The needles used to inject insulin are very fine and sharp however, most injections are said to be virtually painless. Understandably, the word ‘injections’ usually make patients apprehensive. Not to forget the underlying meaning that it is going to take a whole life time to get rid of the injections once you get started. At least for majority of cases, that is how the case looks like. For this reason, hospitals and clinics usually administer lessons in injection technique for beginners.

Insulin is usually administered by a pen injection device but can be drawn up from a vial into special plastic insulin syringes marked in units (100 U in 1 ml), as well. The common places in the body to be injected are abdomen, thighs or upper arm where the needle is usually inserted in to its full length. There are five common types of needles available to be used with pen injection devices. Adults usually use a 30 gauge 8 mm needle while children use a 31 gauge 6 mm needle. When it comes to the pen devices, they come in two types of reusable and disposable.

It is an important requirement to change the injection site regularly to prevent areas of lipohypertrophy. You may have heard that insulin absorption defers from person to person. This notion in fact is correct. The rate of insulin absorption usually depends on local subcutaneous blood flow and is accelerated by exercise, local massage or a warm environment. Absorption from the abdomen is more rapid than from the arm and it is slowest when the injection is taken on the thigh.

So as it is clear by now, everybody needs careful training for a life with insulin and the easiest and the most comfortable way to achieve this is to get some training. If you have a friend who is a trained nurse, you may find some consolation and seek advice from him/her. Either way, it is very important that you learn the techniques properly and feel comfortable about it because insulin will only take you a long way if you take insulin properly and take it a long way.

Although it had always been considered that someday science would be able to duplicate the organs that are in our body, it was always thought to be a ways off. Recently, an artificial pancreas has been tested in individuals and has shown real promise in delivering insulin to them as needed. It is actually a reservoir which holds the insulin and is inserted into the lining of the abdominal cavity. The sugar is regulated by a sensor that is attached to the jugular vein. Whenever it detects a need, it releases insulin into the body in prescribed proportions.

Although it is only in the testing phase, it has shown real promise in helping individuals with insulin to lead normal lives without the need for repetitive shots.

The food that is consumed by a person is broken down into glucose. Glucose is a simple sugar, which is converted into energy by the cells in the body. However, this process requires a hormonal catalyst called insulin. Unfortunately, at times, the pancreas which makes insulin is unable to produce the optimal amount required by the body and the sugar is not converted into energy. This extra sugar starts increasing in the blood and the condition is set for diabetes.

Simple sugar or glucose provides the body with all its energy requirements. But insulin is needed for the conversion of glucose into energy. However, the entire process becomes defunct when adequate amount of insulin is not produced by the pancreas. There are times when the body is unable to use the insulin which has already been produced by the pancreas.

The main factor responsible for the way in which insulin either works or does not work in a person’s body is whether there is extra fat tissue in the person’s body. If a person is obese, then the extra fat which is present in his body develops a resistance to the activity of insulin upon the cells.

This condition can be reversed if the person maintains an exercise regime. As it has been proved that insulin resistance is hereditary and runs in the family, hence it can be inferred that genes are partly responsible for this condition. People with insulin resistance and high blood glucose usually put on weight near the waist.

Insulin resistance and pre-diabetes usually have no symptoms. It is possible for a person to suffer from these two conditions for years without noticing anything or any signs of diabetes. However, on several occasions, a severe form of insulin resistance manifests itself as dark patches on the nape of his neck, around the neck, elbows, knuckles, knees and armpits. It is called the contrition of acanthosis nigricans. People suffering from moderate to mild level of resistance to insulin may display an extraordinary phenomenon of having both high insulin level of blood glucose and high blood pressure together.

The people who are most susceptible to this condition are people having a family history of diabetes, low HDL cholesterol and high triglycerides, high blood pressure, history of gestational diabetes or diabetes during pregnancy or mothers who have given birth to babies weighing more than 4 kgs, minority group background.

A fasting glucose test or a glucose tolerance test can detect a diabetic condition or a pre-diabetic condition to a fairly accurate extent. However, these tests show the presence of insulin resistance in an indirect way. A test called the euglycemic clamp is a more dependable test for the detection of insulin resistance.

An insulin pump is approximately that of the size of a pack of cards. It is of a convenient size, so that it does not affect the mobility of the user. It looks similar to that of a pager. Inside the pump is a reservoir, which contains the insulin. This insulin is only of one type, the fast acting one. The insulin pump keeps on providing the body with a regular flow of insulin at a fixed rate. So it does not remain necessary for a person with diabetes mellitus to take insulin at fixed times of the day. This ensures that the patient has greater flexibility and less of restrictions in his or her life.

Insulin pump information, however, must necessarily contain both the advantages and the disadvantages of insulin pump therapy. Advantages of using an insulin pump in place of insulin injections are:

• When a patient is using insulin pump, he does not need to take individual insulin injections at fixed times of the day
• The delivery of insulin through insulin pumps is more effective and accurate than the insulin injections. Thus there is less wastage.
• An insulin pump ensures that there are lesser large swings in the blood glucose levels of the people using it.
• Thus diabetes management becomes much simpler if an insulin pump is used, because then a person need not restrict his food and the timing of the meal.
• In using an insulin pump, the tension of blood glucose level going down to a very low level does not remain.

There are also certain disadvantages of using an insulin pump.

The disadvantages of using a pump are that it:

· The use of an insulin pump can lead to gain in weight to certain people using it.

· The insulin pump therapy is somewhat more expensive than the regular insulin therapy.

· Insulin pump therapy can pose to be a problem because the user always needs to carry a gadget, and this gadget poses a hindrance when the user is taking a bath, or swimming, or while traveling.

When insulin pump therapy, also known as continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion, is combined with a process called continuous blood glucose monitoring system then the therapy becomes much more effective than before and keeping a check on the blood glucose level becomes much more reliable and effective.

Thus it can be said that though it takes time for a person with diabetes mellitus to get accustomed to the insulin pump, nevertheless, its advantages by far outweigh its disadvantages.

An allergic reaction to insulin, though rare, does occur in certain instances, when the human body or immune system mistakenly identifies the medication as a threat to the system and steps up its efforts to fight that threat. In that effort it produces special antibodies, which will later recognize the allergen.

Allergic reactions to insulin usually occur when the insulin administered is made from pork or beef. This is because this insulin is a little different from human insulin and at times also contains impurities and also bacteria, which the human body is capable of accepting Earlier, this type of insulin was used but this later made way for genetically engineered synthetic human insulin. This genetically engineered version is almost identical to the naturally produced insulin in the human body and thus makes it lesser likely for an allergic reaction to occur. Also the synthetic human insulin contains lesser or no impurities.

The allergy to insulin in human beings is manifested in two forms. Either it is a local allergy, where the skin becomes red and itchy around the place where the injection has been administered, or a systemic allergy, called anaphylaxis where two or more of the body systems may be affected. In such an allergy, red patches may be found all over the body, added to which, changes in the heart rate or the respiratory rate may be observed.

This condition becomes very painful and can be treated by administration of purified insulin or through desensitization therapy. In this process, the patient’s sensitivity to a particular allergen is reduced or removed. If anaphylaxis is not given immediate attention, then it turns to anaphylactic shock, which is clearly dangerous and life-threatening.

It is however, important to note that all reactions to insulin are not allergic reactions. At times there are certain side effects to the medication being given and does not involve the formation of any antibody.

Insulin allergies are very unpredictable. They can either occur at the time when insulin has been administered or just after it, or an allergic reaction to insulin may occur even after a week. For most people it is difficult to even detect an allergic reaction to insulin, until and unless they suffer from an allergic reaction.

There is no established system of prevention of an insulin allergy. However, patients are advised by their doctors to stop discontinuation of the insulin therapy as interrupted insulin therapy has been identified as one of the primary reasons for the onset of allergic reactions to insulin.