Hummingbirds have to constantly eat sweet nectar to survive. Their relationship with sugar has made them a mascot of diabetes organizations such as the International Diabetes Federation.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when a person’s body stops making insulin and the body can no longer use the sugar being metabolized from food ingested. To bring dangerously high blood sugar levels down and to stay alive a person with type 1 diabetes must inject themselves with insulin via a syringe 6 or more times a day or use an insulin pump.
Insulin keeps a person with diabetes alive but if too much is administered or the person has been exercising their blood sugar can drop dangerously low. In that case they must immediately ingest some form of quick acting carbohydrates (sugar) in order to stay alive. This delicate balance to simply survive takes an enormous amount of thought and energy on top of everything else the person must do daily.
We at Sugar Rush Survivors admire hummingbirds for the way they fly through their days and conserve their energy when needed. Our hummingbird is shown in silhouette against a red drop as a nod to the drops of blood that people with diabetes must prick from their fingers multiple times a day in order to test their blood sugar.
Many thanks to Jerry Johnson, Professor of Design at Troy University for guiding his students through a design process for our logo.
And thanks to Clayton McCullough, then a student at Troy University, in Troy, Alabama, who created our logo!
Sugar Rush Survivors 