Editorial Policy

This page describes how pages on this website are chosen, written, checked, and corrected. We would rather tell you plainly how this site is made than let you assume it works some other way.

What this site is for

this website exists for one narrow situation: you have type 2 diabetes, you are coming down with an ordinary illness, and you do not have written sick-day instructions from your own care team in front of you. Everything here is aimed at helping you organise that day — finding your own instructions, writing down what is happening, getting your medicine list in order, and being ready when you speak to a clinician.

It is a site about the paperwork around an illness, not about the illness.

The lines we do not cross

These rules apply to every page on the site, without exception. A page that breaks any of them does not get published.

• No numbers you could act on. No blood glucose or ketone values, no doses, no temperature thresholds, no "above this, below that".
• No frequencies. We never tell you how often to test, check, measure, eat, drink, or call. How often is a decision in your own plan.
• No medicine changes. We never suggest starting, stopping, holding, skipping, doubling, or adjusting anything, prescription or over the counter, and we never recommend a product or a brand.
• No interpretation. We do not tell you what a reading means, how serious a symptom is, or whether something is safe.
• No symptom checking, triage, or risk scoring. There is no questionnaire here that produces a verdict, and there never will be.
• No dietary or fluid instructions, however vaguely worded.

Where a topic genuinely requires one of those things, we say so, and we point you at your own plan, your care team, or your pharmacist instead of inventing a general answer.

How pages are chosen

The list of topics is fixed and editorial. Each one answers a single question a reader could plausibly have during those few days, and each one has to be answerable inside the rules above. Topics that can only be answered with a number, a dose, or a judgement about a symptom are not on the list, because we cannot answer them honestly.

How pages are written and checked

Pages are drafted with the help of a large language model working from an editorial brief and from the public reference pages listed on each page, then put through automatic checks before anything is published:

1. A pattern check that rejects any draft containing clinical values, dosing units, temperature thresholds, or frequency phrasing.
2. A length floor, so that no page is published as a stub.
3. A second model, given only the rules above and the finished draft, which returns a pass or fail verdict and must quote the offending phrase when it fails.

A draft that fails any check is held back rather than softened. An unclear verdict counts as a failure. This is deliberately a blunt instrument: we would rather hold back a useful page than publish one that quietly tells you what to do.

What this process does not include

It does not include review by a licensed clinician. We say so on every page and on our Medical Review page, because a site about illness that stays quiet about this is misleading you. That absence is the reason the rules above are as strict as they are.

Sources

Every page lists the public reference pages it was written from, links straight to them, and shows the date we last opened them. Our Sources page explains which organisations we use and why.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, out of date, or crosses one of the lines above, we want to hear about it. See Corrections, or write to .

Advertising

This site carries third-party advertising. Advertisers have no involvement in what we publish, no view of the topic list, and no ability to influence any page. We do not accept sponsored content, and we do not recommend products. Pages about contacting emergency and urgent care carry no advertising at all.