Is it not bad to have tiny needles traveling through your intestines?
There is no metal needle anywhere in the product. The needles are made of freeze-dried insulin. It is injected into the stomach wall where it dissolves into the bloodstream.
New pill can deliver insulin
111–120 of 260 posts
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
What doctors and researchers get wrong about diabetes is that pin-pricks and injections are not even remotely bad. I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. You get used to that within the first week of diagnosis. No, the unpleasant part of being diabetic is having to live every second of your life as an act of weighing how what you're currently doing is going to affect your blo…
"What doctors and researchers get wrong about diabetes is that pin-pricks and injections are not even remotely bad. I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. You get used to that within the first week of diagnosis." Dude, you don't know many diabetics then. Companies spend billions of dollars to solve this problem.
Yes, and many of them have failed. Pfizer's inhaled insulin was a flop and MannKind's isn't doing well. They were positioned as "no more needles!" and what they realized is that it's not enough to get people to switch.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#113If this is at all attractive to people, it's going to make insulin so damned expensive. The price of insulin is already rising: there aren't all that many generic manufacturers of it, leaving them in a competition-free market. If this takes off it's going to suck up a good chunk of the marketplace, and probably leave us with maybe one or two generic manufacturers - enough to have an effective monopoly. Insulin prices…
> The price of insulin is already rising That really is a sad state of affair, insulin is cheap to produce and we shouldn't live in a world where such a basic medicine is controlled by for profit organizations. At least in countries with a proper health system the cost isn't impacting on an individual level. https://beyondtype1.org/how-much-does-it-cost-to-produce-ins...
Generic insulin is available at $25 per vial. Guess what? Nobody wants to use it because the next generation of insulins is better.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#114> Once ingested, water dissolves a disk of sugar, using a spring to release a tiny needle made up almost entirely of freeze-dried insulin. The needle is injected into the stomach — which the patient can’t feel, owing to a lack of pain receptors in the stomach. Once the injection has occurred, the needle can break down in the digestive tract. That's some pretty impressive ingenuity. Also sounds kinda terrifying if the…
What doctors and researchers get wrong about diabetes is that pin-pricks and injections are not even remotely bad. I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. You get used to that within the first week of diagnosis. No, the unpleasant part of being diabetic is having to live every second of your life as an act of weighing how what you're currently doing is going to affect your blo…
I just stopped caring and accept that I have to die sometime. I have good A1C control, test regularly, and am very physically active. But thinking about it constantly just drives me nuts so I go about my life and if it's what kills me, so be it. And if in the (hopefully far) future my physical health is compromised to the point that I don't want to deal with it anymore, I'm at peace with that, too.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read up on the matter. The culprits are pharmacy benefits managers who push producers to increase list prices while demanding obscene rebates that are never passed on to the consumers. Most producers don’t disclaim the rebates, but Lars Fruegaard (Novos CEO) is on record saying that it increased from 64% to 67% last year. So pharmacy benefits managers are pushing up the list price but less and less is getting through…
Can they just sell direct to consumers? Cut out the pharmacy and the insurance companies. You guys could earn more while the patient pays less.
90% of diabetics are insured. If we stop selling to insurance and try to sell directly to these patients we would end up being more expensive than competitors and lose those customers. I mean you could argue that if they are paying their own insurence they could cancel and perhaps have a net saving on the insulin, but that seem very risky considering potential comorbidities of diabetes, and you’d lose all other coverage.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm saying Novo Nordisk produces insulin, and in doing so causes downward pressure on insulin prices thanks to basic economics. (When the supply of a good increases at the same level of demand, price falls.) This is true for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. In Novo's case, they have two kinds of long-acting insulin analogue taken 1-2 times per day for both T1 and T2; they have to my knowledge the only ultra-long-act…
Insulin prices have inflated by about 500% over the past two decades in the United States. Novo Nordisk's profits have seen a similar rise. Now, im no economitician, but I'd wager a vial of Fiasp® that there's more than just supply and demand going on here.
You're missing the key part of the story. Yes, Novo's price went up, but so did their rebates. The price of insulin (net price) has actually be increasing less than inflation.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
T1 here. This is a perfect summary. I received my Dexcom G6 yesterday. If you dont have a CGM and insulin pump, I highly recommend both.
One thing I'm worried about WRT switching to a pump is the impact of heat on insulin. I can't have a Humalog pen exposed to 80+ degree heat for more than a few minutes without it losing efficacy. I live in Texas. What will stop the summer heat from cooking all the insulin in my pump's reservoir while I'm walking down the street? Do you have any thoughts on this? I'd love to have more flexibility.
Insulin efficacy isn't really an issue until you are about 90+ F, anything below 90 and it will take long enough to breakdown the proteins that you would already be due to swap your infusion set (every 3 to 4 days). But being in Texas, you might exceed 90F at which point, yeah it could go bad really fast. Not a big deal though, just get a cooling wallet for your pump; FRIO seems to be the popular choice https://www.frioinsulincoolingcase.com/frio-pump-wallet.html
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#118I just watched a lecture on diabetes by Dr John McDougall last night. He described type 2 diabetes as the body's natural way to limit weight gain. He points out that morbidly obese people are often not diabetic: lack of insulin resistance is what enabled them to keep growing. Viewed this way, diabetes is a sign that a person has reached maximum weight. Giving a person additional insulin at this point is like trying to override the body's defense mechanism and forcing it to gain even more weight.
McDougall has lots of other interesting insights in the lecture and discusses how he treats diabetics. He goes into some detail about how he decides how to adjust medications and why he recommends his diet.
I'm posting this here because it may be of use to people who may not have heard this information from their own doctors.
The lecture is found here: https://youtu.be/UgE2IdL6tMw?t=1103
The link starts the video at the point where McDougall starts discussing type 2 diabetes specifically. Before this he talks about insulin and type 1 diabetes.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#119> Once ingested, water dissolves a disk of sugar, using a spring to release a tiny needle made up almost entirely of freeze-dried insulin. The needle is injected into the stomach — which the patient can’t feel, owing to a lack of pain receptors in the stomach. Once the injection has occurred, the needle can break down in the digestive tract. That's some pretty impressive ingenuity. Also sounds kinda terrifying if the…
What doctors and researchers get wrong about diabetes is that pin-pricks and injections are not even remotely bad. I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. You get used to that within the first week of diagnosis. No, the unpleasant part of being diabetic is having to live every second of your life as an act of weighing how what you're currently doing is going to affect your blo…
Me and my wife are T1D since childhood. I have started with reusable glass syringe with bovine insulin then Insulin pen and recently switched to pump. Living in developing county and having diabetes is nightmare. Constant mood changes due to sugar imbalance and highly chaotic environment of developing county make the things more difficult. People and even doctors are not able to understand about this decease related situations. Since last 5 years, we are not able to decide whether we should have baby or not.
One of my friend was telling me that I am not participating much in adventure activities I smiled and told that for me, living life itself is far more adventurous.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#120Is it not bad to have tiny needles traveling through your intestines?
There is no metal needle anywhere in the product. The needles are made of freeze-dried insulin. It is injected into the stomach wall where it dissolves into the bloodstream.
Oh I didn’t get that on the first read through.