Skip to main content

Novorapid & Levemir

Not a lot to report today, so thought I would tell you a bit about the insulins that I take. For those of you who are type I diabetics, this will be dull and you will probably know all about it, but for others, it may be good to see what is involved. Apologies if the picture below makes you feel uneasy, but it shows what an insulin pen looks like.

The needle attached is the smallest they do and is 5mm. The dial on the right is used to select the amount of insulin you want to inject. You then press the button and it clicks until the right dose is selected.

This insulin is called Novorapid. As the name suggests, this is a rapid action that starts working in 10 to 15 minutes. It peaks (as far as I can tell, although opinions on the net vary) in just over an hour and can be in the blood stream for 3-5 hours. I have also read that it can be gone in 2 hours, so am not sure about this figures. Novorapid is taken before meals and means that you can vary the times of your meal and if you want a meal high or low in carbohydrates you can change your dose accordingly. The technical name for this type of insulin is a bolus insulin.

The other insulin that I take is called Levemir. This is taken using a pen that looks the same as the Novorapid, except that it is green. It is an insulin analogue. This means that it is an insulin molecule with another molecule (glargine) attached. Although I can't find the exact mechanism at the moment, it appears the glargine molecule changes the solubility of the insulin. If the insulin doesn't dissolve in the blood stream, it can't be absorbed. The glargine molecule is gradually changed by the blood stream and dissolves leaving the insulin also to dissolve. This takes a number of hours and is gradual. In this way the insulin gets released over time. This is about 24 hours depending on the dose. Levemir is a basal insulin, i.e. it controls your baseline insulin. Lecture over!

Other events of note, was my successful cycle to and from work yesterday. It was hard work and my legs ached at the end, but it seemed to have a positive influence on my blood glucose and also made me feel good in myself! Didn't cycle today as it was throwing it down with rain and I am showing some people around the factory at 19:00 today so wanted to have time to have supper at home and come back.

The training course at work is still ongoing, therefore the buffet leftovers keep appearing. Today, they can't have been hungry as the picture of the left-overs shows:

As my levels were a bit high at lunchtime, I didn't eat any of it. The site secretary however sent me an email to say that she had saved me a couple of cans of Diet Coke as compensation. I was touched!

Finally, Abby wanted to come to work with me today. As it was raining she insisted on putting her wellies on with her dressing gown! Picture below:
Threw a bit of a tantrum when I said she couldn't come. What a confusing world it must be for a toddler, but I love her to bits!



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The CCG Project!

In order to find out the situation around the country for Libre prescribing now that the national policy has been published, I have made the decision to contact many of them to find out their plans.  I have arbitrarily chosen to contact all English CCGs that in December 2018 prescribed Libre via Primary Care to less than 5% of their population (and one specific request from a group member).  I had hoped this would be a small list, but there are 135 CCGs on the list.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm committed to doing this and feeding back.  It worked before and hopefully this level of scrutiny will bring similar results. Below is a screenshot of the base document I am sending to each of the CCGs - it has some fields that are merge fields, so don't worry about the brackets and codes in the document (I found a typo, which has now been corrected too) .  The major piece of work with respect to this is finding the right person to contact....
9 comments
Read more

First Post

This is my first post on a blog. Not sure whether it will be the last, but we'll see. I'm not sure I'm keen on sharing too much via a blog. I think work is out of bounds and not sure I want to share too much family stuff, but maybe I'll use it to record certain events. Most probably I will use it to record my experiences with diabetes. I was diagnosed yesterday with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes. I am terrified (probably phobic, although I think it is an overused term) of needles, and know little about diabetes. Evidently my blood glucose was 37mmol/l when a normal reading is less than 10mmol/l. I guess the writing was on the wall. I have lost weight and had great thirst even though I ate lots of stuff and drank almost throughout the day. It is going to be an interesting few weeks finding out about the condition and dealing with the inevitable hardships that may follow. I even managed to eat Weetabix this morning without sugar for the first time in my life! I'...
2 comments
Read more

Abbott dX Virtual 2020

Having missed the preceding event in 2019 (in Lisbon) through my man meets horse moment, I was greatly looking forward to ‘attending’ this year’s event, albeit from my spare room rather than the rather more appealing Portuguese capital…but at least the quality of tea on offer was top-notch! Each year since 2015, Abbott have run an event for bloggers and influencers (and me!) bringing together representatives from all over Europe.   This year there were over forty representatives from fifteen European countries, including eight people from the UK.   The programme was split over Friday evening and Saturday morning with a variety of speakers and discussion sessions.   The sessions were run on the Remo platform ( https://remo.co/ ), an application I didn’t know of previously, but certainly something that has great potential.   I’ll go through its functionality at the end of my review. At this point I need to stress that I haven’t been asked to blog about this event a...
Post a Comment
Read more