Just over 100 years ago, the world changed dramatically for millions of people with the discovery of insulin.

In January of 1922, Canadian doctor Frederick Banting first injected animal insulin into a 14-year-old boy dying of Type 1 diabetes. Within 24 hours, his dangerously high blood sugar levels had dropped. A second injection temporarily brought his blood sugar levels close to normal.

This meant Type 1 diabetes (T1D) was no longer an automatic death sentence, as it had been throughout the ages.

We’ve come a long, long way since then. We now have human insulins that work much quicker and more effectively. We have continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices that allow diabetics to know where their blood sugar is and determine whether they need more food or more insulin. We have electronic insulin pumps that connect to CGMs and deliver insulin when needed.

Research is progressing on ways to implant insulin-producing beta cells into patients, without triggering the patient’s immune system to attack them, and into closed loop systems that will automatically deliver insulin without human intervention.

When my daughter was first diagnosed with T1D 31 years ago, nearly half of all patients had major complications that shortened their life span or dramatically reduced their quality of life. Today, that number is in the single digits. Diabetics compete in the Olympics, climb Mt Everest, and even serve on the Supreme Court.

Yet the number of people with diabetes globally has increased from 200 million in 1990 to 830 million in 2022. Drugs like Ozempic may have a significant impact on the progression of Type 2 diabetes, which makes up most of that number—but only if they are available at a reasonable price to those who need them.

It’s also estimated the number of people with Type 1 (the autoimmune form of the disease) will increase by 60% between 2020 and 2040. There isn’t a single day that a person with T1D can “take off” and forget about their disease. Not a single day they can pretend this disease doesn’t exist.

Today, what would have been Frederick Banting’s 133rd birthday, is World Diabetes Day. Learn more about the disease, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go here.

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linda@popky.com
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