Archive for July, 2011

Planning for Travel with Insulin and Diabetes

Travel can be a lot of fun, but it takes some advance planning. People with diabetes have to plan a little more. Here are a few things to keep in mind about your insulin when you head out for that dream vacation.

Your Blood Sugar

When you are traveling, it is important to monitor your blood sugar more closely. This means checking your blood sugar every four hours when you are awake. Travel can be stressful, which can raise your blood sugar level. Don’t treat your blood sugar without monitoring it, and monitor it to make sure that you are giving the correct dosages of medication and/or insulin.

Insulin Storage

Keep your insulin with you when you travel, in your carry-on or purse. Insulin needs to stay in a fairly moderate temperature zone, and as such, cannot go with your luggage in the depressurized compartment. Also, if there were ever a baggage handling mishap, you would want your insulin to be with you: if your bags end up in Minneapolis-St. Paul’s when you are in Sao Paulo, you want to make sure you have your insulin.

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Insulin Resistance

We hear a lot about insulin resistance, but stop and think a little bit, do you think our cells only become resistant to insulin? The more hormones your cells are exposed to, the more resistant they will become to almost any hormone. Certain cells more than others, so there is a discrepancy. The problem with hormone resistance is that there is a dichotomy of resistance, that all the cells don’t become resistant at the same time.

And different hormones affect different cells, and the rate of hormone is different among different cells and this causes lots of problems with the feedback mechanisms. We know that one of the major areas of the body that becomes resistant to many feedback loops is the hypothalamus. The various interrelationships there I really don’t have time to go in to here.

But hypothalamic resistance to feedback signals plays a very important role in aging and insulin resistance because the hypothalamus has receptors for insulin too. I mentioned that insulin stimulates sympathetic nervous system, it does so through the hypothalamus, which is the center of it all.

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Insulin Therapy 101 – Insulin Injection Basics

If you are insulin dependent your body relies on insulin injections in order to function correctly. This is either because your pancreas is not secreting any insulin, as in type 1 diabetes), or else the insulin that your pancreas is making is not doing its job properly, as in type 2 diabetes.

Insulin Basics

Before we jump into discussing the various insulin regimens, I need to first explain two terms which you will come across frequently:

Basal insulin – This is the injection of a long-acting insulin which mimics the insulin secretion of the pancreas. A single basal shot of insulin continues to act slowly throughout the day, therefore you only need to inject it once or twice daily. These long-acting insulins are “peakless” which means that they try and maintain the same glucose level throughout the day, unlike the fast acting insulins which result in a rapid decrease in blood sugar.

Bolus insulin – A bolus is a medical term for a single dose. Bolus insulin is given when you eat food in order to counteract the rapid increase in blood glucose after a meal. Bolus insulins are typically fast-acting, some of which start bringing down blood glucose in a matter of minutes. They do not remain in your system for long, being metabolized and excreted out of the body usually within a few hours.

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