I just found out insurance wants 74.00 for a 90-day supply of needles testing 4-6 times per day. Does anyone re-use the needles say throughout one day? Or frequency? I think this price is ridiculously high! Can’t really afford so much every 90 days!
Thoughts from others?
Do you mean the lancets for fingersticks or pentips? If lancets, I use the same one for months, until I either fon’t get a good sample or fingersticks start hurting.
Needles for insulin pen tips
I routinely reuse syringes (they’re even more expensive than needles) so I don’t see why not. On average, I use a syringe for about a week before switching to a new one. (Since I use 3 different insulins, I have 3 syringes active at a time and that can get pricey in a hurry.)
When I was on shots, I did reuse needles - certainly throughout a single day and often spanning more than one day. I re-capped the needle with the small cap (VERY carefully! 
), then put the pen cap over it. Worked OK for me.
The manufacturers discourage the reuse of needles, just so you know, but, as my insurance barely covered the needles at all, I tended to want to conserve them. Just so you know, there are online sources for needles that are quite a lot less expensive than the pharmacy brands. I found they worked quite nicely for me.
Sure we can, people do it all the time. The official medical establishment line is that we shouldn’t but who listens to them anyway. When I was on MDI I did it all the time using the same needle for several days.
When I was on MDI and used pens, I used one needle per pen per day. I would leave it on the pen and re-cap it, but I still primed before every injection.
One precaution I do take is to clean the needle with an alcohol swab after each use. The reason for doing this doesn’t really apply in the case of pen needles, though, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
You can get a bunch of injections out of one needle or syringe, but you probably don’t want to go crazy with that. It starts to get dull after a while, and will damage your tissue more. But yes, you can reuse them. I do it frequently.
But please don’t do it excessively, because it will start to be less friendly to your skin.
Pen needles are pretty cheap on Amazon, if you want to make sure you aren’t getting ripped off by getting them through the insurance company’s official supplier. Compare prices!
Other places also sell them on-line, but I actually think Amazon is the cheapest.
The BD ones are more expensive, but there are some cheaper ones available too. Here are a few other places.
https://www.adwdiabetes.com/search.aspx?keywords=needles
Thanks, I will check Amazon Prime which I have and order there. This is CRAZY I hope this year brings better health care to America. The insurance has gone downhill over the years. I have had BCBS for 25 years and this is ridiculous.
I have recently been experimenting with using a supplemental injection of NPH in the evening in addition to my regular Treshiba basal to deal with dawn phenomena. I’m gradually ramping up the dose, so far the results are positive.
In researching NPH I read reusing needles with NPH can contaminate the insulin leading to decreased effectiveness and eventually complete loss of effectiveness.
Anyone have an opinion on this?
I’ve discussed this with my endo. The general rule is that you can use the needle for a rapid and then reuse if for a long acting. But don’t reuse a long acting and certain don’t use it for Tresiba after NPH and vice versa.
I routinely will start a pen off with a needle at the beginning of the day and then keep the needle on all day reusing it. Then at the end of the day I’ll take the needle off and use if for my Tresiba.
I’m using a pen for the Treshiba and a syringe for the NPH so looks like I need to continue my practice of using a syringe only one time for my NPH, thanks for the info Brian.
I think that is a great idea. I had wonderful success with that, in so many ways!
If you take the NPH with your dinner, it actually helps a bit with the later stages of digestion, kind of like when people using a pump do an extended bolus. The “beginning” of the NPH helps with the “end” of the meal - a few hours after you have eaten.
If you do it later than dinner, it will extend later into the morning for you. It’s all about timing.
When I was using pens, I would. One needle a day, multiple injections. Never had a problem.
Actually, I think it does… While the risk is certainly smaller, baddies could still find their way up through the needle into the insulin reservoir. Thinking about it differently, this may actually be a greater risk than standalone syringe reuse as there is a path into the insulin store wide-open until the needle is removed on a pen.
All pure discussion speculation – I’m not speaking from any actual data on this.
When I decided to do this I searched Tud and found some of your posts on this topic, Thanks, they were very helpful.
I have tested and my rise starts after 3:00 AM so ideally the NPH peak should start around then. That would mean injecting at 11 or 12. Most nights I am sound asleep by then, so it’s not perfect. I still need to inject with fast acting when I get up because the DP is ongoing. I just dial back a little to account for the NPH tail. So far so good and I have significantly cut back on my time out of range
What is NPH? Thanks,
Its an older insulin with a medium period of action. It has a pronounced peak at about 4 to 6 hrs. Used as a basil insulin this peak causes problems. I’m attempting to use that peak to my advantage by having it hit around when my dawn phenomena starts. Another advantage is that it’s very cheap at Wal-Mart and you don’t need a prescription
NPH - neutral protamine Hagedorn (Hans Hagedorn was an insulin researcher) is made with an additive that delays the onset of the insulin. It was the first of the longer lasting insulins, they started working on it in 1936! And I don’t want to tell you what they first used 80-plus years ago to figure out the delay, but don’t worry, they don’t use that anymore. 
It just gives a bell-shape release, from 12-16 hours. It is unlike Lantus or Tresiba which are relatively flat.
Here is a confusing way of putting it - While the advantage of Lantus is that it IS flat, the advantage of NPH is that it is NOT flat! Sometimes you want a peak or gradual onset and then fading of your basal. Such as at night time, when some people’s basal needs might be higher.
Here is a picture of how it might compare to a pump’s basal change during the night.
