The development of insulin medication in 1922 changed all that – and today, thanks to these daily injections, the condition is something that people can live with.įor the Webb family, after the initial shock wore off and they learned to manage Sam’s new regime of finger-prick blood sugar checks, calculating carbohydrates in food and jabs after every meal, Justin reflected that it wasn’t ‘the catastrophe it first seemed to be’. This differs from the more common type 2 diabetes, which affects the blood sugar levels in the same way but is usually triggered by being overweight or inactive.Ī century ago, type 1 diabetes was rapidly fatal.
With type 1 diabetes, for reasons still not fully understood, the body stops producing insulin –the hormone needed to transport sugar away from the blood and into cells to be used for energy. Then just eight, at that time living in Washington where Justin was the BBC’s North America editor, he had suffered classic symptoms: a lack of energy, constant hunger, ‘an amazing, prodigious thirst that would leave him gasping for water morning, noon and night’, and subsequent need to go to the loo endlessly. It came almost a decade after his father revealed Sam’s diagnosis.
Back in 2018, the then 18-year-old son of BBC Radio 4’s Today presenter Justin Webb penned an honest account of teenage life with type 1 diabetes in this Health section. Sam Webb is no stranger to talking about his health in public.
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