Hi, I am a Type 1 Juvenile Diabetic, diagnosed March 1, 2010. Along the way it has been difficult and strenuous on a level that I believe only other diabetics can understand. But along the way I have had questions formed from curiosity and I was hoping maybe somebody here might be able to shed some light for me.
I have been told by me endo that the only real way my body would accept insulin would be through injection (syringe, pen, pump, etc). But I have wondered if maybe that was entirely true. So my question is this:
Financials aside, if one were to lay in a bath of insulin, would that work to reduce blood sugar, and if not could that possibly work towards rejuvenating the body?
By the way, this is also assuming that it is a cold bath, otherwise it would be pointless.
Then what if it was a water/insulin mixture? For every x amount of water, a % of insulin is added.
Btw apologies if you do not want to go back and forth talking hypothesis you might leave this forum because I enjoy talking about the possible but unknown and could go on for a while
It won’t work because the skin barrier is too difficult for insulin to penetrate. Insulin is a relatively large molecule compared to some other hormones. It has a molecular mass of almost 6,000 Da.
There are things like nicotine patches that help you quit smoking, and some pain relievers, and things like vitamin B12 that can be delivered from a skin patch. But they have not gotten there with insulin yet.
They also tried doing insulin eye-drops, but I think there was a problem with pH and it did not work well.
It’s great that you are thinking about things like this. Keep it up! You will find something nobody else has thought of!
So too large to go THROUGH skin, but could it (hypothetically) still enter INTO the skin, possibly causing a rejuvenation process? Insulin helps us control the amount of sugar in our blood, but could it be used as well to control the amount of sugar in our skin? Thinking along the lines of dark bags under the eyes, the effects of hyperglycemia, etc.
I remember somebody telling me that sugar can collect under the eyes and cause bags, don’t really know the validity of the information however.
For me, getting the insulin VIA syringe, pen or pump is the EASY part. Planning, counting, correcting, side effects of being too high, too low… those are the things that need to find ways to make easier.
This is a very interesting hypothesis. I can’t speak to the possibility of how this might control your glucose levels, but there might be other benefits in this hypothetical scenario.
I’m about 25 years in with this. Even though my A1c is consistently around 6 and my time in range is about 80%, any type of small cut takes forever to heal! A small paper cut won’t ever start healing until 3 - 4 days. If I apply a small bit of insulin externally to the cut, it will begin healing the same day and the time to heal completely is about 2 days. So there may be some application for some type of “rejuvenation”. Who knows!?!
Short answer: no. The acute effects of hyperglycemia (assuming it’s not at the point of risk for DKA etc) mostly are effects of dehydration anyway, so it would work just to ingest a whole lot more water and maybe a good moisturizer. Those types of skin effects aren’t due to localized higher sugar levels so much as what hyperglycemia does to your body systemically.
Interesting. I know that if I could make my paper cuts (and other kinds of cuts, too) heal quicker, it would be one of the best things I ever learned how to do. I had never heard of insulin being used that way, but then, there are lots of things I have learned here that I never knew or had been told by my doctor.
One of my dogs once got a pretty serious injury that wasn’t healing so we decided to drop a little bit of insulin on the wound. Within 2 days it was completely closed over and stopped even being tender within a week. The amount of insulin I put on the gash should have caused severe hypoglycemia in a small dog but his body just used it up for the healing.
