Welcome to Delta Data lab! This introduction provides details on the Delta Data Lab (DDL) website, some background on the organization andl its founders, and details on where we’re going in the future.
- Purpose: DDL’s purpose, and the purpose of this website, is to provide an all-in-one resource to help type 1 and type 2 diabetics, and those diagnosed with the pre-diabetic forms of each disease, to optimize how they manage their blood glucose levels and other health markers. In doing this, we hope to enable people to better manage this disease, and mitigate many of the negative short and long term lifestyle and health consequences this disease is traditionally associated with.
- What’s up with the name? In Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields, the Greek symbol Delta (Δ) is often used to represent change. “What’s the delta in elevation?” translates to “What’s the change in elevation?”. “What’s the delta in temperature?”, translates to “what’s the change in temperature?”. Delta as used in the name Delta Data lab is intended to represent an organization set up to use data to affect change, specifically a positive change, in people’s health outcomes.
- Background: Delta Data Lab is a business born out of crisis. In mid 2020, one of DDL’s founder’s children was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Standard medical advice provided at that time indicated that this child now had a progressive lifelong disease that would require the regular administration of insulin injections, and likely result in numerous health complications later in life. After researching resources that could be used to help effectively manage or even overcome this life-changing diagnosis, it quickly became apparent that there wasn’t much available outside of the standard path of insulin injections and/or pumps that could be used to manage their blood glucose levels. Besides a few promising academic studies involving mice, and selected antidotal stories of people that had “recovered”, all of this research pointed in one unified negative direction, a lifetime of synthetic insulin dependency and often wild blood glucose swings.
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- Better Way?: Still, DDL’s founders held out hope, and strongly suspected that there was a better way forward. In Andy Weir’s popular novel (and later film) The Martian, protagonist astronaut Mark Watney, (a Botanist and Mechanical Engineer), is stranded on Mars. After a series of unfortunate catastrophes, he comes to the realization that he will eventually run out of food and will likely starve to death on the planet before a rescue mission can reach him. His famous response to the situation was:
“So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”. -Mark Watney, The Martian
Facing similarly insurmountable odds, DDL’s founders decided to do the same relative to this child’s diagnosis. One of DDL’s founders also happens to be an engineer, with a decades long career leading data science divisions at some of the largest financial service companies in the US. With a long history of using data and advanced analytics to characterize and optimize the management of complex business systems, containing thousands of input variables, difficult to control output variables, numerous constraints, and massive amounts of ambiguity, he hypothesized that the human body, and this child’s newly diagnosed condition, could be managed in the same way. It turns out he was right!
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- A Complex System The human body is an incredibly complex system that modern medicine is still exploring. With countless inputs, interconnected systems, and numerous ways of measuring output “health”, optimizing this system seemed daunting. It’s not unlike being a layman looking at the control room for a nuclear power plant (pictured below), with its countless switches, dials, and displays.
CC BY 3.0/YOVKO LAMBREV
The consequences of pushing the wrong button, or combination of buttons, at the wrong time, could be disastrous.
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- Laying the Foundation: The father of western medicine, Hippocrates (460-370 BC) is credited as once saying:
“First, do no harm.” -Hippocrates
That’s sage advice, and a good place to start. As DDL’s founders looked to begin breaking this problem down into bite-sized chunks, they knew they wanted to begin with a series of safe and relatively benign steps. This child was still very sick. To this end, the team decided to do two things. First, they knew that they wanted to define a set of goals. Second, they knew they wanted to begin collecting data on this child’s condition, so they could begin measuring their progress towards these goals. Both of these steps were benign. The goals the team defined are listed below. These goals, and the specific steps DDL’s founders took to tackle them will be discussed in great detail in upcoming postings/publications.
Health Goals
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- Goal 1: Stop the Autoimmune Attack: If accomplished, this child would conceivably be able to, worst case scenario, retain whatever innate pancreatic insulin producing capacity that remained in their body, even if this functionality were to be permanently diminished.
- Goal 2: Normalize Blood Glucose and Minimize/Eliminate Insulin Injections: Our research indicated that when individuals attempt to control their blood glucose using insulin injections while consuming a traditional high-carb standard American (SAD) diet, unstable highs and lows in blood glucose often result. Also, insulin is quite expensive. Reuters reported that a person with type 1 diabetes incurred annual insulin costs of $5,705, on average, in 2016. Eating the BG friendly food and finding some way to minimize the need for insulin injections seemed like a good way to go.
- Goal 3: Normalize Pancreatic Function: While Goal 1 is focused on stopping the diminishment of this child’s pancreatic function, this goal is focused on rebuilding it. It is worth noting that outside of one lab test involving mice, DDL’s founders were not aware of any well documented cases where this had happened.
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The team set about immediately collecting as much data as they could on every aspect of this child’s body’s inputs and outputs. They were very quickly inundated with more data than they could readily manage. This is when they began building the foundations for a cloud based infrastructure to better catalog and organize it.
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- Building the platform: DDL’s data science platform, HERO, was born out of this need.
Early DDL Analytical Platform Prototype
HERO stands for Hemoglobin A1C Endocrine Response Optimizer. HERO, in its first manifestations, included only basic data aggregation and reporting capabilities. Still, as data began to collect within the system, the DDL team started to see some trends and were anxious to begin analyzing and quantifying the underlying dynamics of this child’s system (body).
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- Doing the Math: Outcome Drivers Once sufficient data had been obtained, analyses were performed that looked at thousands of individual variables, and combinations of variables, in an attempt to quantify how each related to increases or decreases in blood glucose. As more data came in, these analyses became more and more insightful and refined. Through these analyses, several very interesting findings came to light, regarding what drives blood glucose levels up and down. These findings can be classified into three categories. More will be written about each of these in upcoming postings/publications.
- Diet Factors: Eating a specific low carb diet that also helps minimize inflammation and autoimmunity has worked wonders to driving improvements in this child’s health.
- Lifestyle Factors: Lifestyle plays an important role in the management of blood glucose levels. Sleep and aerobic exercise, in particular, are critical factors.
- Environmental Factors: While more difficult to analyze, this child’s ongoing data indicates that environment likely plays a significant role in this child’s Type 1 diabetes; both in terms of initial onset and ongoing management. Active environmental management is a key piece of achieving stable ongoing blood glucose levels.
- Optimization: Once at least some of the drivers of this child’s health were quantified, the DDL team set about making small incremental changes to their diet, lifestyle, and environment, to optimize their blood glucose levels. This is when DDL’s Head of Data Science first coined the phrase:
- Doing the Math: Outcome Drivers Once sufficient data had been obtained, analyses were performed that looked at thousands of individual variables, and combinations of variables, in an attempt to quantify how each related to increases or decreases in blood glucose. As more data came in, these analyses became more and more insightful and refined. Through these analyses, several very interesting findings came to light, regarding what drives blood glucose levels up and down. These findings can be classified into three categories. More will be written about each of these in upcoming postings/publications.
“Let your data be your guide to better health”
Countless combinations of food, environmental, and lifestyle variables were tried. Low carb foods, medium carb foods, meats, fruits, vegetables, fats, pre-packaged foods, home-made recipes, nuts, sugar-free sweeteners, various levels of exercise, various amounts of sleep, different variations over different times of day, and much more were tested; each being analyzed individually and in various combinations. Many discoveries, some quite surprising, were distilled from these analyses, and incorporated into a dynamic and iterative plan for this child’s future.
- Results: By using HERO, and by taking action based on the findings of our analysis, this child has achieved some truly unprecedented results. These achievements include the following, despite the challenges of 1) going through puberty, 2) unpredictable blood glucose fluctuations associated with several growth spurts, and 3) contracting COVID 4-5 times:
- Honeymoon: No need for insulin injections for roughly the first year post-diagnosis, other than first month, all while maintaining HbA1c levels in the normal non-diabetic range.
- Longer Term HbA1c Trend: Maintaining an HbA1c level in the low to mid pre-diabetic range (Pre-Diabetic A1C Range: 5.7% – 6.4%) over a period of four years, with rare temporary forays to 6.4. Never 6.5 or above.
- Injections: Minimizing the need for insulin injections
- Rapid Acting: Averaging 1.5 units of rapid acting insulin per meal
- Basal: Averaging 16 units per day
- Growth: Regaining all of the weight lost prior to diagnosis, and returning to their normal growth chart trajectory. Currently 6 feet tall.
- Other Markers: Returning numerous other health markers back to the normal range.
The following labeled chart outlines this child’s blood glucose results from diagnosis (7/29/20) through mid-January 2021, a period of roughly 6 months post-diagnosis, and 5 months after stopping all insulin injections.
Blood Glucose and Insulin Dosage Levels for DDL’s Co-Founder’s Type 1 Diabetic Child. (Click to Zoom In)
- While this child’s need for insulin has increased slightly over the years, now averaging roughly than 8 units of fast-acting insulin per day, given that this well-managed blood glucose trend has continued for 4+ years post diagnosis, DDL’s founders are encouraged. Maintaining a well-managed A1C is our aim… that and full recovery.
Still, time is the ultimate and final arbiter, and so only time will tell if we are successful in accomplishing each of these goals. Regardless, the progress made by this child to date, using the tools and findings developed by DDL, have put them in an enviable state of health that nearly any diabetic (Type 1, Type 2, or pre-diabetic) would likely love to replicate.
Next Steps: While the DDL team is presently working hard to develop HERO’s capabilities and make the platform available to a wider audience, the platform is not yet ready for prime-time. Regardless, the founders thought it would be important to share some of their findings with others presently struggling to manage their diabetic and pre-diabetic symptoms. This is why they’ve put together the following resources to help others replicate their success:
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- DDL Learn: Follow our progress as we investigate various diet, environment, and lifestyle factors that impact blood glucose response. Also be sure to check out our Blog and Quick Start Guide!
- DDL Recipes: Our ever growing list of recipes and meal plans that are not only easy to make and delicious, but are also blood glucose friendly.
- DDL Store: Fun, useful, and even tasty products we recommend! (coming soon)
- HERO: (available for public use soon)
