Jish's Story

Hey there!

I'm Jish, co-founder of Haema.

I have had type 1 diabetes for over 20 years, and my team and I are building Haema, an app to help people with diabetes understand how food and exercise affects their blood sugar.

A little backstory about me:

I grew up taking Insulin injections which meant that I couldn’t eat most foods, I had a super restricted diet.

Later on as the tech got more available I got an insulin pump. All of a sudden eat pretty much anything!

This was a blessing but also in some ways dangerous for my health. I developed a disordered way of eating, I didn’t have the education to know how to eat a variety of food without it spiking my blood sugar.

This eventually developed into eating disorder, I was constantly watching carbs and thought eating extremely low carbs would help better control my blood sugar. For a whole year I lived off soup and raspberries.

Over the years I’ve worked so hard to help this situation and this year I finally started getting into a more ‘normal’ eating routine.

I was able to do this after I learnt that all the different components in food works together in harmony.

The order you eat your meal, the ratio of carbs to proteins and fats and how you stagger your meals all impact your blood sugar.

But this is pretty stressful and managing diabetes is already a full time job and adding maths, tracking, logging into the equation is super difficult.

So I started working with my co-founder, Pranav, to figure out a way to help me track all this stuff without adding to the myriad of decisions I already have to make on a day-to-day basis.

This is the basis for Haema. We’re creating the easiest way to track the things you eat and learn how they affect your blood sugar.

We also recognise that everyone is different and what may work for me will not work for you. So we also want to help people answer super personal questions like:

• How much protein and fat should I add with my carbohydrate meal?

• Which order should I eating

• How long should the gaps be between my meals? What type of carb should I eat?

• What small changes can I make to my meals to make it easier on my blood sugar?

I originally set out to help my self, but after seeing the potential in this idea, I quit my job and now I’m working day and night to help people like you feel healthier and happier.

You should sign up :)

Jish

Co-Founder @ Haema