Resources for Diabetes Videos

So you want to get your fix of diabetes-related videos? Where do you go to?

The general video sites
For sure you can start on YouTube: if you type in "diabetes" you will get tens of thousands of results. You run into the now classic Wilford Brimley "Diabetes Dance Mix" alongside what seems like a million tribute videos to Nick Jonas, side by side with touching amateur productions by patients and their familiies, promoting a fundraising walk or talking about their lives with diabetes.

A nice space where you can find "short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge," as they describe themselves, is 5min.com. They have hundreds of videos about diabetes, most of which look very good and offer valuable advice.

Besides YouTube and 5min.com, you can also look into Vimeo, MetaCafe and Revver. In all of them you will find some pearls, but the biggest problem lies in the volume of junk content posted, not by patients but by people trying to take advantage of patients, trying to pose as experts to sell things to us.

So what can we do? There are more specific resources you can visit.

The health video sites
First off, there is HealthCentral, where you are right now. They offer an excellent library of professionally produced diabetes videos related to diabetes management and care.

Then there’s eMedTV, a source for health and medical information. They have a channel dedicated to diabetes. Their videos feature animations explaining things in a way that is easy to understand.

ICYOU is a user-generated video community that carries material produced by both patients and health professionals, which results in a balanced and valuable mix. Their diabetes channel carries more than 200 videos.

DrMDK.com aggregates medical videos from a variety of sources. Given the prevalence of diabetes, they carry a good number of videos about on their medical videos page.

Last, you can also check out the Videos on TuDiabetes. Members of the community submit their own videos or videos they find while surfing the web, adding up to more than 500 videos… and counting.

So, as long as you have the time to sit through hours and hours of footage, the good news is that there is no shortage of resources for you to check out if you want to watch diabetes-related videos.

In the meantime, let me leave you with the greatest video I have run into recently. It's by George Simmons, a person with type 1 diabetes and a blogger. He wrote a song about life with Diabetes written for World Diabetes Day 2008. It's titled "Not By Choice."