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Dafne

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Ausra

Well-Known Member
Messages
106
Hello people,

Tomorrow is my first day on DAFNE. So i was wondering if anyone would like to give me advise on how to take the most from it.. Or if anyone has some interesting story related to DAFNE..or if anyone learned something really usefull..or met some great people who became a great inspiration.
Anything you would like to share will be much appreciated!
As I said tomorrow is my first day and I will let you know how it went and what I learned :wink:
 
What you will learn from DAFNE is that some people on here do not know what they are talking about.

Take everything from it and your diabetic control and will be better. You will learn that you are able to eat and drink (in moderation of course ) anything you want to as long as you test regularly and take the appropriate amount of insulin. It will dispell a lot of myths that can be found on here and that diabetes/insulin is not responsible for everything that happens to your body.

It's the best thing that I have ever done, good luck and enjoy the course.
 
So it's been my first day and I need to say, Ishjohno, you are right. There so many myths here about how things work but everything is explained logically in Dafne.
So yes, I enjoyed it a lot and looking forward for tomorrow.

I had to edit this post because I understood the importance of keeping everything we learn in dafne to ourselves.
 
Welcome to the DAFNE life, Ausra! ^_^ I think ishjohno summed it all up quite nicely - it's a life changing course, especially for someone like me who's been diabetic for 21 years. I did my course back in 2009 and I will never look back. Shame I couldn't have done it sooner - that's my only regret. ;_;
 
I got DAFNE'd up around this time last year. Fantastic course, really helped with dosing and the like.
 
I did the counting and actually 20g is more then enough. 20g=2CP , 2CP=increase BG by 4-6mmol, so if you have a hypo of 3.5mmol, then after 20g of carbs blood sugar will go to 5.5-9.5mmol...hypo treated
Click to expand...
That's exactly why I have a problem with DAFNE - you have a clever theory, quite possibly based on correct biochemistry or whatever, and value that over empirical evidence; remember that this attitude gave us medical advances such as bloodletting, bloodletting and even more bloodletting (because physicians had a theory and didn't bother checking if their treatment was working).

In your calculation, you assume that your BG is stable when you measure it (which you can't know since you can't retest in 30min because you have to treat now); whether this is true will obviously depend on the cause of the hypo (e.g. high bolus or basal?) but you can't assume that since you evidently don't know your BG patterns well enough to prevent hypos.
 
Physicians did actually check the theory.
If you follow dafne you know your patterns and ratios really well and you know what caused the hypo, they teach you that.

I had to edit this post too, sorry AMBrennan.
P.S. I understand now what you were saying.
 
DAFNE is definately the best thing I ever did for my diabetes.

AM Brennan - it is a guide to have 2CPs not a law!! If your body needs more you give it more! Its like insulin. MY body needs more at night than through the day so I inject double the amount at night.

As Ausra says - the dafne course gives you the tools its just how you chose to use them.
 
It's a guide ,it's not a law :lol: Well said Eddie.

Diabetes is not a static condition, it is organic and it changes all the time...there is no exact science to it, apertaining to indeviduals,lots of variables :crazy: , but what DAFNE does do is give you a good starting point,and a good point of reference to communicate with your HCP...it's just a positive thing , a tool to help....but not a definitive,etched in stone :wink:

Ausra's a smart girl, so she will get a lot from it!
 
hi my son is 12 years old and has been diabetic since september 2010 this august he was put onto carb counting but no matter how well we think we are going to plan his readings are still high i have asked to go on the dapne course because i felt i would learn more but was told he would have to wait until he was 17 and be able to do the course himself so what do i do for the next five years? has any one with more experince got any advice yvonne.
 
this is a really good question! I don't have the answer, and daisy's advice is good, but I wonder if it's worth you contacting DAFNE central and asking them directly why you can't go on the course. They need to know there's a demand and I think it's really important that they recognise the needs of parents, and kids younger than 17.
no idea if you'll get a reply but try this
http://www.dafne.uk.com/contact.php

and I'd be really interested in how you get on, if you don't mind coming back and letting us know
 
DAFNE is the only proven effective patient education program (which they are very keen to point out); for this reason they don't allow any modification to the program (such as applying it to teenagers) stating - quite correctly - that there would be no way to guarantee that the result would be effective; it's not just a matter of demand.
So a 3rd party site such as the one suggested by daisy is probably your best bet - that one in particular is a good (if basic) introduction.


DAFNE.uk.com on DAFNE for children: (here)
DAFNEonline.co.uk on making the DAFNE handbook openly available:
 

The diabetes care team may not be aware but there is a DAFNE based course for kids called KiCK-OFF: http://www.kick-off.org.uk/ Might be worth asking them about that as well as getting directly in contact with the DAFNE organisation.
 
Ah that is a shame. Considering it's nature I'm surprised it hasn't continued. My bad for not realising this. Thanks!
 
I've just finished my DAFNE course. I have to say I just feel so much more confident about making adjustments to my insulin regime now. I've leanrt so much about stuff I just wasn't aware of, i.e how fat slows absorbtion of glucose down - therefore if you're eating a high fat meal, something like chicken tikka masalla, you should split your bolus dose.
Regarding the hypo treatment DAFNE does say to re-test after 5 minutes and if the initial treatment isn't working, to repeat.
 
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