Humulin I

Humulin I is a medium to long acting insulin suspension (thus the need to roll the pen before injecting) identical to human insulin.
Levemir is a long acting insulin analogue (i.e. not identical to human insulin) that better mimics natural basal insulin.
Wikipedia has more details

I still use Humalin I and Humalog, as I have done since moving to MDI after a few months of bimodal insulin immediately after diagnosis in 1996. I reckon it has several advantages, some for me, some for NHS - it's about half the cost of either Levemir or Lantus; it's cloudy, so easy to tell apart from Humalog - rocking slightly to mix is a mnior issue for me; I use it twice a day, as I find that gives me better coverage through the day, more flexibility with times of each dose, more chance to adjuts dose eg when working through the night on endurance sports events.

candi-girl said:

Thank you, see, I never knew that. Didn't realise human insulin worked so slow? thought it worked fast like Humalog.

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some work slow, some work fast. And some work medium lengths!

AMBrennan said:

Humulin I is a medium to long acting insulin suspension .....identical to human insulin......

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:lolno:


an absolute out and out lie. it is not at all identical, they are only as similar as a wheel barrow and a shopping cart.

Identical in biochemical structure to human insulin, as oppose to the various analogues (such as insulin detemir mentioned in the original post) that are not, which I believe would have been reasonably clear from context if you had read more than the first line of my post.

AMBrennan said:

Identical in biochemical structure to human insulin, as oppose to the various analogues (such as insulin detemir mentioned in the original post) that are not, which I believe would have been reasonably clear from context if you had read more than the first line of my post.

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my apologies. its just that, even in context, your statement sounded identical to those of Big Pharma, the statements in which they claim that mfgd in$ulin is identical to a real human's (ie: made by a pancreas) insulin. maybe i thought that because most folks, especially when discussing insulin with relative noobs (no disrespect meant to candi-girl), arent discussing things on a biochemical level --- and with insulin, the sum of the parts may be a bit different than the word identical implies.

candi-girl said:

Thank you, see, I never knew that. Didn't realise human insulin worked so slow? thought it worked fast like Humalog.

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Real human insulin as produced by the body does work fast, It lasts under an hour from the time produced in the pancreas to being totally degraded . It is released on demand.
When you inject insulin as a basal you want it to last longer, otherwise you would have to keep injecting(that is what an insulin pump does) .
It is also difficult to predict how quickly it will be absorbed, and this varies from person to person and site to site, This means that the speed in which the various insulins start to work and the length of time they work for varies betwen people.

Humalin I : the I stands for isophane . It is otherwise called NPH.
The NP standards for neutral protamine.
The H stands for Hagedorn who discovered that adding protomine could make insulin work longer
The protamine was originally obtained from the sperm of river trout (now made in a lab).They had to change the acidity of this protamine to ph7 hence it was neutral protamine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPH_insulin
(Humalin I is confusingly called humalin N in the US)