Jo's Cafe

Many of you know I’m a Type II Diabetic taking Lantus: a 24 hour sustained insluin taken by shot once a day. I never really understood how insulin came to be, so I figured I’d read up on it. Here below are links and exerpts from what I learned.

First, What is insulin?

Insulin is a hormone. And like many hormones, insulin is a protein. Insulin is secreted by groups of cells within the pancreas called islet cells. The pancreas is an organ that sits behind the stomach and has many functions in addition to insulin production. The pancreas also produces digestive enzymes and other hormones. Carbohydrates (or sugars) are absorbed from the intestines into the bloodstream after a meal. Insulin is then secreted by the pancreas in response to this detected increase in blood sugar. Most cells of the body have insulin receptors which bind the insulin which is in the circulation. When a cell has insulin attached to its surface, the cell activates other receptors designed to absorb glucose (sugar) from the blood stream into the inside of the cell.

Without insulin, or insulin working properly, you can actually starve to death. By the time I was diagnosed, I was down to a size 6 and still losing weight. I looked, without clothes, like a skeleton. Hubby said I was emaciated like people they found in concentration camps. When I started the medication forcing my body to use insulin properly, I stopped losing weight and have put it back on. I may not like how I look, being back up to size 10/12, but I sure as heck do look better.

dLife has a short expert on their website from “The Story of Insulin” here. You can see how people were so sick and it’s not for the squeamish either. There are pictures of people who are nothing but skeletons because their insulin production was nothing. Yes, I did look like some of those people underneath all the nice clothes I was wearing. As a woman, I loved being a size 6, but I also went from a 10 to a 6 in 3 week’s time.

When I was diagnosed, I was at a blood sugar level of 457 at 3 pm in the afternoon. Normal is 80-120, depending on your doctor. My body wasn’t using insulin properly and /or may not be producing it in necessary quantities either. But I didn’t start insulin right away. I did not do that for about 8 months later when I couldn’t get my sugar levels down to normal. I had a sugar level of 257 that afternoon and the next morning is was a nice 115.

In 1992 bovine insulin was used on humans. This discovery is attributed to Sir Frederick Grant Banting from Canada.

Frederick Grant Banting completed his medical studies at the University of Toronto and established a surgical practise in London, Ontario, supplementing his income as a medical demonstrator at the University of Western Ontario. In London he conceived a technique which might permit isolation of the anti-diabetic component of the pancreas. He returned to the University of Toronto in 1921 to conduct experiments on the pancreas at the labs of Dr. J.J.R. MacLeod. By the time the summer had ended, he and Charles Best had isolated insulin. Dr. J.B. Collip developed the process by which insulin was able to be refined and processed in sufficient amounts for clinical trials. Fame came quickly to the soft-spoken Banting who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine because of his discovery. Many honours followed, including knighthood, and Banting continued to work on further research and coordinated the National Wartime Medical Research effort. His efforts were cut short by a fatal crash in Newfoundland in 1941.

Medical Science will continue to improve the insulin we use, and hopefully one day we will never have to see small children inject themselves, because diabetes will either have been completely eliminated from our medical vocabulary, or the transit system used to dispense it will be unnoticeable to all.

Insulin has improved my life and I believe it is the best medical decision I made for myself. Not everyone will make that decision, due to fear of needles, or by doing so will make them failures. Thank God for people like Frederick Banting because now we have a way to control diabetes.

Let me ask you this: What is more important to you, your health, or the fear of a needle? Frankly, I’ll take the needle and a longer, healthier life.

Now, I’m off for my one shot a day dose of Lantus.

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