When TikTok Diagnosed Type 1 Diabetes

A 30-year-old producer at CNET was losing weight fast, constantly thirsty, experiencing blurry vision. Two different doctors gave him metformin, a Type 2 diabetes drug, and sent him on his way. For six months, Justin Eastzer felt isolated, scared, and progressively worse. The doctors never ran the autoantibody test that would've revealed Type 1 diabetes.

Then Justin made a TikTok video about a blood glucose meter that sent data to his phone via Bluetooth. He thought the tech was cool. [00:05:00] He wasn't asking for medical advice, he was just showing off technology. But the diabetes community found him immediately, flooding his comments: "You need to get the autoantibody test. You don't have Type 2. You have Type 1."

That video changed everything. What started as a misdiagnosis nightmare turned into a mission that's transformed how over a million people understand and use diabetes technology.

From Hollywood to Healthcare: The Accidental Advocate

Justin's career started in entertainment, producing for America's Got Talent, creating tech content for CNET, building a YouTube channel focused on smart home devices and consumer electronics. [00:06:00] His diagnosis at 30 became a redirection point. He combined his production expertise with a personal urgency to fill an information gap he'd experienced firsthand.

"I was taking information I was learning in my endo and diabetes educator appointments and just offering it for free," Justin explains. [00:10:00] "Why should someone have to have health insurance in the United States and pay their copays to get this crucial information for care when I can just offer it to them?"

That philosophy, education as a right, not a privilege, has built one of the most trusted patient education platforms in diabetes tech. His platform, Diabetech, includes a podcast with over a million downloads, active social channels, educational blog posts, and regular interviews with technology executives and innovators.

The Entertainment-Education Balance Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)

What makes Justin's content compelling isn't just the technical accuracy, it's the characters. There's the mom in a wig who says all the wrong things. There's the friend who doesn't get it. These sketches teach non-diabetics how not to stigmatize the people they love, packaged in shareable, humorous formats that land without lecturing.

[00:11:00] "These characters allow me to create a video that people can share with those family and friends so they can understand what they're saying may not be the best way to put certain things," Justin says. "Should you be eating that?", a question many people with diabetes hear constantly, becomes a teaching moment wrapped in relatability.

The content strategy came from his Hollywood training: story, interview techniques, music to evoke emotion. "I think the best way to educate is in a way that people don't know they're being educated," he explains. [00:10:00] That could mean entertainment, tears, relevance, or characters that de-stigmatize diabetes by showing what it feels like from the inside.

What "Going Low" Actually Means (And Why It Matters for Innovation)

When Justin describes a low blood sugar episode, it's visceral: "You become anxious and paranoid. You can become shaky and sweaty, dizzy. Your body is shutting down and needs glucose to survive. You become this raw inner, like this very human. All ego is gone. You're completely just trying to survive." [00:16:00]

One decision, miscalculating carbs in a sauce, misjudging a meal, can derail an entire day. He describes sitting at dinner with friends, unable to eat because his blood sugar was stubbornly high. While everyone else enjoyed their meal, he sat calculating: Was it the food? Pump malfunction? Spoiled insulin? Did yesterday's hot tub raise levels? [00:47:00]

This is the lived experience gap that medical device innovation often misses. Clinical trials measure A1C (a three-month average of blood glucose). Time in range gets tracked. Standard deviation shows variability. But none of these metrics capture "time in happiness", a term from Camille DiTommaso at Beta Bionics that Justin emphasizes. [01:04:00]

You can have good A1C and time in range while making dozens of calculations per day, experiencing constant decision fatigue, and living in a state of vigilance that prevents presence. That's why Justin's work matters: he translates the invisible burden into stories that innovators, regulators, and family members can actually understand.

The Holy Grail: AI That Reads Your Meal

Ask Justin what feature would change everything, and he doesn't hesitate: AI-powered meal estimation. [00:41:00] Take a photo of your plate, and the system calculates carbs, suggests insulin doses, and learns your patterns over time. The technology exists, he's covered apps like Snack and interviewed developers building custom interfaces for DIY algorithms like Loop.

"Sometimes one decision in your day can lead to the inability to enjoy a moment of the day because you messed up that carb count or had that bad low," Justin explains. [00:46:00] "Using a system like this, if it gives you the information you need to make that decision, that could potentially not happen."

The DIY community has been building these solutions since 2016, features like activity-based insulin adjustments, tighter glucose ranges, and meal photo analysis. Meanwhile, FDA-cleared systems move slowly, constrained by the need to be safe for the general population. Justin uses DIY Loop himself and rarely goes low during workouts. With FDA-cleared pumps, he went low more than 50% of the time during exercise. [00:49:00]

Asking the Hard Questions: Executives and Warning Letters

In August 2024, Justin interviewed Jake Leach, soon-to-be CEO of Dexcom, about sensor failures and FDA warning letters. [00:19:00] Getting executives to sit down for difficult conversations isn't luck, it's journalistic persistence combined with platform credibility.

"I'm not trying to catch anyone. I'm not trying to hide anything," Justin says. [00:21:00] "I give them an entire list of everything I wanted to ask." He also crowdsources questions from his community: What are people going to rip me apart for if I don't ask?

The Dexcom interview covered sensor reliability issues, failures that leave people without critical glucose data, especially when traveling internationally. Some listeners thought Leach wasn't empathetic enough. Justin felt differently: "I thought he did a good job of making me feel a little bit more comfortable." [00:23:00]

That nuance, balancing user frustration with company constraints, is rare in patient advocacy. Justin holds companies accountable while recognizing that safety requirements slow innovation. When we discussed a recent Tandem alert about unexpected insulin boluses during Dexcom G7 sensor warmup if two sensors are active simultaneously, his immediate response wasn't anger at the failure, it was frustration about transparency.

"I don't get mad at the problem. I get mad at the transparency or lack thereof," he says. [00:30:00] "It's a bad look when you announce an issue, and if you don't have to announce that issue, then you don't. I wish these companies would be better about letting the community know what is happening so we don't freak out when it does happen."

The Moonshot: Software Updates at the Speed of Safety

Our conversation turned to regulatory innovation, specifically, the paper I co-authored proposing automated insulin delivery as a "proving ground" for trustworthy medical software updates. [01:05:00] The premise: if we can automate cybersecurity testing and safety validation through simulation, we can ship features faster without compromising safety.

Justin's immediate question cut to the heart of user priorities: "Isn't the safety of people using that feature just as, or more important than the worries of someone hacking that new feature?" [01:08:00]

The answer: they're connected. A cybersecurity vulnerability can become a safety issue. A compromised device could deliver fatal insulin doses. Automated testing pipelines need to address both simultaneously, patch vulnerabilities quickly while validating safety through simulation rather than lengthy clinical trials.

Lane Desborough, a Nightscout pioneer now building safety simulators for multiple companies, is working on exactly this problem. [01:11:00] If his work succeeds alongside automated cybersecurity testing, and companies add real-world beta testing with diverse users (including those who are hard of hearing or blind), we might finally achieve continuous feature deployment.

"The power of innovation lies in continuing to innovate products through software," Justin says. [01:13:00] But only if testing keeps pace with development.

What Regulators Get Wrong (And Right)

Justin hasn't interviewed FDA employees yet, but he wants to. "Let's understand why it's taking this long," he says. [01:14:00] "It's so easy for people in the community to complain about the speed, but let's hear about projects like yours that could potentially make it faster."

This is the balance Justin strikes consistently: advocate for users while recognizing system constraints. He knows FDA employees actively pushed for automated insulin delivery interoperability. He understands that medical device companies must design for the general population, not just advanced users. He sees the value in off-label use and the DIY community while acknowledging regulatory necessity.

When I mentioned that some FDA reviewers still prioritize A1C over time in range as an endpoint, Justin pushed back immediately: "I'm not a huge fan of only looking at A1C. With the advent of CGM, A1C is less necessary to focus on." [00:52:00]

He explained that people with frequent lows can have excellent A1C because the lows bring averages down, even though they feel terrible and have no idea they're experiencing dangerous glucose drops for hours. Time in range combined with standard deviation paints a more accurate picture of glucose management and lived experience.

The Access Problem Nobody's Solving

When consumer CGMs like Levels (founded by Surgeon General nominee Casey Means) expand the market, Justin sees both opportunity and risk. A bigger market could fund innovation that benefits Type 1 diabetes. But it could also divert development away from features critical for insulin management.

His solution: a Tom's Footwear model. [00:56:00] "For every 10 CGMs we sell to consumers, one CGM goes to someone who doesn't have access. That's what I want to see."

There's a massive global population without access to continuous glucose monitors, lifesaving technology that remains out of reach. Expanding to wellness markets without addressing this gap feels uncomfortable. Justin wears a Stelo (Dexcom's over-the-counter CGM) but worries it sends negative signals to people who need medical-grade devices but can't access them.

Why This Work Matters

In rapid-fire closing questions, I asked Justin about the most impactful work of his career. His answer: "Hope for parents that their children will live a fulfilling life." [01:15:00]

That's what his platform does, it shows parents that a Type 1 diagnosis isn't a life sentence of limitations. It educates newly diagnosed adults that they're not alone. It translates between innovators who build technology and users who live with it. It holds companies accountable while explaining regulatory realities.

Justin's heroes are his mentors and his parents. His advice to listeners: "Just ask and do it. It won't get done unless you do." [01:15:00]

For medical device innovators, the message is clear: lived experience matters as much as clinical endpoints. Features that reduce decision fatigue and increase "time in happiness" are worth building, even if they're hard to measure. And when you ship products without understanding how people actually use them, people who are hard of hearing, people with visual impairments, people who exercise spontaneously, you're not innovating. You're just adding to the burden.

Listen to the full conversation with Justin Eastzer: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/shannon-lantzy This content was created from the full episode transcript using AI to capture key insights and stories from the conversation.