Since I missed this week's Diabetes Social Media Advocacy #dsma chat, I'm addressing this week's questions here. The topic was disclosure — who (and what institutions) do you let know you have diabetes, and who (or where) do you choose to keep in the dark.

1. To disclose or not disclose: do(es) your employer/school/friends know you have diabetes? Why or why not?

The company which employs me does not know that I have diabetes; several people at work (including my supervisors) do. There is neither place nor reason to mention diabetes (or any disability) on the job application — I believe it's actually illegal in the US to inquire before hiring — and since hiring/firing decisions are made at the store level, accommodations must be discussed and/or made at that level, rather than the corporate level.

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In most people with diabetes, lows occur either because we've overcalculated the amount of insulin we need, or because of an impaired, inhibited, or insufficient glycogen response. While this is obviously an oversimplification, I remember reading that either autoimmunity or modern insulins did weird things to the glycogen response in people with type 1 diabetes, and I know that at least one class of oral diabetes drugs works by inhibiting, if not completely blocking, that response. Then there's the issue of undereating, or not eating sufficiently, for there to be glycogen stores that can be easily converted to fuel our bodies — and, of course, drugs such as glipizide which work by stimulating additional insulin release.

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There have been a couple of recent threads on LinkedIn regarding the definition of a "cure" for diabetes.

As everyone here who takes insulin will agree, diabetes cannot be "cured" by diet alone. And as everyone whose diabetes is currently controlled in part, or entirely, by diet and exercise will agree, just like "insulin is not a cure", "eating the right foods" is not a cure, either.

Merriam-Webster defines "cure (noun)" in our sense as the following:

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I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I stumbled into bed at midnight and woke you up; piss drunk on TLC and Discovery channel programming. Back-to-back episodes of Hoarders, dysfunctional tattoo artists and the fascinating sex life of giant sea clams of the Pacific.

I know you've had migraines for like eight straight days and the closest thing to real food you've had in the past month has been licking the salt off a tortilla chip.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry I decided, at midnight, to bring you in on my idea for a movie script. You remember - the one about the guy in a coma who is stuck in a dream which becomes his reality. A dream in which he is a wandering homeless man who builds relationships with estranged family members (those at his bedside) urging him to come back.  Now that it's morning, the idea doesn't seem nearly as good. And yes, you were right. A tad depressing.

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When you're strolling down the food store aisles, do you find yourself making mental notations of items that would be disastrous to blood sugars?

I tend to do that when walking through the frozen foods aisle.

"Mmmmmm ... chicken taquitos. Those would not be good for Charlie."

"Mmmmmm ... eggrolls!"

"Mmmmmm ...  pepperoni and cheese strombolis. Those would not be good for Charlie either."

It's just window shopping really. It's no fun getting your kid a treat when you know there's a good chance it will affect his health in a bad way.

I have had friends navigate very carefully around me when discussing their kids' food allergies. They don't want to complain to the guy with a kid with diabetes.

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"Did you see this?" my dad asked pointing to a picture of Paula Deen on the cover of People magazine.

"Yeah," I said. "I wish she wasn't getting so much flak."

If you haven't met Paula Deen, she's a colorful character on the Food Network. She speaks with a thick Southern accent and says "y'all" more times than you can count. Her dishes are rooted in the South and are definitely fat-laden. These are not the types of dishes you want to build your meal plan around. These are not the types of dishes you want to eat at every meal. Geez, people should get that. Everything in moderation.

This topic came up in one of the diabetes forums that I'm a member of. Someone wanted to know what we thought about the whole situation.

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