Here's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

When you were first diagnosed with diabetes, or when someone you love was. Where did you go for information?

For a lot of people, the answer is Google. Before that, it was books, maybe a

pamphlet from the doctor's office. Then social media changed everything. You

could find actual people with T1D, living real lives, talking about real

lived experience. That's literally why I started Diabetics Doing Things in 2015.

But we all know the problem. Google gives you 10 blue links and a 50/50 shot at landing on something accurate, stigmatizing, or both. Social media is a great place to connect, but the algorithm doesn't care about clinical accuracy. And the newly diagnosed? They're starting from zero. They're scared. They don't always know the right questions to ask, let alone who to trust.

So I started thinking: what happens when someone with zero diabetes knowledge asks an AI?

I decided to run the experiment.

BUT

I forgot I was using my regular Claude. My Claude that was trained on my life, background and over 400 episodes of this podcast. Claude had absorbed a significant chunk of my 21-year diabetes story.

So when I sat down and played the role of a newly diagnosed Type 1 with no context, no preparation just:

Claude told me it had been living with T1D for years. That it had started Diabetics Doing Things. That it played professional basketball. It hit me.

That Claude was me.

I had to laugh. I caught it, reset to an incognito chat, and restarted the experiment.

And here's what surprised me — it was really good.

On the things that matter most for a newly diagnosed patient:

I'm not saying AI replaces a doctor, a diabetes educator, or a community. It doesn't. It can't. But think about the person who got diagnosed last week and hasn't seen an endocrinologist yet. Or the person in a rural area where there isn't one. Or the person without insurance who doesn't know that free insulin programs exist. Or the teenager who's embarrassed and not going to ask their parents.

For those people, having access to something that gives stigma-free, accurate, accessible information — that's not nothing. That's a lot.

I ended the episode by asking a question I'm still sitting with: Is the future of diabetes care, no matter who you are or where you are, made better by AI?

I think the answer is yes. And I think we're just getting started.

Listen to the full episode here → Claude Vs. T1D

If you have someone in your life who was recently diagnosed or is just now getting serious about understanding their T1D, share this one with them. It might be the most useful 18 minutes they spend this week.

Talk soon, I’m currently headed to a diabetes meditation retreat to get off the computer and enjoy some stillness. Have a great weekend,

Rob

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P.S. — The moment where Claude revealed it had started Diabetics Doing Things is genuinely one of the funniest things that's happened on this podcast.

Listen to the full episode:

Rob’s closing keynote is next Saturday at this year’s Diabetes & Mental Health conference on May 2. His talk is called “Mind in Range: Mental Health tools for the Moment you’re in.” It’s a virtual conference, so you can hear this talk from anywhere: Register here.