New pill can deliver insulin • Hacker News Board

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#231

Post by anon4lol » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

dpatru wrote: 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…

> ...described type 2 diabetes as the body's natural way to limit weight gain.

Hogwash. If that were true, I'd be skinny. Aside from the standard low fat calorie restricted diets preferred by nutritionists, I've noticed that there seems to be two prevalent themes with respect to currently marketed dietary advice targeted towards T2 diabetics:

Theory #1. High fat intake or the "wrong" fat intake causes insulin resistance by infiltrating the cells or "clogging up" the insulin receptors on cells. Solution: buy my low fat vegan diet plan.

Theory #2. Eating carbs spikes glucose, which intern spikes insulin. "Insulin resistance is a function of having high insulin levels all the time." Solution: buy my low carb diet plan, or buy my book on intermittent fasting.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#232

Post by ZeroRedX » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

daeken wrote: post #26

RPLong wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

A few responses have brought up alternate site testing. Have you tried the palm of your hand? The bottom of 1/4 of your palm, below the pinky. It was life-changing for me. Rarely painful (at worst a sting if my palm is sweaty or my skin is dried out), as accurate as a finger prick, and it bleeds as easily as my fingers. I had the same anxiety for years, and now it’s like nothing. You need a special cap (usually clear) for your lancet device. Sometimes it’s included, sometimes you have to call and ask for one.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#233

Post by Simon_says » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

Pharmakon wrote: post #187

Nasrudith wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that myth would work out although it is a common one. Namely it would show up on a tox screen in some way presumably. Since that is usually how poisonings are found - granted they would need to do an autopsy in the first place.

The interesting thing that isn’t usually an issue with tox screens is the they are limited. You can search whole classes or drugs, but ultimately a truly novel poison would be detectable in principle, but likely to go unnoticed. Now for you and me that’s enough, because we have the resources of individuals, but a large lab and especially a government can afford to engineer toxins that are not tested yet. Having said…

What is ALS? I'm presuming you don't mean amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#234

Post by bparrish0 » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

bojackstorkman wrote: post #174

badreader wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, those days there are ways to monitor glucose levels without finger pricking, google: glucose monitor without needle. source:RN

Most (maybe all?) CGMs need to be calibrated regularly with finger pricks. In fact in the case of both the Dexcom G5 (haven't known anyone on the G6) and Medtronic Guardian sensors they can occasionally sort of derp out and ask for multiple calibrations in a row for utterly mysterious reasons. I just asked and my partner says the most times she has had to test to get a Guardian sensor back to normal was seven times i…

Apparently there's a problem with the Guardian transmitter that causes the multiple calibration requests. Minimed is taking orders for free replacements: https://info.medtronicdiabetes.com/bgcheck

I switched to the Dexcom G6 though. It's amazing. I'm using it with open source closed loop pump software for iOS called Loop. There's also a Linux based solution called OpenAPS.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#235

Post by Simon_says » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #157

dotuser wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the naming of private/public keys is already pretty clear ...

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#236

Post by basil-rash » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

jayalpha wrote: post #49

RPLong wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

I think people who don't need to inject don't realize how benign it really is: I'm not diabetic, but I did need to give myself 3/daily subcut injections (same style as insulin) for a month after an injury. It was absolute agony for the first week or so; often I'd need to psyche myself up for a good 15 minutes before injecting. But by the end of the process it was a 15 second endeavor that I didn't mind in the slightest.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#237

Post by Pharmakon » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

Simon_says wrote: post #233

Pharmakon wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing that isn’t usually an issue with tox screens is the they are limited. You can search whole classes or drugs, but ultimately a truly novel poison would be detectable in principle, but likely to go unnoticed. Now for you and me that’s enough, because we have the resources of individuals, but a large lab and especially a government can afford to engineer toxins that are not tested yet. Having said…

What is ALS? I'm presuming you don't mean amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Sorry about that, you’re right too, it’s Alternate Light Source.

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#238

Post by notfed » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 3:05 AM UTC

samcday wrote: 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…

"...and you don't have to prick your fingers anymore!"

(Sorry, if you don't get this reference please ignore.)

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#239

Post by bleair » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

I view this is interesting research about medicine that has nearly zero usefulness for actually treating diabetes in humans. Since this is a technical audience, if you're diabetic I can't speak highly enough of the opensource efforts combining a cgms (like a dexcom) with a pump and then software running on android or iphon or raspberry pi to create a "feedback loop" to slowly but usefully bring blood sugar back to desired range. For more see: For an overview https://diyps.org/2017/08/09/what-you-should-know-about-clos... iPhone version call Loop https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/ raspberry pi https://openaps.org/

Re: New pill can deliver insulin

#240

Post by bleair » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 5:15 AM UTC

pimeys wrote: post #206

bigtunacan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you can to get the right pump, I highly recommend compiling one of these apps. Just wipes out all the competition from the commercial axis, truly life changing apps if you learn how to use them. https://github.com/MilosKozak/AndroidAPS/ https://github.com/LoopKit/Loop

These open source projects, written by people who actually have Type 1 are light years ahead of doing what I want a closed loop system to actually do. The medtronic 670 is so unusable. I can't say enough good things about OpenAPS AAPS (android) and Loop(iphone). For those living in the US, we are forced to use a very old medtronic pump because it's the only way with a programatic means to control the pump's basal and bolus actions.