Fundraiser living with diabetes to cycle from London to Edinburgh in grandmother's honour

A fundraiser who has been living with diabetes for 20 years is planning a charity cycle from London to Edinburgh to raise awareness and honour his grandmother who recently passed away.

Cameron Muir and partner Abby who will cycle 600 km from London to Edinburgh to honour his late grandmother and raise money for diabetes research.

Cameron Muir, who is originally from Aberdeen but now lives and works in London, will set off on the 600km journey with a group of friends including his partner Abby on 28 August.

The 29-year-old, former University of Edinburgh student, was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2000 aged nine.

Muir, who works as a financial consultant, aims to raise £10k for The Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation and the cyclists are also supporting The Black Curriculum, a social enterprise aiming to address the lack of black British history being taught in schools.

His grandmother Dr Norna Cooper who from Shetland and practiced medicine in Aberdeen, died in April this year aged 93.

Dr Cooper was well-known for busking with her accordion to raise money for the British Red Cross on the streets of Cupar in Fife where she settled after retirement.

Muir said his grandmother gave a lot of money to charity and contributed to diabetes research after he was first diagnosed as a child.

He added: “I was looking into a diabetes charity and The Diabetes Research and Wellness foundation fitted nicely as I smaller charity that we can help.

“We’re five white individuals and we wanted to ensure that we support the movement that’s been happening over the last couple of months and one of my friend’s picked The Black Curriculum social enterprise to support that as well.

“We’re tying in the diabetes charity with The Black Curriculum and looking to fund an educational day to help people with diabetes.”

Muir what it is like to cope with type 1 diabetes on a daily basis, something he’s now done for 20 years.

He said: “I was injecting three or four times per day at the start but the technology has evolved now, so I inject about eight to ten times a day now to keep my blood sugar under control.

“There’s a lot of new technology that’s come in and I have a sensor on my leg to test my blood sugar whereas I used to prick my finger.

“Now I can scan my phone over the sensor and it tells me what my blood sugar is.

“You have to learn to deal with it in order to keep yourself living really.

“Keeping my blood sugar within a certain value and especially making sure it doesn’t drop to a low level particularly when doing sport.

“With cycling this is a pretty big task because you use up so many calories that you have to continually take on so many sugars particularly with long distances.

“This is one of the big challenges to ensure that my blood sugar is kept up.”

The team are currently in training ahead of the cycle which they’ll do over seven days stopping at selected small hotels and B&Bs along the way up to Edinburgh where Muir’s parents live.

There are currently more than 30,000 people living with type 1 diabetes in Scotland and Muir welcomed the advances in technology that continue to take place.

He said: “I think there is a lot of good research going on at the moment and they’re getting there in terms of creating a fake pancreas which would make it possible for those with diabetes to be close to living a normal life.

“There’s a lot of technology updates that need to be made and there’s a lot of red tape to be got through when doing some of this stuff but they [scientists] are making progress.”

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