in, in my, in my life, in my culture. And like, that is, you know, you, you mentioned like real Christopher Columbus shit. Uh, you know, it's, it hasn't been that long since we used to sing songs about Christopher Columbus, you know, like, and, you know, pilgrim. Yeah. And all those horrible things that he did to the Native Americans. And, you know, people talking about stolen land and like, you know, everywhere we are, you know, everywhere my skin goes is stolen land from somebody who talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. And so, you know, I didn't do that, but I benefited from it. And, you know, people died who I'll never meet and I'll never know about because they've been whitewashed from history. And I think now that's where I go back to the democratization of media, where people like us can just create content that is on the ground with our phone and tell and speak truth to power in ways that haven't been able to be done before.

[01:42:35] Noor Al-Ramahi: Yeah, it's like if the liberation of a group of people is uncomfortable or intimidating to you, it's one of two things one is you're benefiting from it too you probably need to sit with yourself a little bit longer and ask yourself why you know it's and I have like major respect and seriously hats off for all the Jewish and Israeli people who have spoken up against the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing appetite and brutality like I know it takes a lot of guts and I know it takes a lot of courage. Like we've seen Bernie Sanders. He's like, you've been like, he's, he's been called self-hating Jew since the very beginning, you know, just because he's standing up for injustice. And it's, I don't know if you guys have seen it, but there's a video circulating around by, um, interviewed by Russell Peters. He interviewed a guy called, uh, Gabor, um, Mate. And he actually spoke about like a couple of things that really stood out for me. It's first, he said you don't have to support Hamas to support Palestinian rights being pro-Palestine does not mean you're anti-Jewish and I feel like that needs to be screened from the top of every building you know it's like and more so um to people who are new to the to this whole topic um especially um Americans and quote-unquote liberal Americans because in their fight to make sure that the Jewish people are given the respect and dignity that they deserve, which we all agree with, me included, I think they're scared to talk about the Palestinian, the Palestinian occupation in fear that they're gonna oppress the Jewish community, which again, it's not Palestinians versus Jewish. It's I don't think that's the fear, Nor. I don't think that's the

[01:44:44] Eritrea: fear. I think that's you being really nice. I think the fear is colonialism. I think that Americans are afraid to say that this is wrong because then it turns around to us also being wrong being this country. Like it's real. It's really. I think it's serving complicated for

[01:44:59] Noor Al-Ramahi: them. No, no. Like it's serving. It's serving very apple doesn't fall far from tree. Like they

[01:45:07] Eritrea: are literally like part of that state being part of its existence is that our government funds

[01:45:12] Noor Al-Ramahi: its existence so yeah you're talking like you're talking on like a government level as a no as an

[01:45:18] Eritrea: american community like i think that a lot of politicians or even commentators or even the way the questions are being asked on cnn and msnbc like it's very around the framework to be pro

[01:45:28] Noor Al-Ramahi: israel because if you see i don't think it has anything to do with like falling the apple falling far from the tree i think it has more to do with the israeli lobbyists being super powerful you know and um trying to control the narrative and all that big money yeah it's it's really about big money at this point it's really and like if you look at if you look at the the um the people who are like it wanting to fight for the government in israel majority of them don't care about religion. It's not about religion, but yet they try to make it about religion because they know that's the weakest link. That's where they're going to get it.

[01:46:15] Rob Howe: And it enrages the mob. It's that tried and true propaganda tactic that I would say the Republican Party in the United States is really good at. They do an awesome job of distracting from the real issue and hitting you with really some of the best PR people in our country work for lobbyist groups because that's their job, is to control the narrative, to keep the money coming in, to keep the candidates in power. And, you know, when people, during the presidential debates, when people were saying Joe Biden's, one of his big weak points in the Democratic Party was his stance on Israel, this is what they were talking about because he, and Kamala Harris too, like she's the police. Big supporters of that. You know, I think that they're, um you know we we're learning a lot and again like i i think you're right nor like most people have no idea about how they you know our global allies and governments work together and um

[01:47:14] Noor Al-Ramahi: it's also also a lot like this is i don't think this is a very well-known fact um even amongst palestinians but actually hamas was really um the doing of the israeli government so I knew that. They funded them. Yeah. They funded the creation. who is a holocaust survivor talked about this and he like i will quote exactly what he said he was like it was an hamas is an islamic organization encouraged by israel as an as a counterweight to the secular plo which israel didn't want to deal with during the elections they wanted the shock of everyone but psychologically speaking like people tend to more no that's my me saying i interpreted psychologically speaking people tend to go for extremist leadership when they are hopeless and deprived of any possibility and basic human rights so um it's not justifying i'm not justifying their actions in any way possible i'm just stating like matter of fact facts kind of thing and he also talks he also so this is a direct quote from him again a holocaust survival who said the disproportion of power and responsibility on oppression is so markedly on one side take the worst thing you can say about hamas and multiply that by a thousand times and it still will not meet the israeli repression killing and disposition of palestinians and you know what's the sad thing in this whole situation is if i had said that or a palestinian person had said that nobody they would have lost the battle right off the bat but acknowledging and saying that this is coming from a jewish person gives it that much weight and it's like we've seen all these people talk about how we need to elevate black voices you know allow them to share their story, to speak up to, it's their story, you know, this is what they went through, and we need to just sit back, shut up and listen. And that same rule doesn't apply to Palestinians. And that's pretty frustrating. And I've also experienced that firsthand when I talk about it from my perspective nobody like it doesn't carry that much weight but when i say oh this jewish person said this or um this israeli person says this or this ex idf um soldier said that then suddenly everybody's like oh let's listen right and that's frustrating yeah i mean i i think even

[01:50:06] Rob Howe: i can't i can't imagine what you guys are experiencing uh from commentary from people when you share content because it's like I've had people accuse me of sharing propaganda, one-sided things. And I think you're right. The Palestinian perspective is just so easily dismissed by people as completely one-sided. And then I see these people and the stuff that they share because I'm a big believer in like studying both sides just to see how they communicate with each other. And all I see is erasure of culture. I see gaslighting. I see recrafting narrative. I see Hamas, weaponizing Hamas as like, oh, look at these bad Hamas people. So we're justified to do whatever we want to Palestine because of this. And it reminds me, a lot of, it's very top of mind for me because during COVID, I read this long article or like a sort of tweet storm from someone who was saying, the reason that COVID-19 is going to wreak havoc on the United States is because it's invisible. And you can't point to a singular source to say, this is the enemy. And it was this way of life that changed and we weren't able to adapt before it really hurt us. And he contrasted that with 9-11 where he said, okay, well, Al-Qaeda is the bad guy. We are going to go get Al-Qaeda. And everyone was united behind that one idea. Al-Qaeda attacked us, we're going to go get Al Qaeda. And the Islamophobia that has spilled out from that, I think it really affects Arab Americans and Palestinians. And it is deeply rooted also in why the media is portraying this in the West like they are. But at that time, I think that's how the media is using Hamas in the US is that they're saying, hey, Hamas is bad. And they're launching rockets and they don't, they redact all of the other information from the headlines that says, hey, this is in response to, uh, you know, the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and all the other events. But like you said, uh, most people, and I think like, this is something that my dad used to tell me a lot, and it's kind of a really weird right-wing Republican idea, but you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. And that's what you said earlier about most people have no idea. They don't really care. And they just take what they're fed. and they just keep on moving. And I think that's what the movement and what social media, the impact of social media is having where we can hear from Holocaust survivors and say, who are addressing this directly and people who are not Palestinian and are Jewish and are saying, hey, this is wrong. And I think that's where, what I was looking for early on was like some sort of source of information that could cut through the people who are very resistant to what's happening.

[01:53:00] Noor Al-Ramahi: Yeah, I don't know how we're going to get there, but like even, I think it's just kind of really humanizing us where we were always viewed as, by the media as terrorists or the enemy, you know, as like, yeah, just like humanizing it. And even like from a diabetes point of view, we've seen so many diabetes advocates talk about access to insulin, but nobody said anything when it came to the Palestinian people. It's like, OK, we understand that you don't want to get into the political situation, but we're still humans. We still need insulin. We still need access to insulin. And even from just the legal standpoint from like international law, it says in international law, it mandates that occupying powers must ensure that that the right to health is upheld during the term of the occupation. So it is the Israeli government's responsibility to ensure that health care in in specifically in our situation right now in diabetes, that insulin and access to health care is provided, which we clearly know is not. Yes, legally, maybe we can say that the people in Jerusalem have access to these, but when push comes to shove, when it's applied, they make their lives miserable intentionally so they can willingly leave Palestine. You know, they're subjected to humiliation, hours at checkpoints, horrible treatment at hospitals, if even, you know, making them pay up front, all in cash, knowing that a lot of people don't have that kind of money. these tactics where it's not written, you know, that you'd be like, oh, hey, you know this. But this is where we need to elevate the Palestinian voices and really understand the struggle of what's happening. And a lot of people, majority of which are Jewish people, because they're the ones who have freedom of movement the most, who have visited occupied Palestine or who have visited Gaza before the blockade have talked about the horrendous circumstances they live and how they were in this bubble where it's like, oh, the only democracy in the Middle East, beautiful, you know, vacation destination, beautiful beaches, beautiful amazing food blah blah blah all that great stuff you know that really is appealing to the western world but they're like if any zionist would go and live there or just visit for a couple of weeks and not come out a different person that's like virtually impossible that that means like you're a psychopath there's something wrong with you like you cannot walk in and see the things that they've seen and be okay with it it's it's just the dehumanization the humiliation that trying to strip us of our dignity it's just next level you know and it's it's exhausting it's exhausting trying to justify like explain to people why you deserve to lit it's basically that bottom line and i just keep reflecting of all the privilege as a person with diabetes living in a place where i have access to all that you know it's like i don't like my endocrinologist or he i don't i don't know he doesn't believe that dairy is going to raise my blood sugar i'm going to go find another endocrinologist well reality check you know because there are no endocrinologists or they don't have access to the information we have Like, Eritrea, you've seen the conversation, like some of the things that we consider basic resources and basic information that we just know in the diabetes community, a lot of them don't have access to that from their health care providers. Yes, some have access to it from like social media and from us, the link to the outside world, which is also somewhat sometimes controlled by the Israeli government. but like imagine the level of care or how are you able to manage your diabetes under those circumstances and it's not an equal fight you know it's like oh both sides no don't tell me both sides when we talk about the the Israeli side they have the leading technology in health care yeah and they have some of the most advanced technologies and advancements when it does come to diabetes as well. And they have universal healthcare, which is another topic that we need to ask ourselves as, as people living in America, I'm not an American, but I live and I pay taxes, but as Americans living in America is we don't have access to healthcare one, to universal healthcare. One in four people who have diabetes are rationing their insulin because they can't afford their insulin. Yet we continue to pay $3.8 billion every year to fund this war, to fuel their economy what about our economy what about our people people who have no access to insulin to basic health care and this is just in the health care realm not to talk about the the homeless people who have no like the most of the reason why they're end up on the streets is because a lot of them are war veterans and have no access to mental health um resources or people who live in horrible socioeconomic situations due to underserved communities, due to the systems failing them. Why is this happening in the world, quote unquote, world power country of the world? Aren't the American people more justified in that $3.8 billion every year? That's our tax money. we pay that money we need we should be voicing our opinion telling them that we want that money why are people like people are dying because they can't afford whether it's chemo whether it's insulin whether it's anything you know that shouldn't be happening especially not in america

[01:59:38] Rob Howe: yeah when i read copy when i read uh you know stats about you know one in three americans don't have five hundred dollars saved one in and then i'm like okay well one in three americans live with diabetes so what's going to happen if they lose their job or if they get in a car wreck like they've got to decide between insulin or and even if they get insulin then it's pump supplies or syringes or test strips and the cost of diabetes in general? And, you know, what if they have to decide between their kids eating lunch for the week and them living in their medical supplies? Like those are those are decisions that people

[02:00:18] Eritrea: are forced to make. I feel lucky to live here because I and I say this in our group, nor knows, but like you can't just have a big mouth for a fun time. Like you got to you got to use that American citizenship when you can, homie, use that privilege to open that big old mouth of yours and speak up for people who can't speak up for themselves. Speak up for people who do live in open air prisons or even in countries like kuwait where you're not or in places like kuwait where you're not even allowed to talk about this at all yeah like a lot of places like that

[02:00:45] Rob Howe: yeah so uh something that i heard early on a couple weeks ago was like especially in um you know in the middle east and a lot of places that we've talked about democracy as we know it is hard to come by and absolutely free speech and those those types of rights that we enjoy here in America, many people in Palestine and elsewhere don't enjoy those and don't have those rights. And so we are very privileged. Nora, we were just saying what we were thanking you for coming on the show today and for sharing your story and for shining light on so many important issues. Again, can't thank you enough for coming on and being so vulnerable. Where can people find you? Plug yourself. Let people reach out to you online. Where can we direct them?

[02:01:33] Noor Al-Ramahi: That's a very good question. I'm on Instagram. That's like my most active platform. But in all honesty, there's not a lot of diabetes content on my Instagram. It's a lot of social justice work. I volunteer a lot. Well, in the diabetes space and also with underserved vulnerable populations. So a lot of my content is that. And then my kids. uh rachae do you have my handle my phone turned off um it's n underscore all ramahi a l r a m a

[02:02:08] Eritrea: h i i got you noor i'll put you in the show notes for sure and we'll tag her in the show notes um i'm so grateful to you i just want to say noor is the person who taught me to open up about my stories my things she's an inspiration to me a light to us all and i'm so grateful for you thank Thank you for telling us your story. I love you.

[02:02:29] Rob Howe: And thanks for taking the extra time. This was a long episode and we, but I, you know, every, at every step was riveting. So thank you.

[02:02:35] Noor Al-Ramahi: Thank you both. Like, I really, I really admire your courage and also for being teachable, you know, that's also a huge step and I really appreciate that. And thank you for it.