I like this one for a couple of reasons: Pizza's a pretty understood concept. I don't think many people in the western world haven't had pizza delivered at least once. Sugar's easy enough to equate to other food too. Insulin triggers the opening of cell doors to let in food, so that's a pretty straightforward comparison too.
It makes explaining insulin resistance really easy too. If you've got insulin resistance, as Type 2 Diabetics, Pre Diabetics and some Type 1 diabetics do, then some of your 'doorbells' are broken. So you're wondering if that 30 minutes or it's free delivery deal is still good, and outside the pizza guy is wondering if anyone is home. I'm not sure how to create a good image with this metaphor to describe a lot of other aspects of diabetes - lack of insulin production (Type 1, Insulin Dependant Type 2) is easy enough to talk about, but an image of a pizza guy with no hands doesn't work for me. Beta cells and insulin factories don't really work with hands either.
Still, it's a start.
6 comments:
Hi Laura.
Cool. I love metaphors.
My first diabetes educator explained insulin as a key that unlocked the doors to fuel-starved cells, and I've always gone back to thinking of it that way.
The key idea is a good way to describe it too. :D
How about for Type one, the delivery guy rings the bell (which doesn't work), leaves the pizza outside and goes away -- and you keep ordering and ordering because you've got no pizza. In the meantime, so many boxes of pizza are piling up outside it's killing your lawn....that is, building up in your bloodstream.
I love this analogy for type 2 diabetes. I'll definitely be using it. It's definitely important to emphasize that only *some* doorbells are broken... otherwise you'd have type 1 diabetes.
I like Val's take on the pizza guy analogy...
This is a pretty good analogy for taking care of diabetes, but not so much for why it happens.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottsDiabetesExplanationTheAirplaneAnalogy.aspx
Oh darn, it didn't work.
Here's the analogy, just erase the spaces:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog
/ScottsDiabetesExplanationThe
AirplaneAnalogy.aspx
Val - the lawn killing is a great way to explain the damage high blood sugar can cause.
Allison - No working doorbells at all would be very deadly! If we couldn't use insulin at all we wouldn't last long.
I agree that Scott's Airplane Analogy is a great explanation of how we try to manage our blood sugars.
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