Hello
@Dotty2
Welcome to the forum!
Those are quite old insulins! It’s been a while since I was on Insulatard, and while I wasn’t on Humulin S, I did use Actrapid which was a non-analogue rDNA predecessor of NovoRapid.
You should ask your clinic for detailed advice, as they will know the specifics of your situation, and the reasons behind the suggested change.
From my experience I think that you probably won’t find it a straight swap, but that after a bit of experimentation you may well find it a more flexible and precise option. It might be a bit unfamiliar and frustrating to begin with though.
I’m making some pretty big guesses here - you’ll have to let the forum know a bit more about your insulin use at the moment if I’m way off-base.
My suspicion would be that at the moment you are generally eating fairly fixed amounts of carbs per meal (I certainly had to on those insulins).
Humulin S has a fairly long ‘tail’ like Actrapid I think (6-8 hours?), so my guess is that your meal doses are overlapping during the day to also cover your daytime background needs. Insulatard has a fairly short profile if I remember right, about 12 hours I think? So it’s most likely not covering much more than your overnight basal. It also is quite ‘peaky’ compared to basal insulin analogues so you are probably a bit more at risk if overnight lows in your current system.
Toujeo is supposed to have a long flat profile that extends for more than 24 hours, so in theory it will be covering your daytime and nighttime basal (background) insulin needs. NovoRapid lasts approx 4-5 hours so can just cover your meals without hanging around and causing mischief as it fades away.
Have you ever been offered an education course like DAFNE or BERTIE? That might really help you get the most from your new insulins.
Out of interest - was there a particular reason why a change was suggested?
