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New pill can deliver insulin

news.mit.edu

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Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#141

Is diabetes curable with gene therapy? I'm surprised we can cure hemophilia with gene therapy but not diabetes. Is it impossible to get your pancreas to create insulin naturally because it's missing something vital? [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-th...

type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where your immune system kills the beta cells that live on the pancreas. you can get donar beta cells that will work but your immune system will just kill them off again. This only works with immunosuppresents which will cause 10x more issues than just taking insulin.

Interesting, I never knew type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. I just thought the body just stopped creating insulin because the pancreas is messed up.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't think so. Getting someone to swallow a pill sounds strictly harder then getting them to swallow a liquid.

It’s a sugar pill, if the target eats candy or takes any other pill it would be doable. It would also be easy to slip into food. Liquid is easier, but will leave unavoidable forensic evidence. If making something look like natural causes even under extreme scrutiny is the goal, this is a hell of a way to do it.

How often do you swallow candy without chewing?

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#143
post #16
post #4

> 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 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.

Tell that to my wife who has had diabetes for 4 years.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#144
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDougall points out at one point that it's common for people to gain weight after their doctor tells them to lose weight and puts them on insulin. Insulin promotes weight gain.

It doesn't. Eating too much and exercising too little promotes weight gain.

Right. And the insulin injections allow them to continue their lifestyle of eating too much and exercising too little. Their body is literally rejecting food and that's the problem insulin solves. It does not solve the root issue.

If you spend a lot of time around diabetics you'll met many people who have lost appendages and continue to live an morbidly unhealthy lifestyle.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#145
post #118

I 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 t…

I think there's a lot of confusion/ignorance with Type 1 and Type 2 and most people just lump them both under the same diabetes umbrella. Diet and exercise will never be enough for Type 1's since the disease is an autoimmune disorder where the pancreas is attacked to the point where it makes little or no insulin (thus the need for external insulin). Type 2, as I understand it, is a progressive disease where the cell's insulin receptors become nonreceptive. I think, in some cases, though, Type 2's can become Type 1's due to their pancreas being overworked to the point where they need insulin. And on the flip side, Type 1's can become Type 2's as a result of eating poorly and overusing insulin. But I wish each disease had it's own name to avoid confusion over how each one should be treated.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#147
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know a single diabetic who cares about injections and blood sugar tests. I'm diabetic and the sole reason I don't check my blood sugar (unless I think something is drastically out of whack) is that it takes me upwards of 30 minutes to do a finger prick for testing. My anxiety skyrockets and nothing I do can tell me that it's not going to be excruciating. Most of the time I end up having my wife do it, which…

Have you talked with a mental health professional about your anxiety? They may be able to help you with techniques to reduce it.

Yeah, I've done a good bit of therapy (which I never found effective) and I'm on a cocktail of meds (which are remarkably effective, but they can only do so much). Anxiety's effect on my life has been drastically reduced over the years, but there are some areas where it's still quite bad; this is one of them.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#148
post #89
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T1 can’t be reversed.

This diet with stopping milk products can. Milk protein with 17 rings similar to beta cells. Body in an attempt to kill milk protein which escapes into blood without breaking down the ring structure also kills beta cells https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4edofibXOiM watch at 48 mins

It would be a sensation if that worked! Just because a guy in a suit says so doesn't make it any truer. Please stop peddling pseudoscience.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#149
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.f…

Thanks for the pointer. I have a FRIO, and love it. I wasn't aware that they made FRIOs for pumps.

I use the Tandem t:slim X2 pump in conjunction with the Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitor. The one thing I hate about the pump is that it's always clipped on or in a pocket. Literally, I'm always plugged into this thing. So that part does suck, but otherwise it's just a lot better than manual injections.

It keeps track of my insulin on board so I don't have to worry about stacking and getting a low nearly as much. It's programmed with my carb ratios so I just type in the carbs and it doses accordingly, it will even take your current BG into consideration and increase/lower the insulin dosage to help get you at target BG.

With manual injections, you have to give 1 full unit of insulin; the pump can give doses as small as .04 units of insulin so the dosing is much more precise. You are no longer saying, "Well should I round up or down..."

The pump has a closed loop with the CGM, so the pump knows if my blood sugar is going to be low BEFORE I'M LOW. So it just automatically quits giving insulin to help prevent the low before it ever happens.

Honestly, it's pretty amazing to me how far these things have come from just 10 years ago.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#150
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Eating too much and exercising too little promotes weight gain.

Right. And the insulin injections allow them to continue their lifestyle of eating too much and exercising too little. Their body is literally rejecting food and that's the problem insulin solves. It does not solve the root issue. If you spend a lot of time around diabetics you'll met many people who have lost appendages and continue to live an morbidly unhealthy lifestyle.

The insulin injections also allow diabetics to regulate their blood sugar so that they don't have to deal with even bigger problems.

I have spent a lot of time around 4 diabetics in my family, none of which had morbidly unhealthy lifestyles. Sure, they could all use a little more exercise and moderation in their diet, but then again most people can.

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