This Weeks Video: How to Change an Insulin Pump

Last week, we talked about the basics of using twitter hashtags to help you search for information about diabetes on twitter. Today, as part of our weekly video series, we are going to dive into how patients are using YouTube to help educate and inform other patients about diabetes. Today’s video comes from DiabeticDanica titled, “How to Change an Insulin Pump Infusion Set (Tutorial) .” This video is a great example of patients using social media to share their experiences for others to learn from. Hope you enjoy the video!

Do you have a video like DiabeticDanica’s that you would like to share? Post your video to any video sharing website and send us the link! Then, stay tuned and subscribe to our blog for our weekly installment of, “Weekend Videos.” Your video could be featured on our blog! To see some of the other videos we’ve shared with our members already, click here. If you don’t want to make a video, but still want to contribute a story, we’ll take that too! Just write your story and send it to us. All videos and other entries can be emailed to info@callingalltypes.com

The decision to participate is always yours and your feedback is always wanted. At Calling All Types, we believe finding the right online resources to better manage your diabetes should be a whole lot easier! So sign up and be a part of our growing online health movement. Once you’ve joined, stay connected with us through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube.

Messages from Our Members

A common statement on our blog, if you haven’t noticed is, "Our members continue to tell us..." So what exactly are we talking about? Who are these members and what are they saying? Over the past few months, diabetes patients and caregivers have been sharing their stories and asking questions about living with diabetes. CallingAllTypes is helpful to people in providing online resources to help better manage diabetes. But for some questions, we think it’s better to call in the real diabetes experts – patients and caregivers like you!

Below are some questions and comments we’d love your response to. You can do this by:

• Leaving a comment on our blog;
• Responding to us on Twitter using #OneDrop; OR
• Write on our Facebook Page. Don’t forget to add the Member Number! 

Member One: 

"I am trying to learn better and healthier ways to control blood sugar; I have been diabetic for a little over a year."

Member Two:
"Does diabetes sometimes cause mental confusion and contradictions and sudden changes of mind or positions on matters?"

Member Three:

"Why is the cost of insulin so high? I have insurance, but cannot use it for insulin as I would be in the 'donut hole' in February each year."

The decision to participate is always yours and your feedback is always wanted. At CallingAllTypes, we believe finding the right online resources to better manage your diabetes should be a whole lot easier! So sign up and be a part of our growing online health movement. Once you've joined, stay connected with us through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube.

Let’s Talk Twitter Hashtags

How do you search on Twitter for information about diabetes? What type of information are you looking for? How do you find the most relevant information? Today’s blog is dedicated to the Twitter hashtag (#) – a tool that will help you find what you are looking for using one of the most popular social media sites.

We’ve been hearing from our members that they want to use Twitter more effectively, but they don’t know how. For all our beginners out there, let’s start with the basic definition. The “#” symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Hashtags help users find interesting or helpful tweets, join conversations around a specific topic, and find people who are interested in similar topics and conversations. 

Let’s look at an example. Today we tweeted, “The smallest #insulin syringe in the world. Watch the video tell us what you think. #diabetes http://youtu.be/c2SB0LrVeQg.” Notice the hashtags in front of the words “insulin” and “diabetes.” Those two words are now links to search results for all tweets containing “#Insulin” and “#Diabetes.” Check it out for yourself by clicking on “Diabetes” or “Insulin” to see their respective hashtag feeds. Stay tuned to our blog as we continue our conversation every week on Twitter and hashtag trends. Each week will take a deeper dive into how to use Twitter to help you manage your diabetes more effectively. For all you expert Twitter users out there, send us some of your favorite hashtags on Twitter and include #onedrop in your tweet. We’ll compile a list and then post a blog article with your favorite hashtags.

The decision to participate is always yours and your feedback is always wanted. At Calling All Types, we believe finding the right online resources to better manage your diabetes should be a whole lot easier! So sign up and be a part of our growing online health movement. Once you’ve joined, stay connected with us through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube.

Meet Jessica: Type 1 Diabetes Patient

“Before we could get pregnant, we had to sit down with a specialist to plan out what we were going to do with my blood sugars. My A1C had to be a six before we could think about getting pregnant... I signed up for CallingAllTypes because it was a good source for all the information I needed.”

Are you thinking of having a child and are concerned about the risks involved with diabetes? Listen to Jessica’s story about what she had to do to manage her diabetes while being pregnant. Our members continue to tell us how valuable online video resources can be, especially when it comes to peer to peer information. With that said, we’re looking for more videos from you that we can share with our members. Do you have a video like Jessica’s that you would like to share? Post your video to any video sharing website and send us the link! Then, stay tuned and subscribe to our blog for our weekly installment of, “Weekend Videos,” which will be posted here every Saturday. Your video could be featured on our blog! To see some of the other videos we’ve shared with our members already, click here. If you don’t want to make a video, but still want to contribute a story, we’ll take that too! Just write your story and send it to us. All videos and other entries can be emailed to info@callingalltypes.com

The decision to participate is always yours and your feedback is always wanted. At Calling All Types, we believe finding the right online resources to better manage your diabetes should be a whole lot easier! So sign up and be a part of our growing online health movement. Once you’ve joined, stay connected with us through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube.

CallingAllTypes Introduces Clinical Study Notifier

Every day, people managing diabetes visit CallingAllTypes.com to let us know what they want to learn more about through our online initiative. From great diabetes blogs such as Arden’s day and Living Vertical, to programs like the Diabetes Social Media Advocacy Group, Calling All Types is committed to keeping people informed, empowered and engaged. As part of our commitment to you, we want to let you know about a powerful new tool available exclusively to our members.

It’s called Clinical Study Notifier^SM – a free online notification service designed to alert you to the latest diabetes clinical studies being conducted in your area directly to your inbox. Not a member? Sign up today.

Here's How it Works

• You’ll receive periodic email notifications as new clinical studies become available in your area.
• If a study interests you, click the link provided to learn more and see if you may be eligible.
• The service is easy and completely free – use it as much and as often as you like.

Again, there’s no cost and no commitment for Clinical Study Notifier. Click here to try it out and don’t forget to tell us what you think.

Thanks Everyone!

CallingAllTypes Team

The decision to participate is always yours and your feedback is always wanted. At CallingAllTypes, we believe finding the right online resources to better manage your diabetes should be a whole lot easier! So sign up and be a part of our growing online health movement. Once you’ve joined, stay connected with us through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube.

Welcome to CallingAllTypes

Welcome to the Calling All Types blog! We appreciate you stopping by. Here’s a little more about who we are, what you’ll find on our blog, and why signing up for CallingAllTypes.com can be a valuable resource for managing your diabetes.

A lot of people ask us, “Hey Calling All Types, what do you guys do and why should I get involved? Why should I care about your advocacy group compared to everyone else?” So let’s clear a few things up.

We are an online health movement.

We are purely interested in providing an outlet for people with diabetes to learn how to use the Internet effectively in order to better manage their health. It’s very common for someone to come to us and say, “I go to Google all the time and I search and I search and I search for the type of information I’m looking for and I can never find what I’m looking for. So what do I do now?” Calling All Types exists to help you with this problem. All you have to do is go to CallingAllTypes.com and tell us what you are interested in learning more about through online sources, and we’ll find it for you. That’s it! 

We won’t spam you with a thousand emails a month ranging from all kinds of topics you don’t care about. You will receive an email from us about once a month or so, detailing some online resources that you indicated you would like to learn more about.

For example:

• Have you heard of the Diabetes Social Media Advocacy Group? Every Wednesday and Thursday they host a live chat on Twitter for people just like you to come together and share your experiences and hopefully learn from one another.
• There’s also a free online community called PatientsLikeMe that allows you to share your real-world health experiences in order to help yourself, other patients like you and organizations that focus on your conditions.
• People are participating in clinical research studies to help develop new treatment options for diabetes. Do you want to find out if there’s one in your area?
• Throughout November, there are restaurants participating in the first ever Diabetes Restaurant Month. Restaurants are adjusting their menus to include meals for people with diabetes. 
• When you get a chance, take a look at the blog Arden’s Day, www.ardensday.com. This blog gives you real, true insight from a father of a child with type 1 diabetes.
• If you have diabetes and are looking for blogs written by people with diabetes, look no further than another great resource called SixUntilMe, www.sixuntilme.com

Great online resources and initiatives like the ones above are only a small sampling of the wealth of information you will learn about by signing up for Calling All Types. So, once again, welcome, we’re glad you are here; we hope you stay, and please feel free to click on any of the videos you see to learn more about Calling All Types and patients who are involved with Calling All Types.