Animal Insulin questions

[diane321]

Hello everyone !
I'm new here, actually I'm not from the UK, I'm from Canada, (although I would like to move to the UK in the near future as I'm getting sick and tired of Canada !)

Anyway, I have some questions about animal insulin and I'm hoping I can get some advice from any experts and those who use it.
I'm type 2 diabetic and take Metformin but my blood sugar is becoming a little uncontrollable lately, and it goes up quite a bit especially after exercising, so I think I could use some insulin at this point. I am getting further tests done and will know soon exactly what's going on.

I have been reading and have also been told by many diabetics that they prefer animal insulin over human insulin but here in Canada the only insulin that is available is the Hypurin porcine insulin R and the porcine insulin NPH. If I wanted to get the bovine I would need to go through some special access program and apparently they won't prescribe that unless you're on your death bed !

Also, I don't really understand the difference between the isophane and the neutral, are there any books out there about animal insulin ?

I eat smaller but frequent meals throughtout the day, but I'm also having issues with night time hypo's, reactive hypoglycemia and after meal spikes. It's a mixed bag of goodies basically !

 

[jopar]

Porchine Neutal, is fast acting insulin, it takes 30 minutes to start lowering the blood gulcose levels, peaks between 2-4 hours after injecting, and can effect levels for upto 8 hours.. This is a clear solution that doesn't need to be mixed before injecting..

Porchine Isophan = long acting insulin, it normally taken twice daily it start to work about 2 hours after injection peaking betwen 4-6 hours and continues to effect blood glucose for 8-14 hours.. This one is a cloudly suspended solution, that needs to be well mixed before injecting..

It's a long time since I've used animal insulin swapped to human around 10 years ago..

My biggest bug bear of the animal insulin is the injecting 30 minutes before eating, this does mean that it doesn't leand its self well to the MDI regime as getting the timing right can be a tad difficult..

Hope this helps