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New pill can deliver insulin
191–200 of 260 posts
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#192> 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…
Ditto for me. I don't mind the insulin pens or the blood tests - it is the constant monitoring / science experiment aspect of all this that is exhausting. Even if I had a phone app that graphed my levels for the past 24 hours, counted carbs for me, and calculated insulin doses, I'd still find it all irritating and would slack off on the 24 hr a day 'mindfulness' it takes.
Even then, I am still going to die earlier than a non-diabetic. So why should I kill myself for 50 years going to the n-th degree when n-1 or n-2 is ok enough? That is my justification for keeping h1bc below 8 or 9, never mind below 7.
All the effort into projects like tech for snorting insulin is just surface stuff, much like all the glitz in the IT world that accomplishes superficial stuff (but takes lots of VC money). I am reminded of the CueCat... 30 years ago, they said there'd be a cure by now. I am still waiting and am going to die before it ever happens. Snortable insulin is sexy, but not that useful in the grand scheme of things.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I have been mostly reusing (up to a point) both the lancets and insulin pen needles. I don't go overboard, i.e .weeks, but ... how much contamination is possible? well... i never reused syringes, however. The idea of doing that makes me wary.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
...more sinister hand
The paw further down south.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#195Earlier 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…
Are you aware of monitors like this https://www.freestylelibre.us/ ? A friend of mine has it and is really happy about it.
I used Freestyle for awhile and was mostly happy, but then had to deal with a series of them that were so inaccurate, it was a waste of money despite the replacements. The less than ideal accuracy was a bit concerning, but for understanding larger general trends, it was good.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are spot on. The temporary reduction or even suspension of insulin depending on my activity are key in preventing lows for me. The closed loop pumps are the biggest improvement I've seen for living with T1. There's always lots of promises, but this is one of the few things that really improves my life on a day to day basis and it just keeps getting better.
Right now it seems there is official support only to prevent hypos, but not to give you more insulin at night when you ate something too heavy and didn't guess the right TBR. Only the open source AndroidAPS for Android and Loop for iOS do this. And then you have a very limited set of pumps you can use.
The Medtronic 670g is the only pump that currently will automatically correct highs, but it only works with the Medtronic CGM which is untrustworthy.
The Tandem t slim x2 only has support for hypo prevention today, but it supports at home firmware/software updates and they are pretty far along with the FDA on getting approvals for their auto dosing for highs. They anticipate a release this summer.
I wish that OmniPod was further along on this front. I would love to have a tubeless solution and the convenience of not needing to disconnect every time I'm going to get in the water, but the trade-off just isn't worth it IMHO.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#197I 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…
and why he recommends his diet.
...which is the key. McDougall's claim to fame is fad diets and prepackaged food for the same since the 80s, and anything where his bottom line is involved is suspect. He's the vegan equivalent of Robert Atkins, basically.
McDougall is not who I look to for nutritional (or really any) advice. I'm sure he's right sometimes, but his credibility is so compromised by his business that I'd need to hear it from someone else first with their data proving it before I'd ever believe it. If he told me the sky is blue, I'd get a second opinion.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#198If 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…
Insulin has been around 90 years. Its gone through several different methods of extraction and manufacturing. They know how to make it high quality and inexpensive.
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#199> 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…
As an aside, you ever see those 'Cash for Strips' signs on the side of the road[0]?
Those are typically a person who's insurance is so lacking that test strips end up as a financial burden. Typically, well insured diabetics will partner with someone who is less well off and share strips. The test strips from a good insurance provider are typically much more than enough to cover the time period that they are prescribed for (exp: you are given 1000/mo, but only use 300/mo).
It's a fascinating side of life, somewhat like the deaf community, that exists in plain sight and yet is invisible to anyone outside of that particular community. Sociologists should investigate that partnering process if they have not already, despite the uproar that insurance companies would make over these kind acts.
[0] https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/519e70b3dd198a728f9efe74a59...
Re: New pill can deliver insulin
#200Study by Novo Nordisk. one of the fine companies responsible for raising insulin prices by thousands of percent.
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…
Each level in the system INCLUDING PHYSICIANS gets a cut.Thein entice is to keep raising prices.