Comfort - in needle free injection

Has anyone heard of this? Apparently it’s been around for a while and people are using it for insulin. I just had a life threatening issue with tresiba and I am putrefied of needles.

https://injectneedlefree.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwldKmBhCCARIsAP-0rfwfi1l-2vw2UbWzW1HGRd1LDDlyr9fDpPsD3cOWnXaVDpUgcNnBYj4aAg2CEALw_wcB

Never heard of it but sounds feasible and fantastic. Several decades ago, I told my endo there was no way I could ever handle a needle. She said to me that with the tiny needles that were coming into use, the pain would be less than that of a mosquito bite. She was right, and as long as I held that thought during injection, the pain was tolerable, and my needle phobia was kept at bay.

I dose with a digital pen in 0.1 units and question if this system could ever dose with that accuracy as at this time the dose is in 1.0 unit increments.

For some reason there exists that misconception out there that a great many diabetics are afraid of needles and they need some other kind of delivery system. The first time I dosed, I did it with a bit of trepidation. However, after that I had absolutely no problems dosing with a syringe. The only time I was aware of someone wincing was my companion when I dosed through my clothes in a restaurant. :wink:

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I used a similar device around 25 years ago. It used high pressure to fire a stream of insulin directly through the skin. It wasn’t always pain free, and could be problematic if not placed absolutely correctly against your ‘injection’ site. This would result in a wet patch on the skin surface, where the stream didn’t fully puncture. Perhaps newer devices have a greater degree of accuracy now, but I would be skeptical.

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Looks pretty cool. If it really is pain free I would have benefited a lot from something like this as a teenager because I started to experience a lot of pain when giving injections, like I couldn’t give myself my own shots because it hurt too much. It resolved itself eventually but man was that a rough time. Now that I’m on a pump I rarely have to inject anymore though.

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Interesting. I wonder if it’s really pain-free. If so, I can see this being of particular use for children. I have been lucky enough to not experience much pain from needles. I think that I experience more discomfort from sore pump sites now than I did from needles when I was on MDI.

Slightly off-topic, but one thing that really annoys me is when some (non-diabetic) person says something along the lines of “oh, I could never take shots everyday! I hate needles!”… It is always difficult to not answer sarcastically - “oh really? I love them!”. Well, it’s either this or literally die, so…

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Although probably not represented much on this forum, there are people whose dislike of needles, combined with their distrust of medicine, causes them to skip injections (or testing) which results in very poor glycemic control, frequent hospitalizations and, often, early death.

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This is just more information on what you are asking about

You might try Afrezza which is an inhaled insulin. It works great! It’s also a reason to use a pump. While you initially have to insert a cannula about every 3 days, you then just give dosing by buttons. An Omnipod pod injects itself.

You also might try to scratch yourself with a fingernail as you are giving a shot. It distracts you from the shot itself. I use that for the pod insertions. On syringes I prefer to push the needle in faster versus slow. I have noticed if I do the injection slowly I have a tendency to feel the needle.

There are also things like TickleFlex Insulin injection aid and Needle Buddies-A clip to hide the needle (available on Amazon) If you enter insulin auto injectors, choices come up. I don’t know anything about them individually. Plus there are Safety Needles.

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I also second this thought! I am imagining a jet of insulin (or any liquid) through the skin is going to hurt, but that’s just a guess…

I used a pressure injector several years and I strongly disagree that it is “pain free”. Maybe the latest generation of these devices is closer to pain free but it definitely wasn’t at that time. The other issue was that if you hit a tougher patch of skin, you did not know how much of the insulin was actually injected.

Someone also mentioned inhaled insulin. I was in an 8-month study using inhaled insulin (again, some years ago). It worked quite well but the inhaler was somewhat cumbersome and could handle only one unit of insulin at a time, so if you needed 5 units, for example, you had to inhale 5 times. As with the pressure injectors, the latest generation of the inhalers may have resolved these issues.

My personal preference, however, is an insulin pump.

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Just a note because the older inhaled insulin was different. Afrezza which is the only inhaled insulin available now? Comes in 4/8/ or 12 unit cartridges. But 4 units is really 2 1/2 to 3 units. It’s not a large inhaler, sort of like a whistle, but longer and skinnier. The best thing about Afrezza is it’s faster. All the dose is used in about 2 hours and then it’s gone after that.

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I tried that system years ago too. I still had to get a shot of my long-acting at night, though, and use that for meal boluses. I found it bulky and not really preferable over injections.