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On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

liamz.co

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um...no. Excess glucose kills you slowly with tissue damage and ketoacidosis. Too little glucose kills you quickly by starving your brain of something it needs. So glucose is very much the stuff we want to control. The mechanism for regulating glucose is insulin.

Excess glucose doesn't cause diabetic ketoacidosis, but rather too little insulin. You can run high blood sugar for literally years without going into DKA (although it does damage your body). It's even possible in certain, rare circumstances to enter DKA with normal blood sugar.

You're right. DKA is the result of the body burning fat for fuel when insufficient insulin prevents it from burning glucose. I should have remembered that. My patients with DKA always had a BGL of 500 or more (5x normal), so that's why I mistakenly associated DKA with high sugar.

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#52
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I guess. But I was looking for something in TFA.

Hey Vlad - I added some pictures of what I actually wear day-to-day at the bottom of the post. Hope this helps!

Thank you!

So really that's not much at all. Impressive. So I'm guessing that there's a strap/pouch for the pump, right? Are the CGM and injection port adhesive?

And for sure, you're a cyborg now ;) With a body area network (BAN). And with much more stable insulin and glucose levels than you could achieve manually. Very cool.

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I would highlight - there is additional high risk now if the sensor becomes faulty, in which case, more insulin could be delivered for incorrect levels while you sleeping, etc.

I don't know if insulin pumps are used while sleeping. After all, there's a needle inserted in your skin. You wake up from hypoglycemia, long before there is more trouble. And the sensor doesn't post glucose levels for example if it gets detached.

Haha, I'm the OP, I use the insulin pump ;)

> You wake up from hypoglycemia, long before there is more trouble

And this is one of the main styles of diabetic death - not waking up (diabetic comatose).

> And the sensor doesn't post glucose levels for example if it gets detached.

I was more referring to the circumstance when you're lying on your sensor in a funny way, and it begins reporting incorrect levels.

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Vlad - I added some pictures of what I actually wear day-to-day at the bottom of the post. Hope this helps!

Thank you! So really that's not much at all. Impressive. So I'm guessing that there's a strap/pouch for the pump, right? Are the CGM and injection port adhesive? And for sure, you're a cyborg now ;) With a body area network (BAN). And with much more stable insulin and glucose levels than you could achieve manually. Very cool.

Body Area Network! Hahahaha love it, going to use this :)

The pump is actually just in your pocket usually, with a big cord hanging out ready to catch on things hehe. The CGM/pump sets are adhesive but not as much as you'd want sometimes.

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#55
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if insulin pumps are used while sleeping. After all, there's a needle inserted in your skin. You wake up from hypoglycemia, long before there is more trouble. And the sensor doesn't post glucose levels for example if it gets detached.

Insulin pumps (and their cannula; not a "needle") are installed 24/7. They can be "suspended" and the insulin delivery hose unhooked, but they are generally there, and active, at all times. Likewise, a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) will provide, as the name says, continuous monitoring. Both use adhesives to keep them attached and generally remain so, even while sleeping. Hypoglycemia also may not lead to "waking".…

Diabetic coma is caused by prolonged hyperglycemia (too much blood sugar) and diabetic ketoacidosis. Many diabetic patients go through months of hyperglycemia and even ketosis before they even know that they have diabetes.

Hypoglycemia in healthy adults mainly results from not eating and develops rather slowly. It's hard to recognize at first, but it will get a lot more obvious before it gets serious.

Hypoglycemia in diabetic patients is more often caused by too much insulin delivered at mealtime and this happens more quickly. Patients can become unconscious before they notice the problem, but usually they recover even without treatment. The goal of diabetes treatment is to avoid this hypoglycemia, also because the body reacts with increased glycogenesis leading to an overshoot of blood sugar.

There are sometimes suicide attempts with insulin. This rarely succeeds, it can result in brain damage, but mostly the patients wake up sometime later.

At night an insulin pump would not need to deliver that much insulin. There are also very long-acting types of insulin, which may be preferable to the short-term insulin in the pump to achieve the "baseline" during the fasting period. Or not. That's a strategy question, I guess. I had type 2 for a short time, and I used long-term and short-term insulin at meal times, with the finger-pricking type of measurement.

I don't think insulin pumps would carry enough insulin or are able to deliver enough.

My point is that there is a relatively large margin of error for any algorithm or software before serious harm occurs, and that the continuous monitoring and delivery is already superior in achieving good glucose curves, regardless if the control loop is manual or automatic.

I've read that continuous sensors help patients to have fewer incidents of hypoglycemia.

Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if insulin pumps are used while sleeping. After all, there's a needle inserted in your skin. You wake up from hypoglycemia, long before there is more trouble. And the sensor doesn't post glucose levels for example if it gets detached.

Haha, I'm the OP, I use the insulin pump ;) > You wake up from hypoglycemia, long before there is more trouble And this is one of the main styles of diabetic death - not waking up (diabetic comatose). > And the sensor doesn't post glucose levels for example if it gets detached. I was more referring to the circumstance when you're lying on your sensor in a funny way, and it begins reporting incorrect levels.

You can loose consciousness from hypoglycemia, but normally the body will do everything it can, even autophaging your heart muscle proteins to bring it back up. Unless you have been fasting for a really long time, it will just release glucose from glycogen reserves and you recover quickly.

The diabetic coma thing is the opposite spectrum when the blood sugar is extremely high but the cell metabolism has to run on ketogenic fuel because it gets no glucose. Which leads to ketoacidosis, which can ultimately lead to a coma.

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