SciShow asks 'Could a Vaccine Prevent Type 1 Diabetes?' for World Diabetes Day

Happy World Diabetes Day! SciShow invites you to 'Actually Understand Type 2 Diabetes' inspired me to see if SciShow had other videos to share about my disease. The channel did (and still does), so I'm sharing one of them, Could a Vaccine Prevent Type 1 Diabetes?

Measles, mumps, and polio are things we can prevent with vaccines, but scientists are looking to add a surprising entry to that list: Type 1 diabetes.

When I first developed diabetes, I attributed it to stress over the election of convicted criminal Donald Trump, including attending protests. I went to the Women's March, then the March for Science, and People's Climate March. Those were fun and I felt like I was doing something useful, but they wore on me. That, along with my condition, are why I'm not planning on attending any protests this time. It turns out I was blaming the wrong trigger; I probably had an infection that I didn't notice by a virus I hadn't even heard of.

Speaking of which, CVB stands for Group B Coxsackieviruses, which I found out from Vaccines against Group B Coxsackieviruses and Their Importance at the National Library of Medicine. It was published last year, so the research into human vaccines SciShow described is still ongoing. I'm not up to examining the paper in detail, but the abstract mentions that CVB has been implicated in the development of not only type I diabetes, the disease I have, but also myocarditis, which I don't have but which runs in my family. It may be too late for a vaccine to prevent me from developing diabetes, but it could save me from myocarditis.

That's it for today's health holiday. Stay tuned for America Recycles Day. I love holidays!