Diabetic, 26, shares injection videos on social media to help others to ‘thrive’ with the ‘relentless’ condition

A 26-year-old professional living with “relentless and exhausting” type 1 diabetes, where an incorrect dose of insulin could kill her, wants to show others “you can still thrive” with the condition as she shares body positivity and its unfiltered reality, including injection videos, with thousands on social media.

Jasmine Jaffar, a community manager in marketing from north-west London, was 12 when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which causes the level of glucose in the blood to become too high because the pancreas stops making, or makes very little, insulin.

She was told she will have the condition for life, which felt “overwhelming”, and will need to inject herself with insulin to manage her glucose levels.

On social media, Jasmine now openly shows the realities of living with and managing her diabetes to help others feel less alone, posting pictures and videos of her injecting herself with insulin, the bruises she sustains from the injections and how she wears and uses continuous glucose monitoring devices.

She does it to highlight the physical and emotional experience of living with diabetes, and alongside lifestyle and fashion content, she hopes this will offer a true and realistic representation of the condition to those within and outside the community.

“A diabetes educator said to me, ‘You don’t have to take your insulin if you don’t want to but don’t be shocked if, within the week, you start to go blind’,” Jasmine told PA Real Life.

“This really stuck with me, and even if (injecting myself with insulin) was the last thing I wanted to do, I knew that for my health long term and my wellbeing, I had to.”

Jasmine said she wanted to “keep living life”, but learning to embrace her diagnosis was challenging, both emotionally and physically, especially in her late teenage years.

“Here you are at home and it’s almost like your bedroom has turned into a pharmacy,” she explained.

“In the diabetes community, we say it’s one of those conditions where what you take to save you – insulin to keep you alive – can also be something that can kill you.”

With time, research, and support from loved ones, however, Jasmine decided to “welcome diabetes, arms wide, into (her) life”, and this led her to set up her own Instagram page in 2020.

Now, boasting more than 6,500 followers on Instagram and nearly 4,000 on TikTok, Jasmine aims to educate and empower others with the message that “you can still thrive” with diabetes.

“Getting diagnosed with type 1 diabetes… was out of my control,” Jasmine said.

“There is nothing I could have done to avoid it, but what I do have control over is my perspective on it, my approach to it, how I think about it and how I talk about it.

“It’s like wanting to thrive with the cards you’ve been dealt with, and there’s a big difference between accepting your diagnosis versus embracing it.

“When I just embrace (living with diabetes) as being my reality, and I want to live my best life and still be my best self, it’s just so much more empowering.”

Looking back now, Jasmine realises she had “all the symptoms” of type 1 diabetes before her diagnosis – but being just 12 years old, she was not aware of the tell-tale signs.

The London resident, who grew up in Australia, felt weak, lethargic, lacked energy, had “unquenchable” thirst and needed to “go to the bathroom all the time”.

“This wasn’t your usual thirst, it was almost unquenchable. Nothing I drank could make it go away,” she explained.

“I remember, a week before I was diagnosed, I had eight glasses of milk (in one day) because nothing else would make the thirst go away.”

After a visit to her GP, where she had a urine test and finger-prick test to measure her glucose levels, and a referral to hospital, Jasmine was told she had type 1 diabetes.

According to the NHS, a blood glucose reading of 4-7mmol/l is considered ‘normal’ on awakening and before meals, but Jasmine’s measured 21.7 mmol/l.

Jasmine said hearing this news was “scary and shocking” but, thankfully, she received an early diagnosis and was reassured she will “still be able to live a happy, healthy life”.

“Even though I had the symptoms, it hadn’t gotten to the point where it really started to affect my body – like losing a lot of weight or my organs going into failure,” she explained.

Jasmine started off managing her glucose levels by using a glucometer – a small, portable device that lets you check your blood sugars – along with insulin injections.

She said she adjusted to her diagnosis quickly but did not process the impact of it until later on, when she started to feel isolated and kept asking: “Why me?”

“I remember a diabetes educator telling me, ‘You’ll come to a point where you’re going to grieve your life’,” she explained.

“Going into university, I felt angry at the world and thought, ‘Why did I get it? What happened in my life that led to this?'”

However, Jasmine knew these feelings would pass and likened these emotions to a “season of life”, as she knew she “could not give up or walk away from it”.

“I had to tell myself, ‘I need to let myself feel this anger and frustration and sadness for me to then be able to pick up and keep going’,” she explained.

“Just because it’s raining and stormy and dark, and you feel so much angst about it, the sun always rises, it’s a new day, even if it takes time.

“It’s really important to let yourself feel these emotions because I feel like when you don’t, when people living with diabetes don’t, that’s when burnout happens faster.”

Now, Jasmine uses Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre 2 system – a monitoring system which sends glucose readings to her smartphone – and insulin injection pens to manage her glucose levels.

She said the progression in technology and using the FreeStyle Libre 2 system have been “life-changing” for her diabetes management, but she feels there is still “so much stigma” surrounding the condition.

Along with her own passion to raise awareness, this is what drove Jasmine to set up her Instagram page, as she wanted to make her “diabetes visible to others” and provide an educational and inspirational platform where she can “break down those walls and help people understand” the reality of living with diabetes.

She wants to encourage curiosity rather than judgement, and although “it’s not always rainbows and butterflies”, she believes you can “bloom” in life, even when faced with limitations.

“It can be both overwhelming and empowering at once, knowing that (diabetes is) forever and you can’t walk away from it,” she said.

“It can be relentless and exhausting, and really hard on your body and mind – it’s something that truly takes a lot of work – but the commitment and discipline and compassion pays off.”

To follow Jasmine, search @thetypethat_ on Instagram and @thetypethat on TikTok.

To find out more about Abbott, visit: www.freestyle.abbott/uk-en/home.html