Lantus and Levemir, how they work

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Einstein said:
Interesting article.

Still a little past my Salter Chemistry Set 7 kit though... guess I'll stick to getting the Levemir on prescription for a while longer yet. 🙄
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I think mine was a 'Merit' - still have some of the chemicals! What surprised me when reading 'The Discovery of Insulin' was that they originally just used to basically mash up pancreases to make the stuff!😱
 
Northerner said:
I think mine was a 'Merit' - still have some of the chemicals! What surprised me when reading 'The Discovery of Insulin' was that they originally just used to basically mash up pancreases to make the stuff!😱
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Yes, Merit was a couple of years before me, I think my microscope may have been a Merit, the one I bought one of the kids for Hanukkah last year was incredible, all metal, magnification to beyond my wildest dreams and software for his laptop so he could use the inbuilt camera to capture the view on the slide... I used to spend hours drawing the view!

We're talking less than one hundred years since insulin therapy or treatment of diabetes became an accepted means of keeping people alive.

I remember as a child my grandfather had diabetes and he'd spend weeks in hospital because something changed and they needed to restructure his regime, those were the days of glass syringes, sharpinging the hyperdermic needle, urine testing, sterilisation and maintaining such a tight routine as to impact on your life.

Today, we self medicate, adjust and control, can vary when and what we eat, do an injection in less than 30 seconds start to finish, upset a few nurses (well one anyway), and view our blood sugars before they get so high as to spill over into our urine. That alone must prevent so many complications.

In the last 30 years (that I know of) improvements in the management of this condition have worked to the advantage of each and everyone of us. When I am able to meet people who've had diabetes for 30 or 40 years, not one of them has ever said they'd go back to the old school, a few get tired of the trends that come an go. But the convenience of our condition today wouldn't be swapped by a single one of them.

Mashing up your pancreas prior to injection, hmmm, well if thats the way they do it in Yorkshire lad, you carry on, I'll do it the soft Lancastrian way!
 
Einstein said:
...Mashing up your pancreas prior to injection, hmmm, well if thats the way they do it in Yorkshire lad, you carry on, I'll do it the soft Lancastrian way!
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Pah! And I do it 4 times a day!😱 You're so right about the advances. I consider myself so lucky on so many counts (apart from actually getting diabetes, of course!) - I was 49, so most of my 'wild' days are behind me - no longer feel the urge to drink myself into a stupor on a night out. I'm at an age where I can understand and appreciate the possibilities and consequences of poor control - when you're younger, you feel it's not going to happen to you (happened to me with smoking). And, I've got it at a time when it is relatively easy to manage, there's plenty of information around, terrific support online and also from my knowledgeable and dedicated healthcare team. Plus, I can eat what I want, more or less, and live pretty much the life I was living before I got this.

I think the biggest drawback for me is a sense of loss of spontenaity and self-sufficiency. I'll always need to be in a position to obtain insulin and associated stuff - it's something I have to plan for and still worry about, probably because it's still somethng novel to me.
 
Yes, we still have to carry our life support pen with us all the time, going away or staying away for a night just because the mood is right can't happen, you need to plan insulins, tablets, needles spares of things. Keeping it cool, travelling and where is there to eat.

But we're alive and the control is there. On the complications bit, yes, I speak to people and discuss my complications, neuropathy in the main. People look and say but you should have controlled it. The problem was, I was controlling it for a long time, too long, I should have hit the floor, been diagnosed and started treatment 10 years earlier - then I'd be in a better position.

If people see that I can't feel my lower limbs, can't tell hot from cold am in pain all day, every day and that this is because of diabetes then I feel some of the suffering is worth it rather than going undiagnosed.

It was the reason that I posted the question in the general section about doctors appointments, because this young lady in her mid 20's wasn't quite a type 2 but will be soon she got put on the back burner, I put a little of the fear of God in her about the condition and what can happen, to make her grab her healthcare team cheerfully by the throat and demand better care.

In 10 years time as a mother of a young child, its no good if she's going blind, has kidney problems, just because someone at her GPs doesn't consider her to be in need 'yet'.

Right, I'm off me soap box - time for someone else!
 
Einstein said:
Yes, we still have to carry our life support pen with us all the time, going away or staying away for a night just because the mood is right can't happen, you need to plan insulins, tablets, needles spares of things. Keeping it cool, travelling and where is there to eat.

But we're alive and the control is there. On the complications bit, yes, I speak to people and discuss my complications, neuropathy in the main. People look and say but you should have controlled it. The problem was, I was controlling it for a long time, too long, I should have hit the floor, been diagnosed and started treatment 10 years earlier - then I'd be in a better position.

If people see that I can't feel my lower limbs, can't tell hot from cold am in pain all day, every day and that this is because of diabetes then I feel some of the suffering is worth it rather than going undiagnosed.

It was the reason that I posted the question in the general section about doctors appointments, because this young lady in her mid 20's wasn't quite a type 2 but will be soon she got put on the back burner, I put a little of the fear of God in her about the condition and what can happen, to make her grab her healthcare team cheerfully by the throat and demand better care.

In 10 years time as a mother of a young child, its no good if she's going blind, has kidney problems, just because someone at her GPs doesn't consider her to be in need 'yet'.

Right, I'm off me soap box - time for someone else!
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I was diagnosed 2 years ago at age 53. I'm healthier now than I've been in a long time, altho a bit too partial to the red wine still! I feel very sympatheitc to the pressure young people are under from the fashion/weight/ police and how it can affect their management, but as you say, treatment is far better now.

Don't want to put a downer, but i think what really helped my management was my eldest son - he died of cancer at age 23 - he didn't have a choice about living and health - I do!

Thanks for the article Northerner - I'm on Lantus - not sure what sifnificance this might be except it says injecting twice rather than once could bbe beneficial.
 
runner said:
ancer at age 23 - he didn't have a choice about living and health - I do!

Thanks for the article Northerner - I'm on Lantus - not sure what sifnificance this might be except it says injecting twice rather than once could bbe beneficial.
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And no, I haven't been on the wine already! 🙂
 
By the way... that trojan/malware alert on DiabetesHealth seems to have cleared.
 
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