Diabetes, anarchy, and social collapse...

We don't need the collapse of society for there to be a life and death problem for diabetics, just have a look at the siuation in the USA. Michael Moore's film Sicko is a real eye opener as to how the free market in healthcare insurance serves the population. There might be stuff wrong with the NHS but free provision at the point of need is the difference between civilisation and barbarism. We should defend our NHS from creeping privatisation, we don't want the American model here thank you very much.

pimmers, much of the nhs is already privatised, just not openly known! i dread to think the state of it will be when cameron leaves office

Speaking personally, I'd rather trust my GP with the money than a PCT. My cousin works for a PCT, not in this area. They refurbished a suite of offices completely last year, to move a new department into. For whatever reason that didn't happen - so 6 months later they refurbished it again, at a cost of £500,000, for a different unit. Both for clerical officers!

Viv

Hi Cortez, the thoughts that occupy your mind often occupy my own too.The question is, for how long is insulin viable for? Setting aside a proportion of your insulin prescription for your long time future survival would seem like a very good idea. I know that insulin has a use-by date, but I once (not for the first or last time) ran out of NovoRapid on a weekend and was compelled to use an old vial of actrapid that had been kicking about in the bottom of a drawer with a bag of old syringes for at least 12 years :!: But the most surprising thing is it worked :!: So Cortez, there is hope for us in some bleak Apocalyptic future. Does anyone know how long insulin can remain viable?
" Soylent Green it's people " :lol:

In another thread on here we were talking about the T1 diabetic on Jersey who stayed alive with a combo of low carb and exercise when the Nazis invaded (and took away all the insulin).
R D Lawrence's book "A Diabetic Life" is really interesting too - wartime supplement in 1940s explains how to cope if you are bombed and can't get to your home insulin or your sugar because you are stuck under a pile of rubble. Also explains how to calculate insulin dosages when you have got rationed insulin of varying strengths. WW2 wasn't quite apocalypse but it was pretty grim insulin-wise.

When the zombies arrive I'm definitely going to get bitten asap and then go after people I don't like, eating their brains and stabbing them with my pen needles. .......BRRRRAAAAAINNSSS......

PS Richard I think you have established the record for viable insulin, especially if it wasn't even in the fridge. The few times I've used out of date stuff by mistake I soon realised coz my bg shot through the roof.

This cook book was published in the days before Insulin was discovered. Makes interesting reading as this was how Type 1's survived pre Insulin.

Interesting to note how low carb everything was !

http://www.archive.org/stream/diabeticc ... 2/mode/2up

Fantastic book, Sue. So that's where Robert Atkins got it from!

Viv 8)

At the time that cook book was written children with T1 didn't survive long, nor did older people ...we don't know what sort of diabetes older people had from the statistics of the time
I've posted these figures before:
length of time from diagnosis to death Joslin 1914-22
(the Allen Era 'starvation diet, low everything) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen

Age
Under 10 2.9yrs
10-19 2.7 yrs
20-39 4.9yrs
40-59 8 yrs
60 and over 6.4 yrs
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 8-0003.pdf
Yes the diet kept some people alive for a while but it really was starvation.
One of the first children to receive insulin, Elizabeth Hughes was on the diet from 1919-22. Sometimes it was as low as 400calories a day,by todays standards her glucose levels may still have been relatively high since the diet was adjusted by testing urine. By the time she received insulin 'Almost fifteen years old, she weighed 45lbs (just over 3stone, or 20.5kilos)She had dry skin,brittle hair and "wasted" muscles. "She was scarcely able to walk on account of weakness" Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes James S. Hirsch