When Dr. Alice Cheng steps on stage to the poppy jangle of “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt-N- Pepa, the audience in front of her knows they won’t be sitting through a dull, academic presentation. Cheng, an endocrinologist at Toronto’s Unity Health, is addressing a room full of people with type 1 diabetes about a topic they all care about, but often don’t get good information on — sex. And she does it in her trademark smart, friendly, and incredibly open way.
For the diabetes community in Canada, Cheng has become a popular voice. Not only does she share knowledge in a way that is engaging and understandable, she also has a sense of empathy often missing in research and academia. She is open and informative about questions from the audience today, sharing accurate and medically-sound information about things like whether or not to take off an insulin pump during sex, and how to manage your blood sugars while you do the deed.
Cheng also talks about a topic that she finds frustrating as a physician and educator — the lack of clinical research done around the sexual health of women with diabetes. As with many areas of science, there are lots of studies looking at men with the condition, but a very limited number looking at how women manage. And it is women, who are dealing with complex hormonal shifts due to things like menstruation, menopause, and pregnancy, that make this understanding so important.
When she led the Diabetes Canada Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment and Prevention of Diabetes in Canada in 2013, Cheng wanted to make the Guidelines as understandable for people in the field as possible. For her, educating health care providers on all areas of diabetes care is critical, and you can’t do that if you aren’t making the content engaging.
Growing up, Cheng originally wanted to be a pediatrician, a plan she scrapped in medical school when she realized that working with gravely ill children was not the right fit for her. She also wanted to be a teacher, and she credits that interest for her success in translating the complex health and science information she disseminates. “It's about translating knowledge, but in a way that someone can understand. It's not just about facts and figures, it's about boiling things down to the core essence of what it is,” she says. “I always challenge myself by thinking that if I can’t really boil it down to a headline, then I haven't figured out the core. And if you don't figure out the core, all the layers on top become just things you memorize, which is not helpful. It’s important to be able to boil things down to simple language, and then you can build layers on top.”
She sees teaching, not only her patients, but her peers and students, as critical to helping everyone succeed. Cheng loves the feeling of seeing a lightbulb go off in someone’s eyes when they start to understand a complex concept, and she is even happier when she sees a student use the knowledge to help a patient. “As a resident, I started teaching students, and when you actually see them admit their first patient with diabetic ketoacidosis, and use the knowledge that you had just gone over with them, it's a great feeling.”
For the diabetes community, many of whom turn to her for trusted information, her desire to help other health care providers is critical. For many with diabetes who are more frequently interacting with family doctors rather than endocrinologists, knowing their GP has access to easy-to-understand, factual information is meaningful.
And Cheng is happy to continue to do what she can to support those living with diabetes. “In medicine, there are some specialities where you can diagnose things, but you can’t do anything about them. In diabetes, you can make a diagnosis and you can do something that we know works,” she says. “I also get to follow people for years. It’s not short snippets of interactions, like in emergency medicine. I have the privilege of being part of the full life journey of someone.”
— Written by Krista Lamb