The Glucose Never Lies® Podcast
Host John Pemberton, diabetes educator, researcher, and a dad living with type 1 since 2008, explores how to think clearly about type 1 diabetes in the real world.
Each episode translates current evidence and expert practice into decisions you can use: CGM accuracy and interpretation, getting more from pumps and automated insulin delivery, movement as a glucose tool, nutrition that protects performance and enjoyment, sleep, travel, parties and sport.
Guests include leading clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience. Expect respectful challenge, plain language and practical takeaways.
Educational only. No therapeutic relationship and no personal medical advice.
Independent by design: no sponsorship, no advertising. Buy the GNL a coffee to keep us independent: https://buymeacoffee.com/gnlfree
Email: john@theglucoseneverlies.com
The Glucose Never Lies® Podcast
26 – Building a Diabetes Community Through Vulnerability, Movement and Mindset (Diabetes with Mily)
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Host: John Pemberton, RD
Guest: Diabetes with Milly (Milly)
Episode page: Detailed show notes
In this episode, Milly joins John to explore how real community forms when people with type 1 diabetes feel safe enough to be vulnerable. Diagnosed during lockdown and thrown into DKA in the final year of her biology degree, Milly rebuilt her life through movement, self-experimenting with strength training, discovering yoga, and eventually travelling alone to India for formal practice in breathwork, mindset and nervous-system regulation.
What began as a personal diary on Instagram became Diabetes with Milly — a space where 10,000+ people find honesty, humour and connection, and where the Glucose Gals WhatsApp community now supports hundreds of women navigating type 1 diabetes, menstrual cycles, trauma echoes, and real-life blood glucose chaos.
This conversation sits firmly “Beyond the Numbers”: the human reality of diagnosis, burnout, highs that trigger old trauma, rebuilding confidence, and how movement and mindfulness can reshape the emotional experience of living with the condition.
Your community is not optional — it is protective infrastructure.
What This Episode Covers
- Diagnosis in lockdown: DKA, isolation, and learning to manage T1D without real-world support
- Sport to strength training: using exercise as both therapy and education
- Yoga, India, breathwork and regulating the panic response during hypos
- Trauma memory: why highs can trigger the emotional weight of diagnosis
- Building an online presence through vulnerability, not perfection
- Creating the Glucose Gals WhatsApp community (250+ women)
- Women’s health, menstrual cycles and why female physiology in T1D is so understudied
- Milly’s plans for a new master’s → PhD in women’s exercise physiology
- The future: UK meet-ups, movement spaces, and combining strength + yoga for holistic T1D support
Key Insights
Vulnerability builds community.
People don’t gather around perfect numbers — they gather around honesty.
Movement changes glucose, but also mindset.
Strength training, yoga and breathwork each shape the physiological and emotional response to hypo/hyper stress.
Trauma echoes are real.
Diagnosis anniversaries, unexplained highs and body sensations can resurface early memories; normalising this reduces shame.
Representation matters.
Women with T1D need research that reflects menstrual cycles, hormonal phases and real-world fluctuations.
People need people.
Where clinic appointments end, community begins — and fills the gap between guideline and lived reality.
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The Glucose Never Lies® is a registered trademark of The GNL Ltd. Company No. 16733595. UK VAT No. GB 516 3272 08.
Independent by design. The Glucose Never Lies® takes no sponsorship and no advertising. We run on education grants and listener donations. If this helped, buy the GNL a coffee (buymeacoffee.com/gnlfree).
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Contact: collaboration, john@theglucoseneverlies.com; creatives, anj@theglucoseneverlies.com
For education only. Not medical advice and not a substitute for individual care; decisions about your care sit with you and your diabetes team.
© The Glucose Never Lies Ltd, company number 16733595. All rights reserved.
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