Type 1 diabetes is a challenging and lifelong disease that affects both children and adults. Every year, around 1,000 children and the same number of adults are diagnosed in Sweden alone. The disease requires complex treatment outside the hospital, which places additional pressure on the affected individual. Balancing blood sugar, avoiding too low and too high levels, and dosing the right amount of insulin is a daily challenge that can be likened to walking a tightrope, a balancing act that is impossible to always manage.
We want to draw attention to and praise an excellent guide to carbohydrate counting produced by the organisation Together Against Diabetes1 (T.A.D.1). The guide aims to help people with type 1 diabetes dose insulin as precisely as possible in relation to the food they eat. Elin Cederbrant and Emma Bygdén, who are behind the carbohydrate-counting guide, make it clear that carbohydrate counting is only one piece of the puzzle in the complex treatment of type 1 diabetes. To achieve the best results, one must also take into account other factors that affect insulin dosage, such as the composition of the meal, past activities, and future plans.
Elin and Emma further explain:
"We developed this guide as a complement to T.A.D.1's app, which has a built-in carb-counting function. Our goal was to make the guide useful to anyone who needs to learn about carb counting, from newly diagnosed individuals and their parents to adults who want to improve their skills, and even grandparents who want to support their affected grandchildren. Together with a dietitian from Astrid Lindgren's Children's Hospital, we have created five different levels to make learning as simple and easy to understand as possible. We have also produced our own images, an animated film, and video clips to facilitate understanding.
It is important to emphasise that the guide alone does not solve everything with carb counting, but is complemented by T.A.D.1's carb-counting function in the T1D app. The guide teaches the mindset and how to use the lists, while the app provides the practical information needed to manage the disease in everyday life.”
We at InfoCaption are not alone in recognising the guide's value; it has been well received by the country's clinics. Many clinics recommend the guide to their patients who need to learn how to count carbohydrates. It has made the process clearer and more manageable, and it is appreciated that you can go back and repeat the material. In addition to the guide's content, we want to highlight its structure and design: it is interactive and includes elements such as videos, text passages, and knowledge tests that enable active participation in the learning process. We at InfoCaption are convinced that the guide's design and structure can serve as a source of inspiration for others to create interactive guides. Congratulations, T.A.D.1, for the guide of the month award, and thank you for using InfoCaption in your important work!
Every month, we at InfoCaption appoint the Guide of the Month - a guide that we want to highlight a little extra because of the value it creates in the organisation. As a thank you to the person(s) who created the Guide of the Month, we donate SEK 1,000 every month to the organisation Hand in Hand Sweden, which fights poverty by creating more jobs in vulnerable countries. Hand in Hand works with the "help to self-help" model, which is in line with InfoCaption's own mission "to make it easier for employees to help each other".