Insulin and its role in managing diabetes

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas which is an organ in our body. Insulin helps your body use glucose as energy.

In people with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas won’t produce any insulin to produce energy, the beta cells will be destroyed so they need insulin shots to use glucose for energy.

In people with type 2 diabetes, the pancreas makes insulin but their body doesn’t respond well to it. So sometimes they need pills or insulin shots to help their body use glucose for energy.

The role of insulin includes — Regulating body sugar level and storing excess glucose for energy.

Insulin resistance:

Insulin resistance happens when insulin produced by the liver or taken externally doesn’t respond properly. This mostly occurs when you have more fat around your stomach.

Also, it happens to teenagers where hormones are unpredictable. In this case, patients are advised to take medications.

Insulin resistance leads to diabetes if not treated it may lead to many diabetic-related complications.

Types of insulin: Natural insulin:

Which is also known as human insulin, is produced by the pancreas in our body. If the pancreas gets damaged then the production will be reduced.

Artificial Insulin:

Which is also known as man-made insulin helps in human while the body becomes insulin resistance or when the pancreas is not able to produce insulin properly. There are five different types of Man-made insulin according to the reacting speed of the insulin.

Rapid-acting insulin:

It is very quick and it takes about 15 minutes to react and about 1 hour to reach its peak time where is the strength of insulin is high in lowering blood sugar and continues to work up to 2–4 hours.

Short-acting insulin:

This is also quick as compared to other ones but slower than rapid-acting insulin.

Reacting time — 30 minutes

Peak time — 2–3 hours

Duration — 3–6 hours

Intermediate-acting insulin:

This is of moderate speed on reacting but lasts a long time.

Reacting time — 2–4 hours

Peak time — 4–12 hours

Duration — 12–18 hours

Long-acting insulin:

This is slower than intermediate but similar to it.

Reacting time — several hours

Peak time — nil

Duration — 24 hours

Ultra long-acting insulin:

One of the slowest insulin

Reacting time — 6 hours

Peak time — nil

Duration — up to 36 hours

Types of intake:

Insulin cannot be taken as pills, because when it reaches digestion it will get broken like proteins. So insulin should be given directly to the blood using

1. Insulin pens
2. Insulin pump
3. Inhaled insulin (afrezza)

Insulin side effects:

1. Hypos — An extreme lowering of blood sugar level to maximum due to the wrong dosage.
2. Injection site reactions are known as LIPOS — hard lumps formed due to the injection of insulin in the same place.
3. Some times causes irritation, which can be treated with normal medications.

Insulin is a kind of best treatment for diabetes treatment. Know your dose properly which will help you in managing your diabetes and to avoid complications. Along with insulin intaking having like yoga and the for diabetes will avoid critical complications. Since diabetes is incurable life with diabetes will be more efficient when you manage it properly.

Many mobile apps are there to manage diabetes effectively. is a mobile cum Web application that provides proper tracking of your health, reminder for drug or insulin intake, and managing any treatment you are undergoing.

Originally published at https://diabetes.cankado.com on August 18, 2020.