It’s been a quarter-century, but Charlie O’Connell vividly recalls one particularly difficult day at football practice.It could have cost O’Connell his life. Instead, it changed his life.O’Connell was a young defensive back and special teams player on a pretty good University of Pennsylvania team. He had managed his Type 1 diabetes throughout his high school […]
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It’s been a quarter-century, but Charlie O’Connell vividly recalls one particularly difficult day at football practice.
It could have cost O’Connell his life. Instead, it changed his life.
O’Connell was a young defensive back and special teams player on a pretty good University of Pennsylvania team. He had managed his Type 1 diabetes throughout his high school football career but preparing for an Ivy League season was going to be a tougher go.
Then one afternoon, it was a no-go. He found himself having what can euphemistically be called a glucose incident and none of the team’s trainers knew what to do to help him.
It all worked out. O’Connell went on to play football on a Penn team that won an Ivy League championship in 1998. He also was on the track team and won an Ivy javelin championship in 2001.
He then went on to found Fitscript, a firm that specializes in understanding the connection between diabetes and exercise.
Surrounded by an unusual mix of gym equipment and studio microphones, O’Connell describes his journey to make sure others would not be as unprepared as he and the Penn trainers had been.
After college, he started networking with doctors in his native New Haven and looking for referrals from Bolton’s Fitness. He smiles as he recalls a doctor giving her husband an ultimatum: Get your Type 2 diabetes under control or else.
With O’Connell’s guidance, the man lost 50 pounds and his critical AIC test score dipped below six. A score below seven means a person has their diabetes under control.
From there, Fitscript’s growth was slow but steady.
Three rounds of funding secured $6.1 million. Fitscript’s YouTube videos have drawn millions of views. There was a trial with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Then the pandemic hit and what had been a rosy outlook turned dark.
“We had to lay off 75 percent of our staff,” O’Connell recalls.
A funding round seeking $10 million to expand Fitscript’s reach into the health plan market was stopped.
Now things are starting to look up again. His crew of eight is back producing Glucose Zone-branded videos that seemingly have an answer for every question.
For people with Type 1 diabetes, Glucose Zone provides real-time digital exercise guidance and support from certified coaches during and after exercise. O’Connell points out some exercises raise blood sugar while others lower it, a lesson he hadn’t learned yet at Penn.
For people with Type 2 diabetes, the aim of Glucose Zone is to provide real-time digital exercise therapy to help lower A1C levels and aid with weight loss.
And for those with pre-diabetes, Glucose Zone exercise therapy is designed to help prevent the progression of diabetes.
There are programs for seniors and those with special needs.
In all, there are more than 300 videos. All are produced in-house, O’Connell says with obvious pride.
Fitscript has individual clients in 20 countries with strong pockets in India and Saudi Arabia. But the future lies in plugging in to health plans. O’Connell is ready for the challenge.
