![\"Roxy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6b987349-898a-49b6-bee3-e33de7425850.jpg\")
Roxy Horner with her CGMInstagram<\/p>\nWhen the model Roxy Horner married the comedian Jack Whitehall last month there was a moment before she walked down the aisle when, she says, she felt as if \u201cI was going to bawl my eyes out\u201d. But on seeing all the people she loved \u2014 and hearing their daughter, Elsie, aged two, shout, \u201cDaddy! Daddy!\u201d \u2014 she couldn\u2019t stop smiling. In fact it was Whitehall who was overcome with emotion. \u201cHe was crying and it was so sweet,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Horner, 34, had a little more to contend with than the average bride, having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes five years ago. \u201cI was very anxious about managing my diabetes on my wedding day because I was thinking, what if my glucose levels go really low while I\u2019m walking down the aisle?\u201d she says. Fundamentally, though, she knew she didn\u2019t have to worry. The tech she uses to manage her condition, \u201cI trust with all my heart\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got these two devices managing my diabetes for me,\u201d she says. She wears a Dexcom G7, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that sends accurate glucose readings to its app on her smartphone every five minutes, no finger pricks required. It\u2019s a little flat disc (for her wedding she had it \u201cblinged up\u201d with little stick-on pearls). \u201cI put it on my arm or my tummy and it reads my glucose levels for me, it talks to my phone,\u201d she says. Consequently she can see her levels at a glance.<\/p>\n
She also has a tiny device, the Omnipod 5, which works in what\u2019s called a hybrid closed-loop system with her CGM and injects insulin into her body as needed. \u201cI\u2019ve got mine on my leg,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m getting insulin injected into me while I\u2019m talking to you. I don\u2019t have to do it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roxy Horner with her CGMInstagram<\/p>\n
Nearly half a million people in the UK have type 1 diabetes and over the past two years tens of thousands of them have benefited from an NHS rollout of hybrid closed-loop systems, which are also known as an \u201cartificial pancreas\u201d (the Dexcom and Omnipod system is just one of several prescribed by the NHS; they\u2019re also available privately). Although such systems automatically adjust the delivery of insulin to keep glucose in range, Horner says you still need to tell them whenever you\u2019re about to eat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really is no kind of break,\u201d she says. \u201cEverything you eat, everything you do, you\u2019re thinking about your glucose levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one wants to count carbs before tucking into their wedding cake but Horner had no choice.\u00a0\u201cI tell my hybrid closed-loop the rough amount of grams of carbohydrates I\u2019m going to have and it will inject me automatically,\u201d she says. Then she waits five to ten minutes for the insulin to be absorbed. \u201cI eat my cake and go about my day, as long as I get it right. You do have to take into account, \u2018Am I going to be dancing or going for a walk or to the gym?\u2019 All these things change the amount of insulin you\u2019re going to need for that cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
That essential pause before every meal doesn\u2019t always suit Whitehall. \u201cSometimes we\u2019re at a restaurant and Jack\u2019s eating and I\u2019m like, \u2018Hmm. Can you wait?\u2019\u201d Horner says.<\/p>\n
She now has the experience (and the tech) to manage her condition effectively but Horner knows how dangerous and terrifying it can be. Before she was diagnosed in her late twenties, she was busy, happy and successful, and didn\u2019t understand why she felt so acutely unwell.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so thirsty that no matter how much water I drank I would be gasping,\u201d she says. \u201cI was drinking excessive amounts. I bought a four-litre bottle off Amazon because I was drinking jugs of it.\u201d She was constantly hungry and eating \u2014 \u201cI felt like I needed energy\u201d \u2014 yet was losing weight. She knew it was bizarre \u2014 she was barely moving. \u201cEven walking round the block I felt like I was going to pass out,\u201d she says. \u201cI was really, really exhausted. I was crying, I was sad, really depressed, because I didn\u2019t feel like myself. I gaslit myself. I don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t believe myself that there was something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet she had sought medical advice several times. \u201cThe doctors were telling me I was fine,\u201d she says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t look at me and assume \u2018diabetes\u2019.\u00a0Type 1 used to be known as \u2018juvenile diabetes\u2019, which is not the case at all. You can get it at any age. It\u2019s an autoimmune disease. We don\u2019t really know what causes it.\u201d While it can be hereditary, no one in her family has it. \u201cIt can just happen to anyone,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
![\"Jack](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d73044d5-64c3-4027-9486-5113a6722a1d.jpg\")
The couple at the Grand Prix in Monaco last year Daniele Venturelli\/Getty Images for Grand Prix De La Haute Joaillerie<\/p>\n
Horner became so desperate that she sought advice on social media. Replies told her to check for diabetes. \u201cI went into a pharmacy and bought myself a finger-prick monitor. My glucose levels were 32.8 \u2014 ridiculously high.\u201d She took herself to A&E. She told them: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t go on like this. I feel like I\u2019m dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instantly diagnosed, Horner says she was actually relieved to know that there was something wrong with her. However, she still didn\u2019t realise how serious it was. \u201cI thought I\u2019d be in and out \u2014 I was there for days,\u201d she says. Then she discharged herself. \u201cI had a terrible hypo, where your sugar goes so low that you can pass out. I panicked and I took myself back to hospital that same day.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was traumatic and a big learning curve, she says, noting that while undiagnosed type 1 diabetes can be fatal (\u201cIf you don\u2019t have your insulin, it will kill you\u201d), it can also be slow onset. \u201cI felt like I had symptoms for, honestly, about a year and it gradually got worse and worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Memory loss was another symptom. \u201cI still suffer with that, actually,\u201d she says. \u201cMemory loss is really bad for me. I forget the simplest things. Jack and I will watch something and I will sometimes forget what we\u2019ve just watched.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now she is experienced in controlling her condition. \u201cBut you do have to learn quite a lot about managing diabetes, type 1 especially, because it\u2019s a dangerous thing to manage,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re playing with your life every day. Injecting insulin into your body is so dangerous. I was pricking my finger up to 20 times a day to check my glucose levels. That was quite consuming. I couldn\u2019t focus on anything else.\u201d She was also manually injecting herself.<\/p>\n
For the first three months she was too scared to go to the gym. \u201cI kept having these hypos. I was terrified, your whole body goes shaky, you can pass out \u2014 and I have passed out before.\u201d A few times, she says, \u201cI was so terrified, I called the ambulance\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then a friend gave her a CGM to try and, a year in, Horner discovered Dexcom \u201cand never looked back\u201d. She\u2019s had the Omnipod for a year. The devices have been transformative. So much of her headspace had been taken up by the logistics and stress. \u201cI can be with my family and friends again, and not worry as much,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
If her glucose levels go out of range, her Dexcom sends an alert to her phone. It can also send alerts to people she trusts. \u201cSo my mum and dad, for instance, have this alarm going off on their phone sometimes, which,\u201d she says wryly, \u201cmay or may not be great for them. They have turned up at my house at a ridiculous time in the morning: \u2018Oh my gosh!\u2019 \u2014 Jack was away \u2014 \u2018You\u2019re alone with Elsie, we panicked, we saw you were having a hypo in your sleep!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Horner is Essex-born but her parents lived in Australia for 12 years. \u201cAnd then, when I fell pregnant, they very sweetly moved back to the UK so they could be close by and help with childcare,\u201d she says. \u201cThey live in Oxford now, which is really lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horner hadn\u2019t realised that pregnancy with type 1 diabetes needs careful management. \u201cIt is a terrifying thing being pregnant with type 1 diabetes,\u201d she says. \u201cYour glucose levels do crazy things. My glucose levels were going really, really high, really, really low, all over the place. I had to go in every week either to have a scan or make sure baby was OK or I was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately her local hospital took great care of her. And Horner was fully focused on controlling her diabetes throughout her pregnancy \u2014 again, her Dexcom was invaluable as she watched everything she ate. (Managing glucose levels reduces any risk to the baby\u2019s health.) As it was, she was advised to have an early birth and Elsie was delivered two weeks short of nine months.<\/p>\n
According to Diabetes UK, the risk to the general population of developing type 1 diabetes is low (about 0.4 per cent), but for the child of a mother with the condition, it is slightly higher: they have roughly a 1-4 per cent chance of developing it. Elsie is healthy and doesn\u2019t have it but, Horner says, \u201cit\u2019s an anxiety I have that one day she could have it\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tempting to say that Horner looks a picture of health but the difficulties and dangers of type 1 diabetes aren\u2019t always apparent, which is one of the reasons why she wants to raise awareness of the condition.\u00a0Her devices have been a \u201cgame-changer\u201d and she marvels at how far tech has come for people living with type 1 diabetes. But, she says, \u201cIt took me a long while to feel OK and normal. And I don\u2019t feel normal ever, I guess, because it\u2019s always there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the model Roxy Horner married the comedian Jack Whitehall last month there was a moment before she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-444986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}