On the other hand, Afrezza is a monomer insulin and not tied to a protein in hexamer form!
Afrezza is human insulin, which has long been available on the market Humulin. Human insulin forms dimers and hexamers in solution. Humalog and Apidra are structurally engineered forms of insulin with amino acid substitutions that prevent hexamers forming. What you are proposing is Humulin, which is much slower than Homolog/Apidra.
I wrote up this description of how Afrezza works on another site:
1) Insulin is a hormone - a chemical that sends a signal or message to other parts of the body.
2) When you inject rapid acting insulin under the skin at mealtime, the accumulation of insulin called a depot is dispersed over the course of more than eight hours. It begins to have an effect in 45-60 minutes.
3) However insulin isn't secreted under the skin naturally. Normally a few minutes into eating mealtime, a sudden spike of insulin is released into the bloodstream directly into the liver portal vein. This message, called "first phase release" tells the liver to stop secreting glucose into the blood, and absorb glucose to keep it constant for more than an hour.
4) That message doesn't happen when you inject rapid-acting insulin. Instead glucose levels are attempted to be managed by elevating insulin levels for an extended period, but a pancreas doesn't work that way.
5) Afrezza is inhaled, and is released into the bloodstream in seconds. It restores the normal function of the liver at mealtime, by giving the normal message from the pancreas.
Nothing else does this, and that's why it's exciting. Blood levels of insulin at 70 minutes after inhaling Afrezza are the same as 3 hours after injecting Humalog.