Jokes + Diabetes

Good morning! I have a question for you. Have you ever been scanning the internet looking at memes, and then you see one that isn't so funny? Well, I was looking at Pinterest memes yesterday afternoon, and I came across one that showed a math test. The question displayed was, "John had 63 chocolate bars and he ate 47 of them. What does John have now?" The answer that the student gave was,"Diabetes. John has diabetes."

The opinions that I state in this post are only my opinions. They are not meant to bring others down or offend anyone, but only to educate people on the basis of Type 1 Diabetes and how some diabetics feel about diabetes-related jokes. If there are any misunderstandings please email me about it here . 

I certainly didn't laugh when I read that. I saw dozens of other memes like that, and it bothered me very much. Of all the diseases, diabetes seems to be the butt of most food-related jokes, such as, "I'm like a diabetic in a candy store!" and "Well this is a big bowl of diabetes," implying two things that most certainly are not true. Number one, that diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar. And number two, that we got it because of our eating habits prior to diagnosis.


The first point is usually based off of the fact that people are uneducated on the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Although it is true that diet and lifestyle can contribute to developing Type 2 Diabetes, diet and lifestyle do not contribute to developing Type 1 Diabetes whatsoever. It is an auto-immune disease, meaning that it couldn't have been prevented. Us eating sugar prior to diagnosis was most certainly not a factor to our disease.


The second point is based off of the same assumption that Type 1 Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes are the same thing. They are absolutely not the same thing! Picture this; you have just been diagnosed with a disease that you know nothing about and is going to change your life forever. When you tell people about it, they ask you, "Did you eat too much sugar as a child?" You feel terrible that people are assuming that you had an unhealthy lifestyle, and are judging you based off a disease that you can't control and there is no cure for, and certainly not one that you asked for.


When I see these kinds of jokes and memes online, it makes me very upset. No one makes fun of other diseases that greatly effect how you live your life because it's rude. Which it is! It's very disrespectful to make jokes about diseases like cancer because they alter and take away countless lives every day. But you should consider adding diabetes to that list of diseases that are "off limits" to joke about. Because we face so many challenges every day that I don't picture most people being able to do.


Type 1 Diabetics are required to make many important decisions every day and their effects could be life-threatening if our decision wasn't correct. It is not something that we enjoy having to do, and people who have absolutely no idea how hard it is making jokes about things that are not true certainly does not make it any easier. I don't mean to complain, but this is simply a subject that I feel strongly about.

Thanks for reading this post of That Stupid Pancreas!

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Today's question of the day is...

What is the funniest joke that you've ever heard? I'll be choosing my favourite one to feature in my next post, so comment down below!




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