Doesn't this have to work 100% of the time if you rely on it? I mean if it works 99% of the time your odds are low you'll make it thru a year. It seems like a cool idea, but the mechanism does seem like it would work not every time.
New pill can deliver insulin
151–160 of 260 posts
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#152Earlier 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 tried using the intermediate segments of the finger instead of the fingertips? It makes a big difference for me in pain perception. Drawing blood is a bit harder sometimes but I still prefer that over having to prick the sensitive tips. (Not that I fret over it. Luckily I lost that within a week of doing regular measurements.) Hospital staff is surprised when they see where I draw blood but so far none told…
The suggestion in the manual of the lancet I used was to use the fingers on the less dexterous hand. It seems logical (but may not actually be correct) that you have more precise/sensitive feeling in the dominant pair.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Our 7 year old lays on top of his pump regularly when he sleeps and despite it making the entire pump way hotter than 80 degrees, it’s never caused any efficacy issues. He’s played soccer for 3+ hours in the 95+ degree heat (4 days in a row), no problems with the insulin on board.
From the context of your message, I think I correctly understood you to mean you have had no problems with the insulin that is in the insulin pump's infusion set reservoir?
Trying to help and I don't want to come off as rude, so please forgive me in advance. The term "insulin on board" has a very specific meaning and it refers to the fast acting insulin that is currently in one's body and still active.
So let us say you are using fast-acting insulin, like Humalog, and it stays active in your body for 2.5 hours.
You take 3 units of insulin at Noon
1 hour later you take another 3 units of insulin
1 hour later you take another 4 units of insulin
At 2:00 you have 10 units of insulin on board
At 2:30 you have 7 units of insulin on board
At 4:30 you no longer have any insulin on board
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#154This still seems dangerous to the stomach lining over time. Why not suppositories?
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#155I 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 know several Type 2 diabetics who are not (and have never been) obese. While obesity is definitely a cause for the disease, it is not the only cause there is.
I googled "diabetes in thin people" and found the term "skinny fat", slim but with a high percentage of body fat. These are people who may appear to their body to have enough fat stored to survive a tough winter. (This was how McDougall describes the onset of diabetes.) Can people with low body fat get diabetes?
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#156Earlier 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…
> 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…
Just so you know, those days there are ways to monitor glucose levels without finger pricking, google: glucose monitor without needle.
source:RN
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#157I 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'…
This is a huge problem. I wish the medical industry would stop using "type" and assign specific names to disease variations. So type 1 would be diabetes but type 2 would be dropped from convention and called insulin resistance (or a new name, I dunno, setebaid). Some other words that have probably cost the world billions of dollars and interfered with public opinion:
* Hepatitis A/B and C (A and B were cured early on so name should be livervirus or whatever, C should remain hepatitis until it's eradicated)
* Herpes types 1 and 2 (1 should be renamed to cold sores since almost everyone has it, 2 should remain herpes until it's cured)
* Nonfatal cancers (especially of the skin) need new names to prevent scaring people, especially if they've been largely cured.
* SSH "private key" and "public key" (should have been called "secret" and "share" so that people would know which to keep secret and which to share.. yes I realize they are symmetric)
I could go on, but you get the drift. I think a problem here is that experts in various fields may have exceptional problem solving skills but be terrible at naming things. I've met many programmers with this affliction!
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#158Earlier 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…
> 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…
Why do diabetics use one of the most sensitive parts of the human body for blood testing? Why not prick your forearm, or your leg, or anywhere else?
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#159Earlier 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…
Why do diabetics use one of the most sensitive parts of the human body for blood testing? Why not prick your forearm, or your leg, or anywhere else?
Apparently there are accuracy problems when testing other sites (though they can be used).
> "The downside to using alternative test sites is that the readings may not be as accurate under certain circumstances. In particular, if blood glucose levels are changing rapidly — as would be expected after a meal, after an insulin injection, or during exercise — there may be a significant difference in the blood glucose level measured in a fingertip sample and in an alternative site sample. Therefore, using a fingertip sample is recommended if you are monitoring at these times."
(source: https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/managing-diabetes/blo...)
Better source, WebMD:
> "When the amount of sugar in the blood was rising or dropping rapidly, only the finger prick testing accurately caught these rapid changes. It took about 30 minutes for the forearm values to catch up to those reported by the finger prick tests."
(https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20010709/accurate-blood-...)
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#160Earlier 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…
I was on a CGM (Dexcom) for about 3 months until my new insurance would not cover it. Even though it's convenient, it comes with its own set of problems - having to restock every month (with copays) got tiring and somewhat expensive compared to strips. I also had false low reads a number of times. And the amount of wasted plastic (the applicator gun) is concerning if you are environmentally conscious. As for lancets,…
I had one of those for a while, and it does say you should only use each lancet once. Realistically, I don't know if there are any real risks to reusing them though?