Thirty years. One app.
Here's why.
Glysimi was built by someone who has managed Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years. This is the story of why it exists.
Good intuition. Bad memory.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in my early twenties. I'm in my fifties now. I've had longer to figure out how to manage this condition than most apps have existed.
For most of those years, I managed the way most experienced T1Ds manage — by feel. I tried systematic carb counting. I tried apps. I tried meticulous logging. Each time, I reached the same conclusion: the overhead wasn't worth the return. Diabetes is too variable, too personal, too dependent on context to submit to a formula.
So I flew by gut feeling. And it worked — more or less.
The problem was memory. I could feel that my body had a pattern around a certain meal, or a certain kind of day. But I couldn't remember the specifics. Same surprises kept repeating. Same uncertainty kept lingering. Intuition that should have sharpened with experience stayed blunt. Everything I needed was there — just impossible to reach.
What I built, and why
In 2012, I built the first version for myself. A diary, fast to log, always at hand. In 2016 I rebuilt it with much better search — that's when spotting patterns became real.
I used it privately for years. Not as a project. Not as a product. As a tool.
What happened over those years surprised me. In 2019, I started experimenting with low-carb eating — something I'd been curious about but hesitant to commit to. The app made that transition far easier than I expected. I could see, day by day, how the change was affecting my blood sugar and my insulin needs. Not in a spreadsheet — in the actual texture of my daily life. The results were clear, and they were mine. The guessing started to give way to something more like informed judgment.
My doctor started commenting on my numbers. Eventually: "Your results are indistinguishable from someone without diabetes."
I want to be careful about how I say this. That's not a target I'm setting for you — it's a data point about what became possible when gut feeling was backed by real experience. Your goals are yours. Your choices are yours.
But I knew this tool needed to exist for more people than just me.
True freedom comes from knowledge — knowledge of the choices available and their consequences. Otherwise it is not a true choice.
The philosophy behind it
I believe in the freedom to manage your diabetes however feels right to you. That is not a position I hold casually. I hold it because I've lived with this long enough to know that this condition touches every corner of your life — your food, your sleep, your relationships, your confidence, your fears — and no one who doesn't live it gets to tell you how to balance those trade-offs.
But I also believe that true freedom requires knowledge. Not someone else's knowledge — your own. Knowledge of what actually happens to your specific body in your specific life. Because without that, what looks like freedom is often just uncertainty with better branding.
When I chose to spend time logging my entries, checking my CGM frequently, and eating mostly low-carb, I made those choices from real information about what they produced for me. You might make completely different choices — and if you make them with the same clarity about their consequences, I respect that entirely.
The problems come when you don't feel in control. When the decisions feel arbitrary. When you're not managing your diabetes so much as reacting to it.
Glysimi is an attempt to give you back some of that control. Not by prescribing what to do — by making your own experience visible, searchable, and usable. So that whatever you choose to do, you do it with your eyes open.
What this means for you
Glysimi works alongside whatever approach you take.
Any diet
Whether you eat low-carb, mixed, or somewhere in between. No food database required, no macro tracking.
Any monitoring method
CGM or finger-prick testing — both work. Log both and see the gap between them over time if you choose.
Any stage
Whether you're newly diagnosed or have been managing for decades. Whether your time-in-range is 95% or 45%.
It will also work for you on the days when you eat something you know isn't optimal, don't log everything, or just want to manage with less overhead than usual. The log captures what you capture. No data, no judgment.
The only thing Glysimi asks is that when you make a decision that matters — a dose, a meal, a check — you spend 30 seconds capturing it. Not for me. For you, the next time you face the same decision and wish you could remember what happened last time.
Timeline
Built the first version for personal use. No launch plans. Just a faster way to manage daily.
Rebuilt with much better search. Patterns became visible for the first time.
Used daily, refined continuously. Kept what worked, cut what didn't.
Decided to share it. Not as a finished product. As a tool that's been tested by one very demanding user for over a decade, and is now ready to be tested by more.
What Glysimi is not
This is not a medical device. Glysimi does not give you medical advice, calculate insulin doses, or make any recommendations about your treatment. It gives you access to your own history. What you do with that history is entirely your decision.
Always work with your healthcare team on your treatment plan. Glysimi is a complement to that relationship, not a replacement for it.
Try it for yourself
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