Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas whose primary function is to lower blood sugar. It does this by binding to insulin receptors on the cell wall which open glucose transporters. Once the glucose transporters are opened by the action of insulin, glucose can flow freely from the blood into the cell.

If you are insulin dependent your body relies on insulin injections in order to function correctly. This is either because your pancreas is not secreting any insulin, as in type 1 diabetes), or else the insulin that your pancreas is making is not doing its job properly, as in type 2 diabetes.

Insulin Basics

Before we jump into discussing the various insulin regimens, I need to first explain two terms which you will come across frequently:

Basal insulin – This is the injection of a long-acting insulin which mimics the insulin secretion of the pancreas. A single basal shot of insulin continues to act slowly throughout the day, therefore you only need to inject it once or twice daily. These long-acting insulins are “peakless” which means that they try and maintain the same glucose level throughout the day, unlike the fast acting insulins which result in a rapid decrease in blood sugar.

Bolus insulin – A bolus is a medical term for a single dose. Bolus insulin is given when you eat food in order to counteract the rapid increase in blood glucose after a meal. Bolus insulins are typically fast-acting, some of which start bringing down blood glucose in a matter of minutes. They do not remain in your system for long, being metabolized and excreted out of the body usually within a few hours.

So, to summarise… basal insulin keeps your blood sugar stable in the absence of food, but when you eat you need to take a bolus of fast acting insulin in order to counteract the sudden increase in blood sugar which comes from the breakdown of carbohydrate into glucose.

When Is Insulin Needed?

Insulin is always necessary for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, because there is a complete lack of the hormone in these patients. Type 2 diabetics do not usually require insulin until the disease has progressed to a point where the patient has become highly resistant to insulin, or when oral antidiabetic medications are no longer enough to keep blood glucose levels down.

A patient with insulin dependent type 2 diabetes has to use insulin in the same way as type 1 diabetics. However, there is a difference in that type 2 diabetics usually have to take much larger doses of insulin than type 1 patients because they have become so resistant to the effects of insulin.

For many type 2 diabetics, the addition of a long acting (basal) insulin such as Lantus or Levemir is usually enough to provide enough help to assist the body’s own insulin in doing its job. If this is still not effective enough, a basal dose can be taken in addition to fast acting boluses of insulin at mealtimes.

Insulin Mixtures

These come premixed under certain brand names, a popular one is a 70/30 mix (70% long acting, 30% fast acting) called humulin or mixtard. These are usually taken before breakfast and supper.

However, the combination of basal and bolus injections provides much tighter glucose control and is a more flexible system than taking premixed insulin. This is because you can vary the amount and timing of the bolus to match what type of food you eat and when you eat it.

With mixtures of insulin such as the 70/30 mix, you have to take it on a rigid schedule, and you can only eat a certain number of carbohydrates each day and at a scheduled time. You are not able to vary the timing of the injections because they contain both slow acting and fast acting insulin, and you are not able to eat more or less food depending on how hungry you are that day.

How to Inject Insulin

Depending on the insulin regime prescribed by your doctor, you may have to inject insulin via a traditional syringe. However, the majority of patients now are using injection pens which come pre-filled with insulin as they are much easier to use. In either case, the following basics apply:

Step 1: If using a syringe, roll the insulin vial (or the syringe itself if it has been pre-filled) between the palms of your hands a number of times before filling the syringe to redistribute any particles that may have settled to the bottom. This ensures an even concentration of insulin in each dose. The same applies to insulin pens, but they should also be shaken as most pens have a small glass ball inside which can move around and mix the insulin thoroughly.

Step 2: Choose an injection site and pinch the skin slightly. Position the syringe or pen so that the insulin is injected under the fatty layer of the skin. Note that a 45 degree angle is best for children and adults who are very thin, otherwise a 90 degree angle may be more appropriate.

Step 3: You should rotate your injection site regularly. Insulin is best absorbed through the abdominal area so rotating injection sites in this area is ideal. You could visualize your abdomen as a grid of 8 squares. Assign to each square a particular day and change to a new one each day of the week.

Insulin Injection Tips

1. Subsequent injections should be delivered at least 1 inch away from the previous injection site.

2. It is not necessary to disinfect the injection site with an alcohol swab as long as your skin is clean.

3. If necessary, insulin may be injected through clothing, but this is not recommended.

4. Never shake a vial of insulin as this creates air bubbles which can clog the syringe.

5. Never mix one type of insulin with another in a single syringe. This can make it’s effects erratic.

6. Try not to inject insulin into muscle tissue. It is painful and the insulin is absorbed too quickly and cause hypoglycemia.

Insulin Pumps

Insulin pumps are normally used in type 1 diabetes however they can work as effectively for insulin dependent type 2 diabetics also.

Some advantages of using an insulin pump include:

You change your infusion site once every 3 days, so if you have a dislike of needles, insulin pumping is better than having to inject yourself times a day.

You will use less insulin with a pump than on injections. Insulin pumps only use fast acting insulin which is more efficient than the slow acting types. Typically you use 20% less insulin when using a pump.

Because you have more control of the amount of insulin you take, if you are motivated, you can achieve much lower HbA1c (glucose average) than with injections. This improved control is due to the fact you can take doses that are not whole units, but fractions of a unit.

A new development in the area of insulin pumps is the advent of the artificial pancreas. This device combines an insulin pump with a continuous blood glucose meter, and automatically calculates how much insulin you need, minute by minute. This device is not currently on the market, but foundations such as the JDRF have invested a lot of money into it’s R&D. Human trials are currently underway.

Is an Insulin Pump Right For Me?

Not everyone is suited to pump therapy, and it usually reserved for cases of type 1 diabetes or insulin dependent type 2 diabetes. In order to be successful at using an insulin pump:

You need to be good at counting carbohydrates. You have to manually program the pump with the number of carbohydrates you are going to eat. It then calculates the dose of insulin to give you.
You need to be comfortable working with technology. If you are unable to basic devices such as a cell phone, then the insulin pump is not for you. However, as you are reading this information on your computer, this is likely not the case.
You need to be patient in order to give the pump a chance to impress you. It usually takes at least a week or two before your glucose levels reach a healthy level. It will also be at least several more weeks after that before you become confidant with adjusting the device.
You need to have a cool head rather than anxiety prone. When your glucose level starts to seem a little scary you have to quickly figure out what changes you need to make. Your doctor will be able to assist you with the learning curve at first, but you will eventually have to cope with the device on your own as the lag time between seeing a problem and getting help is too long for another person to control your pump for you.
Finally, you must be willing to test your blood glucose level with a glucometer about 8 times per day and more often when you are making adjustments to your routine.

Article Author: Michael JC Murphy

Diabetes is insulin resistance or deficiency that deprives your other cells of the much needed metabolic nutrients that your body requires. As a result of the lost nutrients the body can develop complications such as stroke, hypertension, heart attacks and even blindness.

Do not let this happen to you. There is a solution and it starts today and the answer is diabetic diet, exercise and taking your medications as prescribed by your physician. If you will make these changes then you can possibly reverse this disease and avoid the complications.

Changing your diet is the most effective treatment for diabetes that is known. You are in complete control of what you eat and how much you eat. This is a topic that cannot be ignored. You must eat the foods that are recommended for diabetics because these are the foods that will stop your diabetes. The foods that are recommended will normalize our blood sugar. Make small changes in your diet such as eating whole grain bread instead of the processed white bread, or eat a piece of fruit instead of the cookies for snack. Think about the amount of unhealthy fat in your food intake. You want to lower your danger of stroke therefore you will need to lower the volume in your eating habits. Eat dietary items that are baked or broiled, not fried. Remove the skin of the chicken. Pass on rich gravy. Select healthy fats like avocado oil.

If you make several of these changes now then you have begun to manage your diabetes. Concentrate on your diet and exercise and the weight will fall off and you will feel young and healthy again

Article Author: B. Turner

One of the most common but the most feared diseases is diabetes. It’s feared and dreaded because it is very easy for the disease to get out of control and lead to death. If the US statistics are anything to go by, people are justified to dread the disease because the statistics show that diabetes comes third in the list of killer diseases in the US. The worldwide statistics regarding diabetes are equally shocking.

You might be wondering what leads to one being diabetic. Biologically, your pancreas excretes insulin to facilitate the normal functioning of the blood because it absorbs glucose, in form of sugar. There comes a time however that the insulin cannot match up the glucose and glucose will end up in your blood stream, and you’ll simply be referred to as a diabetic.

Once diagnosed as diabetics, it becomes part of your life. You’ll become more active in thinking only that this time you’ll be thinking about diabetes. You shouldn’t be surprised to find yourself chanting diabetes several times a day. You’ll start surviving hour after hour, and medication will become part of your day to day life. Be advised that the medication is highly probable to consume a large part of your earnings.

When you’re diagnosed with diabetes, your body will be vulnerable to other diseases such as heart diseases, kidney failure, blurred vision and blindness, nervous breakdown and infection of the extremities which might lead to amputation and the last thing to befall you once diagnosed with diabetes is death.

The predicaments begin with the prescriptions that you get for your condition. Note that these are just like any other medicine for another disease hence has their own share of side effects. Weight gain, skin rashes, respiratory diseases are few of the many adverse side effects that are virtually inevitable with diabetes medication. You’ll be overwhelmed by many Over the Counter Medications promising you instant cure to diabetes, but so far, no cure yet has been found. The cure lies inside you, you ought to control your diet and become much disciplined to stick to a diabetic diet, and change your lifestyle, that is if you want to live long.

One change of lifestyle that all medical practitioners seem to be in a consensus about is taking morning walks. This way, you’ll be taming your condition’s intensity. Change your diet completely, you might want to take some time to learn about a diabetic diet, what it should and shouldn’t contain. Ensure you stick to your dietary plan; this cannot be overemphasized because only your diet will determine how your recovery path would be. You may seek local treatments that will tame the escalating blood pressure, which should only be your hope at such a point in time. Thus, you shouldn’t be made to believe that all is lost, there is life after diabetes.

Article Author: Camile West

A good friend and a cousin were recently diagnosed with diabetes Both had been treated for prediabetes over the last few years but neither took it too seriously and did not stay with the regimen that was needed. For example, instead of losing weight they both gained weight.

Diabetes is an insidious diseases but all of us can take steps to prevent this disease and help others prevent it also. Yes, it can be controlled with medication. Yes, the symptoms do not cramp your lifestyle enough that you cannot function as you usually do.

On the other hand, over time it is devastating to your organs. A simple way to explain it is that your organs (heart, liver and kidneys especially) have to work very hard when you have diabetes and they tend to wear out faster then normally as you get older. The results are often debilitating in later years and your quality of life is severely reduced as you age. It also shortens your life span.To properly understand diabetes you need to understand how the body normally processes glucose.

Glucose is the main energy source, the fuel, for the cells that make up your muscles and tissues. If you have diabetes, you have too much glucose in your blood which leads to problems. Glucose comes from the food you eat and from your liver. During digestion, glucose is absorbed into your blood stream. At the same time your pancreas also secretes insulin into the bloodstream. As the insulin circulates it is allowed to enter your cells, reducing the amount that’s left in your bloodstream. When the amount of blood glucose level drops so does the secretion of insulin from your pancreas.

Your liver stores any extra glucose, now called glycogen, just in case your cells need it later. When your insulin levels are low because you haven’t eaten in a while, your liver releases the stored glucose into the bloodstream to keep your glucose level normal.

When you have diabetes instead of entering your cells, the glucose builds up in your bloodstream and some is eventually excreted in your urine. Which is why your urine is always test when you go to a physician. This happens because your pancreas is not producing enough insulin or your cells are not responding to insulin or both,

These are symptoms of prediabetes, when your blood sugar level is higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes. The medical term for this is diabetes mellitus, the Latin term meaning honey sweet which refers to the excess sugar in your blood and urine.

People often think of diabetes as one disease. The fact is glucose, which comes from the foods you eat and also is made by your liver, can build up in your body for different reasons.

Type 1 diabetes develops when your pancreas makes little if any of the hormone insulin. Without insulin circulating in your bloodstream, glucose can’t get into the cells in your muscles and tissues so it builds up in your blood. In the meantime, your liver makes more glucose and also releases it in your bloodstream which increases your blood glucose.

Type 1 diabetes used to be called insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile diabetes. That is because the disease most often develops when you’re a child or a teen and daily injections are required to make up for the insulin your body doesn’t produce. Today we know that adults can sometimes also develop type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is the more common form. It makes up close to 95 percent of people over age 20 that have the disease. This type used to be called adult-onset diabetes. Another name is noninsulin-dependent diabetes. This term isn’t accurate anymore either because children and teens are now developing type 2 diabetes. One of the major reasons for this is childhood obesity.

In the mean time, consider one of the complications of diabetes: Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults, ages 20 to 74 years old.

Article Author: Ruthan Brodsky

Tell me, did you jump out of bed this morning feeling energetic, revitalized and ready to take on the world? Or did you feel really tired as though you needed more sleep?

How often do you wake up feeling fatigued or really tired? This is the most common and strongest sign of type 2 diabetes. Unexplained fatigue … you know you haven’t been out partying all night, or working harder than usual. Actually you have been going to bed earlier than you used to, hoping you would not feel so worn out when you first woke up or that you would make if through the day without feeling weary. There are many other signs, but this is one of the earliest signs that you have high blood sugar levels. It can go on for years; you start to accept that this is the way your life is going to be. You wish it would go away but it just stays and affects so many areas of your life.

You feel fatigued or really tired because glucose cannot enter the cells that depend on insulin to act as the transporter of sugar, therefore sugar stays in your bloodstream. Once you blood sugars rise above 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/l), sugar begins to spill over into your urine and that leads to several of the short-term complications of diabetes.

One or more of the following diabetic symptoms may be present along with high blood sugar levels, when you are first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes:

frequency of passing urine and thirst
unusual tiredness at times when you shouldn’t be drowsy or tired
blurred vision or any change in your eyesight
frequent infections that are slow to heal. Women often have recurring vaginal yeast infections or thrush
tingling or numbness in hands and feet
inflamed gums which are caused by high blood sugars affecting the blood vessels in your mouth. The sugar can also be causing teeth cavities

You may also have type 2 diabetes if your health care provider has diagnosed you with:

high cholesterol levels
high blood pressure
anemia
cataracts

Another classic sign is weight gain. This occurs because insulin in your body is not being used properly. High blood insulin levels increases your appetite.

Type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition that starts small and becomes worse over time. In the early stages it can be controlled through a healthy eating plan and exercise. The best way to prevent your pancreas from overworking and breaking down completely, is to check with your health care provider when you have any of the above symptoms. He can order fasting blood sugar levels, and/or an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), which will confirm or rule out type 2 diabetes.

a blood sugar level after fasting for eight hours, if over 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/l) on at least two occasions, usually means you have diabetes
you have diabetes when the OGTT result shows a level equal to or more than 200 mg/dl (11.1 mmol/l)

Your health care provider is the one who is responsible for diagnosing and treating your type 2 diabetes. If you have diabetes you must become your own expert, learning to cope with whatever life may throw at you in a satisfactory way. You need to be able to rely on your own knowledge.

Article author: Beverleigh H Piepers