The Diabetes OC

The Diabetes OC is not a special area of Orange County, CA designated just for diabetics. In this case, OC stands for “on-line community.” Over the past 10 years, and I’d say especially over the last five years, the on-line community devoted to diabetes has exploded! There are all sorts of social networking sites, web-sites, blogs, chat rooms, and user groups devoted just to diabetes. There are SO many of them, that I really don’t even know how to write a post about them all and what they do. But I'm going to try!

I’d say the majority of these sites are patient-oriented and patient founded. These communities are platforms for a variety of diabetes-related activities. People share experiences, recipes, treatment advice, act as support groups for each other, connect with other people just like them, and I've heard there are even some that are devoted to hooking up single diabetics with each other! Crazy!

Here are two of the sites I personally visit frequently. I realize that there are probably a bunch of other awesome sites that I don’t know about yet, just because I haven’t found out about them, so please don’t think I’m playing favorites here. Just FYI, I’m getting no kick back from any of these sites, and they haven’t asked me to feature them at all.

· Tudiabetes.org-This is kind of like facebook for diabetics or people affected by diabetes. There are tons of support groups and forums, and you can have your own profile page, can keep a journal or blog on it and so much more! I really love this site. (to be totally transparent here, I do need to say that my brother works for a company that supports this site, but I found out about that after I found out about tudiabetes)

· Diabetesmine.com-This was one of the first sites on the Diabetes-OC that I found. The author writes a lot about what’s going on in the diabetes industry, especially with regards to new technology and new drugs. She also writes about different aspects of daily living. One of the coolest things about this site is that she hosts the Diabetes Mine Design Challenge every year, which has produced some really cool designs as of late.

So, there you go. Now, if this doesn’t make you want to go watch old episodes of “The OC,” I don’t know what would.