Welcome to the mHealth Grand Tour blog

Welcome to the mHealth Grand Tour blog. This is the place for riders, crew and partners to share their personal thoughts about the ride, shout out if they want to gather support for an idea or ask for help. We invite everyone involved with the ride to contribute, because sometimes, 140 characters just aren’t enough.

My uncomfortably close relationship with diabetes goes back 15 years, although it’s really always been there; my family have a history of type 2 diabetes on maternal and paternal sides. My mum was diagnosed in 1998, when she was still living on her own. I went with her to the doctor, stocked her shelves with the right food and threw away the wrong food, bought her diabetes cookbooks and made a daily calendar of things she had to do. She cheerfully went along with the program, but what we didn’t know – and wouldn’t realise for years – was that she was already in the first stages of dementia. We finally figured it out when she started keeling over on a regular basis. Although good-natured and willing, in later years, she hadn’t been complying with her regimen at all.

The damage was already done – she’s got macular degeneration (so she can’t read, which used to be her greatest pleasure) and nerve loss in her legs and arms, none of which is reparable. (Thank heaven for small mercies; she still has all her fingers and toes.) She’s also had a couple of heart episodes and numerous small strokes. If mum had had a continuous glucose monitor and a reminder system, all linked up wirelessly to her GP or her endocrinologist, we might have prevented the complications – and figured out much earlier that she had dementia and needed round-the-clock care so she didn’t end up face-down in the sofa cushions.

So I want to raise awareness of how to prevent type 2 diabetes, and I want the clinical study that will take place during the ride to yield significant results that will help people like mum have a better life. I’ll be banging away at this over our social media from now through the end of the ride. I’ll be in the support van and bothering you riders throughout the Grand Tour to Tell Me What It’s Like. Looking forward to meeting you all in Brussels.


Lauren Sarno is the mHealth Grand Tour marketing dogsbody and welcomes contributions to the blog – please send images, any relevant URLs and a one-line bio (like this) along with your post.