Explaining Insulin with Pizza

I've been trying to come up with a good metaphor for describing some of the ins and outs of diabetes. One I've come up with for insulin is a Pizza Delivery Comparison, as illustrated below:

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.

Eating Your Meter

I have to admit, every time I read about 'eating your meter', I have this image in my head.

Eating your meter refers to checking your meter after each meal you eat, and removing or reducing the quantities of the foods that run your sugars too high.

It's a good technique for keeping sugars in range - I know from this that a personal size, multigrain crust pizza doesn't do much damage to my sugars, but a serving of fries does.