Slow insulin?

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1

Most every time I shoot insulin it takes 3-4 hours for it to kick in.
I dose correctly, but for some reason it’s taking too long to work.

And then I go hypo pretty bad sometimes.

1hr PP was 190, but 1 1/2 hours later I was 56.

Ate a whole quart of ice cream - sheesh.

It also seems that my stomach is about the worst place to shoot too.

And I don’t have any scar tissue either. Only been shooting for about 6 months.

Is it needle length? Location? What?

This makes it quite hard to control.

I am even taking Apidra too (fastest one out there).
None of the insulins seem to work as expected.

Any suggestions??

2

I have the same problem. Endo says it’s due to insulin resistance but I don’t see why this should be so, since it does work, it’s only that it takes up to 4 hours to work. I now bolus up to two hours before eating and that seems to help but makes carb-counting even more complicated. Even more so as I have to bolus for protein as well. It can also sometimes be a bit Russian roulette. 98.5 times out of 100 I won’t see any impact on my BG for two hours. The other 1.5 times can be hair-raising. I’m going to try out Apidra next week which I have heard works faster for some people.

3

There is no guarantee that Apidra works faster. You should at least try NovoLog/NovoRapid too.

But first of all you should be very sure about your basal rate. Do you achieve stable numbers without carbohdrates on board? Image you will not eat anything at breakfast. Will you have normal blood glucose at lunch and some time later? To really test your basals you need several days with different periods of fasting. What type of basal insulin are use using and what is you injection pattern (times, splitting etc)?

4

So far I tried about every insulin there is.
Humulin R, Humulog, Novolog, Apidra, NPH, Levemir, and Lantus.

I ALWAYS have normal fasting blood sugars with very rare exceptions.
I am only diabetic when I eat…

Levemir and Lantus take a huge dosage (for me anyways) of 20 units or more to even begin to see an effect.

Other analogs, well… It’s hit or miss on them. 10 units are fine most of the time, but 12 can send me hypo up to 4 hours later with PP spikes into the 200’s.

I still think it’s the injection sites that make the difference. I’ll try something different today.

Maybe use my wee-wee. Then when I spike, get my wife to make me excited. Sounds like a great plan to get lucky - tee hee…

5

Do you use Lantus and Apidra now? I just ask because you need a combination of basal and rapid acting insulin to have good glucose control.

6

Yes, I use both. Neither does much for me. My FBS is normal though, it’s just lightly higher than I want.
My PP spikes are awful - into the 200’s regularly.

I think I discovered why insulin isn’t working the way it should. Seems my abdomen is a bad place to inject most times.
I get better results injecting in a thinner fatty area just over a muscle.
But that makes it hard to dose because I don’t know when/how much I am going to use that muscle that day.

It’s like playing craps sometimes…

Soon both will be used up and it’s back to the Humulog I have in the fridge.
And the Apidra pens stink. They take as much as 5-6 units to prime.

7

Note: I have had better results when I was experimenting with just plain old regular insulin…

8

Here’s a suggestion: try injecting yourself the outside of your upper arm close to your shoulder on your non-dominant side. Those type of injections are how most nuses administer most shots. (I know, it’s a complicated description, but that’s the best way to word it in layman’s terms).