Sam here, welcome to the diabetes corner, where you can learn about my experience, tips, and advice for combining type 1 diabetes with a passion for travelling the world.
I want to help you overcome challenges like keeping insulin cold on the move, finding travel insurance that covers diabetes, working out how to get insulin while abroad, and how to travel long-term with the condition.
I’m also here to prove that with some extra planning and preparation, living with diabetes doesn’t have to hold you back from fulfilling your travel dreams!
Essential Guides
Travel & Diabetes
Curated by an actual type 1 diabetic with real experience and who understands the fear, challenges, and daily t1d rollercoaster.
Insulin Travel Coolers
Travel Insurance with Type 1 Diabetes
Guides To Help You Travel With Confidence
My Favourite
Diabetes Travel Resources
These are the go-to resources, products, and services that I use to help take some of the stress out of travelling with type 1 diabetes.
They’ve helped me a lot so I want to recommend them for you too!
Some links are affiliate links, which means if you use the link to make a qualifying purchase, we’ll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.
My T1D Story So Far
Everyone remembers their diagnosis story (well, those of us who were old enough to), and mine is etched in my brain.
I was 14 years old, sitting in my GP’s room, where he uttered those life-changing words to my mum and I:
“Sam has type 1 diabetes and we need to get him to the main hospital immediately”.
Then came the whirlwind as I entered the completely new and scary world that you can probably relate to.
But I did the only thing I could do and just got on with it the best I could.
I soldiered on through the rest of high school, through four years of university, and suddenly it was 2018, I was 22 years old, and Lucy and I were planning a 12-month working holiday in Australia after graduation.
Different diabetes anxieties emerged for the first time, as I wasn’t exactly a seasoned traveller at that point, and planning an extended trip raised a lot of questions that I struggled to get concrete answers to.
How do I get insulin in other countries? Would I be able to afford it? How do I keep insulin cold when on the move? How would different climates and foods affect my sugar levels? What if I got ketoacidosis for the first time? What about carb counting?
Some thoughts were irrational fears, some were genuine concerns, but all were real anxieties that as diabetics, we are more than entitled to feel.
But thankfully, the fears didn’t hold me back and, with the amazing support of Lucy which I’m always grateful for, we went for it and had an incredible 15-month experience!
We road tripped up Australia’s east coast, picked mangoes, lychees, and pineapples to earn money, and visited the likes of Bali, New Zealand, the USA, Mexico, Cuba, and Spain before landing back in Scotland, just in time for Covid!
But the travel bug had fully sunk its teeth in and since 2021, we’ve been back on the road where I’ve been managing my diabetes while travelling long-term and have visited over 50 countries with the condition!
All this is to say that with experience, I’ve learned a lot about travelling with type 1 diabetes, and even though diabetes anxieties still creep in, I’m passionate about showing that it doesn’t have to hold us back from travelling the world!
And that’s where my initial inspiration for creating Type 1 Travelling came from.
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