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Type 2 Diabetic on insulin

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steve100668

Member
I am a type2 diabetic on insulin. If I stop taking my insulin what will be the effect? How long can I survive without insulin? Appreciate some answers
 
Tried this recently and was amzed how ill i felt ,legs like jelly breathless and could not get to top of stairs without sitting on step half way up. Now back on basal bolus and feel wonderful. Like you often wondered if it would make any difference. Suppose really it depends on what sort of insulin regime you are on as if its only lantus or lantus and tablets results would be different for you. Let us know how it goes but please listen to your body if you feel ill be very careful
 
Hi. It all depends on how advanced your diabetes is and whether you are overweight or not. Most T2s on insulin will be overweight and have insulin resistance. Stopping the insulin will cause a blood sugar rise but probably not catastrophic as the body will actually be producing insulin but unable to use it easliy. If you are not overweight then you may not even be a T2 but a LADA (often mis-diagnosed). In this case a lot would depend on how much your pancreas is failing. If it was in a bad state then your blood sugar would rise very rapidly over several days/weeks and you could end up with Ketoacidosis which is not a good thing to have i.e. you might die. If you are overweight then do try a low-carb diet and this could reduce your weight and insulin needs
 
I'm a T2 on insulin. I was on MDI, but I cut out the mealtime insulin and have been able to cope with exercise, a low-GI diet and my daily Lantus. I have edged Lantus down to 8 units a day. I tried going without it for two days, but my glucose levels were creeping up. With Lantus, I'm usually between 4.2 and 5.4. Without Lantus, I was at 7.9 by the end of day 2. So I went back on Lantus.
 
steve100668 said:
I am a type2 diabetic on insulin. If I stop taking my insulin what will be the effect? How long can I survive without insulin? Appreciate some answers
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Seeing as you're on insulin then I assume that you are monitoring your BG levels. If you stop taking your insulin then you will probably see your BG levels steadily creep up over a number of days. Just how high they go will depend on how bad your diabetes currently is, but obviously, letting your BG levels remain high over a long period is very bad for your health.

Instead of stopping your insulin you should be looking at what dietary changes, and (if possible) what exercise regimes, can allow you to lower your insulin intake without leading to BGL rises. For example, after I started a LCHF diet I was able to half my insulin intake while retaining as good or better BGL control. On days when I have a fairly high exercise level I can sometimes even halve that again. To put actual figures to that, I was on 20 units of novamix 30 (10 twice per day), cut that back to 10 to 12 units (5 to 6 twice a day after starting LCHF), and some days if I do a lot of exercise I can skip one of the two injections.

So yes, there may well be strategies you can take to reduce you insulin requirements, and I'd encourage you to do so. However simply stopping your insulin without taking any other measures seems like a silly idea to be honest.
 
Thanks for the replies but nobody has answered my question. Doctor told me it would take atleast 10 years before I started suffering but I am sure he is lying so trying to find out the truth
 
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