Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor. I am not giving medical advice. Always take your prescribed medicine in the way described by your medical practitioner.
Note, background insulin shots are also called; long acting insulin or basal insulin.
Hi. Is Empagliflozin another new'ish diabetic drug?
Empagliflozin is possibly newish - (perhaps 2015) - but I'm not sure.
I'm on 40 Units of Humulin 1 Insulin, 2000mg Metformin and 5mg Dapagliflozin daily.
Humulin 1 is actually "Humulin i" (where the letter i is normally capitalised and stands for isophane) (see the top of the page
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/spcpil/documents/spcpil/con1421390896103.pdf )
My doses were and are:
Was on
Metformin 2000mg,
sitagliptan100mg,
gliclazide 80mg,
and Lantus 80 units(long acting insulin "background insulin)
Now on
Metformin 2000mg,
sitagliptan 100mg,
Empagflozin 10mg,
NovoMix 56 units (mix of fast and long acting (30 quick acting / 70 long acting (background insulin))
Your Humulin I is similar to the Lantus I was prescribed by my doctor (free on the UK NHS). The way these background insulins typically work;
they form crystals which take a certain amount of time to dissolve in your body, meaning the whole dose gets released in bits over a period of time (for example Lantus claims their insulin is released over 24 hours).
In the chart below (and I'm hoping this is sound info) the Humulin is NPH whilst Lantus is called Glargine - the chart shows how the body absorbs the two different insulins over a 24 hour period. The Humulin seems to get used up more quickly (18 hours) and has a spike at the beginning, suggesting that splitting and spacing ones injections (doses) over a day (into two or more) to be more effective on Humulin.
My doc told me to increase my daily morning dose of Lantus by 2 units a day until I was in single digits. I got up to using 80 units a day and my blood sugars still didn't reach single digits (in units of mmol/L)
My insulin resistance had increased so much, (or my pancreas had stopped making much insulin) that although I was getting lots of background insulin, (the long acting stuff) that when I ate any carbs, my body couldn't deal with the sugar spikes.
So my doc swapped the Lantus and gliclazide for NovoMix which is a combination of fast and long acting insulin.
He also gave me the empagliflozin (Jadiance) to help pee out more sugar.
This drug works by preventing your kidneys from reabsorbing sugar from urine back into your blood (so the sugar just stays in your urine).
The combo of these two have given me instant results. I'm hopeful for the long term.
