Pompano Beach, FL (PRWEB) May 18, 2009 — With the Centers for Disease Control (CDC.gov) reporting that nearly 24 million Americans are living with diabetes, the creation of a unified diabetes community that is focused on healthful living is more important than ever. American Diabetes Wholesale, a diabetes supply company keeping diabetes management affordable for all, especially the uninsured, has partnered with Charlie Kimball, a 24-year old Indy Lights race car driver and who has Type I diabetes, to announce the launch GlucoStories & Charlie Kimball Share Your Story Contest. Bringing together individuals living with diabetes and providing them with a platform to share their personal experiences, the contest asks people to explain how diabetes has impacted their lives and enter to win a Grand Prize trip to the “Firestone® Indy Lights” Championship Race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida Friday, October 9, 2009.

Charlie Kimball Firestone Indy Lights Race Car Driver

“Reaching out and supporting people in the diabetes community is what American Diabetes Wholesale is all about,” said Chris Maguire, Vice President of American Diabetes Wholesale. “GlucoStories is an extension of our commitment and partnering with Charlie Kimball to bring this program to the community was a win-win for everyone involved.”

Diagnosed in 2007, Charlie manages his diabetes, while growing his racing career. Racing since age 9, he has been involved in the most competitive racing categories in the world including British Formula 3, the Formula 3 Euroseries and the World Series by Renault. He made international history with a podium finish in the Formula 3 Euro series in his first race and is currently preparing for the Firestone® Freedom 100 from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway taking place at the end of May. Charlie was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 22 and because he cannot stop during a race to check his blood sugar he has a continuous glucose monitoring system where the receiver, mounted on his steering wheel, displays his glucose levels. Charlie also has a drink pack installed in his cockpit so he can sip orange juice if his blood sugar is low while he is driving.

“Diabetes doesn’t slow me down and is as much a part of my life as racing. Being able to merge the two is an incredible opportunity,” said Charlie Kimball, Professional Indy Lights Race Car Driver. “My hope is that by sharing my story, other people will be comfortable and open about sharing theirs. We’re all working towards the same goal of finding a cure and living a healthy, productive and successful life in the meantime.”

With the support of Home Diagnostics, Defeat Diabetes Foundation, Diabetic Rockstar, American Diabetes Wholesale and other partners, GlucoStories is a platform for people with diabetes or those who support people living with diabetes to inspire and feel inspired about living the best life possible. To learn more about the prizes, rules and to enter the contest, please visit www.glucostories.com and share your experiences with diabetes. Contest and story submissions deadline is July 6, 1007 Midnight, EST.

GlucoStories Contest Rules: no purchase necessary. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Legal residents of the 50 United States (D.C.), 13 years and older who did not purchase any equipment for purposes of entering the promotion and are not a practicing physician at time of entry. Void where prohibited. Enter Contest by: 7/6/09. Sweepstakes starts 7/15/09 and ends 8/17/09. For Official Rules, odds disclosure and prize descriptions, visit http://www.glucostories.com. Sponsor: American Diabetes Wholesale, 2501 NW 34th Place, Suite 35, Pompano Beach, FL 33069.

ABOUT CHARLIE KIMBALL

At 24, Charlie Kimball is a successful young American race car driver forging a career in the highly competitive world of open wheel racing. Charlie is currently racing in the Firestone Indy Lights Championship race circuit. Racing since age 9, he has been involved in the most competitive racing categories in the world including British Formula 3, Formula 3 Euroseries and the World Series by Renault. In 2005, Kimball shattered the European stereotype that “Americans are not fast” by becoming the first American in 11 years to win a British Formula 3 race. He went on to secure two track records and several F3 victories in both Britain and Europe. He made international history with a podium finish in the Formula 3 Euro series in his first race after he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2007. For more information visit: www.charliekimball.com.

Watch Charlie Kimball race on Friday, May 22 in the Firestone® Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on VERSUS TV. For more information about the Firestone Indy Lights Championship visit: http://www.indycar.com/indylights

Today in at special ceremony American Diabetes Wholesale paid tribute to Joyce Malaskovitz, PhD, RN, CDE, the winner of their 2nd Annual Diabetes Educator of the Year Contest. We also recognized esteemed Diabetes Educator of the Year Contest finalists Suzanne Laws, MS, RD, LD, CDE and Laura Terrio, RN, BS, CDE.

Created to recognize the unsung heroes of the diabetes epidemic, the Diabetes Educator of the Year Contest received an outpouring of support, and more than 60 people, in both the diabetes and non-medical communities, attended the awards ceremony. NBC 6 South Florida News Anchor and Type I diabetic, Joel Connable, hosted the event. Other attendees included diabetes education professionals, local dignitaries and members of our Destination Diabetes advisor team.

In addition, the event featured prominent speakers such as Donna Rice, immediate past President of the American Association of Diabetes Educators, and Charlie Kimball, a 24 year-old race car driver who made international history with a podium finish in the Formula 3 Euro series in his first race - after he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2007.

Christopher Thomas of Diabetic Rockstar and Andy “Mr. Diabetes” Mandell of the Defeat Diabetes Foundation were also in attendance. We want to recognize the team at IPump.org for their support of this important award as well.

About Our Winner

Joyce Malaskovitz. Joyce believes in following dreams and taking risks. After the sudden death of her grandfather who was a diabetic, Joyce embarked upon her lifelong mission to become a nurse and certified diabetes educator, and to provide the best possible care to all people with diabetes.

For the past 18 years, she has worked as the Director of the Diabetes Treatment Center at Desert Springs Hospital, and in partnership with Healthways, has led the hospital to become the first in the nation to achieve the Certificate of Distinction for Advanced Inpatient Diabetes Care awarded by The Joint Commission. She has spent countless hours supporting diabetes colleagues across the nation to prepare for their certification. She also spends time assisting various community organizations and businesses to make a difference in the fight against diabetes. She is their voice, educator, leader, advocate and friend.

The American Diabetes Wholesale team extends a heartfelt thanks to everyone that made this award so special to all involved. Special thanks go to Home Diagnostics and the Boca Raton Resort & Club for making this year’s contest possible.

This year’s award was even better than last year, and we look forward to continuing our efforts to raise awareness about the importance of diabetes education.

Just scheduled my A1C for next week.  I know it is going to be a little higher then last time, but I know exactly why and it is my own fault, so it can be corrected and I am taking steps today to correct it.  I have no time at all to make it to the gym, however, I am freeing up some time at night because exercise is extremely important.  I went golfing this weekend, which was great exercise, but I am now extremely sore today.

I have planned out my meals for the entire week in order to keep my calories at a certain level.  That is the easy part, now the hard part is actually following through on it.  Eating at work is simple, but more difficult once I get home, I know it’s usually the other way around, but that’s how it is for me.  Salads for lunch, and over eat for dinner, same story.

My blood sugar levels while I was golfing were pretty steady.  It is a great sport to be able to blame a bad shot on a low blood sugar.  Everytime that I sliced a ball, it was only because my blood sugar was low, obviously!

Everyone have a great day!

Marlene Koch is back with another great article in the American Diabetes Wholesale Newsletter! As you probably know, carbohydrates have gotten a bad reputation in the age of Atkins and South Beach, but Marlene discusses how some of the information out there is not accurate. In fact, carbohydrates are an important part of a nutritious, balanced diet, so sort the carb myths from the carb facts in the article, “Truth About Carbohydrates.”

Marlene also provided a great recipe for you to try - the Chicken Caesar Wrap! It’s a great balanced mix of fat, calories and carbohydrates - and tastes fantastic too!

©2009 Keeping Diabetes Management Affordable. All Rights Reserved.

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This week’s American Diabetes Wholesale Newsletter features an article just in time for American Podiatric Medical Association’s Foot Awareness Month this April. Diabetes educator Roberta Kleinman, RN provides some great tips to follow during this Foot Awareness Month and the rest of the year too! Check out her article “Happy Feet, Healthy You” for more great information on keeping your feet safe and healthy.

American Diabetes Wholesale also carries a wide range of foot care products to help you improve the condition of your feet. Check out the popular Anastasia Diabetic Foot Treatment or one of our newest neuropathy care products, Neuragen PN.

©2009 Keeping Diabetes Management Affordable. All Rights Reserved.

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This edition of the American Diabetes Wholesale Newsletter features an informative article by Marci Sloane titled “Food Label Reading Made Easy.” In the article, Marci helps make sense of the myriad of information on food nutrition labels that can often leave a person perplexed. It seems like the labels as well as the expert opinions and studies change every few months, and it can be difficult to keep up with all of these changes when one is at the supermarket. If you need tips on how to calculate the actual calories from fat (not just the grams) or the what allows a food to be labeled “low fat.”

Time is also running out to take advantage of our free gift of a one year subscription to Diabetes Self-Management Magazine. With any purchase made between now and April 15, 2009 you can receive our special gift by shopping through this special offers link.

©2009 Keeping Diabetes Management Affordable. All Rights Reserved.

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I wouldn’t say that I’m “on a diet”, however, in the past 3-4 months I have gained 7 pounds. OMG! I think - and say! How could I let THAT happen? Well, maybe because I’m human just like you? I like food, I talk about it all day long, and although I know how to control my weight sometimes I just don’t feel like it! So, my decision to not care, not think about my food choices and allow life to overwhelm me, resulted in SEVEN POUNDS! With a little thinking, I realized exactly why this happened. As easy as it has been to add 7, I am just as easily subtracting it! After all, I deserve it and more importantly, I feel so much better without it! The small snacks I was adding to my evening hours have gotten even smaller in size and I am thinking more before I grab something I don’t even want or need to eat. It’s a challenge I always like to win. It makes me feel proud of myself! Simple! Don’t you think?

What is this thing called blogging that all these people are doing?  It’s been so long, I almost forgot how to blog!  Well I am back now, it has been an intense two weeks, a lot of things going on, working on a lot of great events that I will let you all know about shortly.

I have successfully gone a full week with the CGMS and I love it.  I don’t have it on today, but I do love it, however I have a few more questions for all of you.  I was giving these things when I received my supplies, I don’t remember their name, but it is something sort of like a transmitter adhesive patch.  But it came with no directions and I have no idea what it is used for at all.  It has stickiness on both sides, so that confuses the heck out of me.  I have just been using the IV Prep 3000 to cover it and that has seemed to be working fine.  My question about that is this, what should I use to get the stickiness off of my skin, you know the dark colored sticky stuff that stays on your skin after you take it off?

My next question is actually about the infusion set side of it, I wear the quick set.  The IV prep 3000 is good to put over the infusion set if I am, lets say going down to the Phillies - Marlins game on a Sunday afternoon at 1:30 to watch my defending World Series Champs (that’s this Sunday by the way), and it is hot and my infusion set may fall out (which happened at last year’s game).  I wouldn’t have any reason to disconnect the infusion set, so the IV Prep is fine, but is there something out there like the Iv 3000, but it has a circle cut out in it, so I can just put it over the infusion set and still be abl to connect / disconnect the tubing whenever I wanted?

All in all the CGMS was great.  I loved just pulling out my pump to see what my sugar was, and the calibration was surprisingly perfect!

I look forward to hearing answers to everything, and I appreciate it.

Thanks.

To those who didn’t know, I was selected as one of the three judges for the American Diabetes Wholesale Second Annual Diabetes Educator of the Year Award.  The voting for the three finalists had ended abotu 2 months ago, and the ceremoney to announce the winner is next week,  so I have been trying to plan this stuff out.  The ceremony is right down the road in Boca Raton, FL.

It should be cool, I will be meeting some good people in the diabetes community, Charlie Kimball (type 1 diabetic Indy Car driver), Mr. Diabetes, Christopher Thomas (Diabetic Rockstar), Donna Rice (former AADE president).

I am also excited to find out who the winner is, they have kept it secret the whole time.

On other news, I am excited about this weekend since the Phillies are coming to town.  I am actually only able to make it to Sunday’s game, but I haven’t even bought my tickets yet, I should probably do that soon.

Well you all have a great day.

Ahhhh…what a relaxing weekend it was.  Friday night there was a Panthers game, and we lost, which that sucked but no big deal.  Saturday morning my girlfriend and I went down to Ft. Lauderdale to spend the whole day at the beach and pool. 

We had a voucher for a free night in a hotel so we decided to just use it to get away for the night and relax from the hectic schedules we have been living.  I brought about 4-5 infusion sets with me just in case.  I started to sweat so much at the beach on Saturday that I could feel my infusion set falling out.  I tested and I was about 110 and I knew I wouldn’t be more than an hour or so longer at the beach without going to the room, so I decided to just take the site out. 

Well we decided to go to the pool after that and relax and read a little bit, but my blood sugar did not go crazy at all.  Once I finally went back to the room and tested again it was 185.  So I put another site in and it was off to Hooters to watch the Michigan St. game.

Now, I’m going to speak briefly about how great that game was before I talk about last night’s game.  Even though last night was a near massacre, it still feels good to have a team go to the National Championship when nobody thought that they could do it.  I had all the confidence in the world in them (that’s what happens when you watch every single one of their games), so I knew how well they could play.

After getting home from all that beach and fun on Sunday, it was time for another Panthers game, a big game in fact against the Penguins from that other sports city in Pennsylvania (I’m originally from Philly, so that’s why I mention it like that).  My blood sugar went a little low during the game, mainly because I wanted to body check the kid behind me!  It was great watching their best player, Sid the Kid (Sidney Crosby) get beat up by one of our players.  Tonight is another huge game against the Philadelphia Flyers, yes the team I liked when I was a little kid, but I grew out of hockey for about 10 years, that’s how I became a Panthers fan.

Well, about diabetes…. I received my script for my next A1C test, so I will have to schedule that sometime soon.