My diabetes nurse has all sorts of sayings – one of my favourites is “pizza is poison” which is due to pizza being so stodgy and fattening, it can take up to seven hours to allow your BGs to return to normal. Another one she has, which springs into my head from time to time is “5 before you drive” (as in, your BG should be 5.0 or over if you plan to drive a car).

I’ve talked about the dangers of driving with low blood glucose before, here. I am getting better at detecting large swings downwards in blood sugars these days – it used to be that I wouldn’t know until I was really, really low, but often now I can detect it racing downwards and this gives me a bit of warning. In fact I went low just this Sunday previous when I was on my way back from the airport. I pulled over once I’d got off the motorway and clocked a 3.2, so had some glucose tablets and waited a bit then pulled back onto the road again.

Anyway – I just bought the latest Diabetic Living magazine from Australia (oooh actually it hadn’t occurred to me before that they use the word ‘diabetic’ as well, for a discussion on this, see this post) and they did a couple of articles on driving which I thought were interesting.

Article one was a feature on a young Australian V8 Supercar driver named Jack Perkins. I won’t go into too much detail (because I encourage you to buy this magazine and keep it afloat, which is good for all of us diabetics) but it’s an interesting article about someone who drives at frenetic speeds for a living and needs to keep his glucose levels perfect for race days. It was also interesting to note that he works with MDI (multiple daily injections) rather than a pump, because “something hanging off my stomach when I’m getting in and out of a race suit is not feasible. Also, if I was in the car and something was to go wrong with the pump, it wouldn’t be too good” – which sort of makes sense when you think about what happened in my low speed life the other day.

Article two was an interesting insight into us mere mortals and driving. Apparently a study in the U.S found that the incidence of crashes and traffic violations were twice as common among drivers with type one diabetes, mainly because of hypos. I found it interesting to read that many Australian states require a medical examination of the diabetic driver before they’ll renew their licence. I had a quick look at the LTSA site for NZ and couldn’t find any such requirement. However, it’s just occurred to me that I got my licence at 15, and got diagnosed at 16 (after I’d completed my full licence) and perhaps I’m not actually on record as having diabetes – hmmmm. Would be interested to hear from any of you out there as to your experiences with the driving/licencing authorities in relation to your diabetes.