Humalog gives me headaches, mental confusion and makes me feel weak and tired, even when my blood glucose levels are normal. Has anyone experience this. Are there other types of insulin that do not have these side effects.
Most people do not experience side effects from Humalog, so it’s anyone’s guess whether you will have side effects from Novolog or Apidra.
I experienced a lot of skin irritation from Humalog, which I do not get from Novolog or Apidra. My doctor chalked it up to an allergy to one of the preservatives in Humalog and switched me to one of the others (currently Apidra). Never experienced side effects like you’re having, but, as my endo says, that fact that “we” haven’t heard of something before, is no proof that it isn’t happening to you! Maybe it is some kind of allergic reaction? Novolog and Apidra have nearly completely different formuations from Humalog (and from each other). You may just have to try one and see what happens.
A classic way of isolating side effects is doing an experiment of one on yourself which is sometimes challenge test. First, you need to get an alternate to Humalog, like Novolog, Apridra or Regular. Then log every day, perhaps several times a day your feelings which you believe are side effects (like headaches and confusion). Us a scale of how bad they are. Do this for like a week. Then change insulin (say to Novolog) and continue recording every day your headaches and confusion. Do this for another week or two. Then go back to Humalog and continue recording your feelings every day. If your effects go away with discontinuance of Humalog and then return when you restart it that highly implicates Humalog as the cause of your feelings of headaches and confusion.
My experience is that unfortunately doctors can often dismiss your feelings of side effects by simply attributing them to transient feelings or being caused by other things. This is most common in things like statins but if you have an infrequent bad reaction from something like Humalog and it doesn’t appear in the common list of side effects you will also likely get dismissed.
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What does your trending look like? Are you swinging from high to low, or low to high? Or have you been having any severe lows?
Sometimes when recovering from a low, even when my subsequent trend lines look like a poster for great control, I still have the low effects lingering. Also, headaches do appear when I am rapidly (and frequently) traveling on the diabetic roller coaster. Thankfully, I have far fewer rides now that I have my CGM.
Absolutely! Though my PCP allowed that the side effects I “thought” I was experiencing from orals (meformin, Januvia, Amaryl) were in fact real – and each went away in turn as I stopped one or the other medication, and in the case of Metformin, returned when I tried taking it again – my now ex-endo insisted that my “symptoms” were a result of anxiety. When no amount of evidence on my part could change his attitude toward my issues, I found a new, more open-minded endo.
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There are a great many things that doctors (and the drug makers) don’t tell you about medications. Thing #17 is that different people react differently to the same insulin. One size does not fit all, ever.
Example: Humalog simply does not work for me. I mean it doesn’t do anything–may as well be a placebo. Novolog and Apidra, on the other hand, work like gangbusters. I also have a friend here on TuD who can’t use Humalog because she has a strong reaction to it, like you describe but worse.
So it’s a fact that some insulins may be good for you and others, not. But few doctors know or will acknowledge that.
Doing a controlled test such as Brian describes is a very good idea. It’s a bother, but it takes the guesswork away and gives you real, hard data that you can base your future actions on.
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