I have just returned from a week’s holday in Spain, where amongst others, I met a very sweet man called Clive, who told me he is a type 2 diabetic. NO he told me that he and I are people who happen to have diabetes. He was on over 200units of insulin per day.That horrified me. 60 units twice daily of glargine and 30 rapid acting with each meal. We got to talking and I told him how I control my condition mainly by diet and exercise with some help from Metformin. I also said that he could probably get his insulin use down by reducing his carb intake.He told me he didn’t fell happy using so much. He would also get those numbers down. he was recording 4 BG tests per day and the numbers were from about 7 to about 12.
A day later, he told me he’d had a bg of 3 for the first time and something in the 5 range. He was determined to keep the numbers down and will keep in touch with me. I also gave him the address of this forum as well as David Mendosa’s website and Bernstein’s book title.
Are other people as shocked as I was by the huge doses of insulin? In addition this man was gaining weight uncontrollably. That is inevitable on huge doses of Insulin.
Incidently, I managed to stick to my low carb eating pattern most of the time I was away. Luckily, I love salads. The one day I gave in to temptation and ate some potato chips, I used a Starlix to keep my numbers down.
Hana,
That isn’t an unusual dose for a true Type 2. Especially a heavy one. I have met people with Type 2 who are eating fairly low carb diets and still using that much insulin.
Remember that Type 2 is a blanket term that covers many different metabolic errors not one condition. Some people have extreme insulin resistance which is not reversed by diet.
And people also can develop insulin antibodies that make it necessary to use even more insulin. There is a U-500 form of insulin where each unit contains five times as much insulin as the stuff most of us use, and people occasionally will be taking hundreds of units of that thanks to antibodies.
Clive told me that his numbers were better and he was not overweight, before he was put on insulin. He showed me his record book and certainly the numbers were better. I couldn’t see why the doctor had changed him over. Apparently he’d said that the pills were no longer doing their job. It all seems quite odd to me.However, he certainly got those numbers down fast when he cut the carbs a bit and also the glargine. I recommended he gets Bernstein’s book as soon as he gets home. that will help him find out what’s going on. I would hate him to do something that would make him ill.