I recently watched a video from the awesome docs at Taking Control of Your Diabetes about Afrezza. I’m going to stick to my Lyumjev/Omnipod, but Afrezza looks nothing less than awesome for getting rid of stubborn high blood sugars or needing a quick fix when I’m flirting with 300. The rapidity of action is just unequaled compared to Lyumjev and Fiasp.
Does anyone use Afrezza? I’m not encouraged that my insurance plan doesn’t pay for it (Boo!), but I noticed that the manufacturer offers a $99/month plan for those without insurance. It would be nice to purchase a month’s worth to have some on hand when needed.
2 Likes
I started using it in small amounts last fall. I wanted something faster for highs and I have been having more pod failures. Afrezza is not an equal measure amount of injectable insulin. It’s somewhere between 2 1/2 to 3 units per 4 unit cartridge. And it still takes “more” to deal with a high, just like injectable.
I have been used to prebolusing, no biggy, I wanted a faster fix for random highs. But it works faster and ends faster and I like it. But it is a trick to learning. You take it when you eat and sometimes it works faster than what I ate, sometimes I have a big peak, for just a few minutes and then a sudden drop. I had never before seen an arrow on my Dexcom straight down and it’s sort of scary to see. And I am still learning how to perfectly dose with it lol…
This past month I have been using it a lot. It’s nice not to worry about prebolusing all the time. I just went to a vegan lunch, took it with me. You never know what’s going to be there or when exactly you are going to eat, so you can’t prebolus. I ate, promptly forgot to bolus at all for about 15 minutes until after I finished eating, hurriedly took some Afrezza, bolused some too. A full plate, watermelon, brownie, veggies, pasta, beans, tofu, etc etc and still never went above 185. While I never usually hit 185 unless it’s a pod failure I was amazed since I had a huge plate of food and didn’t prebolus and then didn’t bolus until after I ate and only went to 185, although I stayed there longer than I wanted and had to add more insulin and Afrezza. But part of that is probably guessing at the food in the first place.
So it’s great. I am on Medicare with a gap insurance, OptumRX is my scripts provider and I pay $50 for a months supply, $100 for a 3 months supply through the mail. But they do have a savings card, I guess it can’t be used if you are on Medicare or any government program.
The rep tried to tell me it would be $15 a month at a local pharmacy, switch it from mail order and when I read their site it specifically lists if you are on medicare you can’t use it. So no…But I pay $100 for 6 boxes of 90 cartridges of 4 units. My budget is okay with that!
2 Likes
Afrezza is a fantastic insulin for treating a stubborn high BG or even a BG that is quickly rising like dawn phenomenon or forgetting to bolus for a meal but it is not so great for high fat or high protein diets since it tapers off too quickly. If you are prone to going low from the long tail on traditional insulins then Afrezza will change your life because the tail is basically non-existent.
3 Likes
I agree about Afrezza’s usefulness for attacking stubborn highs. It would start bringing me down within minutes and then level off in range usually within half an hour without crashing me. I did not use it for regular meal bolusing. But it did make me cough a lot when using it, and no amount of sipping/drinking water and all the other tips helped, so when my box ran out I did not get another one.
2 Likes
