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England Center Slade discovered he had diabetes by accident when he was 18 years old.
A month before he began his career with Exeter Chiefs, he and his school friends were tinkering with testing their sugar levels on a friend’s blood testing kit.
His result was “very high” and the next day it was “even higher” so his parents took him to the doctors, who told him “you are on the verge of diabetes.”
His first thought was: “Can I still play?” The doctor’s answer was “yes.”
“As soon as I heard that, I said I will never let that stop me from doing what I want to do,” he added.
“And that’s the message I tried to get out to people. It doesn’t affect how much weight you can lift, how fast you can run, how fit you are, as long as your blood sugar is in the right zone.”
However, getting them there is no easy task.
The 32-year-old wears a glucose monitoring device on his arm that is connected to his phone and watch, sending him constant updates and alerting him to signs of high or low blood sugar.
“I have to plan how much I need to inject or what I will do when I start training,” he said. “I know how much carbs I’m going to eat for breakfast and how much I need to inject because it’s kind of the ratio you set.”
Then throughout the day he thinks about questions like “What time of day is it?”, “How cold is it?” and “How are your stress levels?” Because all of these factors can affect its levels.
He found that on match days, adrenaline was sending his levels “over the top” by halftime, so he now injects insulin just before the game and at halftime.
“It helped me a lot because adrenaline raises my blood sugar levels,” he said. “It affects how you think, how you feel, and your fatigue levels. So being able to control your blood sugar is really important on game day.”
Slade is passionate about raising awareness to help with early detection and address what he calls the “scary” stigmas of the condition and confusion with type 2 diabetes, which is largely seen as lifestyle-related.
“The majority of people I talk to assume it’s because I ate too many sweets as a kid or had a bad diet growing up,” he said.
“That’s a long way from what it actually is. It’s autoimmune, and you can’t control it. Anyone can get it, at any time.”
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