American Diabetes Association Guide to Insulin and Type 2 Diabetes. Marie McCarren
you can approach your doctor about getting on the most effective medication for controlling blood glucose levels: insulin.
Your doctor may recommend an insulin that your health insurance doesn’t cover. Some insulin plans are better if you have an unpredictable schedule, but you’ll need to take more injections. You’ll learn the pros and cons of the different insulins and insulin plans so you can weigh all of the competing factors and find the one that works best for you.
And if you want to hear from people with first-hand experience using insulin, you’ll get that, too.
Throughout this book, you’ll find excerpts from the American Diabetes Association message boards.
People discuss how scared they were at first…
I thought I would never be able to give myself a shot ’cause I was always afraid of needles. Well, two weeks in and I’m a pro.
Was the first shot scary? Yes, it was. But, did I do it? Yes! And did it hurt? No, not even a little!
…which insulins worked for them and which didn’t…
In my opinion, NPH should be outlawed.
···and how glad they are that they made the move to insulin.
Every day that I am on insulin, I count my lucky stars.
We want you to become one of the lucky ones: a member of the growing number of people with type 2 diabetes who have reclaimed their health with insulin.
It’s Time for Insulin. And It’s Not Your Fault.
You’re doing everything the same. Diet: same. Exercise: same. Medications: same. Blood glucose … up.
Why? Because type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease. It gets worse with time, and you’ll need more medication to reach your blood glucose goals. Let’s track this downward trend, starting at a time before you had diabetes, when glucose was not a problem.
GLUCOSE: TWO SOURCES
All the talk about controlling blood glucose might lead you to believe that glucose is bad. It’s not. Your muscle and fat cells use glucose for energy.
Glucose can’t just float into those cells. It needs the help of insulin. It’s often said that insulin is the key that opens the door to a cell, allowing glucose inside. Insulin is produced by special cells in your pancreas called beta cells.
You always need some insulin in your bloodstream because your cells always need at least a little glucose coming in. When you have a lot of glucose in your blood, such as after you eat, you need more insulin to move it into cells.
Before you developed diabetes, your pancreas produced just the right amount of insulin. When you ate, your blood glucose level went up. Your beta cells detected this rise and secreted extra insulin (called a bolus) for two to three hours. Your cells responded to the insulin and rapidly took in the glucose from the meal. Your blood glucose levels did not go above 140 mg/dl.
Food is not the only source of glucose in your bloodstream. Your liver stores glucose. If you go without food for a long time, such as when you sleep overnight, your liver releases these emergency stores of glucose. It also does this when your body is under stress, such as when you have an illness or infection.
You don’t want your liver to release these glucose stores until you really need it, so insulin signals the liver to hang on to its glucose. Before you developed diabetes, your liver responded well to insulin. Just a little insulin would be enough to remind the liver not to release glucose. Overnight and between meals, your blood glucose levels stayed in the range of 70–110 mg/dl.
IN THE BEGINNING: INSULIN RESISTANCE
At some point in your life, your body became less sensitive to insulin. Your muscle and fat cells now required more insulin to move glucose inside. Your liver needed more insulin to keep it from releasing glucose. You had become insulin resistant, or, put another way, you had developed insulin resistance.
You may have inherited a tendency toward developing insulin resistance from one or both of your parents. Being overweight and inactive also strongly contributes to developing the condition.
Not everyone who develops insulin resistance goes on to develop diabetes. Some people’s bodies are able to produce huge amounts of insulin, enough to overcome their insulin resistance. But you did develop diabetes, because you have another problem: insulin deficiency.
VOICES OF EXPERIENCE
Your health care team may suggest that you visit a diabetes support group. A typical meeting has a guest speaker, one or more diabetes care professionals, plus people with diabetes. You’ll find it invaluable to talk to people who can tell you with the voice of experience: “You can do this. I did it, and I feel a lot better.”
You can also access a very active support group at any time, day or night. It’s the community that posts on the American Diabetes Association message boards. Go to www.diabetes.org, click on “Message Boards,” and then on “Adults Type 2.” We feel these voices of experience are so valuable that we’ve included excerpts from the message boards throughout this book. (We’ve changed the members’ screen names.) Here’s a sampling:
I don’t know where I would find the time to go to a support group meeting. This board is great because I can monitor it between work calls and stuff, and I also like being able to ask my dumb questions in anonymity! The support I have received here has been wonderful!
I live in a fairly rural area and would have to travel at least an hour each way to get to a diabetes support group.
The boards have had a huge impact in how well I manage this disease. The Boomers (of which I am one) are great users of the ’net. It seems to me the “connection” part is the most important for my generation given that most of our families these days are spread all over the place.
Even folks without computers can go to the public library and use the ones there. I’ve told my doctor about some of the message boards, and he wrote them down to offer to his other patients with diabetes.
I am one of those “old” people (I’m 64) who uses a computer. By the time I had my first appt with my RD, I had found this board and had started reading and learning about diabetes. She knew about the board and was pleased that I was trying to educate myself about it. The people who went through classes with me eagerly listened to things I told them about this board. Having people who have been and still are managing diabetes willing to answer my dumb questions has been a constant source of support.
I’ve learned more from this site than I have from my endo!
Message Board Terms
You’ll see many abbreviations in the message board excepts. The most important is the umbrella caveat YMMV—“your mileage may vary.” It means the person is simply stating what has worked for him or her and is not advising you to do the same because you might get very different results. When reading message boards, assume that “YMMV” is present in every post, whether it’s actually there or not. Also be aware that people may talk about doing things differently than what the insulin or syringe manufacturers—or their own health care teams—recommend. As always, check with your health care team before changing anything about your diabetes routine.
Here is a short glossary to help you get through those abbreviations and terms you’ll find in many message boards, here in the book and out there in the Internet.
A1C: a blood test that shows average blood glucose levels.
AM: morning
appt: appointment
BG or BS: blood glucose, blood sugar